Does this sound like a company that is an IP 'data highway' - or a company that wants control of more 'higher level' services by lobbying (buying) politicans? If UT is correct, then consumers would simply quit Verizon and move to (the only) other broadband provider - Comcast - because Verizon wants more control (profits from) higher level Internet functions.
Verizon and Comcast got independence from legal requirements: opening their networks to CLEC - smaller competitors (ie COVAD). With a duopoloy on broadband services, these companies now want control of content. IP is only data packet traffic. Higher level functions from TCP and above are also known as content. Some examples of content are www, movies on demand, RealAudio, and VoIP. Note how the lowly IP provider now wants control and profits from those who provide higher level services such as Google.
Maybe this is only a trial ballon. But it another puzzle piece along with 'packet skewing'. Little pieces that would explain a larger, overall intent to dominate the business we currently call 'The Internet'.
From Washington Post of 7 Feb 2006:
Quote:
Verizon Executive Calls for End to Google's 'Free Lunch'
A Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.
The comments by John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, came as lawmakers prepared to debate legislation that could let phone and cable companies charge Internet firms additional fees for using their high-speed lines.
"The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers," Thorne told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers."
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BTW, there is nothing technically complex in these posts from UT and myself. It's layman's language. If difficult for the lurker, then the lurker is only first learning about what was well understood, expected, and published in newspapers five years ago. This is a contraversy that probably caused Powell Jr to resign as FCC Commissioner when even another Republican commissioner did not agree.