The current version of Business Week has an interesting essay about the large telco's. The article reviews the consolidation of telephone companies after the 1984 split of AT&T. A major difference between the current consolidation and the pre 1984 AT&T is the current lack of Research and Development being done by the large telephone companies.
More after the flip
On interesting paragraph summarizes the issue:
One way in which these companies are very different from the old phone monopoly is that while the original AT&T had a world- class research operation, its successors don't. One of the signal facts of the communications revolution is that virtually all the new technologies that made it possible were developed outside the phone world. Last year, Verizon's revenue came in at nearly $80 billion. AT&T (without BellSouth or Cingular) had revenue of $44 billion. And yet while Intel Corp. (INTC ) spent $5.1 billion last year on research and development, AT&T spent just $130 million. The word "research" doesn't even appear in Verizon's annual report
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UPDATE
I just saw another net neutrality article in e-Week - it contains more information to use in this fight
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1990368,00.asp?kc=EWNAVEMNL071806EOAD
The entire article can be viewed at -
http://www.businessweek.com/...
although a subscription is required.
Late in the article the author notes how AT&T took a long time to allow Vonage access to their 911 switches.
The upshot of the article is that, instead of innovation, the large telephone companies are trying to stiffle their competitors. Of course, that's not news to anyone here. The interesting issue is that a middle of the road (IMHO) business magazine publicizes the same opinion.
If you can't get this article online, get a hardcopy version. It adds a lot of fuel to the argument why net neutraility is important. Stiffling competition will only hurt the US economy. This takes some of the emotion out of the argument and replaces it with fact.