Recent network outages in the Bay Area as well as others around the nation have revealed the flaw in letting the Telecom carriers provide and manage an increasingly important global resource.

This is not your father's internet anymore. The network is no longer structured as it was originally designed - to survive these type of disruptions. The network is now solely at the whim of the carriers who are only interested in 'billable events'. More and more the carriers are deciding whose bits are special and whose aren't worth the effort to transport. As they continue to construct their tariffed fiefdoms, more of these network chokepoints and bottlenecks will be put in place. Poorer service and increased outages will result - but hey - at least the @#$% MBA in the corner office made his quarterly numbers.

Until we remove the telecoms from the internet scenario, we are forever doomed to live within their limited vision of what a global network should be.

Read more at:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=16136

and about the increasing Telecom crisis at:

http://frankston.com/

Over on www.frankston.com, Bob Frankston continues to warn about how the carriers are trying to stifle competition and ensure their longevity by Assuring Scarcity. Good stuff.

On The Consumerist :

. . .

"Verizon and other cellphone companies mark up the cost of text messages by at least 7314% when compared to their rates for data transfer services.

Verizon's max text message size is 160 characters. At 7 bits per character, that's 1120 bits or 140 bytes. Without a text messaging plan, those 140 bytes run you $.15 (fifteen cents), according to Verizon's website.

Compare that to the rate for data transfer (like when you would use your cellphone as modem). That rate is $.015 (one point five cents) every 1024 bytes.

That's $.015 per data kilobyte versus $1.09 per text message kilobyte. In other words, a markup of 7314%. Other cellphone companies charge comparable rates.

Bytes are bytes. What makes a text-message byte so much more valuable than a straightup data byte ?"

. . .

From the TeleRead blog:

A U.S. senator’s jihad against blogs and interactivity

"We’ve got a major Big Bro problem in D.C.—the burning urge of politicians to control our lives in the most obnoxious ways.

The latest example is none other than U.S. Senator John McCain, often a media darling.

Perhaps it’s time to demote him to black sheepdom, if a Think Progress item is on target:

John McCain has made clear that he doesn’t like the blogosphere.

Now he has introduced legislation that would treat blogs like Internet service providers and hold them responsible for all activity in the comments sections and user profiles. Some highlights of the legislation:

– Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.” ...

"