AT&T Lobbyist Predicts Doom & Gloom, Clogged Internet By 2010

from the would-you-put-money-on-that? dept

We've noticed a nice little pattern. Whenever you hear news reports about how the internet is getting clogged up due to things like music downloading or YouTube or video downloads, the claims are almost always from consultants or lobbyists (or politicians who take their cues from the lobbyists). But when you talk to the actual technologists who understand what's actually happening on the network, a very different story emerges (even if those technologists work for the telcos complaining about a bandwidth crunch). They point out that there's no bandwidth crunch and the impact of P2P traffic is overstated and that any increase in bandwidth can be easily dealt with.

So, with headlines blaring out this weekend that AT&T is predicting that "the internet will run out of capacity by 2010," take a wild guess at the role of the guy making the prediction. Yup, it's the company's vice president of legislative affairs. If it's such a burden, then why does AT&T continue to build out its network? The answer is because it still makes the company plenty of money, despite what he'd have you believe. It's because the government was kind enough to grant AT&T all sorts of monopoly rights of way and subsidies -- and the only way to keep those flowing is to warn about some impending doom to hit the network. While he also talks up how he wants the government to keep a "light regulatory touch" when it comes to network neutrality, he skips the part about the heavy regulatory touch that's gone on in terms of benefiting AT&T for years. Funny how that works. No, the internet isn't at risk of collapsing in 2010. AT&T is just trying to squeeze more subsidies out of the government.

Filed Under: bandwidth crunch, clogged internet, lobbyists
Companies: at&t