Threats to an Open Internet

What they've got planned

The threat to an open internet isn't just speculation -- we've seen what happens when the Internet's gatekeepers get too much control. These companies have been clear about their plans to discriminate online. According to the Washington Post:

William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.

Smith isn't alone. Former AT&T Chief Ed Whitacre told BusinessWeek:

Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there's going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they're using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

And Verizon's Ivan Seidenberg told the Wall Street Journal:

We have to make sure they don't sit on our network and chew up our capacity. We need to pay for the pipe.

Net Neutrality advocates are not imagining a doomsday scenario. We are simply taking the telecom execs at their word.