The large telecommunication giants feel they aren't being treated fairly in the grand scheme of the Internet. They are attempting to institute a tiered structure which will involve higher prices for 'priority service'. Priority service being defined as faster more reliable connections. They plan to send these price increases to the content providers of the Internet; Google, Yahoo, and any other company that exists primarily on the Internet. The claim made by John Thorne, senior vice president for Verizon, that Google "is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers." is utterly ludicrous. Telecommunication companies are simply the link between customers and content providers. And they are already getting two slices of the same pie. Customers have to pay them so they can access the content found on the Internet, and paying more for faster and more reliable service is already fairly standard. Content providers have to pay as well in order for their content to be made available to customers. So the telecommunication companies get paid once by customers, and once by providers for the same information. A piece of data traveling from Google to a customer is charged to be sent from Google to the telecommunication company, and then is charged again to go from them to the customer requesting it. And they think it somehow is fair to charge the content providers again for that same data. This is simply another case of the greedy becoming more greedy. Like any moocher, they've seen success, and now want to get their unfair share of the proceeds.

And I could say much more, but then the topic slightly shifts, and I get in trouble for not having a clear subject matter.... so I stop here.

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