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Ok so you what if Verizon, AT&T, SPrint and TMobile all follow suit. They see WoW Verizon is making millions/billions a year via their deal with Skype. Let's

Ok so you what if Verizon, AT&T, SPrint and TMobile all follow suit. They see WoW Verizon is making millions/billions a year via their deal with Skype. Let's go out and find a Skype competitor with big pockets; one that connects to Skype and Yahoo, MSN, etc. With all four WISPs following the money train who is left. Some random joe who is going to start building their own national WISP that provides as solid coverage as the biggies? THis may or may not happen but if set it stone it allows WISPs to do just that. Also If im trying to create the next Skype (a wireless IP service) the service created in my garage is not going to be as reliable and run as well as Skype runs on Verizon. If Im a consumer which one am I going to use and adopt?

btilly 16y ago
Stop this. The sky is not falling. Skype itself, today, runs over the general Internet, and got to its current position competing against an entrenched dedicated network that literally had been optimized for decades. (Aka the telephone network.) Oh, and one that is prioritized over general internet traffic. In the nightmare world that you describe, any new Skype competitor starts with access to a better Internet than Skype did. Their main worry should be that Skype itself already exists, but for some strange reason Skype is choosing to spend hundreds of millions to billions making Verizon happy. And at the same time our new upstart can deliver to the exact same customers at very little cost! (Certainly a lot less per customer than Skype is paying.) Were I that entrepreneur I'd be crying, "Woe is me, don't throw me into that brier patch!" And by this agreement, Verizon et al can't shut off this upstart service because guaranteed customer access comes straight from the consumer protections they've all agreed to. In effect it is, "We have net neutrality, but the ISPs and anyone they can convince are allowed to waste as much money as they want in producing services with premium access." Given the history of the Internet I have no doubt that much money will be so spent, most of it will be wasted, and innovation on the Internet will prove to have been well protected.
paul9290 16y ago
There's nothing to stop. This my opinion and others here too. We'll c how it plays out. Hopefully none of the scenarios i scribed here.

btilly 16y ago

Stop this. The sky is not falling. Skype itself, today, runs over the general Internet, and got to its current position competing against an entrenched dedicated network that literally had been optimized for decades. (Aka the telephone network.) Oh, and one that is prioritized over general internet traffic. In the nightmare world that you describe, any new Skype competitor starts with access to a better Internet than Skype did. Their main worry should be that Skype itself already exists, but for some strange reason Skype is choosing to spend hundreds of millions to billions making Verizon happy. And at the same time our new upstart can deliver to the exact same customers at very little cost! (Certainly a lot less per customer than Skype is paying.) Were I that entrepreneur I'd be crying, "Woe is me, don't throw me into that brier patch!" And by this agreement, Verizon et al can't shut off this upstart service because guaranteed customer access comes straight from the consumer protections they've all agreed to. In effect it is, "We have net neutrality, but the ISPs and anyone they can convince are allowed to waste as much money as they want in producing services with premium access." Given the history of the Internet I have no doubt that much money will be so spent, most of it will be wasted, and innovation on the Internet will prove to have been well protected.

paul9290 16y ago

There's nothing to stop. This my opinion and others here too. We'll c how it plays out. Hopefully none of the scenarios i scribed here.