A Fool and his Words are Soon Parted

You Can Telecom, But You Can’t Tell a Congressman Anything June 9, 2006

Yesterday’s lopsided vote by the House of Representatives to support legislation that clearly favors large Telecom companies, demonstrates “Tim’s Maxim on Congress”:

You cannot trust elected officials to make decisions about anything more complicated than determining whether a bribe should be paid in $10 or $20 denominations.

This seems to be the only kind of decision we can trust our congress to make correctly, without considerable assistance.

Fears for Tiers
The brouhaha here is about what’s generally known as “the tiered Internet.” The idea that the telecom providers are putting forward is that they deserve special access to the infrastructure of the Internet, such that they can tell Vonage (an upstart in the telecom industry, providing VoIP services) that comparable data traffic to AT&T or Sprint will cost them extra.

The implied reasoning is that the telecom providers have made huge investments in the fiberoptics that are carrying the huge amounts of data that run around the globe on the Internet. Did they make these investments, or did the people investing in Global Crossing and other now-defunct players, who lost their shorts pumping cash into this infrastructure during the “dot com bubble” and subsequent bust?

Sadly, the only thing congress seems to understand about complex issues like this one are how to find funding for future campaigns or presidential libraries.