A little rant on US regulatory politics.

“Cheese Doodle-Eating Surrender Monkeys?” is how Hands Off The Internet slams Skype’s bit of consumer advocacy. Skype proposes anyone

can connect a phone to the mobile phone network so long as they don’t hurt it. Basically, you shouldn’t have to buy your phone from your mobile carrier any more than you buy a home phone or PBX from your landline phone company. HOTI’s unsigned blog poster [how cowardly and deceptive, considering how much they get paid] wrote:

“what the companies pushing hardest — Google, eBay and Amazon — really want to do is freeze the market where it is now, with each at the top of their own game.”

Distortions and off-point.

If the dinosaurs innovated and delivered on their promises, the whole US would have fiber to the home by now; standard devices could connect to mobile networks the way home phones connect to the Internet and standard devices can plug-in to telephone jacks and just work.

Is this truly a level playing field? Has hands-off regulation worked? No and No. Whole regions of the United States don’t have access to broadband and where people do, not to more than one or two providers. This highly consolidated oligopoly spends more fortunes on underhanded crap artists like handsoff.org than R&D. And they are doing whatever they can to encumber innovators.

I’m not going to give any Google n. liar. A lawyer with a roving commission.
 - Ambrose Biercejuice to Hands Off The Internet by linking to them. It’s an astroturf (fake grassroots) site run for AT&T by lobbyist Public Strategies Washington. Complain to Mike McCurry at (202) 783-2596 about lying for a client. Tell him I said hello and thanks for selling out to the wrong guys after a career of public service.

P.S. I can’t believe long time Skype partner, Actiontec Electronics, makers of the VoSKY family of Skype-to-PBX gateways, lent their good name to this vile project.

P.P.S. By the way, if you think I’m wrong, speak up. We gladly publish contrary views so long as unsubstantiated ad-hominem attacks are avoided.

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