[franzy belfort @ Jan 6th 2006 4:48PM]

I think a lot of us are missing the bigger picture here. For all the great things that come from Microsoft, Yahoo & Google, they are all making money from advertising and service. But who pays for the pipe that provides all of this great stuff? Everybody wants music, video voip and massive bandwidth, but who is paying for it? Not us and definitely not the service providers. And before you say "well they get to charge for dsl/dial up access" remember that there are now companies like Skype, Vonage and other voips who's entire business model is based on using other people's pipes to provide service and then undercutting the original company. Of course voip companies can charge a great price for their services, they have no overhead and they don't pay for infrastructure or upgrades, or maintenance. I don't remember it being a yahoo repair truck that repair the fiber which allowed my block to go online. It would be the exact same thing as if Amazon put up a booth in Barnes and noble, used their bathroom and electricity and then sold books at a 20% discount because they could afford to. There is no such thing as a free lunch in nature, and there shouldn't be in business either. I applaud Verizon and AT&T for standing up for their rights when something is so far out of balance as this. If this go thru, the service providers should pay it for the same reasons that I pay rent for my business location and for the same reasons we pay for our game consoles and everything else.