Dan Gillmor tackles the increasing trend of telcos and cable companies to attempt to own the data their users access as well as the pipe they access it through:
The question boils down to something fairly simple, Braunstein and several other speakers noted at the Pacific Telecommunications Council annual meeting this week. Should giant telecommunications companies — namely the cable and local-phone provider — have vertical control over everything from the data transport to the content itself? Or should we insist on a more horizontal system, in which the owner of the pipe is obliged to provide interconnections to competing services?
The cable and phone companies are insisting that they need vertical control or they won’t provide broadband (fast) data connections to U.S. households. They appear to have persuaded the Federal Communications Commission’s industry-lapdog chairman, Michael Powell, and a majority of his colleagues.