One of the reasons I hadn’t bought a satellite radio yet had to do with the conflict between Major League Baseball on XM and NFL on Sirius (and, of course, my friend Rick on Sirius).
With the proposal of a merger, that seemed to no longer be a concern. After all, as Mel Karmazin said in Congressional testimony prices would not be raised and that listeners would benefit enormously by getting the best programming from both companies.
Wow – win, win!
This morning, in a count-your-fingers moment, the deal didn’t look as sweet. Here’s what the NY Times had to say, quoting FCC Chairman Kevin Martin:
FCC Chief: AT&T Can Limit Net Bandwidth
FCC Chief Kevin Martin yesterday gave his support to AT&T and other telcos who want to be able to limit bandwidth to sites like Google, unless those sites pay fees. Martin made it clear in a speech yesterday that he supports such a a “tiered” Internet.
That last paragraph was pulled from Digg – though they added the word extortion before the word fees. Maybe, but that’s a little too incendiary for me to use.
If this story is true, I am very disappointed and worried about the future of the Internet.
This is a subject I’ve posted a number of times. I’ll continue to look for developments.