Paving paradise

There's a whole generation of kids who think Counting Crows originated the song, "Big Yellow Taxi" with its well-known lyric--"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." I take such erroneous attribution personally because the Joni Mitchell original, a lilting anthem to human regret and hindsight, was part of the soundtrack of my college years.

After today's Federal Communications Commission approval of the SBC AT&T and Verizon MCI mergers, I'm left wondering what we are likely to look back and regret about the Internet and the telecom market as it exists today.

Will this prove--as FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is convinced--to be the watershed for robust broadband investment, producing a rising tide that floats a new world of content and communications for consumers?

Or will the rebuilding of Ma Bell, as feared by consumer advocates, lead to a dismantling of open Internet access as we know it today?

The most disconcerting thing to me about the conditions imposed by the FCC is a requirement that the two mega-companies follow the commission's Internet policy statement, which requires open Internet access for customers, for two years. Does this amount to tacit approval for the new AT&T and Verizon to begin restricting where their Internet customers can surf two years from now?

It is not hard to imagine the business incentive for these companies--and their cable competitors--to begin restricting access to sites that cut into their business and that business will soon be all-encompassing of content, communications and commerce. If some day, you can't access Google or eBay, or portions of their domains that provide a competing service, can we honestly say that no one saw this coming?

Just how big does the yellow taxi have to be?

E-mail me at cwilson3@primediabusiness.com