First, ignore some existing laws. Second, grease the lawmakers. Third, pull investigators pants down to their knees just as they start running after the problem. What do you get after that? According to some high profile attorneys, you get anti-competitive telco mergers.

How does the government fund these shenanigans, and ensure their telco buddies can stay on the public dole? Uh, they tax the competition.

For a merger to work, the whole has to wind up greater than the sum of the parts. A while back I pondered whether the swathe of telco mergers would make things better. I couldn’t come up with an answer.

Someone else now asks the same questions:

“How would they be able to take, in each case, two companies with already broken processes and mediocre customer support and successfully merge them? How could they continue to provide me with the support I need to keep my company’s networks functioning as they need to in this age of the bandwidth junkie?”

What’s a telecomm manager’s answer? The telcos can’t.

While one guy was insinuating that network neutrality was going the way of the horsedrawn carriage, in the wrong forum at that, another was saying bandwidth utlization from apps like P2P was not really a big a deal right now.

Quest CTO Peter Poll noted:

“I… found that the traffic is well under what some in that industry say is happening. I mean, you hear claims of significant double-digit penetration of peer-to-peer traffic, and it was not near there.”

Some will pass this off as a stray in the “we just can’t recover our costs” argument.

I say so much for unity in the bullshitting department.

The pressure against telco’s plans to charge content providers for access to their pipes (again), has made some headway. Instead of charging Google and Apple’s iTunes, they now want to charge their consumers different rates for access to those “premium” services.

Techdirt says variable rate pricing sounds eerily like the internet of old, which just didn’t work. The problem with this latest scenario is it is going to cost the telco’s big bucks to development the systems necessary to measure this partitioned usage, and the resulting costs of customer service, etc. will likely become a reason to charge even more (not that some of the big guys aren’t singing that song already). I guess they’ll start with outrageous rates for BitTorrent. I wouldn’t be surprised if RSS feed junkies are hit up next.

The irony of the situation is while groups like the DearAOL campaign fight tooth and nail with this single content provider for free access, the real screwing to the concept of an “open internet” is taking shape right under their noses.

Because they have three-way communication going on compliments of the telcos. It didn’t take long for someone to push back against BellSouth’s pomp. But I don’t think it is going to matter - the telcos are just stubborn enough to try charging content providers for access anyway.

BellSouth “finally” announced that they are going to throttling down internet transport for content providers that don’t pay up. Well, actually they said they would be providing better service for those that paid, but what they really mean is the former.

As Bill Smith, CTO at Bell South, pointed out: “Higher usage for broadband services drives more costs that we have to recover.”

If they can’t recover costs of transport, then why in the hell do they continue lowering prices for broadband access?!

The reason is simple: because they’re desperate, because they lack vision, because they just can’t compete.

***UPDATE***

Jeff Pulver is making a plea to Eric Schmidt of Google to simply turn off Bell South. No content, no need for broadband, no customers. Making that work assumes telcos like Bell South are rational business people. Yea, right. We’ll wait and see how it all turns out.

The saga of struggling (and stupid) telecomm companies doesn’t only continue..its accelerating.

The telcos can’t “create” their way out of wet paper bags, so they want to charge service providers for access to their lines. Of course, this will just stifle innovation and piss everyone off, but the telcos don’t care. And if you think this isn’t going to happen just because the Chairman of the FCC thinks its a bad idea, think again. Some of the players are already prepping for it by again lowering prices for broadband access - you know they are thinking they are about to pick up the lost revenue on the backside. Of course, if they can’t make up for the fact they add little value, they can always hide egregious surcharges in their terms and conditions, strapping customers when they least expect it.

The tide moving fast against them nonetheless, with the day of reckoning for the landline drawing ever so near. The latest and greatest in really bad news for the folks who can’t innovate: Netgear has announced it will soon be offering a Skype-compatible Wi-Fi phone, which means that Skype users are getting unshackled from their computers. Throw in the latest offering from the traditional telco nemesis Vonage, a similar piece of equipment and service, and you have the makings for even more lost revenue as a result of sheer ignorance.

The telcos will propose more of the same, lock and block, and piss off customers. Meanwhile, life (meaning great new services) will simply find another way, and leave the dummies out in the cold.

***UPDATE***

The innovators won’t wait, even if it means penetrating and lassoing wireless technologies into the mix. Where are the big carriers in all this? Nowhere.

The news out of Chicago was that for $110, you could buy the call records of any number, including cell phones, from a simple website service. What a fricken travesty!

I can’t help but think this is the telcos’ doing. Where else could you get those records from (tap the switches)? The Illinois Legislature moved quickly to ban the sale of the phone records, and I suggest Tom, Dick, Harry and Sally take measures into their own hands as well.

This is a massive class action lawsuit in the making, and while I generally think they are a waste of time and precious resources, anything that sticks it to the absolutely pathetic telcos is time well spent.

The question came up as to whether telcos are being too conservative with their TV plans, but I have to wonder whether the investment they will have to make is worth the price.

I barely ever click on the tube, but when I did last night, I noticed at least three prime time commercials for a telco bundled offering. The TV hitch was DirectTV, and the first thought through my head was what advantage there could be in doing it. I have a minimal cable offering, mostly because I get a ten dollar discount on internet access (so my actual TV cost is about $4). But there is no way I’d find any value in a big satellite or fancy cable offering, and most of the folks I know wouldn’t either.

So I cut the price of the “additional” offering out of the equation, and what I get is pretty expensive phone and internet service. And it is going to be expensive, if only to cover the cost of all those prime time ads. There is simply low marginal utility in it, but I don’t think the telcos are going to listen.

Bundling may be good where the cost of delivery has already been incurred, and the products are absolutely necessary (like AOL bundling computer security products with their internet access), but I think the telcos may be better off sticking to their core product line, and figuring out how to make money at it again.

***UPDATE***

One such telco might be looking like they want to enhance their core services, but Verizon’s rumoured low fiber offering is about the same game…entertainment.