No company has complained louder than AOL about the cable-TV companies refusal to open their fast data pipes to competing Internet service providers. Those complaints have been totally justified.
Now that AOL will own some large cable-TV systems — Time Warner is a big operator — it’ll have the wide-bandwidth access it hasn’t been able to secure from AT&T. Let’s see if AOL is any less monopolistic than AT&T in this regard — let’s see if AOL will provide the “open access” it’s been demanding when the people asking for it are other Internet service providers.
AOL’s answer will undoubtedly be: “Forget about it. Buy your own cable systems, pal.”
UPDATE:
Steve Case, AOL’s chief executive and chairman-to-be of the new company, says open access will prevail. I do not believe him.
The Baby Bell regional telephone companies have been saying for several years that they’ve provided the equivalent of open access to potential phone-company competitors on their local lines. This has been an outright lie. The Baby Bells have done everything in their power to thwart genuine local-loop competition short of breaking legs.
Watch the fine print, folks. AOL’s record is clear — and Steve Case has been a proponent of openness only when closed systems are being used against him.