We love this quote from AT&T CEO Edward Whitacre, referring to Google, eBay and Amazon.com: “Why should they be able to use my pipes for free?” Pointing out that people are actually paying for the bandwidth going through his pipes hasn’t swayed good old Ed. If the man ran FedEx, both the sender and receiver would pay for a package.

Anyway, as you all know, Ed’s been maniacally threatening to forcibly narrow his fiberoptic urethra for companies that won’t pay. He’s trying to extort companies like Google, bend them over the barrel. But there’s some rumors floating around that Google’s not going to stand for it. With a large section of the country’s wireless spectrum about go up for grabs, the rumor is that Google is going to simply buy it all up and build their own pipe into everyone’s homes, effectively telling Whitacre to go shove it.

Granted, it’s just a rumor, and benevolent corporations like Google, given too much power, become companies like AT&T eventually. Still, doesn’t just about everyone want to see this Whitacre cracker get the double deuce?

Google, eBay And Amazon To AT&T: We’ll Build Our Own Network [Networking Pipeline]

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