End to Google's 'Free Lunch'

WaPo reports A Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.

Google does not access people's homes. People who live in those homes use lines and cables they pay their local phone company or their local cable company for, to access Google's servers and other servers on the internet. Google pays backbone ISP's for lines to connect's servers to the internet.

The comments by John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, came as lawmakers prepared to debate legislation that could let phone and cable companies charge Internet firms additional fees for using their high-speed lines. "The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers," Thorne told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers."

If Verizon provides service to Google, go ahead and increase your charges, and let's see if they can find a less expensive provider to provide it's servers with internet connectivity.

Verizon is spending billions of dollars to construct a fiber-optic network around the country for delivering high-speed Internet and cable TV services.

I presume they are doing that because they feel it is a good business decision.

Executives at other telecom companies, such as AT Inc. chief executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr., have suggested that Google, Yahoo Inc. and other such Internet services should have to pay fees for preferred access to consumers over such lines.