Nick Farrell
The Register
Monday, December 11, 2006

A DAFT BILL by technology wizard Senator Ted Stevens, which would have meant telecom companies could charge sites for access for the use of their 'pipes', has died a death.
The US Congress ran out of time to discuss the bill in the current session and, when a new Democratic Congress comes back from its holidays, the bill is unlikely to get a sympathetic hearing.

The presentation of the bill did manage to amuse most of the technological community as Stevens presented the Internet as a series of tubes and pipes which would get blocked if the bill never went ahead.

Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org Civic Action, said the death of the bill was a huge victory for "real people". He said it was a clear signal to the next Congress that standing up for big bold ideas was a winning political proposition.

It has been estimated that AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth and Comcast shelled out more than $150 million to push the bill through. It looks like they would have been better putting it on a horse.

However, there is still a concern that without some law guaranteeing net neutrality it is possible that the telcos could still lobby senators to bring similar laws. µ