Battleangel

They say mondays really suck. It’s nothing that has been verified on a scientific basis though. Today for example, we learn the ultimate agenda of the Swedish/Finnish communications fascist giant TeliaSonera.

TeliaSonera sätter åt storsurfare (in Swedish)

A couple of snide remarks made in the forum (also in Swedish, sorry)

Essentially this is all about profit. DSL hasn’t become the golden calf that Telia (TeliaSonera) had hoped for. And they have plenty of unsound investments all over the globe that have brought the company to its knees. On top of this they have failed to adapt to the new market conditions for telephony. They like to pretend that it’s 1989 and they are king of the hill and run a flourishing monopoly once again. They of course still control the copper access net but they it is now open for competition. So when they are losing money as an operator they increase the copper access cost in various ways. Very slick indeed.

And behold! Some DSL customers actually use their bandwidth (as they indeed have a right to). This is of course detrimental to the prospect of making money on DSL. Profit will only occur work if people who migrate from dial-up DO NOT actually take advantage of the extra bandwidth. TeliaSonera don’t actually claim to make a loss on DSL. They just say that it’s unfair that “20% of the users use up 80% of the bandwidth”. This bogus statistics jinx is just another way of saying that they have the right to assert how people should use their ADSL. Quite frankly, it’s an insult!

The model for the future could very well be a bandwidth quota whereas excess bandwidth will be billed. This is needless to say a pretty big step back from the flat-rate of the present system. No one is denying that Sweden has a pretty generous policy on DSL but comparing the situation with other countries is pointless. Every market is unique and there is more at play here than corporate profits. Should Sweden wish to continue to spearhead the IT revolution, we MUST also continue to deliver affordable broadband services. And especially so to the wide public. It’s a necessity - not a luxury.