Word: bellsouth
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...broadband DSL. The Federal Communications Commission attempted to do the same during the middle of the decade to allow competition, but it had to back down from this practice after phone companies threatened to sue. Worse, the FCC and the courts allowed SBC to buy both AT&T and Bellsouth in 2005 and 2006, creating a huge monopoly that rivaled AT&T of the 1980s. Lack of competition in the U.S. broadband market has lead to huge profits for companies like Comcast and Verizon, making U.S. Internet not only slow but also among the most expensive in the world...
...commercials were willing to pay more money for a DVD compilation of 15 shorts by the director of the pirate video and to donate more funds to wild-duck preservation. The results held true whether the commercials were humorous (in the case of the pirate program, viewers saw a BellSouth Yellow Pages ad featuring fighting clowns) or annoying (for the duck documentary, there were spots for fitness company Body by Jake and carmaker Hyundai). (See the top 10 TV commercials...
...example, that a cable company could charge it much higher fees if it wants to run as fast as other competing sites. Bloggers warn that a broadband company could even restrict or slow down access to sites that express political viewpoints they disagree with. Cable and phone companies like BellSouth argue that since they?ve built these high-speed networks they should have the ability to charge higher rates for companies like Google (which is not exactly struggling financially) that use lots of bandwidth, but insist they would not use such fees to stifle political views...
...whether it is legal. The consensus seems to be that it probably does not violate the Fourth Amendment ban on illegal search and seizure, but it may run afoul of several statutes governing the privacy of telephone records. The three companies that turned over their customers' records--AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, which combined carry roughly 80% of the nation's landline calls and half the wireless ones--all issued terse statements saying they valued their customers' privacy and did nothing illegal. "We get requests and subpoenas for records from cheating husbands and wives to sheriffs to the FBI down...
...being listened to by some NSA officer, the program sounds creepy enough that no shortage of senators jumped all over it. The Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said he'd subpoena the heads of the three telecommunications companies involved - AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth - before hearings to find out what they knew. Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, who had kind words about former NSA head Gen. Michael Hayden when he was nominated to be the new CIA boss on Monday, talked ominously about a "showdown" over the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unlawful search...