"Don't Clog Mah Pipes"

During the net neutrality debate in 2005, Ed Whitacre, CEO of AT&T in his Southern twang famously talked to BusinessWeek about protecting "my pipes" from free loading VoIP providers.

Well, AT&T, having stuck with you for over 15 years through all your wireless unit's trials and tribulations and name changes, I want an assurance "mah pipes" will not be clogged by the new Apple iPhone deluge.

Dan Farber does a good job summarizing all the comments from various reporters who have been pre-testing the iPhone. If anything the iPhone may regress some of the things other phones can do today. If Apple fans want to shell out $2, 3, 4, 500 more on iPhone than they could on a competing PDA/PocketPC, it's their money. As David Pogue at NY Times says it has at least one nice feature: "When the screen is off, the glossy black glass becomes a handy makeup mirror."

But if they all try to download YouTube on AT&T's network as Apple's ads suggest, and cause me access problems, I will be mightily pissed.

Them's mah pipes too, and I have paid for them for a long time...