Manumission

The arrival of the Internet amounts to a manumission. Manumission refers to the legal requirements giving slaves their freedom. The word like manual derives from the use of hands. It means in a literal sense to send from the grip of hands - escape bondage. Manumission seems an appropriate description of the difference between intercommunication and telecommunications. Telecommunications succeeds by controlling access to communications. Control means service providers can extract usage-based fees and raise rates without increasing value. The personal computer emancipated the world of computing from the time-share metered usage arrangements, and personal computers (sometimes made to look like telephones) connected by the Internet appear poised to do the same for communications.

The network-content fault line marks the point where economies of scale meet dis-economies of scale. The cost of connecting individual users to a network might decline with the number of users, but the content interests of users can prove as unique as fingerprints.

Manumission campaigns:

Broken Trust:
The incumbent telephone companies depend on the protection of government. Government protection rests on the notion that the status quo serves the public interest. The following activities seek to reveal the dramatically anti-consumer nature of telecom monopoly and hold the monopolies accountable for their misdeeds:
Accounting Fraud
TeleTruth

Antitrust: Antitrust laws in the United States and in most countries exist to resist the tendency of companies to pursue and leverage monopoly power. The follow activities seek to get the antitrust laws enforced:
Telecom Antitrust Report
Antitrust Institute

By-Pass: Monopoly persists by keeping customers beholden to a single supplier. The profit potential of communication motivates insurgents. Insurgents give customers more options. By-pass in most industries means competition. For example:
Free World Dialup (broadband VoIP)
Vonage (broadband VoIP)
WHPWireless - CellSocket (wireless conversion)

Manumission Timeline: