Soon after AT&T chief Ed Whitacre announced his plans to accept his companies $161 million retirement offer, the phone collossus announced Big Ed s replacement.

Randall Stephenson onetime SBC Chief Operating Officer, will attempt to fill the shoes of the man who once called all of us nuts for thinking the Internet should remain free from phone company discrimination.

Whitacre Version 2.0

But this apple clearly hasn t fallen far from the tree. Echoing his predecessor, Stephenson was quoted in an industry newsletter saying, We re going to control the video on our network. The content guys will have to make a deal with us.

Stephenson s statement makes it clear that he intends to carry forward Whitacre s plan to block or degrade high-speed content of anyone who has not struck a special deal with AT&T.

It is typical for broadband providers to bill their customers, and only their customers, for access to the Internet. What Stephenson and Whitacre are talking about is their scheme to ransom off access to their users to the highest bidders to add another toll, charging sites for priority access to your connection.

For AT&T it s not just about delivering your world but about charging others that may want to enter your world in front of those that you d rather invite. The problem, of course, is that they re selling out your free choice in the bargain.

Stephenson wants to make it more difficult for you to access the sites that you might want to see sites that may not have paid the phone and cable duopoly the privilege before forcing you to the sites AT&T prefers. The phone and cable companies claim that this sort of triple dipping charging consumers once and content providers twice is necessary for them to provide the high speed services that Americans demand.

According to Professor Tim Wu: While it s one way to earn cash, it’s just too close to the Tony Soprano vision of networking: Use your position to make threats and extract payments. This is similar to the outlawed, but still common, payola schemes in the radio world. Yes, there s money in such schemes, but they aren t good for the industry or the country.

Whitacre and Stephenson s scheme is a fundamental shift in the neutral way the Internet has always worked. In essence, it takes away user choice the most basic tenet of the Internet and hands it to AT&T.

It also tilts the Web s even playing field to favor the larger corporations, while handicapping the Internet s true innovators who can’t afford to buy in to AT&T s protection racket.

Read The Original Posting from Tim Karr of Free Press