Acrimony at Telecom Conference. MCI deserves death penalty, Wi-Fi flash in the pan at telecom conference: Read the article and then consider Verizon's position. If you're a monopoly player restricting access to DSL customers and your principal rival, Comcast, hasn't quite figure out how to offer the right mix to its cable customers at the right price, then you can play games about charging per computer or talking down Wi-Fi. (The Cox spokesperson made the claim that two percent of their users use 40 percent of the bandwidth, but that doesn't mean they know whether that's legitimate use or not!) But if there is adequate competition, then if Verizon wants to charge you a higher rate to share a connection with multiple machines via Wi-Fi (or not allow it at all) and Speakeasy (my home and business ISP) not only lets you share bandwidth with your computers but with neighbors and throws in a cheap Wi-Fi gateway…it's easy to see where the market forces lead. The clear answer is that with limited choices for consumers, the monopolies will try to force them into their mold. More choices means that some ISP will “win” by offering the right package at the right price. If they can sustain the model, they can beat the telcos…. [Wi-Fi Networking News]