We're going down the road of creating a bandwidth cartel in much the same way we have an oil cartel, writes Tim Wu:

Like energy, bandwidth is an essential economic input. You can’t run an engine without gas, or a cellphone without bandwidth. Both are also resources controlled by a tight group of producers, whether oil companies and Middle Eastern nations or communications companies like AT&T, Comcast and Vodafone. That’s why, as with energy, we need to develop alternative sources of bandwidth.

Wired connections to the home — cable and telephone lines — are the major way that Americans move information. In the United States and in most of the world, a monopoly or duopoly controls the pipes that supply homes with information. These companies, primarily phone and cable companies, have a natural interest in controlling supply to maintain price levels and extract maximum profit from their investments — similar to how OPEC sets production quotas to guarantee high prices.

I like this new way that Tim's framing the issue, especially with the price of gas today setting new, ever higher records. It works well: wireline Internet is to oil as wireless Internet is to solar/wind/etc. (Is that right? I can never get that A is to B as C is D thing right. Anyway, I trust you get the drift.) But the point is that having just a few hands on just one nozzle is a bad thing whether it comes to oil or Internet, an argument that seems to particulary hit home when gas is topping $4 a gallon.