"This is an expression of an industry in deep trouble," he said. "We are plumbers down at the sewage and commodity level. People don't join the Internet and use it because they admire the packets -- they go there for the apps, they go their for the services."

The fight over how to regulate the Internet is a "fight over a dwindling pool of money" in the telecom industry, he said.

"When you've got a shockingly bad, broken business plan that's unsustainable, the best thing you can do is seek regulatory relief," he added. "To what extent are we seeing a bunch of losers trying to promote broken business plans by ... screaming loudly because this is the last gasp of the telephone industry that should have died a decade ago?"

The IDG News Service