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I'm sure telecom carriers would welcome local competetion and build out their infrastructure for everyone:

http://www.startribune.com/tel...

https://www.fiercetelecom.com/...

https://www.bizjournals.com/de...

https://arstechnica.com/uncate...

https://www.reddit.com/r/cordc...

...and if you don't own the poles (like Verizon)...

Verizon, the telephone company, does not own telephone poles? That seems...wrong.

To be fair, they own a lot less than they used to.

Sorry dude, you're already using other ISPs..... Your ISP, DSLExtreme is just the conduit from your house the back bone of the intenet. When you watch Netflix at home, the IP path is not NETFFLIX --> DLSExtreme ---> your house, but rather ....
NETFLIX --> Amazon --> Verizon --> AT&T --> COX ---> Comcast --> DSLExtreme --> Your house...
So throttling is already happening upstream of your provider if ANY upstream oligarchy want's Netflix payola to let the traffic through unmolested. This is exactly why Municipal ISP's are BS because people do not understand how the dataflow works.
Here's just an example of 2 ISP back bone providers finger pointing resulting in any down stream customer getting screwed.
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/...

The same type of thing is happening in San Jose. Comcast and AT&T are working hard to keep Google Fiber out of the Bay Area in California, by denying access to utility poles. I called the Northern California Joint Pole Association (NCJPA) myself to ask them some questions, and they were somewhat flummoxed on the phone. I guess it never occurred to them that helping monopolists protect their turf might tick off the local population.

They're still rolling out in NYC as of at least last year (link) but they're certainly not expanding to new areas. It's sad, great service despite the company providing it!

If I were a Mayor of a city that AT&T serves; I would respond by saying that this will mean the city will need to start rolling out it's own gigabit network now.

AT&T can't complain that the city is competing with them, if AT&T isn't providing the service in the first place.

Of course. Which is why they (among others) support blocking municipal broadband networks.

Internet service is far cheaper to provide than television.

Wholesale cost of 1TB of network data is under $4 and if historical trends continue will be below $3 by 2015 if not sooner. The math is a little fuzzy because its priced in bits per second, not increments of bytes, but close enough for slashdot. And, of course, there are fixed costs like infrastructure and manpower. But television service also has significant fixed costs.

They are the entity in this arrangement that has actively encouraged assymetric use of the net by offering assymeteric service.

This is half true. Verizon is selling asymmetric services (although they are changing most FiOS plans to symmetric).

What is not true is that asymmetric connections encourages asymmetric usage. It's the other way around, and has been since the days of dialup.

Unless you're downloading games regularly, watching high def videos online, or torrenting stuff, data caps should never be a problem.

The trouble is a lot of people are now doing most of the above. People who aren't don't care about caps, since they'll never get close to 100gb a month without those three.

The problem is that the hogs of today are examples of what the average customer could be doing 10 years from now.

10 years ago, 3 Mbps down/384 kbps up DSL was widespread. Streaming video was uncommon. There was no YouTube, and Facebook was exclusive to Harvard. Windows XP SP2 was not yet released. Perhaps a 10GB cap would have been reasonable, and data hogs would pay exorbitant prices for cable.

Now, "selfie" is a thing. My chattering devices are constantly looking to communicate with Google (Android), Apple (iOS and MacOS), and Microsoft (Windows Update). I probably go right past 50GB regularly, and I don't do Netflix. This has been enabled by the relentless falling prices of Internet transit. (Historical trends) Games, Netflix, and BitTorrent aren't the only things pushing bandwidth usage up.

So, it's alarming to see a Comcast exec, proposing in 5 years to limit the Internet to the Internet of today. He wants to stop progress. It's especially galling because he's already double-dipping. He's trying to triple-dip. He's charging consumers for the cable Internet connection, he's charging Netflix for access to those consumers, and now he wants to charge again to use that connection that 2 parties have already paid for.

Netflix is having all these problems because they use Cogent, the cut-rate morons of the transit world...

This has happened hundreds of times, long before they carried Netflix streaming video:

http://www.pcworld.com/article...

https://secure.dslreports.com/...

https://secure.dslreports.com/...

https://secure.dslreports.com/...

http://www.complaints.com/2008...

http://publicpolicy.verizon.co...

http://www.prnewswire.com/news...

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/s...

https://www.datacenterknowledg...

etc., etc.

I think you may be incorrect on those speeds. Comcast speed tiers are 3/6/25/50/105/515(certain Northeast markets only) There may be regional offers on price but the actual speeds are uniform

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/google-fiber-now-faces-comcasts-250-mbps-offering-provo/2013-08-29>
http://www.multichannel.com/distribution/comcast-light-250-meg-broadband-service-provo/145182

I think that they were fine on the speed, but not sure about the price.

In this posting, below, Animats points to an article that says it's really a peering fight between Orange and Cogent, an ISP that Google uses for transit. More detail in techdirt. At least 90% of the time, if you see an article about "ISP Peering Fight", Cogent is one of the players. They're really big, they're really cheap, and they sell lots of bandwidth to content providers. They're pretty much the bottom of Tier 1 - they'd like to get free peering from all the other Tier 1 providers, but that doesn't always happen, and occasionally somebody decides not to peer with them.

Content providers and Eyeball providers each think that the other side should pay them money. After all, content's worthless if nobody can see it. But consumer eyeballs only buy your broadband service if there's something to see. And the transport-oriented networks get squeezed by both sides, which is one reason they usually end up buying or being bought by consumer broadband networks.

For a less clueless article, see "France Telecom and Google entangled in peering fight".

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/huawei-banned-making-equipment-bids-australias-nbn/2012-03-26

Not just a handicap against them, and no reason given. It's not like there are a lot of world class Australian router companies. They are buying Taiwanese, French-ish, and US-ish, so it isn't nationalism. Just seems to be anti-China sentiment, with no substance backing it up, in this case, or the Aussie NBN.

Verizon is not going to add any new cities. You're lucky. All I can get is Time Warner or AT&T.

Verizon disagrees. http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizon-brings-fios-upstate-new-york-challenge-time-warner-cable/2011-03-28

And Verizon just sold all that FiOS, DSL and landline business to Frontier.

Really? At least article says Verizon didn't sell its service everywhere, such as Virginia. Another one says it sold "its rural assets in 14 states to Frontier Communications (NYSE: FTR) last year."

Falcon

And Verizon just sold all that FiOS, DSL and landline business to Frontier.

Really? At least article says Verizon didn't sell its service everywhere, such as Virginia. Another one says it sold "its rural assets in 14 states to Frontier Communications (NYSE: FTR) last year."

Falcon

Verizon FIOS is testing dual stacks. Comcast is testing approaches as well. This is all hyperbole.

FIOS is also running tests for how to support. See FIOS and Dual Stack

Not quite, unless he's betting 75% of his salary.

Granted, $16M is still just half a percent of their net income for 2008, but half a percent is probably enough. For someone making $50k/yr, half a percent of that would be $250 -- enough of a penalty to make most people take notice.

The truth is out there. See here, here, here, and here for starters. Keep in mind that's all from 2008 and the price trend has continued.

If you don't believe that a connection costs the same saturated as it does idle, consult any networking manual and try to come up with ANY mechanism that would make a busy circuit more costly.

I was voting for the CWA as well...

This happened the same day the CWA was reported as saying "contract talks with AT&T are not going well", 5 days after most of the employment contracts in California expired and AT&T tried to low-ball the healthcare benefits they'd be giving union workers in the future, and force a series of job cuts. One imagines that, in a down economy, AT&T felt they had their workers over a barrel, since job prospects are tighter these days.

Here's a telecom industry rags take on the whole thing: http://www.fiercetelecom.com/special-reports/cwa-strike.

-- Terry

ORLY?
Brief: Comcast lobbies local Philadelphia gov't to slow/prevent Verizon from laying FIOS.
http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/spotlight-comcast-lobbies-slow-philadelphia-verizon-fios/2008-12-01

Brief: Verizon gets committee vote, after years of fighting, to lay FIOS in Philadelphia
http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/committee-moves-forward-verizon-fios-philadelphia-franchise-agreement/2009-01-22

BTW, this only happened because of the new mayor (Nutter).

Verizon FIOS has been in the greater philadelphia area since 2006.
http://www.tvover.net/2006/12/06/Verizon+Launches+FiOS+TV+In+Greater+Philadelphia+Area.aspx

So bite me with your spewed trash. Local gov'ts, Philadelphia is notorious, are corrupt.

ORLY?
Brief: Comcast lobbies local Philadelphia gov't to slow/prevent Verizon from laying FIOS.
http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/spotlight-comcast-lobbies-slow-philadelphia-verizon-fios/2008-12-01

Brief: Verizon gets committee vote, after years of fighting, to lay FIOS in Philadelphia
http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/committee-moves-forward-verizon-fios-philadelphia-franchise-agreement/2009-01-22

BTW, this only happened because of the new mayor (Nutter).

Verizon FIOS has been in the greater philadelphia area since 2006.
http://www.tvover.net/2006/12/06/Verizon+Launches+FiOS+TV+In+Greater+Philadelphia+Area.aspx

So bite me with your spewed trash. Local gov'ts, Philadelphia is notorious, are corrupt.

Comcast rolls out DOCSIS 3.0 to 3 more cities:

http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/comcast-rolls-docsis-3-0-three-more-cities/2008-12-11

And Denver, Salt Lake City, and most of the west coast should be done before the end of 2009.

Qwest lost pentagon contracts for refusing to illegal wiretap when it was asked to in February 2001 . The 9/11 attacks are a strawman argument for the executive branch grabbing as much power as they can.

As to impeachment, Pelosi has said impeachment is off the table for quite awhile. Kucinich has tried to start impeachment hearings but they got killed in subcommittees. The two parties may bicker at some level but they wouldn't actually want to oh, follow the law or anything when it comes to trampling personal liberties.

Last I checked, Qwest wasn't brought up on "not doing the executive branch's bidding"

That's because you didn't really check at all, did you?

C'mon, admit it.