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Great post I agree that the majority of us are in similar boats, or trains so to speak. Obviously riding a train, bus or metro is not the same as driving a car; even there it always should come down to Personal Responsibility.

There is probably not much you can do at work without approval from someone, though it can be as cheap as it can be at home for the entire office if you boss is so inclined. If you have a formal IT department, talk to them. However if you do NOT have formal IT, you could run it by your boss and add it to the network. There are many ways to make it secure, even down to NOT having it broadcast its presence, thus no hackers can see it. If you do decide to get a router for work or home, make sure you ONLY purchase a DD-WRT supported router. The DD-WRT open source software gives you some great additional capabilities normally only found on routers costing hundreds for routers costing in the $15 - $60 range.

I take exception with this FUD that you appear, as many, to have bought into...:

...is probably much more secure than open wifi.

Whether your WiFi is open or not should not matter. In fact we should all keep our WiFi open and available for all as we have choice, between SSH, SFTP, VPNs, secure ID/passwords, VLANs and more; so there is no reason to worry about open WiFi anymore. I like many get tired of the industry scare tactics and FUD.

Stop buying into the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, the FUD, spread by the FEAR mongering corporations that want to charge all of us monthly fees and provide as little service as possible.

Monthly fees in and of themselves are NOT necessarily a bad thing, especially if the company is innovative and truly providing service.

Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?

These days, that is NOT true of the telecoms, cellular providers, ISPs, Cable Companies, and other corporations trying to squeeze every last drop out of the internet. These poor excuses for companies have received billions in federal funding to build out fiber since before 1996. If a telecom bought out and/or is now servicing the area of a telecom that got funding, they should still be expected to provide the service to the people living there. Just like the financial companies, these companies, accepted funding, added fees (totaling more than $200 Billion) and started buying up the competition instead of building the infrastructure as they promised. Add on their customer-no-service-response for any error in the monthly billing, based on searches online seems to happen to new people every day.

In fact over the last 5 years the episodes of customer no service have risen to new highs. It is so bad that there is not a single corporation out there that honestly gives a darn about their customers. If they did the complaints on Rip Off

Great post I agree that the majority of us are in similar boats, or trains so to speak. Obviously riding a train, bus or metro is not the same as driving a car; even there it always should come down to Personal Responsibility.

There is probably not much you can do at work without approval from someone, though it can be as cheap as it can be at home for the entire office if you boss is so inclined. If you have a formal IT department, talk to them. However if you do NOT have formal IT, you could run it by your boss and add it to the network. There are many ways to make it secure, even down to NOT having it broadcast its presence, thus no hackers can see it. If you do decide to get a router for work or home, make sure you ONLY purchase a DD-WRT supported router. The DD-WRT open source software gives you some great additional capabilities normally only found on routers costing hundreds for routers costing in the $15 - $60 range.

I take exception with this FUD that you appear, as many, to have bought into...:

...is probably much more secure than open wifi.

Whether your WiFi is open or not should not matter. In fact we should all keep our WiFi open and available for all as we have choice, between SSH, SFTP, VPNs, secure ID/passwords, VLANs and more; so there is no reason to worry about open WiFi anymore. I like many get tired of the industry scare tactics and FUD.

Stop buying into the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, the FUD, spread by the FEAR mongering corporations that want to charge all of us monthly fees and provide as little service as possible.

Monthly fees in and of themselves are NOT necessarily a bad thing, especially if the company is innovative and truly providing service.

Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?

These days, that is NOT true of the telecoms, cellular providers, ISPs, Cable Companies, and other corporations trying to squeeze every last drop out of the internet. These poor excuses for companies have received billions in federal funding to build out fiber since before 1996. If a telecom bought out and/or is now servicing the area of a telecom that got funding, they should still be expected to provide the service to the people living there. Just like the financial companies, these companies, accepted funding, added fees (totaling more than $200 Billion) and started buying up the competition instead of building the infrastructure as they promised. Add on their customer-no-service-response for any error in the monthly billing, based on searches online seems to happen to new people every day.

In fact over the last 5 years the episodes of customer no service have risen to new highs. It is so bad that there is not a single corporation out there that honestly gives a darn about their customers. If they did the complaints on Rip Off

We already paid $200 billion for a nation wide fiber optics network that never delivered. When is anyone going to ask what happened to all that money?

Telco Companies: "What money? What, you're not satisfied with your '8mb' *snicker* connections?"

We already paid $200 billion for a nation wide fiber optics network that never delivered. When is anyone going to ask what happened to all that money?

We paid for nation wide fiber optics, and it never got delivered. The telcos should give us our money back, all of it. If they can't afford it, go bankrupt, get nationalized, and let someone competent take over. Oh, and send the execs who squandered it all to jail.

Not one red cent should go to the telcos until they pay back what we're owed.

For the readers who don't already know: $200 Billion Broadband Scandal

We already paid 200 freaking billion to get our damned nationwide high speed and all we got for it was the freaking finger. So WTF are you talking about "free bullshit"? There wasn't a damned thing free about it, we freaking paid. And since we didn't get what we paid for we should foreclose on the whole damned thing. Just take it all. Then we can open up the wires to REAL competition instead of the robber barons we have now. But there wasn't any "free" anything, WE PAID. We just got ripped off.

But... Comcast's traffic shaping policies do not apply unless you've used over 75% of the upstream or downstream for 15 minutes straight, and even then only when the whole cable node is congested....

You can not be serious...or perhaps you are not reading all the posts and complaints from customers who have and are experiencing problems with throttling, the crafting of RST packets to cut off communication between your PC and another. Like almost everyone, I have seen my upstream and downstream traffic throttled within the first 30 secs to (consistently) less than 1 minute of beginning to connect and read, connect and download, connect and view, attempt to upload...etc.... to very low Kbps rates of usually around 20 or 30 Kbps, consistently less than 200 Kbps on cable and that does suck. (And this happens without using any P2P or BitTorrent software...just browsing the web...reading articles, viewing still images, it is a wonder videos will even play at all when you think about it.) Of course they do choke out and stop occasionally as well.

I wish that I got 25% of the bandwidth that I am paying for. You made me laugh with your 75% figure. I wish... Also after 15 minutes...that too I wish I would get, but do not. My speed drops in less than 20 seconds. I am so sick and tired of sites (not blaming the sites in most cases) with images loading slow and slowing me down when I am looking for information on the net. I too would take a non-throttled slower service over the currently throttled fake promises of Telcos, Cable and DSL providers. Granted my experience is strictly with cable and it does suck, big time, for everyone at this time, with no good future in sight any time soon.

Heck I wish I got a consistent 2 MB down and 600 Kbps up (instead of 30 Kbps, much less than 200 Kbps, thus they are not providing me high speed internet even with the older FCC definition of 200 Kbps which only recently got updated to 768K, which is still a joke). I know it can NOT happen without government intervention as happened in Japan back before 2000. I seriously doubt that it will ever happen until some competitor enters the market offering fiber from their location to my home, period, end of discussion. (Note: FIOS and other current American ISP / Telco Fiber initiatives will not give Americans what other countries have had since 2000, read on... that joke is on all US consumers, sad really.)

government intervention is credited for 100MB/100MB in Japan

1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month)

Until we have a new competitor enter (very profitable, yet unlikely) the market or government intervention and regulation (much more likely to happen sooner thanks to the current administration), the current group of ISP and bandwidth providers will continue to ignore consumers, stick their collective noses up at our elected officials, showing their arses I might add. Obviously they would not be able to take billions (more than $200 billion) of our money via set asides, increased taxes and incentives if they did not pay off more than a few politicians.

While I challenge the Obama Administration to fix this, sadly too many current politicians (both Democrats and Republicans) are in the telco's pockets today. Heck they canno

...100MB up and a 100 MB down...

Whoa! Those are some steep caps dude! Maybe you skiped something, like per second?

[/UnitNazi]

Caps, NO CAPS! (... watched Independence Day again) No compromise is acceptable here!

If the companies in question had built out their infrastructures with the additional taxes and fees legislatures allotted them (Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?) for that specific purpose, we would not be having this exchange today, nor would there be a need for the farce that are bandwidth caps or per message charges on text messaging and the other BS we are told by companies in order to gouge us for more money. They do us no favors and provide even poorer service!

If I had been referring to caps I would agree with you...rather I want the bandwidth I have paid for (ie. no throttling). My bandwidth should allow for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps synchronous communications via fiber (doubt any other media will allow for it) as they have had in Japan since pre 2000 thanks to Japanese government intervention. We should have had this in 1996, however are (US) legislative leaders have let us down yet again. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty (Even pre-Clinton, as far back as 1991, the Bell companies made very promising statements about their commitment to fiber-optic networks.) of sabatoging our children's futures.

Now in Japan, since they wisely built out their fiber infrastructure years ago, are starting to offer 1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month) synchronous bandwidth to customers homes.

Here in America, we have been sold (and continue to be sold) down the river by are leaders, politicians, our ISPs, the telcos and others. (United States could add $500 billion annually to its GDP)

• Overall, using a 20-year analysis of major revenues and expenses, we found that once deregulation laws went through, the Bells became a cash machine. - why didn't they spend some of this money updating their infrastructure?
• Phone companies were once regulated....Profits were ... 11-13% ⦠Under alternative regulation (i.e., deregulation),...Profits â¦jumped to 30%, more than double the original. ⦠also received massive tax write-offs on the promise they would build fiber-optic networks...
• The phone companies argued for deregulation in part because they said it would allow them to use the extra profits to construct new services, including fiber-optic lines. In fact, however, such capital expenditures dropped from 24% of Bellsâ(TM) total expenses in the early 1980s to just 14% of expenses in 2004. ...high speed networks could have been built.
• The primary difference today between the United States and other countries is that instead of diverting funds away from upgrade commitments, ⦠other countries made sure the money went into ground wiring and other upgrades. The U.S. lacked the regulatory will for enforcing the agreements, and ⦠(were not) held accountable.
• About all fiber deployments over the last few years by telcos...

...100MB up and a 100 MB down...

Whoa! Those are some steep caps dude! Maybe you skiped something, like per second?

[/UnitNazi]

Caps, NO CAPS! (... watched Independence Day again) No compromise is acceptable here!

If the companies in question had built out their infrastructures with the additional taxes and fees legislatures allotted them (Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?) for that specific purpose, we would not be having this exchange today, nor would there be a need for the farce that are bandwidth caps or per message charges on text messaging and the other BS we are told by companies in order to gouge us for more money. They do us no favors and provide even poorer service!

If I had been referring to caps I would agree with you...rather I want the bandwidth I have paid for (ie. no throttling). My bandwidth should allow for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps synchronous communications via fiber (doubt any other media will allow for it) as they have had in Japan since pre 2000 thanks to Japanese government intervention. We should have had this in 1996, however are (US) legislative leaders have let us down yet again. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty (Even pre-Clinton, as far back as 1991, the Bell companies made very promising statements about their commitment to fiber-optic networks.) of sabatoging our children's futures.

Now in Japan, since they wisely built out their fiber infrastructure years ago, are starting to offer 1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month) synchronous bandwidth to customers homes.

Here in America, we have been sold (and continue to be sold) down the river by are leaders, politicians, our ISPs, the telcos and others. (United States could add $500 billion annually to its GDP)

• Overall, using a 20-year analysis of major revenues and expenses, we found that once deregulation laws went through, the Bells became a cash machine. - why didn't they spend some of this money updating their infrastructure?
• Phone companies were once regulated....Profits were ... 11-13% ⦠Under alternative regulation (i.e., deregulation),...Profits â¦jumped to 30%, more than double the original. ⦠also received massive tax write-offs on the promise they would build fiber-optic networks...
• The phone companies argued for deregulation in part because they said it would allow them to use the extra profits to construct new services, including fiber-optic lines. In fact, however, such capital expenditures dropped from 24% of Bellsâ(TM) total expenses in the early 1980s to just 14% of expenses in 2004. ...high speed networks could have been built.
• The primary difference today between the United States and other countries is that instead of diverting funds away from upgrade commitments, ⦠other countries made sure the money went into ground wiring and other upgrades. The U.S. lacked the regulatory will for enforcing the agreements, and ⦠(were not) held accountable.
• About all fiber deployments over the last few years by telcos...

...100MB up and a 100 MB down...

Whoa! Those are some steep caps dude! Maybe you skiped something, like per second?

[/UnitNazi]

Caps, NO CAPS! (... watched Independence Day again) No compromise is acceptable here!

If the companies in question had built out their infrastructures with the additional taxes and fees legislatures allotted them (Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?) for that specific purpose, we would not be having this exchange today, nor would there be a need for the farce that are bandwidth caps or per message charges on text messaging and the other BS we are told by companies in order to gouge us for more money. They do us no favors and provide even poorer service!

If I had been referring to caps I would agree with you...rather I want the bandwidth I have paid for (ie. no throttling). My bandwidth should allow for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps synchronous communications via fiber (doubt any other media will allow for it) as they have had in Japan since pre 2000 thanks to Japanese government intervention. We should have had this in 1996, however are (US) legislative leaders have let us down yet again. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty (Even pre-Clinton, as far back as 1991, the Bell companies made very promising statements about their commitment to fiber-optic networks.) of sabatoging our children's futures.

Now in Japan, since they wisely built out their fiber infrastructure years ago, are starting to offer 1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month) synchronous bandwidth to customers homes.

Here in America, we have been sold (and continue to be sold) down the river by are leaders, politicians, our ISPs, the telcos and others. (United States could add $500 billion annually to its GDP)

• Overall, using a 20-year analysis of major revenues and expenses, we found that once deregulation laws went through, the Bells became a cash machine. - why didn't they spend some of this money updating their infrastructure?
• Phone companies were once regulated....Profits were ... 11-13% ⦠Under alternative regulation (i.e., deregulation),...Profits â¦jumped to 30%, more than double the original. ⦠also received massive tax write-offs on the promise they would build fiber-optic networks...
• The phone companies argued for deregulation in part because they said it would allow them to use the extra profits to construct new services, including fiber-optic lines. In fact, however, such capital expenditures dropped from 24% of Bellsâ(TM) total expenses in the early 1980s to just 14% of expenses in 2004. ...high speed networks could have been built.
• The primary difference today between the United States and other countries is that instead of diverting funds away from upgrade commitments, ⦠other countries made sure the money went into ground wiring and other upgrades. The U.S. lacked the regulatory will for enforcing the agreements, and ⦠(were not) held accountable.
• About all fiber deployments over the last few years by telcos...

...100MB up and a 100 MB down...

Whoa! Those are some steep caps dude! Maybe you skiped something, like per second?

[/UnitNazi]

Caps, NO CAPS! (... watched Independence Day again) No compromise is acceptable here!

If the companies in question had built out their infrastructures with the additional taxes and fees legislatures allotted them (Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?) for that specific purpose, we would not be having this exchange today, nor would there be a need for the farce that are bandwidth caps or per message charges on text messaging and the other BS we are told by companies in order to gouge us for more money. They do us no favors and provide even poorer service!

If I had been referring to caps I would agree with you...rather I want the bandwidth I have paid for (ie. no throttling). My bandwidth should allow for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps synchronous communications via fiber (doubt any other media will allow for it) as they have had in Japan since pre 2000 thanks to Japanese government intervention. We should have had this in 1996, however are (US) legislative leaders have let us down yet again. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty (Even pre-Clinton, as far back as 1991, the Bell companies made very promising statements about their commitment to fiber-optic networks.) of sabatoging our children's futures.

Now in Japan, since they wisely built out their fiber infrastructure years ago, are starting to offer 1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month) synchronous bandwidth to customers homes.

Here in America, we have been sold (and continue to be sold) down the river by are leaders, politicians, our ISPs, the telcos and others. (United States could add $500 billion annually to its GDP)

• Overall, using a 20-year analysis of major revenues and expenses, we found that once deregulation laws went through, the Bells became a cash machine. - why didn't they spend some of this money updating their infrastructure?
• Phone companies were once regulated....Profits were ... 11-13% ⦠Under alternative regulation (i.e., deregulation),...Profits â¦jumped to 30%, more than double the original. ⦠also received massive tax write-offs on the promise they would build fiber-optic networks...
• The phone companies argued for deregulation in part because they said it would allow them to use the extra profits to construct new services, including fiber-optic lines. In fact, however, such capital expenditures dropped from 24% of Bellsâ(TM) total expenses in the early 1980s to just 14% of expenses in 2004. ...high speed networks could have been built.
• The primary difference today between the United States and other countries is that instead of diverting funds away from upgrade commitments, ⦠other countries made sure the money went into ground wiring and other upgrades. The U.S. lacked the regulatory will for enforcing the agreements, and ⦠(were not) held accountable.
• About all fiber deployments over the last few years by telcos...

...100MB up and a 100 MB down...

Whoa! Those are some steep caps dude! Maybe you skiped something, like per second?

[/UnitNazi]

Caps, NO CAPS! (... watched Independence Day again) No compromise is acceptable here!

If the companies in question had built out their infrastructures with the additional taxes and fees legislatures allotted them (Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?) for that specific purpose, we would not be having this exchange today, nor would there be a need for the farce that are bandwidth caps or per message charges on text messaging and the other BS we are told by companies in order to gouge us for more money. They do us no favors and provide even poorer service!

If I had been referring to caps I would agree with you...rather I want the bandwidth I have paid for (ie. no throttling). My bandwidth should allow for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps synchronous communications via fiber (doubt any other media will allow for it) as they have had in Japan since pre 2000 thanks to Japanese government intervention. We should have had this in 1996, however are (US) legislative leaders have let us down yet again. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty (Even pre-Clinton, as far back as 1991, the Bell companies made very promising statements about their commitment to fiber-optic networks.) of sabatoging our children's futures.

Now in Japan, since they wisely built out their fiber infrastructure years ago, are starting to offer 1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month) synchronous bandwidth to customers homes.

Here in America, we have been sold (and continue to be sold) down the river by are leaders, politicians, our ISPs, the telcos and others. (United States could add $500 billion annually to its GDP)

• Overall, using a 20-year analysis of major revenues and expenses, we found that once deregulation laws went through, the Bells became a cash machine. - why didn't they spend some of this money updating their infrastructure?
• Phone companies were once regulated....Profits were ... 11-13% ⦠Under alternative regulation (i.e., deregulation),...Profits â¦jumped to 30%, more than double the original. ⦠also received massive tax write-offs on the promise they would build fiber-optic networks...
• The phone companies argued for deregulation in part because they said it would allow them to use the extra profits to construct new services, including fiber-optic lines. In fact, however, such capital expenditures dropped from 24% of Bellsâ(TM) total expenses in the early 1980s to just 14% of expenses in 2004. ...high speed networks could have been built.
• The primary difference today between the United States and other countries is that instead of diverting funds away from upgrade commitments, ⦠other countries made sure the money went into ground wiring and other upgrades. The U.S. lacked the regulatory will for enforcing the agreements, and ⦠(were not) held accountable.
• About all fiber deployments over the last few years by telcos...

...100MB up and a 100 MB down...

Whoa! Those are some steep caps dude! Maybe you skiped something, like per second?

[/UnitNazi]

Caps, NO CAPS! (... watched Independence Day again) No compromise is acceptable here!

If the companies in question had built out their infrastructures with the additional taxes and fees legislatures allotted them (Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?) for that specific purpose, we would not be having this exchange today, nor would there be a need for the farce that are bandwidth caps or per message charges on text messaging and the other BS we are told by companies in order to gouge us for more money. They do us no favors and provide even poorer service!

If I had been referring to caps I would agree with you...rather I want the bandwidth I have paid for (ie. no throttling). My bandwidth should allow for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps synchronous communications via fiber (doubt any other media will allow for it) as they have had in Japan since pre 2000 thanks to Japanese government intervention. We should have had this in 1996, however are (US) legislative leaders have let us down yet again. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty (Even pre-Clinton, as far back as 1991, the Bell companies made very promising statements about their commitment to fiber-optic networks.) of sabatoging our children's futures.

Now in Japan, since they wisely built out their fiber infrastructure years ago, are starting to offer 1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month) synchronous bandwidth to customers homes.

Here in America, we have been sold (and continue to be sold) down the river by are leaders, politicians, our ISPs, the telcos and others. (United States could add $500 billion annually to its GDP)

• Overall, using a 20-year analysis of major revenues and expenses, we found that once deregulation laws went through, the Bells became a cash machine. - why didn't they spend some of this money updating their infrastructure?
• Phone companies were once regulated....Profits were ... 11-13% ⦠Under alternative regulation (i.e., deregulation),...Profits â¦jumped to 30%, more than double the original. ⦠also received massive tax write-offs on the promise they would build fiber-optic networks...
• The phone companies argued for deregulation in part because they said it would allow them to use the extra profits to construct new services, including fiber-optic lines. In fact, however, such capital expenditures dropped from 24% of Bellsâ(TM) total expenses in the early 1980s to just 14% of expenses in 2004. ...high speed networks could have been built.
• The primary difference today between the United States and other countries is that instead of diverting funds away from upgrade commitments, ⦠other countries made sure the money went into ground wiring and other upgrades. The U.S. lacked the regulatory will for enforcing the agreements, and ⦠(were not) held accountable.
• About all fiber deployments over the last few years by telcos...

...100MB up and a 100 MB down...

Whoa! Those are some steep caps dude! Maybe you skiped something, like per second?

[/UnitNazi]

Caps, NO CAPS! (... watched Independence Day again) No compromise is acceptable here!

If the companies in question had built out their infrastructures with the additional taxes and fees legislatures allotted them (Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?) for that specific purpose, we would not be having this exchange today, nor would there be a need for the farce that are bandwidth caps or per message charges on text messaging and the other BS we are told by companies in order to gouge us for more money. They do us no favors and provide even poorer service!

If I had been referring to caps I would agree with you...rather I want the bandwidth I have paid for (ie. no throttling). My bandwidth should allow for 100 Mbps / 100 Mbps synchronous communications via fiber (doubt any other media will allow for it) as they have had in Japan since pre 2000 thanks to Japanese government intervention. We should have had this in 1996, however are (US) legislative leaders have let us down yet again. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty (Even pre-Clinton, as far back as 1991, the Bell companies made very promising statements about their commitment to fiber-optic networks.) of sabatoging our children's futures.

Now in Japan, since they wisely built out their fiber infrastructure years ago, are starting to offer 1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month) synchronous bandwidth to customers homes.

Here in America, we have been sold (and continue to be sold) down the river by are leaders, politicians, our ISPs, the telcos and others. (United States could add $500 billion annually to its GDP)

• Overall, using a 20-year analysis of major revenues and expenses, we found that once deregulation laws went through, the Bells became a cash machine. - why didn't they spend some of this money updating their infrastructure?
• Phone companies were once regulated....Profits were ... 11-13% ⦠Under alternative regulation (i.e., deregulation),...Profits â¦jumped to 30%, more than double the original. ⦠also received massive tax write-offs on the promise they would build fiber-optic networks...
• The phone companies argued for deregulation in part because they said it would allow them to use the extra profits to construct new services, including fiber-optic lines. In fact, however, such capital expenditures dropped from 24% of Bellsâ(TM) total expenses in the early 1980s to just 14% of expenses in 2004. ...high speed networks could have been built.
• The primary difference today between the United States and other countries is that instead of diverting funds away from upgrade commitments, ⦠other countries made sure the money went into ground wiring and other upgrades. The U.S. lacked the regulatory will for enforcing the agreements, and ⦠(were not) held accountable.
• About all fiber deployments over the last few years by telcos...

... and I'm sure it will work just as well as the FIRST time we gave telecoms billions to upgrade us to broadband speeds on fiber connections, right? Oh wait, the telecoms took all the money, did fuck-all to develop broadband, and gave everyone the finger when we came looking for results. They had dumped all the money in wireless instead, made a tremendous profit, and ignored their responsibilities with government money. "It's too expensive!" was their cry then too.

Government should run the lines themselves, then lease them to telecoms.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." We're about to get fooled again, and for some reason (no matter how grudgingly you say it) you're willing to go along with it. Where was the part where we're all dumbasses and you're not?

Didnt we already pay $200 Billion for this once and get nothing to show, and further consolodation - limiting free market options? http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm

It would be great if the local cable or phone company could run their lines just 1 block further from my nearest neighbor so I could get broadband.

Maybe Obama can make it happen!

Or Obama can help find where that 200 billion dollars went.

http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm

I paid for it already, bitches.

Now bury some fiber here in East Podunk township so us hicks can see what this here Youtube thingy is all about.

Can you provide some sources for this?

• $200 Billion Broadband Scandal
• Universal Service Fund
• Broadband Penetration: An Empirical Analysis of State and Federal Policies
• "Verizon, for instance, didn't complain last fall when Pennsylvania handed them subsidies for broadband deployment worth nearly 10 times what Wireless Philadelphia will cost. Neither did Comcast object when Philadelphia approved a $30 million grant to build a skyscraper that will house its headquarters. To the incumbent providers, "unfair competition" means any competition at all."

Falcon

The plan is to extend per byte per site, which will effectively end the internet as we know it today. The ability to turn off users will be abused in more than one way. Demand infrastructure upgrades and neutrality, you have already paid for it.

About a dozen years ago a company dug a trench through my yard to bury a fiber optic cable. It was for our city government, which was going to setup a public utiltiy to connect to the Internet because the cable and telecos were not responding to requests and their proposals would cost too much for too slow a service.

Of course, the cable and telecos whined to Congress about "unfair competition", plus they greased the political wheels via "campaign contributions". Congress agreed and asked the cable and telecos if they would be willing to do it. "Why of course, but we'd need to be reimbursed for our expenses." Congress gave them $200B or so to cover "their expenses", but the funding bill didn't have any penalties for non-compliance. So, the cable and telecos TOOK the $200B as pure profit, going mostly to upper management as salary and "bonuses" and stock holders as extra dividends, but promptly FORGOT to do their part of the bargin -- actually complete the fiber optic deployment.

So, I set here using a 10Mb/s connection that costs me $72/month (no cable TV included, unless I want to pay an additional $55/month) while my friends in Japan and Korea, who have fiber optic systems, enjoy 100Mb/s connections for 1/4th the price.

Don't you just love greedy corporate monopolies run with the blessings of the best Congress money can buy, because most are paid off by lobbyists? Not! Those vermin cost each of us $2,000 for NOTHING. May they rot in Hell.

http://www.newnetworks.com/failedfiberstates.htm

The problem is the cost of wiring up a single home. In the city it's easy because you have to invest much less money on equipment per person living in a certain area. But in Urban areas the cost of wiring up a home could be upwards of thousands of dollars and the broadband companies are not very likely to go into those markets. The State or Federal government should subsidize this cost by taxing Internet connections across the board.

Just the federal government, not counting states, counties, or cities, has given telcos more than $200 billion already but all they did with it was pad their profits. Before any of them get any more tax payer money they should do what they already have been paid to do.

America only become a super power by making investments in the common good. You can't say "we are the greatest and will always be the greatest" with a straight face if you're not willing to invest in this common good.

Unlike chicken hawks I don't see any need to be the greatest super power. I see no need to be a super power period. Nationalism has caused among the greatest human rights crimes. The New World, check. Germany, check. Soviet Union, check. China, check. Cambodia, check. Rwanda, check. Iraq, check.

Falcon

"it's the rural areas where the real problems are, telcos are simply not motivated to do anything at all about it."
I agree, but can you blame them?

The telcos couldn't be blamed if they hadn't been given billions of dollars in subsidies to build out broadband, but they did get paid and didn't build out. So yes, they are to blame. They are also to blame when because they refuse to build out, even though they were paid to, they sue local governments for doing it themselves.

Falcon

if you can't live with the cap, get a business account - no caps. Yes, it costs more, but if you need the bandwidth you should pay for it instead of making MY rates higher to cover the 0.5% of the people that use 95% of the bandwidth.

If the providers didn't have the capacity then they shouldn't have sold an "unlimited" service. And that's on top of receiving billions in subsidies.

Falcon

I'd like some Slashdotters' feedback on the following problem:

I live in an area of Northern New England where most people don't have broadband. It's somewhat rural, but certainly not 'very rural'. There are maybe 12-15 homes per linear mile in most areas. The ILEC was, until recently, Verizon.

The main issue was that Verizon is a big public company with a huge market. Yet, it necessarily has limited resources. It's not that running DSL up a residential road would be unprofitable, it's that for the n dollars it would cost, they could spend that same n dollars in Jersey City and get a better return on investment. You can't blame them for seeking that return. For this reason they continue to upgrade and invest in their dense plant and do nothing in their sparse plant. When they still owned the area, an engineer told me their plan went to 2014 and our county wasn't on the plan.

Now, since then Fairpoint has taken ownership of the plant. They want to sell voice and data, sure, but they also want to sell video service over DSL, which is where the real money is (for now anyway). So, they're sending trucks around, surveying lines and poles, figuring out the fastest way to get DSL in. Their logistics make Northern New England look like a huge market, where Verizon saw it as a distraction. They're even finding CO's where Verizon installed DSLAM's 3 years ago but never offered service, simply because they couldn't be bothered. Some people are getting lit up the next business day after calling. This is very positive, we're lucky the plant was sold.

However, for any sized market, there's still a long-tail where people aren't going to be profitable enough to serve. We had Rural Electrification in 1936 which is largely parallel because both served/would-serve to improve total overall economic efficiency. There are also PUC's which can force changes (in theory), and towns can bond for their own fiber plants. However, Government is always the easy 'big stick', but it would be nicer, more sustainable, and more peaceful, if there was a creative third-way. Besides that, the US Federal Government already charged us all for FTTH and it never materialized. So it's not just violent, it's dysfunctional. And the municipal fiber projects are very slow to meet market need, and seemingly often have management and funding problems.

So, I'm asking folks here for great 'third-way' ideas. I've come up empty, but there are lots of clever thinkers in these parts.

Over $200 billion has been given in taxes to the telcos to build out our 45 meg up / down fiber to the home network and now they want more?

This article gives some good info on what happened. Where's the accountability? NII was Bill Clinton and Al Gores deal for America.

Epic Fail if we don't demand they build the damn thing now.

Why should the monopolies in the US plop down more lines when they can keep getting subsidies and billions given to them to 'roll out broadband'.

The realization of ubiquitous broadband is right up there with Duke Nuke'm Forever, except the telcos have actually figured out how to keep getting paid for a mythical product. The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household and the FCC and legislature keep letting them get away with empty promises. What a great Lobbying effort!

..the public paid for over and over and over again way back when, plus later on they (that company and others) got shedloads more cash to upgrade those pipes, yet failed to do so, to the tune of 200 billion bucks. As in further, why aren't a lot of fatcats in jail yet for fraud? In true let it all hang out slashdot fashion, fuck those assholes. The "pipes" everywhere, leading from the smallest house to the big cross continental lines, should be taken back to public ownership and run as a commons or public co-op type deal, like the interstate road system is, or municipal water supply, or the public post office. charge a simple flat fee that pays for costs, then a little more, and it goes to improving and extending the networks, and get the private profit part out of the picture completely. I've had both a community telco experience and then be forced to use one of the old bells, no comparison, much better service and cheaper rates with the community telco model. And I certainly remember the olden days when those jerks got given a monopoly and abused it for decades. Screw 'em, they have proven to be greedy fucks forever, eminent domain seize the pipes and be done with it, then see to sticking some of those Cxx goons in jail for fraud, and make those "shareholders" in those asshole companies pay back the full 200 billion they stole, based on an exact proportion shares they hold and their part of that 200 billion dollars ripped off from the public. Fucking thieves. And then that would be lesson to other greedy companies and "stockholders" in the future if they are granted a pretty nice slice of some big public service pie and fail to do anything with it but rape it into the ground and screw everyone over.

There are two indecent issues here.

First, you are absolutely correct that a local-government granted monopoly is probably one of the major sources of any individual's current ISP selection woes.

But there's also a second issue, as described here. It's hard to describe the issue in a way that doesn't sound radically biased, but the simple fact of the matter is that the telecom companies committed to deploying massive fiber networks and managed to squirm out of it (mostly thorough regulator-capture).

So this isn't just a local government failure. It's also a massive federal government failure, from which there is perfectly good reason for US residents to feel cheated out of decent speed data infrastructure.

..federal appeals court has sided in part with amateur radio operators who challenged rules designed to speed the nascent Internet service's rollout.

Hmm.. here's an idea. How about the FCC focus more on enforcing the roll-out of fiber optic services, like the telecommunication companies were supposed to start doing over 10 years ago. No interference with amateur radio operators, faster and more reliable service for everyone too.

Where the problem is: I think the people in the US should have a problem with the present (and proposed) underwhelming ISP subscription plans, since they've already paid USD 200 billion.

I heard that the US ISPs were given USD 200 billion (via tax credits, higher charges) in the understanding that they would roll out stuff like 45Mbps (up and down) speeds to subscribers (there was talk of fibre optics and so on).

If that USD 200 billion was actually used to improve internet connectivity, perhaps there wouldn't be such a great need to throttle P2P today in the USA. With current tech, USD 200 billion should go a lot further.

http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html

I read his post, did you read mine? He said, and I included it, he didn't want to throttle certain websites and I said that's why some people want net neutrality, so their ISP won't throttle websites that won't pay extra.

Logically I think ISPs should be raising prices to their own consumers, because I believe firmly in net-neutrality. And am very much against the sort of double dipping that not having net-neutrality would allow.

Same here, but only after ISPs either build out their network infrastructure or give the subsidies the government gave them to build it out back. The government gave them more than $200 million of taxpayer money. And stop advertizing it as unlimited. They did so to lure customers to sign up with them, and now that people are they are crying.

I am ALSO going to consume considerable EXTRA upload bandwidth to seed that movie to others. And the ISP will be billing ME for that extra upload.

You can't control what programs on your computer has access to the internet? When I used Windows I also used the ZoneAlarm firewall which allowed me to do just that. I didn't get around to installing a firewall on my Linux PC but I have one on my Mac as well.

I thought net neutrality was supposed to treat everyone's comparable traffic that same and not to charge extra for preferred delivery of packets.

I think that's what Richard Bennett, TFA writer, is missing about net neutrality. Nowhere does he address the possibility of ISPs demanding one content provider, such as Google, pay them not to slow their traffic.

It sounds like "I feel bad, therefore we should pass a law".

Generally I don't like, I actually oppose, new laws however what TFA writer misses besides what I say above is free speech. Say PHB at cableco X is a conservative and hates liberals so he has his engineers slow down connections to Daily Kos whereas PHB at cableco Y hates conservatives and slows down traffic from Free Republic. Both websites deliver html but their politics are different. Another thing he misses is that the government has given more than $200 billion of taxpayer money to buildout the broadband infrastructure, which for the most part they have not done.

Falcon

network

Who? Affected how?

Me. By the government giving broadband providers $200 Billion+ of my tax money to build out broadband which they did not do.

funding an objective (e.g. "high-speed access for everyone")

The US government has already funded broadband access.

(That's more than 50 per state, so if you don't patronize one, it's not their fault.) That's hardly a duopoly situation.

It is a duopoly if you only have 2 choices for broadband, and many don't have 2 choices. If you're lucky you have a choice for cable and dsl, many can't get either, and even if you can sign up with a third party ISP they still use either the cableco's or telco's lines.

Rather, it's greed on the part of some bandwidth hogging users

No it's greed on the part of access providers. Nothing made them offer unlimited access plans, but once people took them up on the offer they are crying. It's nothing more than offering more than they can provide and that's a problem of their own making.

Now, if they want to start charging some people more for using more bandwidth then I want them to pay back the billions of taxpayer dollars they got in subsidies to build out their infrastructure. They took the taxpayers' money and used it to boost their bottom line without doing what they were given the money do to.

Here is a good place to start http://www.newnetworks.com/BroadbandScandalIntro.htm

Good points, valid points, granted, and what exactly do the computer makers think people actually *do* with hundreds of gigabytes of hard drive space, type up school reports and recipes? And look at the freekin ads for the big ISPs, smiling happy people and advertising "blazing download speeds, enjoy movies" and etc. So? Where's the beef when people really try to do that? Why does unlimited really mean limited in the fine print?

  This is like the wink wink nod nod industry. The big pipe providers (in the US) though already got paid 200 billion dollars to roll out true high speed internet all over and did about bupkis with it except squabble over the low hanging profitable fruit in some select areas. The bulk of the nation gets grade C alleged broadband or not even that. Cry me a river of crocodile tears, like the auto industry in the US saying they can't make high MPG cars when they *sell* high MPG cars in Europe. In short, always read between the lines when big corporations bitch about stuff. It's just *cheaper* for them to do "throttling, packet shaping, and simply capping the bandwidth." than it is to actually, you know, improve the infrastructure from end to end. The fatcats Cxx whatevers and big pirate wallstreet "investors" ain't happy being millionaires anymore, nope, that ain't enough, they all got to be *billionaires* now and the only way to do that is to screw their customers over and bribe off government so they can get away with it.

Frankly, being on dialup and being told directly by the lineman when they ran out new phone wire when I moved in here that they would *never* install anything good enough for DSL unless ordered to by the government (that is an exact quote when I asked him him if I could now get dsl and he was a smug and condescending ass about it too, BTW, near giggling over being able to screw a customer by charging for tissue paper phone lines with constant buzz and noise and crappy connections), I have little sympathy for the monopoly broadband folks and the entrenched telco cartels. I also have little sympathy for that roomate who was hogging what was available, and offered two fast solutions to that exact problem, because I have been in that situation with roomates and that is what we did, multiple lines, problem solved. If that crap-geting full seasons of the simpsons dubbed in japanese-is so important to someone, that they have to leech 24/7, let them get their own freeking line, that's what an adult would do anyway (loosely used term for anyone who would actually do that of course..seems rather silly to me, and the other roomate who I guess the net connections name is in is leaving him or herself open to getting *popped* by the the MAFIAA some day, another boneheaded decision). But if the telco folks would have their feet held to the fire by the government and the FCC the US could be on top and not like number 16 in the developed world for decent net connectivity, and then everyone might have some decent throughput and bandwith.

  Most places, if its cable, they've been there for years and have been milking a granted local monopoly with zero competition (and I remember before they even started, sat through a county commission hearing when they promised "no commercials, really, trust us!"). If it is the phone company, they've been mostly milking the same wires they strung up when alex bell was running things. I grew up with the "one" phone company and their pure asshattery corporate mindset, and I can tell you, it never went away even after they were allegedly "broken up", it's just a cartel now instead of one company. All that money they got went someplace, but a whole heaping pile of that 200 billion did not go into the last mile solution very many places except at the bare minimum possible level they could claim was "broadband".

They won't win by sitting on their hands and had better get moving. They tried that back in US back in the 80s and lost big time. It has taken ATT the last 20 years to lie cheat and steal their way back to government protected monopoly status and they are about to lose it all again. Your government is not the only one feeling redfaced about the pathetic network capacity they got in return for $200 billion and a lot of promisses. The next monopoly break up is not going to leave pieces large enough to grasp - it's going to be spectrum liberation, and that will be the end of all traditional broadcast and telcos. The more they piss their customers off, the sooner customers will realize what a fraud traditional telco is.

The fiber optic infrastructure you paid for was never delivered.

Starting in the early 1990's, with a push from the Clinton-Gore Administration's "Information Superhighway", every Bell company - SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest - made commitments to rewire America, state by state. Fiber optic wires would replace the 100-year old copper wiring. The push caused techno-frenzy of major proportions. By 2006, 86 million households should have had a service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions, (to and from the customer) could handle over 500 channels of high quality video and be deployed in rural, urban and suburban areas equally. And these networks were open to ALL competition.

In order to pay for these upgrades, in state after state, the public service commissions and state legislatures acquiesced to the Bells' promises by removing the constraints on the Bells' profits as well as gave other financial perks. They were able to print money - billions of dollars per state - all collected in the form of higher phone rates and tax perks. (Note: each state is different.)

* ADSL is not what was promised and paid for. It goes over the old copper wiring, can't achieve the speed, has problems in rural areas and is mostly one-way.

* The public subsidies for infrastructure were pocketed. The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household.

* The World is Laughing at US. Korea and Japan have 100 Mbps services as standard, and America could have been Number One had the phone companies actually delivered. Instead, we are 16th in broadband and falling in technology dominance.

* Harm to the economy. Five trillion dollars was lost because new technologies and services that America would have developed, happened in Korea. Municipalities around America are waking up to the fact that the phone companies failed to deliver and are now doing Wifi and fiber-based work-arounds.

* The promised networks couldn't be built in 1993 and state laws were changed based on "deceptive speech". The technology today still has problems delivering 500 channels.

* The phone companies pulled a bait and switch. In order to offer DSL over copper, it was not necessary to have state regulation changed. Their plan was to get rid of regulations and enter long distance.

* The Bell mergers resulted in the death of the state plans for fiber optic broadband. Over 26 states had fiber optic projects closed when the mergers of SBC and Verizon were completed. That affected almost 80% of all phone customers in the US.

It's less than 20 miles from Boston, hardly the middle of nowhere. If the phone companies won't service rich people there, who will they serve? It's time to end their comfortable public servitude monopoly because they have obviously failed it.

Where's your $200 billion network?

We paid $200 BILLION dollars to telcos in return for them running fiber to 86 million households by 2006.

It's 2008, how many households have fiber?

They have stolen from us, plain and simple, and those responsible should go to jail.

Who gets the maintenance contracts? How much do we pay for the maintenance contracts? How much maintenance should be spent on all fiber or should only dense populations get it? How dense do the populations have to be? How do we pay for it, do we inflate the currency through debt or do we increase tax?

Who gets to use the fiber? How much do we charge companies to use this fiber? How do we ensure its being used for the right purposes and companies aren't bidding for contacts and locking in those customers? Who is responsible for faults in the network? How are costs allocated?

The market is fine, the solution is to deregulate so companies are forced to compete, as opposed to the more segregated systems that we are used to now a days.

I don't recall anyone ever saying "To have a free market, it must be provided by public Government services", a free market can never have any Government regulation or intervention, else it is not a free market.

Well... we already have been paying for fiber to the home since 1994 so why not have them do what we already paid over $200 billion (conservative estimate) in taxes for???

Or they can just give it back...

It might cost $200 billion.

Sadly, the money was STOLEN by the private sector, providing yet more evidence that free markets abhor honesty.

In the real world, you dont own the network, the board of directors, or any part of their business.

If you dont want to be tracked, profiled, and served steaming hot piles of ads, then build your own network, backbone, etc and see how far you can go with that.

It seems obvious to me that if you some rural location with a low cost of living was wired it could allow those areas to be more competitive with outsourcing overseas or south of the border.

Most of those jobs don't pay much though, and they don't create new jobs. At most they bring back jobs that were outsourced to begin with. Like what Dell did. At first Dell sent support to India but ended up relocating support to Carolina, I don't recall whether North or South. Outsourcing to India didn't really work for them.

And then there are the entrepreneurs that we dont know about...

And all the unknown jobs. However seeing as how TFA was about new jobs it would of been nice if they had said somethng about what sort of jobs they would be.

There is distance learning which would help educate those in more rural areas who cannot reach a community college.

Some people find distance learning helpful but others need someone physically present. I learned this a long tyme ago when I used to tutor. Since then I relearned, because of an injury I survived, yes survived as I wasn't expected to live, that. After struggling in classes I realized I needed that person aid. Heck, after my injury for a while I had an ILS, Independent Living Skills, nurse help me.

Yet we don't have the infrastructure to do it. And based on a a lot of the comments here on Slashdot there is not the appreciation or the willpower to do it. Probably because most of you posting already have your fast connection. If just those digital 'have nots' would pull themselves up by their tin can straps...

I don't know where this comes from. Other /.ers have, as I have myself, railed against Cablecos and Telcos for not expanding, building out, the infrastructure for broadband. And yet they have already been paid billions of dollars to do so. There's the "$200 Billion Broadband Scandal", "Pennsylvania Broadband Fraud", and "You've Already Paid $2,000 For A Fiber Connection You'll Never Get". And those are from the still good bookmarks I have. Googling /. for broadband cableco OR telco" returns 1250 results. Admittedly not all are where /.ers complain about broadband not being rolled out but a good percentage should be. I don't recall how many tymes, but it's been a bunch, I've posted about the Broadband Utopia in northeastern Utah and have said that though I consider myself libertarian I like that the infrastructure here is owned by the communities involved, who then allow anyone to use it to provide any services it can deliver, and not some for profit monopoly. However it doesn't have to be owned by government as in this case, actually I'd rather it be owned by a coop.

No.

The ISPs, cable companies and baby bells were given $200 BILLION to lay optical cables over 15 years ago.
http://www.newnetworks.com/scandalquotes.htm

Had they fulfilled their end of the bargain we wouldn't be having bandwidth problems today. Then they couldn't claim they were throttling p2p and other down loaders to "preserve bandwidth".

It's time some public interest group sued them for breach of promise and force them to complete their end of the agreement.

* Smaller population (9 million). Although we are do not have a high population density (20/km compared to 31/km for the US), the problem does not scale in a linear fashion.

So you should be able to get it in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. You can't get it anywhere - even when the population is extremely concentrated.

* We've paid for it.

So did we. We aren't centralized, but virtually every single state wants fiber at the state level. They just can't force the telecos to do it.

Seeing as the telecoms gained about $200 billion in increased fees and tax breaks since AT&T's breakup in 1984. That money was supposed to be used to upgrade the entire nation's infrastructure from copper wiring to fiber optics, but was instead used to pad the pockets of executives and shareholders. Find out more here.