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Court Ruling Points Way To Broadband Regulation

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the which-way-is-the-highway? dept.

DarkHelmet writes "An article on CNET News indicates: 'A U.S. appeals court has rejected the Federal Communications Commission's request to rehear a case, in a move that could prompt local governments to regulate the cable industry.' The piece explains: 'The rejection could pave the way for municipalities to force cable companies to share their broadband Internet lines with third parties.' I personally can't wait for companies like Speakeasy to branch into the Cable Internet market and provide 10-100mbps service."

2 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Always a downside by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure, with government regulation your cable bills will be cheaper, and your service better. Great. But once the government has latched onto this industry it'll never let go. We could soon see cable TV channels with an anti-war bias get censored off the air 'for our own good', and copy protection built right into the cable system (protected by the DMCA, naturally). Say goodbye to having non-fritz chip enabled machines (like Linux boxen) working on broadband. I hope it doesn't come to this.

  2. 10/100 over cable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    With the current DOCSIS 1.0 spec, 10/100 is impossible. And due to the fact that most cable providers only support DOCSIS 1.0 right now, the only way you are going to see 10/100 to the home is over fiber... And I don't think that is going to fit into the speakeasy price plan of 19.95 a month...