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FCC Chair Says Broadband Top Goal
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "FCC chairman Kevin Martin says 'his top goal is to increase Americans access to high-speed Internet,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Late last week, he began circulating plans to loosen rules so neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections with competitors like America Online, a change that essentially would create a duopoly in many local markets. He also embraces the idea that local governments should be allowed to offer wireless Internet services, at least in rural areas where some phone and cable companies balk at providing high-speed service.' The Journal also has a transcript of its interview with Martin, in which he discusses indecency and whether broadcast rules should also apply to satellite and cable."
Broadband may the the FCC's top goal, just make sure you don't offer free access to it! You can make something ubiquitous if you make it free, otherwise charging $40 - $80 for the "right" to broadband won't find it available in every home in America.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I know this isn't completely ridiculous, given that it came from the FCC, and therefore is connected to the communications industry, but doesn't this strike anyone else as being a bit like "Let them have broadband!"
I don't want to be the inevitable Slashdot guy who posts this, but I guess I will be: Don't we have some more important problems to which to attend?
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
He wants to energize the deployment of broadband in America?
remove all restrictions. Allow municipal wifi. Allow everything. Disallow cities from forcing companies to pay extortion to them in "franchise fees", one of the biggest hurdles and deterrents to small business starting up in an area.
when i see real solutions from the FCC then we will see real progress..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Before there was a "requirement" to share lines, many ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers) withheld valuable technology from the public. Bellsouth had DSL capability for years but releasing to the home user would have cannibalized their business T1 subscriptions. Even with "requirements" to share lines and invite competition, ILECs tend to drag their feet and construct obstacles for CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) to enter the market.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
"Late last week, he began circulating plans to loosen rules so neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections"
Well, ignoring that the infrastructure may have been publicly subsidized, why shouldn't the people who own the wires be able to decide what to do with them? Why can't they only allow their own network connections across those wires? Or charge competitors extra to use it?
anyone who has seen what bt has been up to will see that local loop unbundelling is the best way to get fast connections
It's 2005. Why has it taken them this long to realize that the should be supporting maximum penitration of highspeed access?
There are lives at stake here!
If they would simply focus on the absurd price that is being charged for broadband, then the consumers would fall in line. $70 a month (without cable service)for internet access is crazy. Not to mention that the service provided by Comcast is some of the worst I have ever seen in my life.
why would deregulating the communication industry help broadband. The only reason I have broadband at the price that I do is because regulations force Verizon and SBC to share there lines at a fair cost. Companies like XO would dissappear. I don't like the Idea that I have to go with either Charter or Verizon for broadband I would like more options. The only way this will happen is if other companies can tap into the cable and data lines at my driveway.
The chairman says this: "Fundamentally, the government should be trying to provide tools for parents to help them control what's coming into their living rooms and what their kids are exposed to."
Why? Shouldn't the parents just not buy products that don't offer them the controls they want? All TVs and desktop computers I've encountered have an off switch and there's nothing the government can do to get people to use them. How are more switches, knobs, dials, control panels, etc. going to help anything?
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ya, "loosen rules" on those cable and telephone companies that got government subsidies for the last 50 years so that companies who DIDN'T receive subsidies can't compete as they don't have the cash to lay the networks themselves... and the government isn't handing out any new subsidies. THAT will give the consumer a better choice... *right*
While you're at it, make sure to relieve those poor corporations of any promises they made in order to receive subsidies like minimum speeds and % of coverage in a given area. Wouldn't want to "hold back the spread of broadband" or anything.
I also love his supposed problems with "blocking channel options" not being available to cable and satellite customers. What a non-issue to suck up to "concerned parent groups" I don't think I've seen a cable system since the '80s that didn't have some option on your cable box to block channels, and satellite always had it. God forbid parents should read the manual, or actually pay attention to what their children are watching.
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
The FCC should exist to enforce private property rights on pieces of spectrum, and stay the hell out of the business of engineering society.
Unless some further regulation is attached, I don't see how promoting a duopoly is beneficial to the consumer.
Traditional U.S. government sanctioned monopolies attained their position by HAVING to provide service to the majority of consumer even in areas that would be a losing proposition (because of infrastructure versus population density) and having their prices set for them by a regulatory commission.
Will Verizon have to suddenly build more Central Offices (CO) or mini-CO's (so more people can get DSL) for the sake of this benefit? And what will Comcast trade in?
I fail to see how this helps anything but the big business.
The part of local government and wireless is cool, but at best this initiative will be sporadic or in big cities where getting broadband is less of a hassle.
You're forgetting that the FCC by definition doesn't deal with important stuff. They regulate communications services and the airwaves. Doing much more is going to be out of their league.
When did government stop being about "secur[ing] the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity" and start being about "improving" citizens' lives?
That, and of course you also get (surprise!) the "preferred network solution provider" as the one-and-only choice. Guess which "preferred network solution provider" has the most sweetheart deals in the USA?
Hint: they not only "support" only one operating system, they don't allow others to connect.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
bigger, better, faster... pr0n
"What is the answer?" (Silence) "In that case, what is the question?" --Gertrude Stein
I pay $45 a month for Comcast and it's faster than any of the other services in my town (but they cost more).
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Fundamentally, the government should be trying to provide tools for parents to help them control what's coming into their living rooms and what their kids are exposed to.
You mean like literature and educational messages on how to be a better parent and not government funded studies and unnecessary hardware requirements, right? Parents don't need to have the government pushing for senseless hardware integrated into televisions to help them be better parents... What they need is to be at home with their kids or come up with their own way to stop their kids from watching "indecency" (which only really comes on after 9/10pm).
I've tried to encourage the cable industry to provide some kind of a family package or family tier for parents to subscribe to. I think there are a variety of tools that can help empower parents.
How about teaching parents how to turn off the TV 90% of the week themselves and not worry about empowering the Cable monopolies to make even more money by stupid parents thinking that by purchasing a "family package" they won't have to pay attention to what their kids see on TV?
Oh wait, that wouldn't benefit your image or the Cable monopoly's pockets. Sorry.
WSJ: Have your friends just stopped swearing around you?
Martin: (laughing) No, no, my friends are still the same.
No Way! Martin has friends!?!?!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
i dunno. if the phone companies and cable companies created their networks without any public funds or help, i can see them not wanting to share thier services. but these two industries were helped by public funding, so i can see the public wanting to open access to that infrastructure.
i know one thing, we don't want monopolies. and that is exactly what cable companies want.
why the hell should a cable company sue a town if the town votes to have public wireless service? the people of the town in effect are creating their own ISP, and running it for pennies on the dollar. instead of paying $50 per person to the cable company, a town of 45,000 might pay $1.25 per person.
there is something my subdivision wants to do, and we are running into problems with legal threats from the comcast. we want to install one large satelite dish, and buy programming- espn, fox news, sci fi, disney, there are about 30 channels the subdivision agreed on. it would cost $5.75 per home. there are some channels we can get that are not available on cable, like about 10 free public access channels (not included in the 30 mentioned above, one channel is a university that broadcasts its lectures).
it seems to me that companies are going one step further than forming monopolies. they are now suing people to force them to buy their service. if comcast could burry directtv, they would do it in a heartbeat. does anyone remember those offensive ad's? a little kid pulls on the suit of a well dressed man while his father looks uneasy, then the kid says "my daddy says you use a dish? why are you the boss of the company?". the anwser is the dish is half the price with more channels. duh. then comcast lied, saying whenever there was a rainy day, there was no tv service. my friend has directtv, and it has never gone out, not in any storm, unlike my comcast which sucks!.
i want cable companies to stay barely alive, so the people who run these companies won't take their managment style to other companies. they are like used car salesmen.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I think I was a little vague there... just to clarify it's the other services, not Comcast, that cost more yet offer slower service. And don't get me wrong...I don't want Comcast having a monopoly any more than I want any other company...but it's not a bad service and a better price than the other guys (where I live, Mississippi).
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
so that the FCC can attempt to regulate it into oblivion! All these clowns can do is chase their tails trying to censor people. They thought Janet Jackson was bad? Wait till they see what this internet thingy has to offer. "Hmm, look at this link, it must be to pictures of cute little pet goats..."
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Why doesn't the government lay the lines for internet where needed and let companies use them? Just like the Tennessee Valley Authority Act but with internet.
The human race is artificial intelligence created using object orientated programming.
I think that things like building roads, administering various aid-to-needy-people programs, and limiting and controling access to various public resources (hunting licenses, fishing, park usage, timber usage, etc) might be in some way considered to be contributing the the way society is "engineered".
Look, I am not screaming for the liberals to come to the rescue here (I am a moderate and fall on both sides of the political fence on a lot of things), but to me, this seems like more corporate kowtowing by the government.
Why does the government care if I have access to broadband, but does not care enough about the lower classes who cannot afford computers?
Mr. Martin (and the FCC) fail to address the growing "technocracy" brewing in this country. There is no discussion on how this increased access will positively affect communities, specifically those with great economic need, and instead focus on corporate revenues and ensuring that "more companies have a chance to make money in broadband"
Maybe its just me, but perhaps the Bush administration should focus on the US's literacy and mathematical skills compared to the rest of the globe, as opposed to our position in the world's broadband distribution.
...both interiorlly, and exteriorlly.
You heard me.
You pot-smoking Republican types cry "freedom and property rights" all the time. Well, you've won the elections in the past 8 years? Where's legal prostitution? Why does the deficit keep going up? Where's legal heroin? Hmmm?? Well ???
Freedom means more than tax breaks for the rich.
You guys talk the talk but dont walk the walk.
What I haven't been able to understand is why can't/doesn't the FCC force the local monopolies to split into a service company, and a physical maintence company?
The only part that the natural monopoly exists is really on the physical properties. Then the services compete on services, while everyone just pays the physical wires company fees for upkeep and expansion?
This seems to makes much more sense, since these network seems to moving more towards packet-switched technologies rather than circut based technologies.
So, why not?
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
I want to focus on giving people broadband, but only you two can do it. Anyone who isn't currently making money off of this technology will not be able to make money off of it in the future - that will be the government's job. Sincerly FCC F%$kwit
they were always coming up with 5-year-plans to reach this goal or that level of something or other.
I live in Illinois, in the central US. I live in one of the poorest counties in the state. In my county, about 400 sq mi, there are less than 10,000 people. Most of them live in trailers and broken-down farm houses, just making ends meet, or selling the place because they can't.
We've got broadband.
Why do bureaucrats think they have to manage the economy? Here's a suggestion: Quit your job so I can quit paying your salary.
Maybe then I'll be able to start up a WiFi ISP in the next county over, where they're really hard up.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
WSJ: Let's turn to indecency. You're pretty young and you don't have kids. Why does broadcast indecency incense you so much?
Martin: I think there's been an increasing sense of the people who are filing complaints at the commission that they're incensed. My first year on the commission there were a couple hundred complaints. I think the next year there were over 10,000 and two years later there were over 100,000 and by the following year there were more than a million complaints. Its actually many of the consumers who are increasingly upset by what's on TV and radio and they're filing at the commission. There's a growing chorus of people complaining about what's on television and radio and that's what you're seeing the commission respond to.
WSJ: It's not personal, it's just that people are filing a lot of complaints?
Martin: I evaluate every complaint on the merits of the complaint but I think consumers have become increasingly frustrated on what's on television and radio. There was a lot of consumer outrage and Congress was upset and the commission has an obligation to enforce its rules that indecent material is prohibited during certain hours from being on television and radio. Its' incumbent that the FCC enforce its rules and we're going to.
WSJ: Do you think the government should be in the role to decide what's indecent?
Martin: You always have to be careful when you're talking about the government being involved in content issues. For anyone who expresses concern about what's on television or radio today the first line of defense always has to be the parents. The parents who are with their children and should be watching or supervising what they're watching on television or listen to on radio should be doing everything they can to make sure their children aren't being exposed to things they think are inappropriate. Fundamentally, the government should be trying to provide tools for parents to help them control what's coming into their living rooms and what their kids are exposed to.
Ok... now correct me if I'm wrong, but he's saying that the numerous complaints is about broadcast television and radio. . But not about Sattelite, etc, right? If there is, I must be blind.... So why is there a comment in the header about sattelite, etc, having anything to do with this?
More interestingly he says that they base their decisions (at least in part) on the number of complaints...... I find myself wondering what they'd do if a large section of the population copmlained there wasn't enough indecency on TV.
I live in a duopoly, it doesn't work. Please force a disconnected hardware and service layer. That promotes much more creativity and innovation.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Still waiting for the day when all cities (at least metros) will have wireless internet access at every corner of the city. That will be soo cool. Then we can laptops or internet access devices built into the car like the GPS and stuff.
What does your Credit Report look like?
Why? Shouldn't the parents just not buy products that don't offer them the controls they want? All TVs and desktop computers I've encountered have an off switch and there's nothing the government can do to get people to use them. How are more switches, knobs, dials, control panels, etc. going to help anything?
if it was the 1950's and only one parent had to work, then we would not need government intervention. not to mention, there is so much offensive programming on television today. have you seen some of the rap videos on MTV. those are real good values for a 10 year old to learn.
it is like the monday night football TO and desperate houswives promo. that never should have been on tv. how many dads want to watch football with their kids? and to have a kid exposed to that is horrible. what lessons were taught? a black guy decides his responsibility to his team is meaningless when he can have a peice of tail who he has met for the first time. they should have had part 2 of that episode next week- the woman gets aids and dies.
i'll give one last example. i was watching a sit com, one that is pretty funny. one night, they decided to have an episode where they showcased a gay guy. wtf? episodes should have warnings ahead of time. nobody wants to see that crap.
i think i am going to look for an advocacy group, one that wants to remove offensive skits from tv. one that will sue the television companies, and file complaints with the FCC on my behalf. a special interest group that will tell the government my community does not want homosexuals, lesbians, or anything offensive on tv. and get rid of all the alcohol advertising. can't a dad and his son watch a baseball game without seeing 100 different advertisments for beer?
until then, we need more government regulations. i don't care about violence, that is good clean fun. but get the sex off tv.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
... that you already have broadband
So the FCC wants to bend over for private industry and protect the children. And the boonies can have some muni wifi as long as no corporations are harmed.
Does the interviewer bother to throw any criticism, even for the sake of a straw man argument? Nope. Just more longwinded leading questions and inane banter. Just because the WSJ is pro-business does not excuse them from actually acting like journalists. This interview might as well have included a happy ending for all the ego-stroking involved.
Asking a question about whether the increase in indecency complaints was mainly due to organized letter writing campaigns would be a start. Maybe a firing offense too. Twenty years ago it would be considered good journalism and it would have been a firing offense not to ask. Its just a shame that the WSJ doesn't apply the same treatment that it would to a business exec.
Unless I'm mistaken all FCC complaint filings are available to the public, with name and address of the filer.
It would be interesting to interview each of these people, and get answers to the following questions:
1. What percentage of them actually pay attention to what their children watch and actively keep their kids from watching "bad" shows.
2. What percentage of them own TVs that include a V-Chip.
3. What percentage of those whose TVs have a V-Chip are actually making use of it. (!!!)
It would be a pretty sad statistic if, say, 60% of parents who have filed complaints say stuff like "I don't have time to monitor what my kids watch on the babysitter, uhh, I mean, the television!"
Far more damning would be the revelation that many parents filing complaints have V-Chips in their televisions and have never bothered activating and configuring them. Oh yes, that would be too much work, but when they walk by and see Fear Factor on TV and their jaw drops, they passionately write the FCC via the PTC's website.
Seriously, all this complaining about indecency aside, the V-Chip *IS* actually a pretty effective solution, as is the TV ratings system. Really the only problem I see is that some shows really push the boundaries of their ratings, but I rarely see FCC filings complaining simply about shows going beyond their ratings.
The problem is, many of these people writing in are simply outraged that everyone else's kids are watching this "smut," they want to usurp the authority of all the other parents out there, perhaps so that their kid doesn't grow up in a world where everyone around him is a whole lot smuttier than he/she is. A sympathetic but ultimately illegitimate and immoral goal.
The biggest cause of prices being what they are is that we who support these services don't work for free. Have the government do them and you can multiply corruption times ten and watch your taxes climb to cover it. Either way, you WILL pay.
And right now, YOU the Internet using public are one of the faster growing costs of the Internet: stupidity. It is the common users who infect their machines with viruses, it is idiot spammers abusing the net, it is script kiddies and amature hackers spreading trojans and so on. And we who support it, have to spend part of our busy time dealing with that. And did I mention, we don't work for free.
It is not a matter of Comcast profiteering or having some supposed monopoly. It is not about local or state governments not giving out municipal wireless (yes, let's trust our pipe to the net to the same people we otherwise wouldn't trust as far as we could throw them on any other subject). It's about the fact that building out miles and miles of fiber and copper costs. It's about the fact that thousands and thousands of industrial-duty routers and switches costs. It's about the fact that facilities to house the aforementioned items costs. It's about the fact that the people who KEEP it working despite the (l}users doing their level best to level the network, disrupt their own connections, and otherwise fark up their service and the service of others costs.
Just as with coding, I don't work for free. What I write isn't coming to you for free, the service I support in my day job isn't coming to you for free. But I don't expect too many to care. I see every day fellow support techs carp about the McDonald's wages they are now being offered to do jobs which used to pay $35K/year but then complaining that their high speed Internet costs. All I can do is shake my head as I give them a penalty line bounce lart.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
On promoting broadband and oligopolies:
He (and "the industry") claim that the incentive for building out infrastructure is not there if they are forced to share access for marginal profits.
That is only because "the industry" is conflating physical access (actual cables, etc) with logical access (tcp/ip, etc). If these public utilities were prevented from selling logical access, and instead saw their customers as the logical access providers - the ISPs - then they would not have to worry about competing with the ISPs and the ISPs would all competing within their own market. It is almost as if they are saying, "because we have a monopoly on the physical plant, we have to use it to enter the ISP market, to do otherwise would be unmonopoly-like!" - kind of the Bill Gates school on monopoly business practices.
On indeceny:
He talks about receiving hundreds of thousands of complaints. As if that legitimizes the content of the complaints. It might, if they were meaningfully distinct, but over 99% are astro-turf complaints and not charactertistic of the public at large.
At least he is being consistent - he favors monopolies - both business wanting to monopolize public utilities and idealogies like the "christain" Parents Television Council wanting to monopolize the content of enterntainment, be it over-the-air, over-the-wire or direct, encrypted satellite.
Look who this is coming from.
The purpose of this initiative to increase broadband access is to make sure that every consumer device (DVD player etc.) is connected to the internet for content companies to use it for their own ends, to enforce DRM, enforce automatic updates etc. etc. You know the issues.
How many people engage in violence? How many eventually have sex and drink beer?
Doesn't it seem backwards to glorify violence and ignore sex when, by all accounts, almost everyone will eventually have sex and relatively few commit any violent crimes or any crimes at all (short of things like speeding)?
In any case, it is not the government's responsibility to babysit your babies. I hope you're not leaving the kids home alone when they're so young. In most places that's illegal and considered child endangerment or something like that. If you can't trust your babysitter or daycare to keep what you don't like off the TV, then you best find yourself a different caretaker.
And when it comes to knowing what's going to be on a given show, I know that my dish allows me to press the "info" button well before the show even airs to see the synopsis. If you can't be bothered to do that before sitting down with your kids to a nice wholesome sitcom, then you're just being lazy.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
So I've never asked myself this, and I'm tempted to make this a separate ask-slashdot question, but why the heck is broadband so important? Most of all, why is it a federal government interest?
/.? At some type of disadvantage in this world?
If I didn't have broadband, I'd still have a POTS line or ISDN, plus dialup, I guess. I couldn't watch Battlestar Galactica without a lot more patience, free music would be a lot more annoying, and iTunes music store could be less popular.
So, I can afford cable internet and won't give it up until I can no longer afford it. But would my life suck without it? Would I be out of touch with my government? Blocked from
Is there really some compelling interest in that EVERYONE have broadband?
--Jim (me)
Are you the one trolling here?
Republicans are NOT Libertarians. They are totally different people. Libertarians are not happy that Bush is in power. I don't recall George W. Bush being endorsed as the Libertarian candidate.
Please educate yourself so that you don't say such ignorant things in the future.
What? Somehow barring other ISP's from using cable or phone lines is supposed to make the infrastructure grow faster?
Luckily, we have the benefit of the current situation to see what actually happens when one type of data lines are open (phone company copper and fiber) and another is closed (cable). According to the proposal's logic, cable should have exploded with new infrastructure, while phone companies would have been cautious in growth.
But that IS NOT what is current being seen. Both are growing at roughly the same pace. In some situations, cable outpaces the phone company (such as Comcast over Qwest), but in others it is the reverse (such as Verizon over Comcast). So given the current situation as a measure of future performance, I don't think this law will change anything, except barring other ISP's from using DSL.
As an alternate fix, why can't others who want to use cable or phone lines pay a decent price to lease the lines? Enough that it gives the phone company and cable company a profit for laying and leasing the lines? That way, it would be profitable for the phone and cable companies to run new lines.
"Allow municipal wifi."
Muni wifi is technically a poor solution and only a govt. agency would be stupid enough to waste money on such a venture.
Vote for Pedro
And how does this increase broadband penetration? If I were an AOL customer (I'm not), I'd want to buy my broadband from AOL, not from my local cable or telco.
If he wants to increase broadband -- and not just profits from broadband to the two regulated monopolies -- he'd tell them that for the next 5 years that 20% of every remaining non-broadband enabled customer must be converted to have the broadband option on their cable or telephone line. And that this broadband be used to connect said customer to their desired ISP at the same flat rate that covers installation and servicing, plus whatever premium said ISP wishes to charge for their services. In short, broadband charges are broken down into the cost of the transport + the cost of the ISP services.
That would increase broadband.
In the mean time, time to call my broker and buy some more Comcast. This is the only way I'll see any benefit from this FCC ruling.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
hey what a coinkidink..i have Comcast and live in Mississippi too :P where in MS are you? i am in Hattiesburg.
to get back on topic, i dont think Comcast for example, should have to share their lines with certain providers.. a la AOL. why waste your time on such a sucky ISP. of course i know AOL would call unfair but hey...
in all seriousness i think the way to go would be to put in Wi-fi...at least for the rural areas, just as was mentioned..where dsl and cable wont go. there are a lot of rural areas here in Mississippi but a WHOLE lot more in the mid-west to upper mid west where not only is there a lack on broadband but also a lack of cell towers. go look on a map and look at the coverage you get up there with any plan you are on..its abysmal.
anyway i pay $42.95/month for 4.0mbps..and i have digital basic--with the music channels and the Starz package(encore ect etc) for $60.00.
"why would deregulating the communication industry help broadband"
- Actually, the recent Supreme Court decision to not force local carriers to share their digital lines such as cable or dsl lines, and unlike analog phone lines that are truly deregulated, will help these companies invest into laying lots of fiber, thinking it's gonna be theirs forever. Then a new decision from the Supreme Court, and the government shows up with eminent domain ideas and seizes their lines, and makes them a public good. It's like with patents and other monopolistic things - you get an initial period where you get your return, then it's all deregulated in your face, for the benefit of everyone.
- Another way to help this broadband agenda and lay lots of fiber, all the way to the home, is to start up a company that lives on borrowed cash, do a stock offer on this company, take the investor's money, lay it down into fiber, then run the company into the ground into bankruptcy, and cancel the stock of the investors, then show up with a "real" company and purchase up the remaining assets at a bargain price. This has been done quite a few times, and this is the preferable way the FCC/Corporate America would like to go, if only those investors weren't so scared to invest after the dotcom bust! Maybe Bush with his Social Security reform could nudge them into investing? How about a tax reform where you won't pay as much direct taxes, but we'll make it mandatory to invest. At least this way you won't know for sure your money is gone as soon as you bought stock on it, and you get "hope" in exchange, just like with the lottery, and unlike with regular taxes. Dazzling with bullshit, giving lots of "hope" could do great things to moral and consumer confidence. Cuz songs like 'if I was a wealthy girl, I'd have all the money in the world, my cash flow would never ever end" just ain't helping the stock market, man, the money just ain't pouring in as it used to. Ah, those good old days!
Requirements to share lines decreases the incentive to invest in new infrastructure, because other companies can leech off of your investment. Therefore, if you want to provide incentives for companies to add broadband support to new communities, you need stop forcing other companies to leech off of their capital investments. This is the goal of the FCC, so the move makes sense.
Vote for Pedro
Third party providers are not allowed to have access to the same markets as providers who own the wire: 1. smaller providers and possibly larger providers go out of business. 2. unemployeement rate goes up. 3. general prices for all internet access goes back up. 4. 'infrastructure' is expanded like martin say's it will. 5. because internet service prices are so outrageous people decide that they don't need to the internet to function in life and cancel their internet services. 6. innovation and creativity that the internet once produced is dwindled into almost nothing. 7. people start watching more tv or possibly even get off their asses and go outside. 8. the service providers who actually own 'infrastructure' lose their asses because they charge to much, because they have to off their debts and go bankrupt. 9. the new .com bust makes the one of '99 look mundane.
10. does their really need to be 10 reasons why this is a bad idea?
.... market demand should keep things in check. What I mean by that is that while there may be no innovation and there will definitely be no shortage of pissed off people, if these companies keep raising the prices of internet access, they're just going to find that already-tight budgets are going to drop the net access because they really can live without it (or take care of their internet needs at work...).
I just signed up for Comcast cable in my area and my jaw dropped when I heard I was going to be charged $60/month for their lowest-priced internet package. The sad fact is that I have no other adequate choice, because I'd be paying more for DSL since I use my cell phone for my phone service, without having a land line at all (meaning I would be charged for a line into the house for the sole purpose of having internet access).
I'm really pissed about the situation, and I'm not even really that strapped for cash. The part that irks me the most is the Comcast treats me like shit, and it's my reasoning that they do that because they know that nobody else can serve me. Either I accept it up the ass, or nothing at all. *sigh*
A community-oriented lyrics site
these airwaves belong to us and shouldn't be used to fill government coffers. The airwaves are used for communications which is free speech. Selling it to the highest bidder is not the most efficient use of this spectrum . It only ensures politicians money to play with.
To get lower more affordable mobile phone prices , we need to get the gov out and have a system based on most efficient usage.
Right now the metaphor is like the Bells running the internet and charging a high price per min long distance call.
If you're going to use an acronym, the proper way is to spell out the entire phrase first (i.e. using "Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers" before using "ILECs"). It makes the reading a whole lot easier. But hey.. I don't mean to be a grammar Nazi. I just wanna point it out for the rest of us.
What is your penile percentile?
broadband.
period.
and you wanna know why?
1/2/4/8 megabits DOWN...
128/256 kiloBITS UP.
by any reasonable definition, it is NOT broadband (please don't nitpick, i use broadband in the sense that most people understand).
when connections become at least synchronous, then and only then can you consider it broadband.
right now, it's just a joke. the fact that the "FCC" so conveniently forgot to address it (when not trying to please it's corporate masters by forcing the broadcast flag onto the unsuspecting populace and which also the mainstream media somehow forgot to mention while showing 20 different views of the scott peterson trial...) simply means the fcc has no business being involved any longer in the regulation of communications.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
One thing about capitalism that some think is a benefit is the ability to assign ownership and a price to anything. This FCC guy thinks that an entity owning/maintaining this infrastructure and individuals paying for the right is better.
This, IMHO is ridiculous given it is the 2005 equivalent of Interstate highways or going further back railroads. This has the capacity to expand the economy exactly like the railroad and highways. But that's my opinion.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
"Communication companies' bottomlines could, for example, be increased dramatically if the infrastrusture was there for each and every sucker in the US to have access to $50/mth broadband. And that could happen if, for example, they lobbied the FCC to let them do that..."
That's what telcon companies thought during the dot boom. They spent a ton of money on laying fiber, and then people were still ok with dial-up. Worst telcom downturn ever followed.
Vote for Pedro
A monopoly can only exist if a competitor can't offer the same product in the same market, and there is no effective substitute product either. Until very recently, there was no effective substitute for wireline telephone service. Therefore it was appropriate to regulate the industry.
The broadband market, however, is substantially different in that 70% or so of the homes in the United States have access to two different providers using two different technologies. In addition there at least 4 other technologies which may compete to deliver broadband to consumers (IP over Power Line, Satellite, Terrestrial Wireless such as WiMax, and High Speed Cell Phone). In this case there cannot be a monopoly, and regulation needs to be refocused on monitoring the marketplace for collusion.
"he began circulating plans to loosen rules so neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections with competitors like America Online,"
Exactly how is this in line with his stated goal of increasing broadband access his top priority?
Wouldn't this increase broadband prices, which in turn would cause FEWER homes to get broadband?
Obviously, he needs practice at spinning so that the publically stated goal and plans to achieve the unstated true goal doesn't make him look like a fool.
Sounding like a fool or making the unstated goal so damned obvious isn't the best way to repay campaign contributors who helped his boss get elected.
Anyone care to show the specifics players by digging up specifics and crafting a link to http://www.opensecrets.org/ ?
Better yet, I'd love to see a website that basically documents publically stated objectives, subsequent actions, and link them to the campaign contributors while refraining from opinions or accusations. The facts alone would make things crystal clear to the general public. Everything published would have to be verifiable of course so that it would stand up to scrutiny.
For example, a neat table showing the following would be particularly useful in countering spin:
Appointed or Elected official
Appointed by (if any)
Primary campaign contributors
Publically stated goals
Actual actions taken
Quantificable impact of actions on campaign contributors
Quantifiable impact of actions on other Americans
" I want to focus on giving people broadband, but only you two can do it. Anyone who isn't currently making money off of this technology will not be able to make money off of it in the future - that will be the government's job. Sincerly FCC F%$kwit"
No one is going to spend money on infrastructure if they're forced to then rent it out to competitors. Therefore, taking away the leech option will result in more investment to give more access to people who currently don't have a broadband option. You really shouldn't call someone a "F%$kwit" when you don't understand what he's saying.
Vote for Pedro
I don't know about everyone else, but I want fiber to the house and that requires digital signalling (baseband).
It really amamzes me that we (including so called computer geeks) bastardized the real meaning of the word "broadband".
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
...was just to lower the standards until more people fit the broadband category. I'm suprised his solution wasn't simply to relabel 56k and up as broadband.
Michael
Although Verizon and the cable company were unable to provide even a guesstimate of when they could provide high speed access, I was finally able to convince a local small business to install and configure a wireless broadband antenna that will reach my house. This wasn't easy, considering the terrain and heavy forest between here and there, but they pulled it off.
It is nice that local municipalities will be allowed to offer wifi access, but that won't help must rural users. I am fortunate that my area is growing, so hi-speed access will eventually make it here. But for the average middle-America rural user, it will be a long wait. Remember, electricity and telephone spread to rural areas due to gummint programs. My libertarian nature hates the idea, but it may be required to make it happen.
There you have it: Order, Justice, Tranquility, Defense, Welfare, Liberty.
Your notion of laissez fair was thrown on the scrapheap of stupid ideas in Washington's first term. Read up on Alexander Hamilton's Reports on Credit and Manufacturing and Congress' endorsement of them, including many of the "founding fathers", for more info.
Yeah, which is exactly why we had to break up AT&T almost 20 years ago. Assholes like this need to be shot.
Speaking as an ISP who would be put out of business by this kind of crap, I can say there would be MILLIONS of customers who would baulk at the FCC allowing SBC and Verizon to keep them out of the broadband business.
Those millions of customers might just say to hell with it and use dialup instead of broadband just because they HATE the bells and they HATE comcast. That's why many people use independant ISPs. They want choice.
This is almost as depressing as the time I realized that Intel did not plan on making an entire wireless network in the US for use with Centrino.
I was curious when the Intel trucks would come around the corner to put up new cellular towers and then start sending us a bill as the new ISP.
Unfortunately, everyone's glad about making new hardware but the implementations are weak. WiFi is wonderous but I don't have it everywhere I go, I don't even have it at home (but if I drive down the street and park in my neighbor's driveway it's always free!).
Although his views are important and yadda yadda internet: do it for the kids junk is cool and everything I don't think you'll see much of a change in how ISPs take control of areas.
Give me $2 million and a gigabit line to my household, I can do as much as any one of these dudes toward making internet [pornography] more available to everyone.
On the need to do something about indecency in broadcast, Martin says:
He doesn't mention that the overwhelming majority of those are form letters from the Parents Television Council, an organization dedicated to spamming the FCC with indecency complaints until they get their way and force us all to watch a sanitized version of reality.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
Perhaps first you should try getting any internet acess at all into every home. Not everyone has internet acces. Not everyone owns a computer either. I would think that you need to have a computer to connect to the internet, unless you want to try to shove a co-ax cable in your temple and see if that works.
C'mon, get your priorities straight. I don't pay taxes just so that you can just make me pay more.
"neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections with competitors" You're trying to increase our access to the internet by eliminating competetion? This will drive the price up, and make it harder to get on the internet. The competetion is the only reason its as cheap as it is now. If he had it his way, it would seem we don't pick our internet provider, but rather how we get the internet (dsl, or cable). I want to pick my ISP, not have it forced on me. Now that that's out of the way, I like Comcast and am happy with their service... so this post was pointless. -1 redundant.
http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
"neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections with competitors"
You're trying to increase our access to the internet by eliminating competetion? This will drive the price up, and make it harder to get on the internet. The competetion is the only reason its as cheap as it is now.
If he had it his way, it would seem we don't pick our internet provider, but rather how we get the internet (dsl, or cable). I want to pick my ISP, not have it forced on me.
Now that that's out of the way, I like Comcast and am happy with their service... so this post was pointless.
-1 redundant.
http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
then I am ok with it.
The real problem is that we seem to say that it is ok to grant total monopolies to just a few companies. That is a waste. If we are going to allow the companies to have 100% control of their lines (which they should), then we should disallow long-term monopolies. Basically, there needs to be an open market.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The attribution to Marie Antoinette, according to the first few sites I googled, is incorrect, but neglecting that, this is not what I have always understood the quote to mean.
The original quote was ""Qu'ils mangent de la brioche". Brioche, according to wikipedia, is "a light but rich French bread made with a yeast dough and eggs, milk, butter and sugar."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brioche)
The quote refers to a huge disconnect between the ruler and his or her subjects. The original utterer (if there was one) didn't understand that people were starving because they had no bread. He/she assumed that they, like her, had a choice between bread and 'cake', and if they ran out of one, they could simply munch on the other for a while.
Read the 9th and 10th amendments for more info.
...with mediaone. Until att and, later, comcast bought them out cutting upload caps by 10x and download by about 4. Newgroups were limited to 1 GB per month from the previous unlimited and the 7 or so ips you could have was chopped to 1. They also raised the price by $20. Yay for broadband
I wanna know who is paying this guy and blowing smoke up his ass, because he certainly sounds like somebody who has just about as much concern for the public interest as a drug dealer.
This sig no verb.
And just how is removing competition supposed to encourage these companies to increase their rollout of new services? I seems like a complete crock to me.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Amen to that. I guess there really are people with nothing better to do with their lives than monitor and attempt to stop all *indecency*, or what they consider to be indecent. However one thing also strikes me as odd. One million complaints were filed with the FCC, and that represents a very small part of the population that has actually bothered to complain. The rest just grin and bear it apparently? Or could it be THEY DON"T CARE??? :). Could it possibly be that people are a bit more sensible about what constitutes profanity and other content??
So we're having a small majority of the population try to force their moral beliefs on the rest of us. I realize this is how America works today, but it still annoys me.
"The boy is dangerous, they all sense it, why can't you?"
It also did better than its southern, pork laden cousin. The govt RR, paid for per mile of track laid. The subsidized companies, ran circuitous routes using low grade steel for the track, just to get paind for miles of track laid. Also contained in this bargain was land grants; somewhere on the order of 25% of the western terrories(I don't think my memory is playing hyperbole on me, but correct me if it is)
On the other hand, The Great Northern, laid its track to connect commercial centers and ports and used high quality steel to induce confidence in thier rail system. It was completely privately funded. It had more commerce running on it.
Do we really need govt, in order for laying technical infrastructureso our economy can grow? The rail subsidies nearly(my opinion) broke the back of the nation. Is that helpfull?
When you get broadband out to Lapoint, Utah... wake me up. When you even find Lapoint, Utah on a map, give yourself a pat on the back. /just moved to lapoint... I miss my cable internet.
MadOgre.com
Remember when the government started Medicare and Medicaid and now how cheap and efficient medical care is compared to back when everyone had to responsible for their own medical care? It'll be just like that. Forcing companies to give everyone broadband will just make it all that much cheaper!!!
And Free laptops for the Homeless! Broadband =! WiFi
You point out some very good defects/distortions that gov't incentives created, but:
-The goal of coast-to-coast railroads wouldn't have happened without gov't support and enforcing some standards.
-Some railroads would have failed with our without gov't intervention.
-The country as a whole was made better off as a result despite the pork-barreling.
Let's go your way and leave it all up to private industry to provide infrastructure. Let's use the mobile phone industry as an example.
-Poor allocation of resources. Each networks must provide their own infrastructure in any given area. How is having 3 different, incompatible networks doing the same thing efficient? How many incompatible java phone implementations are there??? Answer: Most of them are incompatible with each other.
-Oligarchy
-Excess utility (profit) goes to shareholders, not society. If you think that's okay, then know that you create a minority ruling class dominating an impoverished masses.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
FCC chairman Kevin Martin says 'his top goal is to increase Americans access to high-speed Internet,'
Funny... I thought his top priority was to destroy VOIP so his telco cronies could keep the checks coming..
There's a growing chorus of people complaining about what's on television and radio and that's what you're seeing the commission respond to.
What I notice is that they are all complaining to the FCC, not doing what will really get the industry's attention: stop watching TV.
Seriously. If you don't like what's on TV, don't watch it, and write your letter to the television studios producing this crap. Explain to them why you are writing them and make sure to tell them you have stopped watching their shows (/channels/ service) because of this. Once the letters start rolling in as fast as they apparently are at the FCC, and viewership and advertising profits start going down, you can bet they'll make changes. The media companies are businesses, after all. They wont survive long if you don't want their product.
The idea that "a minority ruling class" could dominate "impoverished masses" only exists because you advocate a government that can grant favors to groups of people. True capitalism would not allow government to favor *any* groups of people. Not the poor, not the rich, not AIDS victims, not business or people run over by a truck. It would simply enforce against the initiation of force or fraud against others. Nothing else. If you accept the principle that gov't can favor certain groups, then those with the most influence (read: money) will be the recipient of all the "favors". If after almost 200 years of this mentality this isnt apparent, then I dont know what is. The system you seem to advocate (Im extrapoling from your comments) is the very one that creates the problems you seem to not want. Just remember: the "rich" prosper in *every* economic system. Every single one. The "poor" or as you put it, the "impoverished masses" have the most to gain from a capitalistic system.
'90s: Get Rich Quick
'00s: Get Pr0n Fast
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
Is it me, or is this FCC chairman missing the point. He wants to do away with AOL , and by doing so create a duopoly in most areas. Will there then be a reg board to make sure consumers arent gauged? I doubt it. You want govt off the back of business, Mr Chairman, then allow for plenty of competion everywhere, like ten players. That way prices have a better chance of being fixed fairly. You want only two players, or one player like Microsoft, that't why you need rigerous govt regulation to make sure the public isnt screwed over. Stuff like utilities, of which telephone services are, basically end up one firm operations. Hence the need for the govt to step in. Geez this country went through this 60-100 years ago. Dont you think they would have learned something? Maybe if another economic depression comes, they'll just do it all over again.
"FCC chairman Kevin Martin says 'his top goal is to increase Americans access to high-speed Internet,'"
FCC charimain Kevin Martin says "his top goal is to kiss the asses of the cablecos and the Baby Bells equall."
crazy...I live in Hattiesburg too. Check out my personal page ;)
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
One such industry initiative is called IMS (IP Multimedia Services). This comes from the mobile side. You know how wide open that Wireless Web is, right? A "walled garden" of pay-per-view services, mostly, not the Internet at all! With 3G cellular, the speed is faster, but the mobile operators do not want to give up their greedy fingers in every pie. They want to have fast "services" they can sell, but not the public Internet. Hence IMS. If you follow the trade press, though, you'll see that there's lots of talk about IMS moving to the wireline world too.
An even more onerous project is called IPsphere http://www.ipsphere.org/. This replaces the public Internet with walled garden applications that are each associated with specific network Quality of Service levels. Now I actually do like QoS (controversial in the Internet world) but not walled gardens! But the wire owners do not want to "get Skyped", with services using their wire that do not pay them extra. IPspheres would allow the wire owner to take a cut off of e-commerce (selected vendors only), charge you by the message for mail from any server or web site, and filter exactly what you may or may not read. Think "Great Firewall of China" on steroids, and done for profit, not merely protection of a regime. Or think AOL (which is a charter member), especially if they don't need those pesky outside services. Lucent, Intel and HP are chomping at the bit for this, since the requisite "deep packet inspection" requires lots of CPU power.
This doesn't work if the public has a choice! Most people would choose an ISP over a closed IPsphere Wasteband provider. So the Bells want to take away your choice. They've asked the FCC to be treated like cablecos, who, the court (correcly, under the law) ruled, are ISPs, not common carriers. So if the telcos (who were created explicitly to be common carriers) don't have to be common carriers either, they can kick all of the other ISPs off of their copper wire. And then the consumer gets a choice of telco or cable, if that.
That's the "broadband" that Martin is pushing. A Wasteband. Be warned, tell your friends, and put on some heat! Keep the Internet open to Americans.
Also, there is a lot of equipment that is being moved out of the mature urban/suburban systems as they are being upgraded to handle more capicity. It can be reused in the rural areas easily for the cost of installation and configuration (cheap).
Finally, the Cable company I work for has been building a nationwide 10Gbps backbone. It runs right through our rural cable system, just like the big metro systems. Sure, we're not making a dent in it, but it makes me feel a little better about our prospects of being able to compete with DBS and DSL (it will carry HDTV, video on demand and VOIP as well as Internet traffic).
If the ILECs have figured it out, they'll abandon the dividend and use that money to build out their networks (much like Verizon, but they still pay a dividend). If not, they will die off.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
"True" economic and social systems simply don't exist.
Please go, participate in local government and come back and tell me about it.
I don't advocate any particular form of government. They all have good/bad qualities. I participate in local gov't to try to improve my local conditions. But that's about all I choose to do.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
And that's what he's doing. But hey, the US is putting its head up its ass, with Shrubery and theocrats in charge...
0 282,00.html
There was a great article about how Japan decided that they were falling behind the onlineness, and how they went about correcting that deficit nationally.
Of course I can't find that piece online now. It's archived somewhere, but I'm not digging it out (where's my desktop google application guys?)
This paper seems to talk about the regulatory and policy changes that lead to Japanese dominance:
http://www.jiad.org/vol4/no1/taniwaki/
Historically (1999), Japan sucked at connectivity:
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,2
Some current news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3278375.stm
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
Why don't they start cleaning house of all the stupidity?
Seriously, why am I still paying for the Spanish-American War with every phone bill?
Maintainence fees, etc. And re-drilling, when the water-table lowers past your well.
And you're actually stealing from the water-table. Which can be construed as a public resource.
Decreasing water-tables are going to become a huge issue in the near future.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
How did you get the Constitution in the first place idiot?
Someone thought about an ideal government, and put together some rules about how it should be run (the Constitution).
He (or she) is attempting to do the same thing, and analyze what things are necessary, and *why*.
I disagree with some things. I'm in a city that did have private Fire Service, and it choked and is now gone. Luckily, some people had thought ahead, and the items funded by the city tax-fees (to pay the private contractor for city-wide service (and you're not going to be dumb enough to argue about city-wide service, are you?!?)) were owned by the city, so we weren't missing fire-engines and stations and all the rest when the company decided to pursue profit elsewhere - And nobody else wanted to bid on the contract. That could've seriously sucked.
The firemen were getting seriously jacked over as well.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
But has to provide free services to the government:
Franking
Comes to mind immediately.
They also do things in a government way, like providing service to the *whole* country (even pesky Red states), unlike private shipping carriers, which don't have to provide service to rural areas, nor do they have to provide all services to rural areas.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
Is that the FCC hates that you can have one phone line and a data connection supporting up to multiple phone lines, all without expensive drop-in line charges/etc. I think we should focus on getting Fiber, DSL, and Cable out to the masses and giving them VoIP.
Telecom is a changing industry, that's for sure. The players will stay the same, but will shrink and move into the background. (Yeah, I know they can make the quality bad, but with many VoIP providers going over dark fiber and becoming CLECs, many are learning to bypass the big bell's, but the big bell's are gonna stay around for awhile, someone'll have to repair those lines).
The sad thing is there is no reason it has to be like this. I worked for three years for BellSouth Business Systems (BBS) in the Digital Services Group (DSG) Service Activation and Repair (SAR) section as an ADSL "Multimedia Technician" (MT), which was an old job classification that must have sounded more reassuring than "Network Overlord" to the suits.
We had complete control of the network between the user and the NSPs' switches, including the 2E6 phone lines, 1E4 DSLAMs (DSL Access Multiplexer - the actual DSL boxen), 1E3 ATM switches, and all layers of provisioning software plus all the databases and network management tools - 25 different applications, some new, some 30 years old. If it couldn't be fixed in software we could call anyone in the company - CO and field techs to VPs and get anything done - except get a new DSLAM put where it was needed. One thing we could do (but weren't allowed to) was to make lines work better than they should. Virtually any line can go at 3 Mbps and most can work at 6 or even 8 Mbps just by setting a variable. Most - no, all - upstream links were fat and empty, so there is no good reason for not letting people use what is already there. Conversely, if a poor 20 kft line that never should have qualified could be made usable and even reliable by throttling the bandwidth to a lower rate, we weren't allowed to do it. Even using line profiles that used more robust encoding or changed the noise margin requirements to block intermittently noisy frequencies were verboten. Not that many of my coworkers knew how to do that, of course.
The excuse always given was that the FCC tariffs (service- and company-specific regulations) dictated what we could do. I read all the BS ADSL FCC tariffs I could find, but I never found any such restrictions. Basically the ILECs have a reflexively greedy, dog-in-the-manger attitude towards providing service. If they can give you less for the same money, then they will, even if it is no more effort or expense is required to do better.
I could go on about BS's Soviet bureaucracy and its recent infatuation with moronic Six Sigma pseudo-measurements of everything except whether the problem was fixed, or about its subsidiary NSP, BellSouth.net, which closed most of its domestic call centers, (even Oak Ridge, the only one that had a clue) and outsourced the jobs to India, the Phillipines, and even Costa Rica, but I'm getting tired.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
"Requirements to share lines decreases the incentive to invest in new infrastructure, because other companies can leech off of your investment."
If you were talking about any other industry in the USA today, I might agree with you. But when Ma Bell (AT&T) was broken up into the regional "baby bells", many of the restrictions on the expansion of their business model were removed. Additional regulation at the state corporation commission level (individual states) was introduced in place of Federal regulations.
This is why the "baby bells" have been extremely active in the states' legislatures to nip competition like municipal WiFi in the bud. These "baby bells" are still government regulated (albeit less so today) monopolies, with minimum levels of service specified as well as a GUARANTEED PROFIT MARGIN.
It is new technology, like VoIP offered by other ISPs piggybacking on the "baby bells" infrastructure that the FCC has just given them the ability to crush. VoIP is an enabling force that is reducing the slice of "baby bell" income derived from their share of long distance charges.
The "baby bells" have dangled the prospect of widespread broadband service before the FCC as the "carrot" to the increased monopoly power "stick". The FCC has bitten the lure. But the creaky POTS circuits to most residences will not be addressed by the "baby bells" for decades to come. The only regions with active development of FTTP are those with high density populations that make such a roll-out less expensive.
The "baby bells" do want to replace their POTS wiring with FTTP, but on their terms, and on their schedule. Adn when these "test" regions are up to spec with FTTP, the "baby bells" will be competing with the cable companies for digital content. The area that I live in will not see FTTP for a decade or more -- all underground services that are 35 years old. The local "baby bell" could run FTTN (Fiber To The Neighborhood) as a means of more quickly providing adequate broadband speed, but that would not eliminate their cable competition. The "baby bells" want to take the whole "pie" away from the cable companies, not coexist with them -- a situation not unlike (1) the municipal WiFi threat to crappy ADSL service, and (2) the VoIP threat to their share of long distance charges.
In retrospect, the breakup of AT&T could have been avoided by government regulators providing new avenues of business expansion. We would not have the fractured (even broken) cellular phone service we have today, and closer oversight at the Federal level could have brought broadband DSL or even FTTP nationally, long before now. AT&T the national monopolist has been replaced with even more greedy "baby bell" monopolists, but with far less oversight provided at the states' level. The result has been poorer service overall, and at far higher a cost to the consumers.
Thanks for give examples of why it the coast to coast rail roads would have failed. Thanks for inplying I am ignorant, because I am not "participating in local governnment".
True?
Thanks to the mods for scoring up mpapet, as what is said is sooooo scorable.
I figgured nerds would know....
I chair several commitees on the city council. Care to make anymore unfounded assumptions?
But I don't want it replaced. I want that copper pair with the battery farm at the other end to always be there, still working when the hurricane takes out power, cable, and cell phones.
Of course I also want something else run to the house that can provide obscene amounts of bandwidth at low cost, and a wide variety of choices as to for what I use it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.