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."

Comments

Re:Marie Antoinette

[eggoeater]

this strike anyone else as being a bit like "Let them have broadband!"

I'm not sure you entirely understand the meaning and context of this quote.* If the upper elite of society were enjoying streaming video from their 10MBps fiber connection, it would be a more apt paraphrase to say "Let them have AOL dial-up." (i.e. expensive, slow, and like the "cake" that the bakers of the time threw out, not much use to anyone.)


*Cake in the Antoinette quote refers to the flour mixture bakers lined their oven with at the beginning of the day and scraped off and threw into the street at the end of the day (when it was pretty much burned to a crisp an inedible.) Also, Antoinette, if she actually said it, was being glib, repeating the phrase ver-batim from a popluar book of the day...don't remember the book though.

Re:it's their wires

[Mr. Underbridge]

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?

If they own every inch of the land over which the wires run, sure. That, however, is never the case.

Re:Going forward

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument would be valid if the phone companies made the investment. Their money didn't build the infrastructure, your tax money did. Phone company build out is heavily subsidised.

These companies are also not "leeching" off anything. They don't get the lines for free just because their competitors asked. The phone company still charges a fee for use of that line.