Slashdot Mirror
Bill Would Reverse Bans On Municipal Broadband
Yuppie writes "A bill introduced to the House this week would overturn bans that currently exist in several states that forbid cities and towns building and deploying their own broadband networks. The big telecoms may not be be too happy about the bill, however: 'The telecoms have historically argued that municipalities that own and operate — or even build and lease — broadband networks could give themselves preferential treatment. The Act anticipates that argument with a section on "competition neutrality." Public providers would be banned from giving themselves any "regulatory preference," which should create a level playing field for all broadband providers. Municipalities interested in getting into the broadband business would also have to solicit feedback from the private sector on planned deployments.' The full text of the bill (pdf) is available from Rep. Boucher's website."
how the FUCK is that any different to what telecoms do NOW? i bet at&t give themselfs preferential treatment on lines they install to. what a bunch of 2 faced cockheads.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I unconciously read "Bill [Gates] Would Reverse Bans ..." and now I'm a little bit scared.
The telecoms are worried!? Price drops anyone?
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
Goddamn activist legislators preventing ordinary Americans being price gouged by ISPs.
Don't they know that that's SOCIALISM? And SOCIALISM is not just automatically bad, but Anti-American(TM) even when its not.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
If an ISP decided it would be cool to allow uncapped transfer over their network (ie, no cost of switching to another ISP), would that be considered preference?
The Telecoms want net neutrality to only apply to them.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
I really have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, it'd be nice to actually get something cool like this for my tax dollars. On the other, I definitely don't want to see my city out-compete our wonderful local ISPs. If/when they became the only game in down, what's their incentive to maintain the networks? Will Joe Cityadmin give a rat's butt if I call to complain about an outage? And above all else, do I really want the government (even the friendly local variety) being my gateway to the Internet? I have nightmares of hearing a prosecuting attorney saying something like "our city access records indicate you posted anti-government statements to a communist website called Dotslash." Maybe that's unlikely, but tell me honestly you can't hear a mayor explaining how his city's network will be "a safe place for our children to play thanks to our new monitoring and filtering system" to thunderous applause. If there's a vibrant ecosystem of private competition in an area, great. If not...
Help me out here. Do I root for the cities to undercut big telco (whom I customarily hate on general principles), or for private enterprise to win out over the government's desire to protect me from myself?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
As long as it's not paid for by the tax-payer I don't see the problem. Otherwise it's just a waste.
I can't believe such a ban exists in the first place! This is exactly the kind of crap that is helping the telcos. and the cable companies hold broadband hostage in the U.S. It's no wonder why we've fallen so far behind.
Wait, you mean municipal broadband will give preferential treatment for its own service? The one run by an elected entity, representing the people they serve? The one that won't be profit seeking (other than providing nominal tax dollars to fund other services)? The one whose pricing, serving level, and whatnot would be controlled by the citizenry at the city council level? HOLY COW BATMAN!
I don't see a SIGN UP button on the article, damn...
municipalities get fed up at the empty promises the Telco's give them about getting them wired, and how they can't make money if the municipality does it themselves.. Given how the Telco's already squandered the millions of dollars that were supposed to be used for upgrading broadband, I would be in favor of locking out Telco's all together. Like hell I am going to pay for my city to upgrade its broadband only to hand it over to a corporation to get neutered, all the while they [the telco] will complain that "this setup sucks, if you had let us install it as we promised, it would have been better!"
Deleted
So, if I understand this properly, the telecoms don't want municipalities to give themselves "preferential treatment". That makes sense.
Wait a second. Are these the same telecoms that want to be able to sell "preferential treatment" at the detriment of everyone else? As a matter of fact, I think they are.
The only possible conclusion I can draw from this is as follows: it's okay for large companies to fuck people over, but governments damn well better... not. Or something.
What the telecoms need to realize is that the governments have been fucking us over for centuries, if not longer, to the point that they've nearly perfected it to a (very perverse) form of art. The telecoms can't hope to compete, though that doesn't seem to be stopping them.
I own itburns.net. What should I put there?
when the government has to ask permission of private business to do anything. :(
Municipalities interested in getting into the broadband business would also have to solicit feedback from the private sector on planned deployments.
Of course the incumbent monopolies don't want competition from municipalities! They know their current services are miserable, that we don't have any other choice, and that there are a lot of well run, responsive, municipal utilities out there!
I live where I can choose between one of two local telco monopolies for bad Internet service: the phone company or the cable company. They don't really compete. Businesses have to go with DSL to get a static IP address and the privilege of running any servers. Home users go with the cable company because they already have cable television and the download speeds are marginally faster. Neither company has any connection whatsoever to the community, aside from extracting subscription fees and demanding cable right of ways. Both are widely despised.
In contrast, our local publicly owned water and electric utilities are responsive, provide excellent service, have a focus on low rates, and actively solicit community input, and (oddly enough) are widely respected.
If the water and electrical utility would provide the same sort of community oriented service for Internet that it now provides for water and electricity, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
There is, in fact, nothing to stop them from doing so right now. I live where there are no laws banning municipally owned data networks. But that brings me to this bill: although it would explicitly allow such networks, when I read the Slashdot summary my first concern was about the kinds of requirements it places on the municipalities. For example, soliciting input from local businesses (which might be served by such a utility) would make good business sense, but requiring discussions with the ILEC and cable company would seem silly. Fortunately the bill looks very clean and merely appears to mandate community involvement -- which is appropriate for a community network.
I strongly recommend reading the bill. It easy to understand and only takes a minute.
By the way: I see little reason to regulate publicly owned utilities any differently than the existing monopolies.
Of course what I'd really like to see are the physical lines condemned and handed over to local government with the provision they allow any service provider who meets appropriate qualifications sell services over those lines. But since that won't happen, and would be a bit thorny in practice anyway, this bill seems like a reasonable step in the right direction.
In the long run, the only thing that's going to materially improve high speed Internet service for most of us is some interest by the Congress and President in improving the situation. As it is, without competition, without any prodding from the powers that be, and given the practicalities of constructing new networks, the monopolies see no reason to improve and it's too risky for anyone else. So here's hoping for more active government motivation against the problem come 2008.
Ya know, I keep thinking about the Constitution's mandate to build postal roads, and I'm still having trouble understanding why the national government is not the primary interstate ISP, and why the state and local governments are not the primary state and local ISPs.
I understand the dangers in letting the government bureaucracy develop cutting edge tech, but, if the state is always so bad with infrastructure tech, why aren't more bridges falling down every year?
joudanzuki, with reservations
I don't believe the Congress is granted the authority to write laws regulating state treatment of municipal ISPs (I don't see how you could possibly try to shoe-horn this into "regulating inter-state commerce").
I thought Bill was retiring.
Our internet service comes from our light department. Our town has no cable, and DSL covers only about half the town due to it's size. Last year the municipal light dept rolled out WiMax. It's not perfect, but it's damn better than dial-up. Before they went ahead though they had to write a letter to Verizon to get permission to enter the market, presumably due to this law or fear of it. Fortunately Verizon said yes (our town has only 1500 or so homes in it, so they probably didn't care - too busy rolling Fios out to people who already have broadband I guess) If Verizon had said no for some reason though, my phone line would be busy right now, and I probably wouldn't have loaded this article yet. So yes it's a good thing for competition in existing broadband markets, but it may also encourage other frightened municipalities from providing missing service.
Interesting that the US is taking a rather regulation-friendly route! In Sweden, anyone can apply to each local municipality to pull your own fiber - and I have never heard anyone being denied that. In rural areas aswell as cities, many municipalities have pulled their own fibers in order to give their areas a improved competitive edge when any of the main telcos have not been up to the task quick enough. The business model many have choosen is a completely open one; the offer to lease dark fibers, wavelenghts on lit fibers, and in many cases all the way up to the IP level. And yes, they will give themselves preferential treatments by connecting schools, administrations and hospitals to a well working, high-capacity network at competitive cost -. a service level that would not have been available to them otherwise. Many individual networks are interconnected, forming regional gigabit networks. Facilities for co-location of equipment is generally also on offer. I believe most Telcos has seen this as an opportunity since it gives the access to more infrastructure at lower risk of investment. I woud attribute the high broadband penetration and low costs in Sweden partly to this de-regulation. According to recent figures 97% of the households can have at least DSL access and about 20% have a fiber to their home.
Here in Stockholm, there is a city owned company called Stokab, they build and own fibers to city owned apartment buildings as well as coop/condo buildings that sign a contract with the company. This company only owns and maintains the fibers, another company, called OpenNet, operates the fiber network. The actual services are provided by private companies, who are allowed equal access to the network. I have a choice between about 8 ISP's (with speeds between 10 and 100 Mbps both downstream and upstream, costing about 300 SEK (32/$45)/month for 100/100 Mbps), 4 VoIP providers, and (only) 2 TV providers, all operating over the fiber.
companies that build & operate toll road and highways? Do they have the same kind of power to regulate what elected governments do? say if a county wanted to build a new road from scratch would they need to consult various third parties beforehand and try to figure out a fair solution.. because free publically accessible roads means someone is not making a profit.. and that's not fair..
You owe me a new keyboard.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Fire departments are a bad analogy, they are required by law to maintain a certain level of service because fire spreads.
Deleted
Which part of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to do this? Does the 10th amendment mean anything anymore?
Either way this plays out, I hope there will be some incentive for the provider to keep up the quality, increase bandwidth as needed, etc. I cannot even imagine how frustrating it's going to be to have your internet go down for a week, and to have nothing but an answering machine to complain to. And what happens when the municipality claims that there is a budget crunch, and there is no money to improve coverage? Then we'll want the private provider to come back. There's something to be said for "you get what you pay for."
I wager the future of public internet access will be a combined effort of private and public initiatives. Take for example the town of Brookline, MA, which recently implemented the nations first border-to-border wireless internet access system. It was an initiative based in the town, organized by the local government, but implemented by a private firm (Strix Systems I believe) to get a professional infrastructure in place. Although it's a pay service for most homes, public hotspots exist in parks, recreational areas, and some public housing. In short, with this bill I think we can at least look forward to more systems like this cropping up, which blur the line between municipal implementation and private enterprise. In the end, it means more choice for the consumer and more pervasive internet access for the people themselves.
Before the break-up, ATT had about as good uptime as what we see today. In fact, the vast majority of that infrastructure was becasue of ATT. As such, ATT was able to solve problems quickly. Now, if you go into a CO, you will see wires in disarray due to the fact that they have to allow other companies (verizon, etc) in, and those companies do not care about the mess. If the connections drop, they just blame the clec.
As to the 100% uptime, we are nowhere near as good as it use to be. In particular, when a drop occurs, it takes MUCH longer to get service.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
To my friends who see the blatant unconstitutionality of this act, remember Wickard.
A farmer named Wickard, in the 1950s I believe, was sued by the Federal Government for having commited the heinous crime of growing too much wheat. Here are the facts of the case, which are undisputed.
The farmer was growing more wheat than the statute permitted.
The wheat never sold.
The wheat never left the farm; it was fed to the cattle.
The Supreme Court of the United States determined that Mr. Wickard had indeed violated the law and that the law was constitutional. Why?
If Mr. Wickard had not grown the wheat, he MIGHT have bought it.
If he had bought it, it MIGHT have come from another state.
If it had come from another state, then it would be interstate commerce.
Therefore, Mr. Wickard engaged in interstate commerce.
"Legal reasoning" is an oxymoron.
Well first of all, I have a feeling the telecoms give themselves preferential treatment already. So STFU, AT&T.
Secondly - Good! Governments are supposed to give contracts to the lowest bidder. They're supposed to try to get the most out of our tax dollars. If they can save a few bucks from a government-run ISP, then good! They're spending enough of our money to build it, there better as hell be an upside to it. Because really, the government is paid for by the citizens, so them getting better access means we get better taxes. At least in theory. Once we pay off the massive construction costs.
I've seen some robust language on this site, but I don't remember such concentration of it getting moderated to such levels (5 Insightful ATM).
One developmentally-challenged dimwit (timmarhy) could happen, but where did the 3-4 others come from to mod him up?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Why don't we go ahead and put all goods and services in the hands of the government, because everything would be cheaper, right? Because they're not operating for a profit? I don't want to pay for your broadband, or anyone else's, with my tax dollars. Nor do I want my Internet regulated by those who brought us the PATRIOT act, the DMV, and the IRS. The government is terrible at managing cost-effective solutions to anything because they're spending other people's money. Take this million-dollar outhouse, for example: http://www.jldr.com/oh1mill.html . "The whole project is loaded with Park Service overhead. The agency already has spent $860,000 for design and construction supervision teams. In all, the job could end up costing taxpayers more than $6 million." It's a four-holer outhouse with no running water. The worst argument for municipal broadband that I've heard is that it helps the poor who can't afford Internet access. I suppose we'll be buying them laptops with WiFi, too. The people that benefit most from municipal broadband are the people that can afford it but don't want to pay. If you want Internet access, pay for it. It's a luxury item that didn't exist in the public's perception fifteen short years ago. Don't levy taxes on the poor who can't afford or need a MySpace page so you can read Slashdot for free.
Most telcom/broadband suppliers do this in the US. RCN's entire business plan was built around it. The US population is scattered in such a way that close to 75% of the population lives in just 20% of the landmass (Boston - DC & Seattle - LA corridors). One of the biggest things the telcos are fighting is that the municipalities are trying to require that they don't cherry pick who gets the service. AT&T has gone after several Illinois municipalities that are caught between regulations saying they have to provide equitable access to utilities in the municipality & other regulations saying they can't stop 'network improvememnts'.
Thus the telcos are saying that they are doing a network improvement when they are building out for IPTV and are not subject to the laws about buildout requirements that the cable companies are. Thus they claim that they can cherry pick the wealthiest 10% of the municipality & can ignore the rest - while the cable companies are required to do full buildouts.
If you see any European or Asian over the age of 45 on the phone, they usually shout. We never had to do that here in the States during the AT&T era Why is it then, that when you see most Americans on the phone in a public place, they are usually shouting? Not to mention that if they have a hands-free, they think that they need to look everyone around them directly in the eye.
Hey bob, they want to conect Bungtuck to Bumfuck, what do you think ?
Tell them it's a bad idea right after you get our crews started on it.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
What congress is doing with this bill is no more unconstitutional than the bills prohibiting local taxation of information services. One difference is that instead of limiting what local governements can do, the bill gives more freedom to the local governments (it allows, but does not mandate, municipal ISP's).
The best of both worlds would be where the local goverment provides the last mile connectivity and the individual is allowed to pick their ISP.
Screw that. No wonder it takes me so long to get anywhere.
I say we privatize the road system. That way people will have a choice in what type of road system they use. You could have your budget system, which would similar to the one we are all forced to use now. Then you could have a premium one, basically parallel to the first (or maybe directly above it), but with no speed limits or traffic lights. Then, for very impatient people with deep pockets, there would be a luxury provider who would build roads that go directly from your house to your work and anywhere else you frequently go.
I currently live in a city that has apparently had a tradition of corrupt government continuously since at least 1900...and perhaps longer. This is odd, since the other local cities have no such reputation, and people move back and forth between them easily, often not even noticing which city they're in.
So. Essentially the same citizenry, but one out of, say 10 (local is hard to be specific about) local cities is corrupt. People get upset with one government and "throw the rascals out". Makes no difference. Import politicians from outside the area. Makes no difference. (Well, to be honest it was just the mayor that was imported, the council remained local politicians...it's hard to replace everyone.)
That said, even so I trust my local government more than I trust the telcos. I may end up with corrupt politicians, but their access to the levers of power is dependent on not unduly riling the citizenry. (We got them to stop cutting down trees along the local street...even though it probably meant not giving business to somebody's brother or brother-in-law.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The big money communications interests will buy the death of this bill like they bought the death of the last one. It's coming up on campaign season so lawmakers propose excellent laws as extortion to big money interests. Even the sponsors probably have no real expectation it will pass. Everybody in congress has to have a few of these so they can wave them at the crowds as proof they went to Washington to help their constituents. Then they get their campaign money buy killing the great public spirited laws of the other incumbents. It's a game.
That's a shame. This is an obviously necessary law that would bring great benefit to all US residents. Read the bill. It's only five pages.
I would much prefer my state, county or city government build out fiber networks than build sports stadiums and such things. I would also like a law like "No road project without a pipe to draw fiber through buried under it".
I live in a state where the telco and cableco bought a law to prevent communities from self-helping themselves to modern communications infrastructure even when the commercial interests flat refuse to provide it. The incumbent providers bought the law because they were afraid the projects already under way to build out communications infrastructure in several places in the state would swell into a popular movement of universal broadband for everyone. The muni broadband projects already under way were grandfathered. It's now several years later and guess who has the best bandwidth and lowest prices? Yeah, that would be the munis. Guess who doesn't have service at all? Yeah, that would be the communities that would have built out their infrastructure if it wasn't illegal. Now that the ban is in place the incumbent providers no longer find it so urgent to expand coverage to some areas or improve their offerings at more than a glacial pace.
I would love for this bill to pass, but I'll believe it when I see it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
As a bonus to my thirty bucks a month 28Mbps ADSL2+ line, I get free phone calls to 45 countries (all of Europe, USA, China, etc ...)
Where do you get that in the US nowadays?
Oh that's right, you don't!
"Will Joe Cityadmin give a rat's butt if I call to complain about an outage? "
Well, good luck if you have an outage with Comcast. My internet line was down for two months. They kept closing the ticket claiming it was fixed. One tech came out and tried to tell me I needed lighting arrestors that he personally would install for only $300. Then they finally fixed it just as I switched to Verizon FIOS. Then they called me back and asked what it would take to switch back... I told them "A promise that it won't take 2 months to fix a problem". They said they couldn't do that and hung up.
Or better still... if you have a physical problem with a buried line from Verizon. Two weeks minimum for them to come out and look at it. I was without phone service for 2 1/2 weeks a few years back because workmen on my neighbor's property cut the phone lines accidentally.
So as much as I agree with you, it's hard to argue government could do any worse than the fiasco that is the communications infrastructure in the U.S. It's pitiful.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
You can make the same argument about public schools ("I don't have kids," or "my kids go to private school,"), state universities (ibid), the FAA ("I don't fly."), public roads ("I don't drive."), the National Science Foundation ("I'm a religious loon who doesn't 'believe in' science."), public libraries ("Theft from the publishers! Er, I mean, Won't someone think about the poor starving authors?"), the EPA ("Toxic sludge is good for you!"), the NRC ("I trust private industry 100% where nuclear power plants are concerned, because private industry would never cut corners or skimp on safety to save a buck."), the DOL ("No employer would ever try to fuck me over or take advantage of me."), etc.
Shall I continue?
You may not use all of the services your tax dollars pay for, and neither do I, but when those tax dollars go to something that is actually useful and beneficial to the public (as opposed to pork projects, contractor "waste"/theft, etc.) what is your reason for objecting? Besides general short-sightedness, selfishness and/or greed? Especially when services are provided that private industry can't supply, won't supply for whatever reason, or might even attempt to block in order to maintain a monopolistic stranglehold?
So let's see. The telecoms and other utilities spent the vast bulk of the 20th century operating under a socialist notion that "this town heah ain't big enough fer the both of us", and sought "rent seeking" laws giving them a monopoly in that particular town.
Now that towns want to go one step further and do it completely themselves, suddenly they're all so darned interested in fairness and competition and not wanting the towns to give their own stuff preferential treatment in laws.
I don't know. It's nice to see them change their mind, but doing it for the wrong reason seems so...dirty.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Communications infrastructure very much is an essential part of interstate commerce, government and the press. More and more people rely on the Internet exclusively for news and information. Products are ordered and paid for over the Internet. Some products are not available in any other way. Funds are transferred. Travel is arranged. Federal income taxes are paid over it, tax returns are filed on it. Many essential government services at all levels are provided on the Internet. Some places now mandate parallel online services for all public services where possible. Online voting is seeing trials in various places.
You are right that for a state to tell a county or town that they may not build a bridge, road or ferry to allow their citizens to engage in commerce, interact with the federal government, or vote would be a violation of the rights of the citizens. Telling them they can't build a digital bridge to ecommerce, egovernment or slashdot is no different.
But the laws exist. The laws are preventing people from engaging in interstate commerce, interacting with their government in the most accessible way, accessing global commons of information. The laws are not being challenged.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
COX doesn't provide that level of service.
We had an outage that eventually lasted five weeks. For the first week they told us there was an area wide outage (which must have been true because my neighbor's was out too). Every time we called they said that they had no idea how long it would be out but assured us that a technician was working on it. After that, they kept saying that it was a local problem, and they would send a tech out "tomorrow." I have no idea what day of the week "tomorrow" comes after, so every few days we would call them back - and they would say that he had been there and hadn't found any problems. This seemed strange since we had never seen anyone and the cable was still out - so they would send out the same invisible tech again with the same results. When we refused to pay our bill and threatened to terminate service, they finally sent a real tech - who took one look at the junction box outside and noticed that they had neglected to hook our line back up after the original outage.
Why does this make sense to everyone??? This is going to be taxpayer subsidized BUSINESS that the public municipalities and governments should be involved in.
Why doesn't anyone wonder why the government doesn't just deregulate the entire industry. The problem is that AT&T (as they seem to be the whipping boy here today) can get an exclusive agreement to operate in a location. Why not just disallow this and open up competition? All those of you who think this is SUCH a great idea...don't you realize that TAXPAYERS are paying for this! If you think regulations about filtering, download limits, etc apply on a service you PAY for then just wait 'til the government receives the bill for the amount of data transferred and complaints about service being slow. They will figure out how to stop P2P and large downloads and anything else that can be considered "the using of too much bandwidth."
Besides that, it IS unfair to ANY business when government enters that market. De-regulation is what should be happening and open up the markets to competition.
I think you jumped over a few historical facts when you mentioned the Interstate Highways were unfair competition to the railroads. When the Interstate Highways were designed in the early 1950's and built in the late 50's and early 60's, they were paid for by .... long pause so you can think ....
The Department of Defense.
Of course the railroads could not compete with the Interstate Highways. But why would the DOD build the Interstate Highways? Well, to understand that, you needed to look at the first Interstate Highways built, and notice they were all very flat, and that NOTHING crossed over them, not even power lines. These new highways were built with several hundred feet of separation between the opposite direction traffic lanes. And they were incredibly straight. The few curves these highways had were all very gradual.
Any ideas yet why DOD paid for building the Interstate Highways? Here's a hint -- the Strategic Air Command.
During the late 50's and early 60's, the Strategic Air Command was a very large part of our national defense, with many long range bombers in the air at any one time. But, an enemy might attack our airfields, in particular, those with 10,000 foot runways. Such an attack could prevent many of our long range bombers from taking off, and prevent the bombers already in the air from refueling before they flew to their targets over the North Pole.
AH HA!
Our Interstate Highways were built to be used as runways -- runways for our bombers to use for refueling. By covering the countryside with runways, there was no way a potential adversary could prevent our long range bombers from refueling so they could reach their targets. But technology eventually obsoleted the Strategic Air Command as our primary defense, and we no longer needed those runways all over the countryside.
At about the same time as the Interstate Highway system was being built, a nationwide broadband network was being built by AT&T. This nationwide network, consisting of microwave relay stations and coaxial cable repeaters, carried long distance telephone calls and network television programs. About 1/2 of the capacity of this broadband network was leased to the Federal Government. The Federal Government provided guaranteed traffic for this nationwide network, insuring it would be built. Here are two links to some of the history and technical details of AT&T's broadband network.
http://www.corp.att.com/history/nethistory/milesto nes.html
http://long-lines.net/
The AT&T "Long Lines" network was built with no central control point, specifically so it would survive a nuclear war. But eventually, the AT&T microwave and coaxial cable network approached saturation, and more bandwidth was needed. Worse, many of the consulates and embassies belonging to our adversaries now had arrays of microwave antennas on their roofs.
Here is are two links to what some of the government traffic passing through the AT&T microwave and coaxial cable physical network was:
http://www.albany.edu/ltl/using/history.html
http://www.inetdaemon.com/tutorials/internet/histo ry.shtml
In the 1990's, AT&T sold off their microwave and coaxial cable physical network because by then AT&T had deployed a fiber mesh network with far higher bandwidth. This fiber network also offered significantly better security than the microwave network did because intercepting message traffic on a fiber network without being detected is quite difficult. AT&T's conversion to an all fiber network made those consulate and embassy roof microwave antennas largely obsolete for gathering electronic intelligence.
About our trans-oceanic te
An analog gray hair frantically clinging to the trailing edge of technology.
Amazing.
These are the same Telecoms who are pushing for the right to decide what sites get accessed faster and what applications and traffic gets priority on their network based on which companies have paid them more?
Now they are worried about States prioritizing their own traffic?
It's utterly hypocritical and shows that this has nothing to do with the consumer, consumer rights, or even votes (since the US public in general appears to be apathetic): It's ALL about the money, and who pays the most of that money to Senators to get their laws passed...or 'lobbying' whatever you want to call it.
-Gel214th