Slashdot Mirror
WSJ Says Gov't Money Injection Won't Help Broadband
olddotter writes "According to the WSJ, The US government is about to spend $10 Billion to make little difference in US broadband services: 'More fundamentally, nothing in the legislation would address the key reason that the US lags so far behind other countries. This is that there is an effective broadband duopoly in the US, with most communities able to choose only between one cable company and one telecom carrier. It's this lack of competition, blessed by national, state and local politicians, that keeps prices up and services down.' Get ready for USDA certified Grade A broadband."
Of course they do. The Wall Street Journal is a temple of supply-side economics. According to them, the government can't do anything right, except cut capital gains taxes. I would have been very surprised if they'd had anything good to say about this bill.
The House bill also calls for "open access." This phrase can include hugely controversial topics such as net neutrality, which in its most radical version would bar providers from charging different amounts for different kinds of broadband content. Now that video, conferencing and other heavy-bandwidth applications are growing in popularity, price needs to be one tool for allocating scarce resources. Analysts at Medley Global Advisors warn that if these provisions remain in the bill, "it will keep most broadband providers out of the applicant pool" for the funds intended specifically for them.
We already paid $200 billion for a nation wide fiber optics network that never delivered. When is anyone going to ask what happened to all that money?
We paid for nation wide fiber optics, and it never got delivered. The telcos should give us our money back, all of it. If they can't afford it, go bankrupt, get nationalized, and let someone competent take over. Oh, and send the execs who squandered it all to jail.
Not one red cent should go to the telcos until they pay back what we're owed.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If I'm charging $50 per ounce for onions and I'm the only source of onions in a city and getting an "onion reseller license" ("building infrastructure") is really expensive (but I got mine since I used to runt the government-owned onion store wouldn't you say that my onions are overpriced?
And good luck trying to boycott someone who's got a regional monopoly, that's like when guys complain about always having to make the first move and some woman says "well why don't you guys get together and stop hitting on women? then we'd have to hit on you guys.", any sane person understands that it doesn't work.
/Mikael
(Why do I even bother replying to AC trolls?)
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
>>>Actually, the major problem with the US is distance. Japan is the size of California, France is 4/5th the size of Texas
And population. When you compare the U.S. states versus the EU states, we're not being bad at all. We have states that every bit as fast as Europe's fastest:
FASTEST STATES (avg Mbps) ,Colorado, Connecticut, Arizona, Germany(7)
---------------
Sweden(11)
Delaware(10)
Washington(9)
Netherlands, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts(8)
Virginia, New York
So if you want speeds faster than France, move to the one of the places listed above. It's that simple. Of course at this point, various readers will ignore this data, the same way a christian ignores 1 million-year-old rocks with fossilized animals. It's easier to cling to religion than think.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Dunno about those countries, but here in Finland we have regulation which forces the company which owns my telephone line to let other companies offer Internet connectivity over it. That has led to healthy competition and drop in prices.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You are absolutely and totally wrong in both your examples.
Japan was lagging behind the US, France, germany and a lot of countries concerning internet access.
Then one particular member of their government (his name eludes me for now) declared that internet access should be a priority, and the big companies followed the impulse up to today's situation.
France has successfully reached a healthy competitive market for internet access, all thanks to proper regulation that FORCED the previously state-owned monopolistic operator, whose lines were paid by french citizen's taxes, to provide access to the last mile to competitors.
Said historical monopolistic operator, france telecom (now orange) had to be pulled into this screaming and kicking, and was using all its weight and dirty tricks to hinder and slow any other company.
If not for the ART (Telecoms Regulation Authority) kicking France Telecom's nuts so they would obey the LAW that opened the market and allowed competition, there would not be such an excellent internet access for citizens today.
Morevover, everyone is impatient to see the arrival of a new operator in the cell phone business. French government wants a 4th cell phone carrier to operate, as the current triopoly has been comdemned in justice already for their pricefixing (colluding to keep prices artificially high).
The US needs proper regulation. Not abscence of regulation nor bailout/incentive/whatever billions of $.