Slashdot Mirror
Major Carriers Shun Broadband Stimulus
jmcharry sends word that as the deadline looms for requesting broadband grants from the $4.7 billion available in stimulus funding, Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are conspicuously absent from the list of applicants. Quoting the Washington Post: "Their reasons are varied. All three say they are flush with cash, enough to upgrade and expand their broadband networks on their own. Some say taking money could draw unwanted scrutiny of business practices and compensation, as seen with automakers and banks that have taken government bailouts. And privately, some companies are griping about conditions attached to the money, including a net-neutrality rule that they say would prevent them from managing traffic on their networks in the way they want. ... Yet those firms might be the best positioned to achieve the goal of spreading Internet access to underserved areas, some experts say." Reader Michael_Curator notes that while the major carriers may be holding back, there were still enough applications to slow government servers to a crawl, resulting in a deadline extension.
> Comcast/AT&T/Time Warner suck, but you can bet
> that the US government will suck even worse.
Yup. That's how I feel about healthcare, too. It's a dog's breakfast now, but having the government take over won't help.
The Army reading list
Aren't you afraid that ... you know ... at some point you will run out of other people's money to spend ?
Obviously if I were to spend your money (like you want to spend other's money) you'd call that theft. So do you consider yourself a thief ?