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WSJ's Mossberg Calls For a Tougher Broadband Plan
GovTechGuy writes "Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg thinks the FCC's national broadband plan is long overdue, but he criticized it for being vague on the details and too focused on expanding access into rural areas. Mossberg pointed out that what passes for broadband in the US wouldn't even qualify as such in many other developed countries. He also noted that Americans pay more per unit of broadband speed than our competitors. He called on the government to devote time and resources to making sure Americans have the broadband access they need to stay competitive in the 21st century global economy."
Just pass a federal law stating that it is an illegal restraint of interstate trade for a state or municipality to restrict the ability of new service providers to enter their markets. The only regulations they should be able to impose are civil and criminal penalties for damaging infrastructure.
As a person who lives in Poland, Europe and used to envy US people because of their cheap and broad internet access in times when I had to pay about 20% of national average income just to get 30 hours of dial up per month, I'm quite confused. Are USA recessing so much into dark ages? Not only You start teaching "Intelligent Design" as a scientific theory at schools, but also have the weirdest patent and copyright issues in the world; there's no other country where law is as offensive and counter-people as in the USA (think millions of damages per mp3 song, etc) Now I hear that one can barely get 3Mbps in US cities - come on, is it true?? I have an ADSL with 30Mbps down- and 3Mbps up-link for about 50$ per month, sans any transfer limits. It is in Poland, which used to be quite far behind other EU countries. Are USA getting behind even us?