The United States has dropped to 16th in the world in per capita broadband deployment, and we can expect to slip further until we probably settle at the level of sub-Saharan Africa. While there is local interest in improving the situation, state and federal officials will make sure it doesn't happen. It's as if they are mandating a dumbed-down public. Heaven forbid we should be on the Net discovering cronyism, favoritism, and corruption.
The established phone and cable companies have no qualms about being on board with this sort of thinking. After all, why should they have to do more than coast along with high prices and substandard service?
The most onerous and disgusting example of this emerged last year in Pennsylvania in the form of state House Bill 30, which was passed despite protests and signed into law as soon as possible by Governor Edward G. Rendell.
Philadelphia wanted to create a municipal Wi-Fi network in the form of a universal MAN (metropolitan area network). This would be like a utility, costing the public next to nothing while providing universal access. You'd be able to log on from anywhere. It would provide municipal news and broadband access to the Net for anyone with a computer and an 802.11 connection.
The telecom lobby got wind of this and had its stooges in the state legislature draft House Bill 30, which actually banned such municipal activity. The rationale for such a ban? You tell me.
This was softened slightly after some protests to a semi-ban, with Comcast and Verizon getting an opportunity (with potential subsidies) to build a MAN themselves within 14 months of any proposed municipal implementation. This means for anyone to implement a MAN with either Wi-Fi or WiMAX, they have essentially to go through Comcast and Verizon, who can stall the project as they see fit. There are ways around this, but the bill was written to make these corporations de facto gatekeepers on behalf of the state. Sweet deal, eh?
This is one of the most astonishing laws I've ever seen enacted. Apparently, Gov. Rendell was trying to get Comcast a big tax break to build a fancy office in Philly, too. My advice to Pennsylvanians: Just make the CEO of Comcast the governor. Cut out the middlemen. You'll save money.
This same sort of public policy is practiced at the federal level too, again at the behest of the big phone and cable companies. A recent court ruling in favor of the telcos says it's okay for them to withhold DSL service if the user doesn't have some sort of voice service. In other words, if I have a phone and decide that I want just DSL and not voice, I can't have it. There's your free market for you.
The telcos fear they could lose their voice business to VoIP, and the cable companies could lose their business to IP TV. Easy money will be gone forever—or at least until they do some real work.
What's most galling is that both the cable and phone companies are trespassers in any municipality and are there by invitation. Local governments used to lord it over the cable companies, and throw them out if they didn't adequately serve the public. Now the cable companies tell the government what to do. Does this sound right? Our spineless and corrupt politicians are putting the entire country at risk by letting advancements in telecommunications and connectivity pass us by.
Has anyone noticed that most of the buildup in high-speed access and efficient VoIP is in India, not here? That's how they can do all the offshore help desks there in the first place.
In much of Asia, and increasingly in Europe, DSL is cheaper and faster. You can get 30 Mbps in many locations for what someone here might pay for 512 Kbps. But cheaper and faster are not what this should be about. It should be about what Philly wants to do: universal high-speed service for the public, like cheap water. This is not a situation where publicly traded monopolies serve the public because free enterprise is better or more competitive. It isn't. Deregulation absolutists talk a big game, but when you see slippage like what we're seeing, you have to ask for the proof of these free-market and deregulation assertions. I don't see it.
I see crummy service, bad practices, useless utilities commissions, cheating, and unregulated mayhem. It's a disaster, and the public is not served by it. Our future and safety are at grave risk, thanks to these jokers and the apologists who back them. Let's get rid of them all.
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