Category Archives: Jeers

It's not surprising to read, but many in rural areas are shut out from high-speed Internet options since most telcos and cablecos refuse to expand there. Oh, they'll line up to the trough for the $2 billion rural telecommunications loan pool, but actually doing something with it is a different matter. Maybe these smaller counties need to take the lead and deploy their own broadband networks to make up for the shortcomings of their monopolistic phone companies.

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A group of homebuilders in Wisconsin have sued the city they're building in for asking them to install dedicated conduit for their municipal broadband project. While they claim that it's requiring them to install a non-essential service, access to data over the Internet has rapidly become the one-stop shop for information. With telephone and television networks moving towards Internet-like structures, we will soon notice no difference between services: they'll all be on the same line.

Boo on the builders for raising a stink over some plastic pipes that cost just $250 per home yet increasing the value of those homes immensely.

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Thanks to the cable/telco duopoly, Americans are lagging behind with adopting broadband since it's just too darned expensive. While the Japanese and Koreans can enjoy a bundle of telephone, cable, and high-speed Internet (often at speeds well beyond what we can get here) for about $35 a month, it's hard to find just an Internet connection for that in this country. Over 1/3 of US households still have no choice but dial-up for Internet access.

Alarmingly, companies like AT&T have been lobbying to get municipal WiFi systems outlawed. I guess they figure that if they can't compete on price or service, it's time to roll out the high-priced lawyers. This should come as little surprise as AT&T was one of the chief proponents of a tiered Internet, effectively ending "Net Neutrality".

Since the telcos and cablecos are doing such a terrible job of rolling out access and affordably pricing their services, can there be any other option but municipal broadband projects like UTOPIA? Wishful thinking isn't going to get them in line with thier 1996 Telecommunications Act promises.

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