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FCC Chair Says Broadband Top Goal 265

Posted by Zonk from the better-than-covering-up-unmentionables dept.
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "FCC chairman Kevin Martin says 'his top goal is to increase Americans access to high-speed Internet,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Late last week, he began circulating plans to loosen rules so neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections with competitors like America Online, a change that essentially would create a duopoly in many local markets. He also embraces the idea that local governments should be allowed to offer wireless Internet services, at least in rural areas where some phone and cable companies balk at providing high-speed service.' The Journal also has a transcript of its interview with Martin, in which he discusses indecency and whether broadcast rules should also apply to satellite and cable."
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FCC Chair Says Broadband Top Goal More

FCC Chair Says Broadband Top Goal

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  • Broadband may the the FCC's top goal, just make sure you don't offer free access to it! You can make something ubiquitous if you make it free, otherwise charging $40 - $80 for the "right" to broadband won't find it available in every home in America.

    • Re:Sure it is (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:39PM (#13107061) Homepage Journal
      "You can make something ubiquitous if you make it free, otherwise charging $40 - $80 for the "right" to broadband won't find it available in every home in America."

      Nothing is free. Who will pay for it? You do not free power, water, gas, or place to live why free bandwidth.

      • Re:Sure it is (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:56PM (#13107280) Homepage
        Nothing is free

        So, when you last drove, you payed a toll and/or owned all of the roads that you travelled on. When you go to the park, you have to stop and visit all of the maintenance people first to pay them before you can get in. Of course, you can't walk on the sidewalk to get there, either, without paying. Naturally, you pay a fee to get into the local public pool, and you pay a fee when you swim on public beaches. If you want police to protect you, you have to go pay them first - same if you want firemen to come put out any fires at your house. Of course, you don't just pay them, you have to pay for all of their equipment and monthly bills as well.

        What, you say? You pay for them through taxes? Well, that is what is being discussed here. The idea is to treat net infrastructure and services as we treat other "widely utilized infrastructure and services" in the country. Should broadband fall under that category? That's the issue up for debate.
        • "What, you say? You pay for them through taxes? Well, that is what is being discussed here. The idea is to treat net infrastructure and services as we treat other "widely utilized infrastructure and services" in the country."

          More or less my point. Even with tax support you pay for water and sewage in many places. You pay for power, phone, CATV, gas, and rent or a mortgage.
          Why in the name of heaven should broadband be free? It does make sense for some locations to use the tax base to build infrastructure. I

        • So, when you last drove, you payed a toll and/or owned all of the roads that you travelled on. When you go to the park, you have to stop and visit all of the maintenance people first to pay them before you can get in.
          ...
          Naturally, you pay a fee to get into the local public pool, and you pay a fee when you swim on public beaches. If you want police to protect you, you have to go pay them first - same if you want firemen to come put out any fires at your house. Of course, you don't just pay them, you have t

    • One thing about capitalism that some think is a benefit is the ability to assign ownership and a price to anything. This FCC guy thinks that an entity owning/maintaining this infrastructure and individuals paying for the right is better.

      This, IMHO is ridiculous given it is the 2005 equivalent of Interstate highways or going further back railroads. This has the capacity to expand the economy exactly like the railroad and highways. But that's my opinion.

    • Publically stated goals != unstated true goals (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "he began circulating plans to loosen rules so neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections with competitors like America Online,"

      Exactly how is this in line with his stated goal of increasing broadband access his top priority?
      Wouldn't this increase broadband prices, which in turn would cause FEWER homes to get broadband?

      Obviously, he needs practice at spinning so that the publically stated goal and plans to achieve the unstated true goal doesn't make him look lik
    • This is bad, Very bad! If the FCC is busy pushing broadband, how can they protect us, and the children from Janet Jackson's boobies and dirty words on the radio? Won't someone please think of the children?

  • nothing but hot air. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:27PM (#13106901) Homepage
    He wants to energize the deployment of broadband in America?

    remove all restrictions. Allow municipal wifi. Allow everything. Disallow cities from forcing companies to pay extortion to them in "franchise fees", one of the biggest hurdles and deterrents to small business starting up in an area.

    when i see real solutions from the FCC then we will see real progress..

    • Re:nothing but hot air. (Score:4, Funny)

      by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:35PM (#13107010) Homepage
      remove all restrictions. Allow municipal wifi.

      Remove all restrictions... and get the tax-payer to subsidise it...

      AN interesting approach.

      US... Health care for the rich... Wi-Fi for everyone.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • How would municipal wifi track users? I think you have a good idea, but I'm curious how we would prevent the bad apples from completly destroying that idea.

      Public wifi feels a lot like pandora's box....
      • How would municipal wifi track users? I think you have a good idea, but I'm curious how we would prevent the bad apples from completly destroying that idea.

        Who cares? As long as the system is under-utilized it doesn't matter and once it starts becoming over-utilized, all it takes is some smart bandwidth shaping to keep the top users from stepping on everyone else.
    • He wants to energize the deployment of broadband in America? remove all restrictions.

      Great, and while we're at it, revive that hateful broadband-over-powerline solution that'll kill hamradio and bleed over most shortwave communications...

      Gee, hasn't the FCC fucked up enough already? they're here to regulate, not to let everybody do as they please willy-nilly...
    • remove all restrictions. Allow municipal wifi. Allow everything. Disallow cities from forcing companies to pay extortion to them in "franchise fees", one of the biggest hurdles and deterrents to small business starting up in an area.

      Disallow? You mean restrict?

      You can't have it both ways. If you allow people to do what they want, there's a chance they might not do what you like. The FCC does not have oversight over laws crafted in local municipalities and state governments. If you want to grant them that

    • Re:nothing but hot air. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:52PM (#13107232)
      Disallow cities from forcing companies to pay extortion to them in "franchise fees"

      In looking at my bills, there is a neatly itemized bill that is outside of all advertised pricing that says: "franchise fee".

      So to me it seems like I am being extorted, not the poor company.

      Now, lets wait until the FCC has fucked up the internet like phones and collects about 33% of the bill due to various FCC fees for the privilege of using the internet like I have for over 10 years already.

      Why is it that gasoline filling stations are few of the companies out there that actually tell you up front how much something is going to cost (with a big sign visible to boot)? Everywhere else I go, I can expect to pay an additional 10 to 30 someodd percent additional on my bill for the things that the company "forgot" to put on the price.
      • dude-

        that's because you are paying almost 20% taxes on the gasoline and they are legally prohibited from telling you that fact.

        The government would LOVE it if cable bills couldn't list the fees seperately.
      • So to me it seems like I am being extorted, not the poor company.

        That's always the case. Wild-eyed lefties claim we should tax the hell out of corporations, yet seem to suffer a mental disconnect about WHERE the money that corporations makes comes from. Apparently they think that corporations actually print money in a basement somewhere.

        Every single tax paid by a corporation comes from its earnings. All of a corporations earnings comes from its customers. That means YOU. YOU pay every tax levied aga
      • Why is it that gasoline filling stations are few of the companies out there that actually tell you up front how much something is going to cost (with a big sign visible to boot)? Everywhere else I go, I can expect to pay an additional 10 to 30 someodd percent additional on my bill for the things that the company "forgot" to put on the price.

        There really is no reason for this practice, especially given that tax rates change far less often than the price the store normally charges for an item gets changed.
    • "Allow municipal wifi."

      Muni wifi is technically a poor solution and only a govt. agency would be stupid enough to waste money on such a venture.

  • Going Backwards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ehaggis ( 879721 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:28PM (#13106913) Homepage Journal
    Before there was a "requirement" to share lines, many ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers) withheld valuable technology from the public. Bellsouth had DSL capability for years but releasing to the home user would have cannibalized their business T1 subscriptions. Even with "requirements" to share lines and invite competition, ILECs tend to drag their feet and construct obstacles for CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) to enter the market.
    • Requirements to share lines decreases the incentive to invest in new infrastructure, because other companies can leech off of your investment. Therefore, if you want to provide incentives for companies to add broadband support to new communities, you need stop forcing other companies to leech off of their capital investments. This is the goal of the FCC, so the move makes sense.

      • Re:Going forward (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Your argument would be valid if the phone companies made the investment. Their money didn't build the infrastructure, your tax money did. Phone company build out is heavily subsidised.

        These companies are also not "leeching" off anything. They don't get the lines for free just because their competitors asked. The phone company still charges a fee for use of that line.
    • If you're going to use an acronym, the proper way is to spell out the entire phrase first (i.e. using "Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers" before using "ILECs"). It makes the reading a whole lot easier. But hey.. I don't mean to be a grammar Nazi. I just wanna point it out for the rest of us.

    • Before there was a "requirement" to share lines, many ILECs (Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers) withheld valuable technology from the public...

      A monopoly can only exist if a competitor can't offer the same product in the same market, and there is no effective substitute product either. Until very recently, there was no effective substitute for wireline telephone service. Therefore it was appropriate to regulate the industry.

      The broadband market, however, is substantially different in that 70% or so

      • A monopoly can only exist if a competitor can't offer the same product in the same market

        That's only true in a free market. In the real world governments create and grant monopolies all the time. What do you think municipal franchises are?

        Max
    • This latest FCC pronouncement is pure, unadulterated bullshit. In what way will narrowing broadband offerings to only the primary carriers make broadband more accessable? What it really is is surrendering the public's broadband choices to the pigopolists^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmonopolists who are already interfering in other public options, like municipal WiFi. Perhaps the FCC is hoping that the increased price that will be charged for broadband will finance the rollout of more broadband.
      It hasn't happened y

    • Re:Going Backwards (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Sentry21 ( 8183 )
      Bellsouth had DSL capability for years but releasing to the home user would have cannibalized their business T1 subscriptions.

      Pacific Bell tried another tactic - 128k up, 32k down for $39.99/mo, 512k up, 64k down for I think something like $79.99, and 1.5m down, 128k up for a ridiculous $249.99. I compared this to prices for DSL service from Telus, right next door to Pacific Bell (across the Washington/BC border), and found that Telus's prime offering - 1.5m down, 512k up - was a mere $39.99 as well - in
  • It's 2005. Why has it taken them this long to realize that the should be supporting maximum penitration of highspeed access?

  • That's easy. Remove Comcast from the picture.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Genjurosan ( 601032 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:29PM (#13106941)
    If they would simply focus on the absurd price that is being charged for broadband, then the consumers would fall in line. $70 a month (without cable service)for internet access is crazy. Not to mention that the service provided by Comcast is some of the worst I have ever seen in my life.

  • this doesn't make sence (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Brigadier ( 12956 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:30PM (#13106945)


    why would deregulating the communication industry help broadband. The only reason I have broadband at the price that I do is because regulations force Verizon and SBC to share there lines at a fair cost. Companies like XO would dissappear. I don't like the Idea that I have to go with either Charter or Verizon for broadband I would like more options. The only way this will happen is if other companies can tap into the cable and data lines at my driveway.

    • Re:this doesn't make sence (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:41PM (#13107075) Homepage Journal
      It would help "broadband", which translates "help a handful of companies charge higher rates for worse service so that maybe those companies will have a financial incentive to deploy broadband more broadly." Bottom line: the FCC is now firmly in the pockets of the ILECs and the public had better get used to getting screwed, 'cause it's only going to get worse. Much, much worse.

      There is exactly -one- way for the government to help broadband deployment: provide large block grants to communities for use in building up public communications infrastructure. The cities that have put in municipal fiber tend to be years ahead of neighboring communities in terms of broadband deployment, with lower costs for the user, better service, etc.

      Don't get me wrong, I don't think the government should be in the telecommunications business. I just think it should own the infrastructure and lease it on fair and equal terms to private ISPs and LECs as the ILECs are currently forced to do. That would put everyone on equal footing (except the ILECs, but even then, largely so).

      • I don't think the government should be in the telecommunications business. I just think it should own the infrastructure and lease it on fair and equal terms to private ISPs and LECs as the ILECs are currently forced to do.

        That's actually a libertarian concept. Better be careful or the liberals will revoke your membership card.

        Max
    • "why would deregulating the communication industry help broadband"

      - Actually, the recent Supreme Court decision to not force local carriers to share their digital lines such as cable or dsl lines, and unlike analog phone lines that are truly deregulated, will help these companies invest into laying lots of fiber, thinking it's gonna be theirs forever. Then a new decision from the Supreme Court, and the government shows up with eminent domain ideas and seizes their lines, and makes them a public good. It's

  • Think of the Children (Score:3, Interesting)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:30PM (#13106949) Homepage
    The chairman says this: "Fundamentally, the government should be trying to provide tools for parents to help them control what's coming into their living rooms and what their kids are exposed to."

    Why? Shouldn't the parents just not buy products that don't offer them the controls they want? All TVs and desktop computers I've encountered have an off switch and there's nothing the government can do to get people to use them. How are more switches, knobs, dials, control panels, etc. going to help anything?

    • Good point.

      Just adding one extra knob will only increase the amount of time it'll take a shocked parent to leap off the couch, spill his corn chips, and turn the channel away from the staggering horror of another nipple slip.

      You know, for a group that's been predominantly run by a Republican majority for the past few years, the FCC sure seems to be spending a lot of time and energy trying to have more government involvement in our lives. I don't get it, I thought Republicans traditionally preferred les

      • Traditionally I think they do tend towards less government, but in my (rather uneducated) opinion, all government is interested in more of itself and so no one party can ever be trusted with reducing it or wholly thinking of rights and liberties. That's why we should elect people based on who they are individually and not which groups they pledge their allegiance to.

  • "loosen rules" (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ya, "loosen rules" on those cable and telephone companies that got government subsidies for the last 50 years so that companies who DIDN'T receive subsidies can't compete as they don't have the cash to lay the networks themselves... and the government isn't handing out any new subsidies. THAT will give the consumer a better choice... *right*

    While you're at it, make sure to relieve those poor corporations of any promises they made in order to receive subsidies like minimum speeds and % of coverage in a giv

  • Whatever. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jpiggot ( 800494 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:31PM (#13106970)
    Well, that's great Kevin. Glad to see you're loosening rules in order to reward billion dollar companies, whom I'm sure have my best interests at heart (cause, you know, they always have before...just look at how great the customer service for those cable monopolies worked out) And it's nice to see that you're taking a break from being a slave to a highly vocal minority that seeks to impose their quasi-religious views on what I watch in the privacy of my own home.

    I also love his supposed problems with "blocking channel options" not being available to cable and satellite customers. What a non-issue to suck up to "concerned parent groups" I don't think I've seen a cable system since the '80s that didn't have some option on your cable box to block channels, and satellite always had it. God forbid parents should read the manual, or actually pay attention to what their children are watching.

  • Wrong, wrong, wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XanC ( 644172 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:31PM (#13106972)
    The goal of government is to prevent people from interfering with each other's rights. Not to form society according to the vision of master planners.

    The FCC should exist to enforce private property rights on pieces of spectrum, and stay the hell out of the business of engineering society.

    • That's hardly the exclusive goal of government (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Snar Bloot ( 324250 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:45PM (#13107133)
      I think that things like building roads, administering various aid-to-needy-people programs, and limiting and controling access to various public resources (hunting licenses, fishing, park usage, timber usage, etc) might be in some way considered to be contributing the the way society is "engineered".
      • From wikipedia on the War on Poverty;

        The 'War on Poverty' was enacted in response to hard economic times which saw a poverty rate of around 25%. However, President Johnson's 'War on Poverty' speech was delivered at a time of recovery and some viewed it as an effort to get Congress to authorize social welfare programs. The poverty level had fallen from 22.4% in 1959 to 19% in 1964 when the War on Poverty was announced. Government officials are always poised just in time to take credit for things it did

    • Basically, I agree. A government should be like an OS: it should govern the different peoples and resources, but it should not determine what content can be produced or consumed.
    • The goal of government is to prevent people from interfering with each other's rights. Not to form society according to the vision of master planners.

      In case you haven't noticed, most of the government is on the payroll of a handfull of big all-powerful corporations. What corporations want, the government gives them.

      They have no master plan, it's the corporations that have one. And their master plan is to increase their bottomline. Communication companies' bottomlines could, for example, be increased dra
      • "Communication companies' bottomlines could, for example, be increased dramatically if the infrastrusture was there for each and every sucker in the US to have access to $50/mth broadband. And that could happen if, for example, they lobbied the FCC to let them do that..."

        That's what telcon companies thought during the dot boom. They spent a ton of money on laying fiber, and then people were still ok with dial-up. Worst telcom downturn ever followed.
      • They have no master plan

        Apparently you've never worked for government. The goal of government - all government - is to accrue power. If corporations are in line with that goal then government will do business with them; if not, then government and corporations will be at odds.

        Despite what some far-left loons think, America is not in the absolute grip of some overarching corporate conspiracy. There is no corporate "Illuminati", nor will there ever be one.

        Max
    • We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

      There you have it: Order, Justice, Tranquility, Defense, Welfare, Liberty.

      Your notion of laissez fair was thrown on the scrapheap of stupid ideas in Washington's first term. Read

      • You seem to be assigning legal force to the Preamble. How can it override the document it introduces?

        Read the 9th and 10th amendments for more info.

  • What is the trade? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:33PM (#13106983)
    Unless some further regulation is attached, I don't see how promoting a duopoly is beneficial to the consumer.

    Traditional U.S. government sanctioned monopolies attained their position by HAVING to provide service to the majority of consumer even in areas that would be a losing proposition (because of infrastructure versus population density) and having their prices set for them by a regulatory commission.

    Will Verizon have to suddenly build more Central Offices (CO) or mini-CO's (so more people can get DSL) for the sake of this benefit? And what will Comcast trade in?

    I fail to see how this helps anything but the big business.

    The part of local government and wireless is cool, but at best this initiative will be sporadic or in big cities where getting broadband is less of a hassle.
    • I don't see how promoting a duopoly is beneficial to the consumer.

      Here's how:

      Lets say that you're a huge telecom company. You're already hurting from all that fiber that you laid in the late 90's that's now sitting dark, and you're very skpetical about making that mistake all over again. Obviously, you're not going to invest billions of dollars creating an broadband infrastructure unless you can be reasonably sure that you're going to be able to earn your money back (and a little extra for the effort...k

  • Yeah, that'll work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by overshoot ( 39700 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:38PM (#13107050)
    Cut all competition out of the process, and you get what we had in 1995: Baby Bells that would charge you for running a "study" of whether they could hook you up in five or ten years.

    That, and of course you also get (surprise!) the "preferred network solution provider" as the one-and-only choice. Guess which "preferred network solution provider" has the most sweetheart deals in the USA?

    Hint: they not only "support" only one operating system, they don't allow others to connect.

  • Fundamentally, the government should be trying to provide tools for parents to help them control what's coming into their living rooms and what their kids are exposed to.

    You mean like literature and educational messages on how to be a better parent and not government funded studies and unnecessary hardware requirements, right? Parents don't need to have the government pushing for senseless hardware integrated into televisions to help them be better parents... What they need is to be at home with their k
  • plans to loosen rules so neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections with competitors like America Online, a change that essentially would create a duopoly in many local markets.

    i dunno. if the phone companies and cable companies created their networks without any public funds or help, i can see them not wanting to share thier services. but these two industries were helped by public funding, so i can see the public wanting to open access to that infrastructure.

    • Who's building the infrastructure (lines, repeaters, etc.) to move the signal from the community dish to each home?
      • Who's building the infrastructure (lines, repeaters, etc.) to move the signal from the community dish to each home?

        The people who live here would pay for the infrastructure.

        What the people originally wanted to do was collectivly purchase a large contract from Dish tv, so dish would provide every house with service for about 40% off. Comcast responded when we told them we were taking bids, they offered a bullshit package. Comcast then started mailing hate mail to everyone, the typical lies that dish tv

        • Then some members started doing research. They discovered that if the community had a large dish, the community could purchase access to channels ala-cart for about 10% the cost of comcast (comcast does not even offer the ability to buy ala-cart, only one dish package does). We decided this is the option we want to go with.

          So - if I understand you correctly, you are saying that your complex essentially wants to be a "downlink" station from the satellites, right? In other words, you have a large dish (10-12

          • So - if I understand you correctly, you are saying that your complex essentially wants to be a "downlink" station from the satellites, right? In other words, you have a large dish (10-12 foot) K or C-Band (or something else newer, probably), pointed at some general bird in the sky with the channels you want from a higher tier provider (ie, the people who provide the access to DishTV), you pay them and get it cheap, then wire everyone to the dish with repeaters, amps, etc - and give each one a "custom" "cabl

  • his REAL motivation is... (Score:3)

    by gosand ( 234100 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @03:44PM (#13107119)
    his top goal is to increase Americans access to high-speed Internet

    so that the FCC can attempt to regulate it into oblivion! All these clowns can do is chase their tails trying to censor people. They thought Janet Jackson was bad? Wait till they see what this internet thingy has to offer. "Hmm, look at this link, it must be to pictures of cute little pet goats..."

  • What I haven't been able to understand is why can't/doesn't the FCC force the local monopolies to split into a service company, and a physical maintence company?

    The only part that the natural monopoly exists is really on the physical properties. Then the services compete on services, while everyone just pays the physical wires company fees for upkeep and expansion?

    This seems to makes much more sense, since these network seems to moving more towards packet-switched technologies rather than circut based t

  • Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by LordPhantom ( 763327 )
    WSJ: Let's turn to indecency. You're pretty young and you don't have kids. Why does broadcast indecency incense you so much?
    Martin: I think there's been an increasing sense of the people who are filing complaints at the commission that they're incensed. My first year on the commission there were a couple hundred complaints. I think the next year there were over 10,000 and two years later there were over 100,000 and by the following year there were more than a million complaints. Its actually many of the c
  • I live in a duopoly, it doesn't work. Please force a disconnected hardware and service layer. That promotes much more creativity and innovation.
  • Unless I'm mistaken all FCC complaint filings are available to the public, with name and address of the filer.

    It would be interesting to interview each of these people, and get answers to the following questions:

    1. What percentage of them actually pay attention to what their children watch and actively keep their kids from watching "bad" shows.

    2. What percentage of them own TVs that include a V-Chip.

    3. What percentage of those whose TVs have a V-Chip are actually making use of it. (!!!)

    It would be a pr
    • Don't bother trying to track them down. Mediaweek already did, and found that amongst "standard" complaints (which they categorize as everything except the Janet Jackson Superbowl kerfufle) 99.8% came from the Parents Television Council. In the case of the Superbowl issue 99.9% were from that group.

      See SFGate article [sfgate.com]. I can't seem to find the mediaweek story, but their website isn't loading for me so that might be why.

  • Before everyone whines too much (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suitepotato ( 863945 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @04:05PM (#13107375)
    The biggest cause of prices being what they are is that we who support these services don't work for free. Have the government do them and you can multiply corruption times ten and watch your taxes climb to cover it. Either way, you WILL pay.

    And right now, YOU the Internet using public are one of the faster growing costs of the Internet: stupidity. It is the common users who infect their machines with viruses, it is idiot spammers abusing the net, it is script kiddies and amature hackers spreading trojans and so on. And we who support it, have to spend part of our busy time dealing with that. And did I mention, we don't work for free.

    It is not a matter of Comcast profiteering or having some supposed monopoly. It is not about local or state governments not giving out municipal wireless (yes, let's trust our pipe to the net to the same people we otherwise wouldn't trust as far as we could throw them on any other subject). It's about the fact that building out miles and miles of fiber and copper costs. It's about the fact that thousands and thousands of industrial-duty routers and switches costs. It's about the fact that facilities to house the aforementioned items costs. It's about the fact that the people who KEEP it working despite the (l}users doing their level best to level the network, disrupt their own connections, and otherwise fark up their service and the service of others costs.

    Just as with coding, I don't work for free. What I write isn't coming to you for free, the service I support in my day job isn't coming to you for free. But I don't expect too many to care. I see every day fellow support techs carp about the McDonald's wages they are now being offered to do jobs which used to pay $35K/year but then complaining that their high speed Internet costs. All I can do is shake my head as I give them a penalty line bounce lart.
    • So what you are saying is that you underestimated the amount of traffic that your routers would have to handle? Boo hoo. I payed $55 for month's use of a 4Mbps down and 350kbps(?) up (not quite sure of the actual up speed) connection and expect to have it. I should be able to load it with bittorrent traffic and whatever other traffic I want that maxes out my connection for the entire month.

      Illegal or not. Now, let me qualify that. ISP's shouldn't care what I transfer, until otherwise notified by the approp
  • On promoting broadband and oligopolies:

    He (and "the industry") claim that the incentive for building out infrastructure is not there if they are forced to share access for marginal profits.

    That is only because "the industry" is conflating physical access (actual cables, etc) with logical access (tcp/ip, etc). If these public utilities were prevented from selling logical access, and instead saw their customers as the logical access providers - the ISPs - then they would not have to worry about competing

  • Why is broadband important? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Balthisar ( 649688 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @04:09PM (#13107421) Homepage
    So I've never asked myself this, and I'm tempted to make this a separate ask-slashdot question, but why the heck is broadband so important? Most of all, why is it a federal government interest?

    If I didn't have broadband, I'd still have a POTS line or ISDN, plus dialup, I guess. I couldn't watch Battlestar Galactica without a lot more patience, free music would be a lot more annoying, and iTunes music store could be less popular.

    So, I can afford cable internet and won't give it up until I can no longer afford it. But would my life suck without it? Would I be out of touch with my government? Blocked from /.? At some type of disadvantage in this world?

    Is there really some compelling interest in that EVERYONE have broadband?
  • What? Somehow barring other ISP's from using cable or phone lines is supposed to make the infrastructure grow faster?

    Luckily, we have the benefit of the current situation to see what actually happens when one type of data lines are open (phone company copper and fiber) and another is closed (cable). According to the proposal's logic, cable should have exploded with new infrastructure, while phone companies would have been cautious in growth.

    But that IS NOT what is current being seen. Both are growi
  • Late last week, he began circulating plans to loosen rules so neither phone nor cable companies will be required to share their Internet connections with competitors like America Online

    And how does this increase broadband penetration? If I were an AOL customer (I'm not), I'd want to buy my broadband from AOL, not from my local cable or telco.

    If he wants to increase broadband -- and not just profits from broadband to the two regulated monopolies -- he'd tell them that for the next 5 years that 20% of e

  • I don't know about everyone else, but I want fiber to the house and that requires digital signalling (baseband).

    It really amamzes me that we (including so called computer geeks) bastardized the real meaning of the word "broadband".

    -Nick

  • On the need to do something about indecency in broadcast, Martin says:

    I think there's been an increasing sense of the people who are filing complaints at the commission that they're incensed. My first year on the commission there were a couple hundred complaints. I think the next year there were over 10,000 and two years later there were over 100,000 and by the following year there were more than a million complaints. Its actually many of the consumers who are increasingly upset by what's on TV and radi

  • then I am ok with it.

    The real problem is that we seem to say that it is ok to grant total monopolies to just a few companies. That is a waste. If we are going to allow the companies to have 100% control of their lines (which they should), then we should disallow long-term monopolies. Basically, there needs to be an open market.
  • I wanna know who is paying this guy and blowing smoke up his ass, because he certainly sounds like somebody who has just about as much concern for the public interest as a drug dealer.
  • And just how is removing competition supposed to encourage these companies to increase their rollout of new services? I seems like a complete crock to me.

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