Fios, Lightspeed 'Crippled Networks' > Key Word is 'Crippled Networks'

Key Word is 'Crippled Networks'

I really don't know if the word to use is 'control' There definitely needs to SOME type of oversight to hasten things along here-all the corps want to do is crawl with this technology in order to maximize their profits. This data is knowledge-which is power to those who receive it un adulterated and in a timely manner-which is why it needs to be distributed widely and quickly

reply to alchav
You have to 'take your pick'.

As profit demanding shareholders are out there demanding $$$, there's 2 things.

A) No government restrictions would give us... 'Proxied/filtered' portals to the web full of all you can eat bundled cr@p (spam/advertising, etc). Coporations get rich, people get broadband, but not what they really want... just what companies can make a big profit on.

B) Government restrictions would give us...
unfiltered services, with bandwidth/capacity caps, and pricey a la carte options. You can still have surf and not be force fed, run VPN tunnels across the web, host sites, etc.

Take your pick... this almost starts to sound like the 'a la carte TV programming'

Let business do its job, you will have service, but its not what you want. Let government do its job and regulate, you will get what you want, but its going to take a while and cost a lot more (except muni broadband).

reply to alchav

You mean, "they may need to step in and make it so people aren't screwed."

reply to alchav
The government of the United States is *inherently inefficient* at controlling a large national network (which it would have to do). The government of the United States cannot control our existing borders with Canada and Mexico! That little tidbit came right from the United States Congress (both houses thereof). Both the House and Senate have quite honestly stated that there is No Way that, given the current legal system, that current laws against illegal immigration can be effectively enforced. This is why the division in Congress (between a majority-Republican grou insisting on an enforcement-plus approach, which also, at least temporarily, suspends the Posse Comitatus Act so that National Guard troops, primarily from MP companies, be placed along both the Mexican and Canadian borders until the United States Border Patrol can be brought up to what is deemed fully-effective strength, and a mostly-Democratic group, plus the President, which is pushing for a guest-worker program, plus limited amnesty for those illegal immigrants already here) exists.

Those countries you mentioned that run their own networks all have national sizes and populations more in line with one of our *smaller* states, as opposed to the size of the United States of America. Also, they tend, more often, than not, to be non-democracies (or if they are democracies, they tend to be based on the British or European Social Democratic model, as opposed to the United States' democracy model; the one commonality to the British and European Social Democratic models is the state-owned corporation, usually it's a telecommunications company).