Pay Extra For Normal Latency > I have said it over and over and you don't listen

I have said it over and over and you don't listen

Good point. The important thing is that States and Federal CANNOT be allowed to own or run any of the grids, it is ALL county, to help keep some of the big brother nature out of it. Strict laws government what the government can do, and civilian oversight committees would protect people's privacy. Since there is no real privacy now, it could be an improvement.

The federal government had to step in and get involved in a big way when the time came to get everyone a telephone, and back in those days there was resistance to the idea of the federal government making laws to force phone service to everyone. Imagine where we would be today if it wasn't for that effort?

Getting the entire nation fiber connected could pump a huge amount of money into our economy, create countless new companies and businesses, and make us a bigger player in the world wide communications technology community, because other countries would come to us for the technology and hardware, and our experts. It could even change our economy, just think, look what all FDR did for the country with the national works projects, those saved the nation and we are still enjoying the fruits of their labors daily here now. All the great parks and facilities. People put down the idea, but it worked. It can work again.
--
You know your life has gotten "DICEY" when it turns into an episode of LOST, like my ex wife, who I swear is one of "The Others"... !!!Save Lives: Join Team Discovery AND Team Helix, it is easy and painless to do!!!

reply to signmeuptoo
That is exactly what Public Utility Department in my county started doing in 2001. Sadly, they tried to manipulate another PUD from a nearby county, to be the front for their own ISP. However, they got busted (kind of hard to hide it when that ISP is charging less the subscriber than the PUD charges to all the other ISP's), and the build-out was put on hold (at about 4000 homes passed). Just this year they started slowly building out some more (650 homes).

Thanks to the heavy hand of the state attorney's office, the PUD now sits under close scrutiny, and keeps wholesale rates down. We have almost a dozen ISP's selling Internet and Phone service (used to have 3 reselling TV service, but that got yanked when the PUD got busted for "borrowing" feeds from someone else, instead of purchasing their own), for $35-40/mo Residential Internet (10mbps symmetrical), and $20-25 per month Phone.

Apparently, when there is lots of competition, the pricing settles out to roughly the same between the providers.

Interesting. So corruption IS a factor, even still. I guess the Mafia could get inside too if they wanted to, but I still believe in my suggestion, it just has to be implemented the right way with a good oversight committee and LOTS of public disclosure. Every subscriber should have access to a channel and pages on the DAILY goings on of the Country operation, and online voting might be a good idea, as well...
--
You know your life has gotten "DICEY" when it turns into an episode of LOST, like my ex wife, who I swear is one of "The Others"... !!!Save Lives: Join Team Discovery AND Team Helix, it is easy and painless to do!!!

In this case corruption seemed be rather prolific, but it didn't take very long to spot the retail coup attempt (since all the ISP's were supposed to be charged from the same price schedule). As for the television scandal; I don't really know how they got caught, since the ISP I worked for was sold as a result of the first scandal and the new owners (who bought 2 other ISP's at the same time) laid off two-thirds of us (kept all the slackers, go figure).

I think it will be harder for public pseudo-government entities to hide corruption, since most of the top positions (Commisioners, at least) are filled by public vote regularly (every 4 years I believe), and their records (and meeting minute's) are supposed to be open to the public. Sadly, we find corruption everywhere, even in non-profit organizations, so I expect a fair number of public utilites/commissions will be tainted as well.

Edit: Forgot to mention, three Commisioner's, the head network engineer, and a few other people, were 'resigned' over the first scandal; I didn't keep close tabs on the second one. So, voting can happen whenever necessary, and the will of the people prevails (for the most part), whereas a private corporation (even publicly held, unless most of the shareholders are also customers) could just scoff at the people and keep on messing with them.