ross
join:2000-08-16
 ·Digizip
| reply to MyDogHsFleas
Re: Must be law
said by MyDogHsFleas  :said by nasadude :said by MyDogHsFleas :...There's a TON of competition out there. I live in area code 20850; I eagerly await your list of multiple broadband providers in my area. You said: quote:
there is no meaningful competition in the U.S. market and there won't be any for years to come.
So now "the US market" equals "zip code 20850" ?? Come on. Pick an argument and stick with it, OK?? quote:
sorry, satellite broadband is not a substitute for wired or even wireless broadband.
umm... yeah... it is. Maybe not a perfect one, but it is. I have a co-worker who lives in a remote area in Northern California on a ranch. He barely has POTS service (he has to maintain his own 1/4 mile of twisted pair). He is a work at home guy like me with heavy internet/VPN use, and uses satellite. It works OK for him. Maybe it's a little slower than if he had DSL or cable, but it works. Yeah, and look how far we've come since the Telecom Act of 1996. Yep, competition all over the place, and getting cheaper by the minute/byte (which they'll soon be charging by). How much USF money do you think the telcos have collected over the intervening years? Enough to enable them to provide service to your friend's rural abode? Probably...
Where I live, a major metropolitan area, I only have one telco (AT&T), one cable company (Comcrap), to choose from. While there are plenty of resellers still for telco service, the prices are anything but competitive. Cable is an unattractive, even less reliable, and more expensive option. No teleco entity/reseller here offers speeds over 3Mbps/384Kbps without surcharging the hell out of you. Five miles away, there is Verizon Fios, but they can't compete in my location because AT&T is the monopoly telco here. The wiring in my neighborhood is the shits, and it is routine that my line pairs are stolen at least once a year by AT&T service techs in search of a reasonably quiet pair for a "new" install. The F2 cable run to my central office is defective, which AT&T has known for years, but AT&T won't replace it. Uverse is a substandard promise I won't hold my breath for, and probably won't be able to afford by the time it is implemented here, anyway.
Telecom competition is just a bad, and expensive, joke...but the subject under discussion was/is network neutrality, right? |
