http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20423416 en Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:04:04 EDT Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:04:04 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20429062 anon : Thanks for sharing the info. Good read. :)]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20429062 Sun, 04 May 2008 07:05:32 EDT http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20423416 Y2KickIT : It is interesting to read people who do not know our own history, do not understand infrastructure, do not understand market forces and the role of government in incentives/disincentives and regulation.

Markets aren't "Free," even the black market quickly is organized in a system of rules understood by the players and acts to erect barriers to entry and eliminate competition.

In a market system, government most often has played a role in the development of a technology and the deployment of a ubiquitous infrastructure that is necessary for use as an economically reliable tool for businesses.

The "Middle Ground" in this article is not some mish mash of policy. You need to create a dynamic marketplace. This exists in countries that have spurred deployment either by private entities or by direct government investment where the local connection has open access and multiple vendors compete for services deployed over the access network.

Since the US is so far behind and we need jobs and infrastructure, direct investment in Fiber-To-The-Premises as the national local access network standard, divesting the access networks from service providers, and allowing all to compete over this common fiber access network would allow a quick rise in price/performance.

The article mentions penetration as the end all, no, it is price performance. 100/100 Mbps or 1Gbps/1Gbps is available in many of the countries WITH a national broadband policy, and at very low rates, imagine US 100 Mbps symmetric IPv6 Static IP service for $20 a month.

Now that would be an economic stimulus plan. Imagine a four day work week with at least one day you can work virtual from home with full motion full screen video conferencing that is affordable?

Some employees could work from home most of the time. What would a 40% reduction in commuting do to our environment, our national economy, the oil crisis, and our personal pocketbook?

It is time to dust off the ideas of "telecommuting," the 1996 National Information Infrastructure Plan, and the 1997 report by Raj Reddy of the President's Information Technology Advisory Council (PITAC) entitled "A National Gigabit Data Grid Fiber-To-The-Home Infrastructure."

These ideas and the US dominance in computers and Internet technologies worried other industrial countries so much they responded to these US initiatives with their own national policies. Here we bowed to the "Free Market" force of the Telecommunications Lobbyists on K Street lining the pockets of Congress and writing legislation for them.

What we got is a rapid loss of our dominance, and telecom and cable companies censoring content, and illegally wiretapping our communications in violation of the fourth amendment.]]> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,20423416 Fri, 02 May 2008 20:42:04 EDT