said by fifty nine:said by the_ticket :
No one has a problem with you wanting broadband access, the problem comes when you expect the rest of us to pay for it. If you want broadband access, pay for it yourselves. Don't expect the rest of us to pay for it in the form of subsidies and higher taxes, and don't expect the Verizon's and the AT&T's to pay for it because its clearly not cost effective for them to do so. They aren't charities. The Cable/Telco's would be happy to provide you with broadband service if you paid for the lines to be strung to your house, if you don't want to pay for it, quit whining about it.
You're doing tlike the telcos that are deploying next gen services such as FiOS and U-verse to highly populated urban and suburban areas did so all on their own.
Do some reading on the Universal Service Fund, an 11.4% TAX that ALL long distance users had to pay.
You want to hear about subsidies? The USF is the height of subsidies. No one knows where it went, meanwhile we keep paying it (at least those suckers who are still telco subscribers, not me!!!) Verizon is building out FiOS and AT&T is building out U-Verse, but NOT to everyone who paid into this ridiculous slush fund.
So you wanna talk about subsidies? Let's get back our 11.4% USF subsidy first. Then we can talk about who's subsidizing who.
As I said above, I agree that the USF is the height of subsidies, and I think its a joke. I'm all for returning that money back to the people, especially since urban areas put the majority of the money in that fund...
