I want my fiber optics!!!

[sandnsea]

Forget this Net Neutrality shit - I want the goddamn fiber optics that they promised. If they'd built the fiber optic infrastructure they were supposed to, there'd be no bandwidth problem to be talking about.

Back in the late 90's, we worked with some local business people on a plan to bring fiber and high speed to my town. We were going to lease the fiber from QWest, had the Lucent equipment read to go, etc. Well, the phone company finally told us we couldn't run high speed over copper connections at the houses. New homes were getting fiber, but the old system was too big of a mess for a small private company to deal with.

I never gave much thought to why I could later get DSL over copper after they'd told us it wasn't possible. Well whoa boy do I get it now. They got tax breaks to figure out a way to deliver high speed and did it the cheapest way possible.

Except we didn't get the true fiber optic speed we were supposed to get. And now, instead of building that fiber system, they want to create this phony toll system to suck more money out of the internet.

Well feck that!!

I WANT MY FIBER OPTIC INTERNET!!

[skids]

1. I take it you just watched the Moyer's documentary.

Yeah this whole argument about net neutrality would be pretty moot if the only thing that could really saturate the Internet and was truly deserving of premium prices was full-motion video. I think free speech and common carriage could abide by premium services as long as they could get compressed video, audio, and content out with no obstructions.

The telcom industry will be held up in decades to come as the ultimate example of how "competitive capitalism" can be taken too far and actually work to inhibit progress and economic development. In their drive to control the market and ensure they are among the few to effectively monetize it, telcom companies have become pretty perverse and the laws surrounding them have followed suit. Big stakes games breed bigtime corruption.

[sandnsea]

3. Yes I did

I more or less got it before - but this is the first time I heard the fiber optic aspect thoroughly explained. Particularly from my own experience, it was a huge lightbulb moment. Net Neutrality is just a small part, we need to be demanding fiber to every business and home the way it was promised. Especially considering how difficult they made it for local start-ups, I really think they out and out lied about the copper technology in the 90's. They told us we'd need this massive new system, and just a year or so later, put in high speed with the copper phone lines anyway. They said they needed all these tax breaks to lay fiber and then they didn't lay it at all. I never knew that's what they were supposed to do. I Want My Fiber Optic Internet!!!

[Bigmack]

2. This country is in a race to the bottom....

... and Dumbya and his repub asshole buddies are as clueless about how to make this country competitive as they are about the Iraq clusterfuck.

I didn't know until tonite that the communication companies were supposed to use their bloated profits to install fiberoptic internet.

[sandnsea]

4. Same here

I am really pissed!!! :grr:

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. I just watched it too, and I'm pissed

They lied and now they want MORE money?! Piss off!

[sandnsea]

6. Kicking

For light of day pissed-offedness!