The Internet, Free Enterprise, and a little bit of Net Neutrality

[cornermouse]

You hear the freepers doing a lot of squawking about how perfect everything will be if we only have free enterprise. After listening to Moyer’s report on how the telecommuncations companies took the tax breaks and didn’t provide the optical-fiber services they had contracted to provide, its seems to me that they already have as close to “free” enterprise as you can possibly get, the telecommunication companies owe us (the public) some money, some interest, and maybe even some punitive damages via one of those “frivolous” lawsuits that bring tears to the freeper’s eyes.

I know that will never happen in Bush’s America and unless the corporations decide that they are losing money due to lack of optical fiber service, I have become convinced a lot of us are unlikely to ever see high speed internet in our homes.

Bill Moyers had an excellent report about it recently. Prepare to be outraged. The transcript for it can be found at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html The avariciousness of the telecommunications companies is incredible.

But I’m going to take this conversation a little further; a little closer to where the rubber meets the road currently for us little people.

Recently I was offered a job where I could work from home via the internet. It depended on my ability to get high speed internet service from home. Naïve and optimistic little person that I am, I thought “No problem.” I was wrong.

I live in a rural area and although they were and have been installing high speed internet in the area, they let us know that it was not available for us yet. When we questioned them further, we were told that we were close to getting high speed internet, but they weren’t quite ready. And when we continued to question, we were told that we would not be getting high speed internet here at all. It seems that although we live a fraction of a mile from several different directions that they are currently supplying high speed internet service to, they had no plans to extend that border and cover the area in between where we live.

So we wrote a letter to the FCC. A short time later, the telephone company representative called and offered us half speed service (I assume at full speed price). Anyway, the bottom line is that half speed did not meet job requirements. We delayed giving the telephone company a reply whereupon the telephone company called us repeatedly because they “wanted to close the case”. The FCC? We never heard anything else from them. ...What a surprise... I guess we either sell our home and move to the big city and higher expenses or I get to continue to driving every day. Bottom line, the telephone company cost me money.

Now I don’t know how things are done in the big cities but out here you have one telephone company and if you’re living in a town considered big enough to get cable, one cable company. It appears to me that some time ago, these people gathered in a room in some unknown location and basically split the entire country amongst themselves. Above all else, they do not move in on each other’s turf. They might buy a competitor out, but you still end up with only one company supplying services. My experience is that they tend to avoid trodding on each other’s toes, probably because they’re so busy walking on ours. At any rate, the result is not my definition of “free enterprise”. It is my definition of monopoly.

I think its time we take back the country and the FCC. We need enforcement of laws governing corporate behavior and we need to add a few as well.