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Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just plug it in and have it work? They seem to have no problem charging you the full amount regardless of whether or not the service works. Can you imagine if every few days your water went down to a trickle and you had to go to the main shutoff valve and leave it off for five minutes in order to get the water flowing at full speed again? Why do we tolerate such consistently lousy Internet service?
In my mind the present state of high-speed Internet in the US is emblematic of the level to which corporate interests, lobbying and monopolistic behavior have prevented what’s good for consumers and our economy. It frustrates me that our country, not to mention our supposedly “wired” and high-tech city, is way behind other nations in the availability of fast, inexpensive Internet. Granted, some of those nations are much more compact than ours. But our government has been asleep at the wheel for decades on this issue while governments of, say, South Korea or Japan have been forward-thinking. I’m generally all for the free market solution over bigger government. But this is one case in which the free markets have failed horribly because they have been so extensively manipulated. And governments too happy to collect both high taxes on telecom services and campaign contributions from PACs do nothing to change things.
I was interested to see an article in Engadget yesterday about a case where a municipality in North Carolina grew weary of the high prices and limited bandwidth being offered to consumers. So they started their own fiber service to residential customers called “Greenlight” which offers much higher speeds and lower costs than what private telecoms offer. And guess what….the telecoms are suing them to stop it.
The article his here: http://tiny.cc/b5Muo
I welcome President Obama’s pledge to look into this issue. But I really wish Seattle had better City leadership as well. That people out in the sticks on Camano Island can have fiber optic Internet and yet we can’t have it here in the City is a disgrace. It is 2009. I’m weary of hearing that “It’s coming.”
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