.There are forces who would make dial-up popular again, if they had a chance. A
New York Times article, by Randall Stross, delves into phone companies’ desire to play the proverbial troll under-the-bridge with our internet access. This, of course, would make the global brain which is the current infosphere riddled with charges and aghast with bureaucracy.
“Now these same carriers–led by Verizon Communications and BellSouth–want to create entirely new categories of fees that risk destroying the anyone-can-publish culture of the Internet. And they are lobbying for legislative protection of their meddling with the Internet content that runs through their pipes. These are not good ideas.
Slow broadband seems to be our cursed lot. Until we get an upgrade–or rather an upgrade to an upgrade–the only Americans who will enjoy truly fast and inexpensive service will be those who leave the country. In California, Comcast cable broadband provides top download speeds of 6 megabits a second for a little more than $50 a month. That falls well short, however, of Verizon’s 15-megabit fiber-based service offered on the East Coast at about the same price. But what about the 100-megabit service in Japan for $25 month? And better, much better: Stockholm’s one-gigabit service–that is, 1,000 megabits, or more than 1,300 times faster than Verizon’s entry-level DSL service–for less than 100 euros, or $120, a month.
One-gigabit service is not in the offing in the United States. What the network carriers seem most determined to sell is a premium form of Internet service that offers a tantalizing prospect of faster, more reliable delivery–but only if providers like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft pay a new charge for special delivery of their content. (That charge, by the way, would be in addition to the regular bandwidth-based Internet connection charges that their carriers already levy.)”
People want their hassle-free Internet connection, whether these phone companies’ are smart enough to see that is another matter. There is a lot of ingenuity and a sense of equality of all behind the online communities, the type of attitude that will fight for memetic distribution. If these restrictions go into effect we will see a strong investment into data service through power lines, satellite and other untapped avenues.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/business/yourmoney/15digi.html?pagewanted=print
