Man I hate it when I agree with the likes of Al Franken. Don’t get me wrong, Al was a funny guy when he was on SNL back in my college days. But I generally prefer a more hands off, regulation free approach to most things, a view that Mr. Franken does not seem to share with me.
However, when it comes to the Internet, it seems we cannot leave it up to the free market. Why not? Well because, there is no free market at least in the American Internet.
In 90%+ of the nation there is only one true high speed broadband provider, the cable company. The cable company operate in localized monopolies, one provider, per neighborhood, town, city, county etc…
Oh sure there is DSL, in most of the country but honestly compared to what speeds the cable companies are offering it might as well be dial-up. Additionally, thanks to a redefined definition of Broadband by the FCC, most DSL providers don’t meet or the barely scrape the bottom of the new standard. So for all practical purposes Cable internet = Broadband in the United States, and… it’s a localized monopoly.
Now to make things worse, the internet is starting to compete head to head with the same Cable companies’ own TV offering. So the local monopoly is in charge of providing us with it’s own, only competition. Can you say conflict of interest? ”I knew that you could.”
It’s in the consumer interest for government regulation of monopolies. We can’t count on them to keep out best interest in mind. Especially when they keep proposing things like “fast lanes” for premium subscribers, which really mean “slow downs” for the rest of us. Or usage caps in a world when every day some new service that we want to use comes online. Not to mention ever increasing rates for little or no increase in service level.
Until a times comes when we have at least two “real” broadband providers in every market. (AT&T U-verse, Verizon FIOS, or the next big thing) we need somebody to watch our backs. Personally I’d prefer that to be the FCC, but the FCC has no real teeth to enforce it’s “guidelines.”
So perhaps… it’s time to make a law or two.
Have at it, Al.
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