If you’re at all confused about the network neutrality issue—or why it’s so crucially important—Bill Moyers and his team have put together an excellent analysis.
The internet has changed everything and now the telecommunications and cable giants want to put the genie back in the bottle.
As Bruce Kushnick points out, we’ve already paid the telecommunications companies for a very-high-speed symmetrical fiber network that they have subsequently reneged on delivering. In exchange for being able to keep the profits on telephone services like call waiting and caller ID, the telephone companies agreed to build-out what amounts to 100Mbps connectivity for about US$40 per month; that’s more than 100 times current broadband speeds. 86 million US households should have been wired by now according to Kushnick’s research. It hasn’t happened, says Kushnick, because “none of the regulators stepped up to the plate and held the phone companies accountable.” That would be the individual state utility commissioners.
And now the telephone (and cable) companies want to double-dip by charging extra delivery of certain data packets on the network.
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