The Plan Lacks Critical Component
For many American's choices are at the heart of our freedoms. Much of what Government is suppose to do is ensure that in a capitalist economy, we the people, continue to have choices and are not forced into a situation where we are not victims to a monopoly or unfair business practices or that we are taken advantage of. Back in 1956, Eisenhower saw the need that in order to take these 50 States and connect them in a way that allowed for easier commerce across state-lines, an interstate highway system had to be built. So in 1956 with the passing of the Federal Aid Highway Act, 41,000 miles of highway were **** spanning from sea to shining sea. Obviously for the day this was one of the biggest achievements and certainly one of the largest that had been funded by the Government, but years later, we look back to this and we take for granted the fact that if I need to go from point A to point B is there a highway that will get me there. Nowadays we are in the same place when it comes to the Internet. More and more of our work and our lives are moving into that space. And what is lacking now is clear direction from the Government to say this is how we are going to push America into the forefront. Just like Eisenhower didn't wait for private industry to come in and build an interstate highway system to allow them to do more business, the Government today cannot sit and let private industry continue to monopolize the Internet. We need a public sponsored backbone that connects all 50 States in a high speed smart network grid. As it stands right now, ISP's compete with each other in terms of routing and handling various traffic, and that traffic within a metropolitan area is then passed to larger ISP's who maintain "backbones" which are even larger conduits to pass data from one large metropolitan to another. Here in lies the problem. ISP's are charging more and more to transmit that data, there are less and less smaller companies that can compete to provide massive data requirements to individual homes, and backbone providers are either getting saturated or are having to filter traffic, which means that certain content may get priority over other content. The end result is that the American people are at the mercy of these few mega-corporations who control the network infrastructure in America. This is just not a good idea. Imagine of the national highway system was privatized. Or what if the National parks were privatized? Obviously we scoff at these ideas as they are pure lunacy--we would never dream of doing such a thing. But yet we can't see the value in having a Government sponsored program that establishes the inter-state massive smart network grid for the 22nd century (yes that's not a typo)? We need to look to the future, just as Eisenhower did back in the 1950's and realize that our demand for bandwidth is going to grow exponentially. Just as Moore's law says computing power will double every 18 months, our appetite for bandwidth is growing at an even more considerable rate. Spectrum isn't a solution as there are always interferences that cause the service to be poor. We need the equivalent of the interstate highway system to transport massive amounts of data--both today's requirements as well as at least 50 years into the future--to make sure that at the heart of the net, there isn't a corporate entity that controls it. What I propose in addition to this massive smart network grid, is that the Government would only serve as the backbone between the large metropolitan areas. Individual ISP's would still have to provide end to end service that brings the network to the individual homes (much like how the interstate power grid works). This would provide more options for smaller companies to tailor solutions for customer's and make it more competitive within the market space. Their infrastructure costs would be limited to the home to metropolitan hub. From there, they connect into the Government backbone and the traffic is then routed accordingly based on wherever the DNS points to. This sounds like a large undertaking and it is. But remember the Federal Aid Highway Act was originally a $25 billion dollar project--and that was back in the 1950's. To do something like that today it would obviously be much more costly, but this is the direction that America needs to go in. This is what would give clear direction to tell businesses that American's, every single American, should have access to affordable massive speed access. If Google can affordably connect two Cities on a Gigabit network, surely we can take lessons from them in terms of how they lowered their implementation costs so as not to create a massive craptastic network and instead create something that others in the World decide they need to as well and take the American model.
Amen, this is the most important thing to consider.... That being said it works pretty good with things like electricity. But then again aren't prices and such regulated. I'm sure people will say "but the free market is what America is about not government regulation"... Fine but don't give money to people to be a monopoly in an area and not ask them for something in return.
Sattelite internet is awful why in the world the goverment would give them a dime is beyond me. And why they think that giving someone 10 gigs a month when EVERYTHING ,can, run on the internet these days(tvs, coffee pots, lights, front door locks...............)
It might work for now but to encourage this type of trend of pay per use is just going to kill the industrial advancements. The limits to the internet are not even begun to be tapped into we need to think 10 years from now, if satellites cant provide as good a product as wired internet STOP INVESTING IN IT!
Seriously,i have satellite tv and the majority of the "perks" that come with it you need high-speed internet. So even they know how important it is ...They just want to continue to advertise stuff to get people into a contract for stuff they cant even use.(which is another issue about unfair business practices they use to get customers into lengthy terms that can be change by the provider at any time....even the length of the contract they can change WTF!!!!!?)
oh and it's drizzling out(not even that hard)............... so... gotta wait another hour or so before i can post this. Cant wait till emergency services and telephones are all over the internet.. and it rains and people die because the government went for the cheap solution vs the reliable solution............ it's a shame society is planning technology around the future when were not ready for it.
But like the OP i just wish i had a choice....my only choice really is satellite......... and there's 3-4 choices... but when you do your homework they are all thru the same providers they just offer different names so if someone talks bad about one people will still choose them under a different name.