Opinion Column by PC Magazine: Disserving the Public — The current column I’m running in PC Magazine is now available online and is generating much more mail than the usual fare — and I normally get a lot.
One of the more important columns I’ve written.
The United States has dropped to 16th in the world in per capita broadband deployment, and we can expect to slip further until we probably settle at the level of sub-Saharan Africa. While there is local interest in improving the situation, state and federal officials will make sure it doesn’t happen. It’s as if they are mandating a dumbed-down public. Heaven forbid we should be on the Net discovering cronyism, favoritism, and corruption.
These mega-corporations has more resources than God to throw around. They’ll get their way in the end. It has been, and always will be about economics, regardless of the societal structure.
A lot of people are perplexed at why broadband sucks in the US. They blame the government. They blame the size of our country. They blame the market. But look who’s primarily behind broadband over here: Phone companies and cable companies.
Let’s start with phone companies. Does it really benefit phone companies to have great and cheap bandwidth? Not when everyone switches over to VoIP killing their high profit long distance service. Not to mention that businesses pay for EVERY call they make. If broadband was great and cheap, the phone companies would disappear.
Let’s move on to cable companies. Pretty soon you’ll be able to watch movies via broadband. E.g., Netflix is about to offer movies. In a few years you’ll probably be able to watch any movie and any TV you want with a simple clicks. Does this benefit cable companies? Nope. Because they make tons of money, nearly all their money, selling premium movie channels and content via pay-per-view. In other words, if broadband was great and cheap, they’d also be out of business.
Thus, the ONLY way we’re going to get real broadband in the US is by wrestling control of it from the current status quo. That’s why I’m really excited about broadband over power lines. The power companies have nothing to lose with broadband.
And if you ask yourself, why aren’t the same problems occurring in the rest of the world, here’s the answer: Foreign governments are getting directly involved in setting up broadband instead of leaving it up to the entrenched status quo with a vest interested in eliminating great and cheap broadband. As John points out in his article, the opposite is happening in the US. Here whenever the government tries to do what the cable and phones companies refuse to do, they’re shut down.
Conservatives have been planting the “let the market work it out” mantra for decades. The masses finally believe it as fact and generally agree that the government should stay out. Ignoring the fact that the broadband status quo has a disincentive to create real and cheap broadband.
We have the technology. This sort of reminds me of UHF. You needed a set top box for the extra channels and the TV sets had an 82 channel dial.
Buffalo: Television City
Even with the financial clout of a wealthy network, UHF still was a money loser. UHF was like the dotcom boom went bust of the 1950’s.
NBC pulled the plug on its Buffalo UHF experiment on September 30, 1958.
1964, That was the year that was the year.
The FCC required all new TV’s to come equipped with all-channel receivers, that UHF could penetrate satisfactorily.
I recall we got about about 2 UHF channels and one was PBS 16 in Pittsburgh. The rest of the dial was useless. Then we got cable and needed a cable box to get the new channels which wouldn’t work with the FCC mandated all channel receiver built into the set. It seemed really dumb at the time. I guess it was. These forced must of shaped AM stereo. Those were the days!
K. Zuke, it’s NOT a zero sum game. Most of the time the market DOES work. However, in this particular instance it obviously isn’t. Why can’t conservatives admit it’s not working and move forward instead of being left behind?
It’s also painfully obvious that you didn’t bother to contradict a single thing I said. Merely an ad hominem attack against my alleged liberalism. Listen, if I’m wrong, simply tell me how I’m wrong. Don’t attack me personally, it only makes you look even more pathetic.
The biggest chuckle is out-and-out reactionaries who now lay claim to being traditional American Conservatives. I guess respectability accrues from the thug in the White House. A result, of course, of a populace so brainwashed by advertising that a campaign with the right buzzwords means more than a platform, reason or truth.
I’m reminded of a same fools who claim to be patriots — and opposed public education, the right to organize for collective bargaining, any campaigns for equal rights. If you’re a so-called patriot, why not support technology and communications systems which enable a step up for the whole nation? Why are you so threatened by an increased availability of technology which allows us to look around at the whole world, at ideas absent from our tame media barons?
Sorry, dudes. The idea of benevolent corporations being the only folks who know what’s right for the rest of the nation may be the most popular ideology in the White House, nowadays. I think it should sit in history’s outhouse along with all the other intellectual plumbing left over from the 19th Century.
Hey John,
This piece is generating “much more mail” than the usual fare? I guess you must mean email, because there are only 27 comments posted to the piece; some of your columns get 80-100+
There is another issue your blog has with Safari…the left hand links show up right over your posts…please fix!
Keep up good work
Dave
#4 Lou you pay 100-120 a month American? I pay that much in Canadian funds! That’s 20-30% less depending on how you score it. I could do better but I’m lazy when it comes to shopping.
Is WiFi the right technology to be doing this with?
Wouldn’t it be better to wait for WiMAX or some newer technology designed to cover an area the size of a city, instead of piecing together coverage for the size of a house.
How many entrepreneurs, geeks, and incumbent providers have already assessed these kinds of city-wide offerings and decided the technology or the demand is not there? How will it look if Philadelphia spends millions of dollars to get the thing up and running and then finds out that no one wants to use it. Even at $10 or $20 a month instead of the usual $60 or $70? (My roommate and homeowner is slowly building up a wireless network in the Oakland/Berkeley Hills at just this price point.)
I agree that the Pennsylvania legislation is unconscionable. How it can reserve the rights for particular companies — instead of putting it out to open bid, or something — is ridiculous.
But I hope no one is arguing for the right of local governments to start risky Dot Com style ventures providing wireless access to barely existant wireless users. There will be red ink all over the books, and blood in the voting booths!!!
(Actually, it’s more likely the losses to taxpayers from such a venture, and the bad government it represents, would continue.)
Is there any market research on this? How many people would subscribe to a service at $20, $10, or even $5 per month (assuming the government is going to subsidize this “vital” infrastructure?) It’s way too early for this, and I’m sure the state was partly reacting to historically bad government in Philadelphia finding another way to blow their taxpayers’ money.
Broadband is not indispensable. I know a ton of people who only use it because someone else is paying, or don’t feel they need it because they have fast access at work or school. Even at a lower cost, the market is not there.
You’re all living in a fastasy dreamland of realtime gaming, IPTV, and “information empowerment”.
To ,
Obviously I didn’t address each and every single one of your points because I just knew you’d whip out terms like “zero sum game” and “ad hominem”. Kidding. Love those catchy phrases.
I don’t disagree with your points that the big industry leaders see the increasing use of the internet for purposes like VoIP and TV/movies on demand as a threat to their business, and will try to do what they can to fight it. I just don’t think the govt should pay for providing free service. I do think that legislation passed was stupid. But you lost me when you inevitably whipped out the Blame-it-on-Conservatives card. WTF? I guess no Liberals own/run any large corporations in this nation? It must’ve been misreported that Oracle/Apple/Ben&Jerrys/etc. CEOs gave $ to the Kerry campaign??
The companies that provide those services, currently enjoy an unfair advantage, not having to pay the same federal/state taxes (interstate line fees, CARE fees, etc), local franchise taxes, or adhere to the same FCC restrictions as the well-regulated cable co’s and telcos. I have a friend who works for a company which provides VoIP services, and he freely admits this. They are trying to get a customer base established ASAP before the rest of the industry screams loud enough for the Federal/State/local govts to level the field. If you have a problem with the stupid laws that the govt passes, you need to vote those officials out. I’m libertarian in that sense, the less laws the better.
And , I was unaware Ken Lay was still a billionaire CEO slob, I thought he was heading for jail? And what company is Dick Cheney the CEO of? Please enlighten us.
Cripes, I forgot what my original point was. Oh yeah, I just don’t believe broadband is a Right that needs to be funded by govt. I pay out my nose $50/mth for 3mb cable, but my Dad gets away with $20/mth 56k just fine. Sure, I’d love free service, but I don’t think I’m entitled to it and I think those taxdollars could be used better elsewhere.
But if they do start paying for it, I’d like them to get into the gasoline biz too. My neighbor drives a 65mpg slow-as-molasses hybrid and pays $50/mth in regular unleaded gas. I drive a 15mpg 420hp sportcar and pay $240/mth in premium unleaded gas to go the same distance. Why doesn’t the govt help fund that?!?!? See my point? Besides, driving to work is a necessity for me! I make twice their salary and thus spend more $$$$ in our local economy, so the govt is actually benefitting from a better economy, more income/sales tax $… yeah, that’s it.
Damn, now I got my own tirade going. It’s contagious!