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I have suffered through letting the "Free" market provide. I live near DFW; however I don't choose to live in the Metromess (not Metroplex) but in the rural areas just south. While this year I moved closer to town, I am still in the "country". <br> <br> My previous residence was a bit further out. Since SBC (doing business as AT&T) has a monopoly on phone lines in the area the only hard wired internet is dial-up at a blazing 16 to 20 thousand bits per second (about 1/40th the speed of the slowest DSL)and it was constantly being taken down by rats chewing the wire, as stated by the repairman. They have told me they have no plans of deploying anything faster since we are in a "rural" area. I think that is to be translated as you bunch of drooling, half-wit rednecks don't need any decent Internet. But then the local telephone company is a monopoly and acts like it; and they will use the full force of bad law to enforce that monoploy.<br> <br> The only wireless provider is pretty much useless too in some ways. When they announced that they were coming into the area, I signed up for a survey to get the service. The individual that came out to do the survey drove onto my property, stopped, and then turned around and left. Through their sales people he stated that I couldn't get it. When I sent them pictures taken from my property of the watertower that their antenna was on they finally installed it. They were more rude to my neighbor when they wouldn't put the antenna on his roof because it was "too" steep.<br> <br> What is going on now with internet service is much like the electricty situation back 50 plus years ago. People who live in rural areas had powerlines running by their properties but no electricity. It was not "cost effective" to provide them with electric service. The government came up with the rural electric cooperative idea. The power companies screamed that it was unfair but would still not provide power in rural areas. The rural electric co-ops are now thriving customer owned companies that generally provide better service than the big, publicly-traded electric companies.<br> <br> Maybe the FCC needs to set aside some of this spectrum and provide monies (loans) for Internet Cooperatives (even in non-rural areas) to be formed. Not fully Libertarian, anarchic free markets but a solution that doesn't force something onto companies.
By Bill
Search Boortz.com
