Art at Public Knowledge explains why broadband service in the US is so bad.
Basically it boils down to the fact that we have few choices when it comes to providers and a government that doesn’t give a rat’s ass what those providers do with their monopoly.
Earlier today (Sept. 6), the Justice Department filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opposing Net Neutrality. The DoJ, supposedly the protector of consumers and guardian of competition, said that “market forces” were sufficient to do both of those jobs.
He illustrates the point with a stark comparison between the options residents of a town in England with a population of 233,000 have and those of most of us in the US.
This U.K. consumer did something not one U.S. consumer can do. This broadband consumer in the U.K. has so many options — 59 Internet Service Providers that he needed a spreadsheet to figure them out. Here in the U.S., a similar customer might have two — the telephone company and cable company.
The contrast is staggering: a complex spreadsheet with 59 choices and several features for each vs. pre-kindergarten math of counting to two. The evidence is clear. From the consumer point of view, our Internet policies are a failure and a disgrace.
And if the “Justice” department has it’s way, they are only going to get worse.
Art poses some questions that all of us should be asking of our big media’s Congress critters (I love his labels: D-ATT, R-VZ). “And you have to keep on asking until there’s an answer.”