Monday, December 30, 2013

Thanks to Telco's Effective Lobbying Efforts

U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace in Delivering Broadband Service. (The New York Times, 12/29/2013)

What would ALEC say?  San Antonio’s power company has a largely unused fiber-optic network that local government offices have been using for high-speed Internet service for years, but a Texas law prevents the city from using the network to give low-cost service to consumers.


Related reading
Why Are There No Big Cities with Municipal Broadband Networks? (The Atlantic, 3/4/2013)

Profit centers.    In big cities, there’s also one other obvious obstacle to municipal broadband: Current providers like Comcast will be heavily motivated to fight for their hold on the market. “Comcast and AT&T don’t really care about Chattanooga," Mitchell says. "They care a lot about Philadelphia. That’s where they do their best business." Big cities are where telecoms make their highest returns selling service to densely clustered customers on fixed infrastructure.

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