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Citywide Hotspots vs. Incumbent Carriers
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 19:42:17 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com> Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 12:03:36 -0800 To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Citywide Hotspots vs. Incumbent Carriers In the article " Citywide Hotspots vs. Incumbent Carriers" <http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3465811> The reporter said: Their [incumbent monopoly carrier] argument:
City governments are funded by tax revenues unavailable to the corporate sector. Furthermore, their nature is such that they can legally offer at-cost services to the general public, answering only to their primary goal of benefiting all citizens. By contrast, public corporations such as Verizon answer to their shareholders, and any attempt to deliver competitive services at comparable cost‹certain to be unprofitable‹would likely be perceived unfavorably by those shareholders.
Well, by similar logic. Incumbent monopoly carriers should not be allowed to provide services: Incumbent carriers had their infrastructure paid for by ratepayers under a government regulated monopoly. Their nature is to gouge the ratepayers as much as possible an limit their choice to "Intelligent Networks" that allow them to charge for things like "Call Waiting", "Touch Tone dialing", and blocking caller ID. By contrast municipalities answer to their citizens through a process called democracy, and any and any attempt to deliver services that the incumbent refuses to deploy or breaks their promise to deploy (Fiber to the home, DSL to underserved regions and other promises made to PUCs and FCC over the years) would like be blocked through bribes to politicians and vast legal attacks funded by said ratepayers. -- Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC. Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868 http://www.ibd.com ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- Citywide Hotspots vs. Incumbent Carriers David Farber (Feb 01)