Are you tired of the lousy, expensive, unreliable, slow, or unavailable broadband services in your area but don’t have much hope that you can overcome the baloney visited upon us by broadband providers and the government agencies they’ve co-opted?
Read on…
What’s the world going to look like 10-15 years from now?
It’s very likely that there will be one broadband data-pipe connection into every premise, just like there’s one electricity pipe, gas pipe, sewer pipe.
But what about all that good competition that’s going on between telco and cable broadband providers, isn’t that a Good Thing?
Since broadband data-pipes are natural monopolies just like all those other utility-pipes, it means that right now we’re building at least one redundant broadband network that is going to get thrown away somewhere down the line.
Who’s paying to build those redundant (often sub-par) broadband networks?
We the consumers are, that’s who. How dumb is that?
Who’s paying for the lobbyists that capture our regulatory agencies and keep them from doing right by us broadband consumers?
We are! How dumb is that?
Who’s paying for all those stupid broadband advertising campaigns that feature turtles and the like?
We are! How dumb is that?
What can we do??
We can engage in monopolistic broadband-consumer behavior. We can Switch To Winners!
How does that work?
Pick the best broadband provider in your area and get EVERYBODY to switch their business to the Winner — thus starving out the others and advancing the timetable to that day when we have one good broadband pipe into the premise.
How do we ensure that the service is good?
Same way we do with all other utilities — standard-issue quality and rate regulation. Winners can work with that.
Regulation? I hate regulation and taxes. Why do we have to do that?
There’s a difference between regulations and taxes. Your gas and electric companies are price and quality regulated, but it’s your payments for their services that pays the way not taxes. We can allow investor-owned, or citizen-owned, or customer-owned Winners to get a decent rate of return on their investment just like the other utilities do.
Do we have to give our provider a monopoly on providing TV over the network to subsidize the costs of broadband?
NO! That’s where we always get in trouble. Make the broadband portion of your bill a true reflection of the cost of the service (yes, we support tiered pricing for different speeds) so that multiple video, Internet, voice and other application providers can compete for your business without disturbing the broadband-utility business model. Our current approach is a lot like giving natural gas utilities a monopoly on selling us furnaces to subsidize our rate.
But what about competition? Won’t that keep rates down better?
To get a little geeky for a minute — let competition flourish at the top of the protocol stack (the application layer) by acknowledging the natural monopoly at the bottom of the stack (the physical layer). There’s lots and lots of room for competition in services (video, voice calls, email, web pages, etc.). But there will only be one pipe provider one day.
How do we make sure our monopoly money doesn’t go to fund networks somewhere else?
Make your provider agree to spend your money in your area. Winners will do that.
But switching is hard, sometimes expensive, why should I incur those costs?
That’s your part of the bargain and the reason “switch” is in this credo. The costs are small, it’s only once, and the result is worth the investment. That makes you a Winner too.
Tell me again, what’s in it for me?
Hastening the day of fast, cheap, reliable, neutral broadband pipes. That’s all.