People should be happy to have these speeds. I remember dial up modems, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting to get online. I really appreciate the speeds we have now. But, I guess once you get used to something, going back to dinosaur days isn't very appealing.
There were times I was trying to get online for an appointment, and couldn't! Had to use the the telephone to call and explain where I was. Wow, those days really sucked now that I look back on them. I could smoke an entire cigarette, and STILL not be online yet!
"What’s most striking to me is that the taxpayers paid for the copper infrastructure, paid for it through regulated, expensive telephone service with taxpayers slated to own the resulting infrastructure,” said
Benjamin Edelman, an associate professor of business administration at
Harvard Business School. “Now, that all got privatized in a particular way, [but] the short of it is, this is a public resource. It’s a public right of way; it was funded through public expenditures. It seems strange to declare this is actually one company’s asset to do with as they see fit.”
"One puzzle about recent U.S. experience has been the disconnect between profits and investment. Profits are at a record high as a share of G.D.P., yet corporations aren’t reinvesting their returns in their businesses. Instead, they’re buying back shares, or accumulating huge piles of cash. This is exactly what you’d expect to see if a lot of those record profits represent monopoly rents."
"The reason this deal is scary is that for the vast majority of businesses in 19 of the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the country, their only choice for a high-capacity wired connection will be Comcast. Comcast, in turn, has its own built-in conflicts of interest: It will be serving the interests of its shareholders by keeping investments in its network as low as possible — in particular, making no move to provide the world-class fiber-optic connections that are now standard and cheap in other countries — and extracting as much rent as it can, in all kinds of ways. Comcast, for purposes of today’s public , is calling itself a “cable company.” It no longer is. Comcast sells infrastructure subject to neither competition nor a cop on the beat."
Happy?!?!
