A High Price For Broadband
from the let-it-be dept
Declan McCullough’s latest opinion piece is talking about the question of how involved the government should be in promoting the growth of broadband. He points out that, despite popular opinion in the press, broadband offerings are available in many areas around the country. However, people are choosing not to sign up. We were just discussing that here, debating what the reasons are. Declan brings up the “price” argument again – but it seems that a large reason still is that there really just isn’t compelling reasons for people to sign up. That doesn’t necessarily change if the government starts trying to force more broadband offerings. What really needs to happen is for the system to be more open, and make it easier for people to create the applications that convince people to sign up for broadband. Update: On the other side of the coin, Paul Krugman has written an article suggesting that we need more regulation for the deployment of broadband. What’s amusing, is that I think both sides are basically arguing for the same thing – but disagree on how to get there.
Comments on “A High Price For Broadband”
Broadband
I enjoyed your article explaining that people are not signing up for broadband service. What is left out is the extreme dislike many of us have for the cable industry. I had digital cable that was so poorly managed that I had it removed. My oldest son who has a substantial income had his cable reduced to basic service due to his irritation with the cable industry.
I’m presently assembling a state of the art computer with the ability to keep up with cable or digital programming but have no intention of putting it into affect for some time.
I would like to have high speed access but won’t subscribe until Verizon can offer high speed access. Verizon has been great to deal with.
I was almost excited when I observed that Verizon had reached some sort of joint agreement with Dish Network. My hope was that Verizon would take the Dish Network signal and place it on their lines and then give me single wire access to DSL, TV programming, and my voice line with all three on a single billing and one place to contact. I can wait but when this occurs I’ll be the first one in line. It will be interesting to see how I’ll receive TV programming on a phone line and then convert the signal to a CATV connection to my ATI graphics card.
I fully expect that Microsoft will be building the capabilities into Longhorn along with their other media improvements which are now being tested on computers with their Windows Media Center Operating System.
I got to your site by looking up Supernova Group. Lastly, I’mm 66 years old, retired, and live in a rural area. Best wishes. Gary Bloomquist. Tokeland, WA.