Telecom Giants Drag Their Feet on Broadband for the Whole Country

[Seedersandleechers]

snip:

For almost 20 years, AT&T, Verizon and the other big players have collected hundreds of billions of dollars through rate increases and surcharges to finance that ambitious plan, but after wiring the high-density big cities, they now say it's too expensive to connect the rest of the country. But they'd like to keep all that money they banked for the project.





http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/21/telecom-giants-drag-feet-broadband-whole-country.html#.UyBbYY2JqRc.twitter

[sakabatou]

1. Too expensive my ass

[PumpkinAle]

2. No surprises

they are all greedy bastards.

In my little part of the world they won't build a cell tower because it isn't worth it to any of them - and yet this is where cell-phone use could really help out in a disaster.

Connect America, more like fleece America.

[geckosfeet]

3. Long haul fiber is relatively cheap. And it is already in the ground across most of the country.

The expensive bit is retrofitting whole cities. You need to remove a lot of copper, or at least run fiber. But they have the know how and the technology. They have the cash as well.

[Glitterati]

4. I've dealt with this attitude

Due to a snafu at closing, 2 years ago I moved into a rental in a last minute situation. Long story, but bottom line 3 days before closing the seller discovered he couldn't sell the house because he took out a government loan that required him to keep the house for a year.

I had 3 days to find somewhere to live, so I ended up in this godforsaken rental that was built on a hill at the top of a horrible lot. It was the last house to be thrown up in a subdivision years after the subdivision had been built and wired.

Little did I know that the house had never had anything but electricity and water installed - no phones, no cable, no satellite dish, nothing. Just power and water.

Because it was 1 house, no one wanted to do an installation - not AT&T, Comcast, none of them. Satellite dish was blocked by neighboring trees. I literally had no access to television, internet nor phones. I spent a fortune trying to install those "network" antennas and could pick up nothing that was a decent signal. Not one channel! And I was stuck with a 1 year lease.

The bottom line was I wrote the FCC and asked how the hell I was supposed to know bad/dangerous weather was headed my way! Only after they got involved did they force Comcast to run the cable to the location.

I spent 4 months trying to get service from anyone.

[TexasProgresive]

5. Under the present telcom laws

you can't make them do anything they don't want to do.

Look into how we got universal power and telcom service and for that matter a once good highway system.

It takes the governments; local, state and federal to be both carrot and stick. The companies have to be allowed a reasonable profit while being committed to universal service. And there needs to be a plan that will reach the targets. Taking money and not using it for providing service where it is not profitable is a theft. Where the telcos invested they have a return. So if they are not going to serve the rest of us (read rural America) then they should return to money with interest.