Re: Entirely the wrong model?
"The free market is a good thing provided monopolies are forbidden, healthy competition is fostered, excessive greed is punished and companies in general are reminded—forcibly when necessary—that with their rights come social responsibilities."
But sometimes monopolies are unavoidable. Thus we have the term natural monopolies, where the market won't tolerate more than one provider due to things like NIMBY concerns. Utilities happens to be one industry where monopolies tend to be natural because no one wants a second set of eyesore infrastructure in their neighborhood. Rural services is another one because of geography; there's simply no other way to reach out to a population that sparse without lots of expensive infrastructure, threatening the RoI picture.
Which means rural Internet access (a utility) suffers a double whammy, especially in a country as large as the United States. AFAIK, the only larger country with (arguably) better service is Canada (and again I emphasize, that's arguable given the complaints from Canadians about the likes of Rogers), and they have the edges of a heavily-skewed population distribution and a contiguous geography.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
