I'll throw some salt over my shoulder
for this article, as it is obviously not a neutral view - But I live in the desert out in the middle of no where. We have so few people here, we had to build our own networks, which include wireless, cable - both copper and optical fiber, and for a short time, satellite. Our association sold off the satellite assets long ago, and finally sold their cell phone assets to another customer owned cell service. So no we only have cable tv/internet/landline service using this association. However - depending on which community you are from, there is everything from AT&T U-Verse, to Verizon wireless, to power-line internet available. I live in the most restricted community in miles around and I still have 4 choices of all three services from four different providers. All of them with unlimited plans that are very competitive.
This phenomenon of a few companies monopolizing much of this networking is curious to me. Why do we out here in the desert have more choices than a city slicker in a huge community? It could be that we are a small potatoes market, so the truly big companies aren't interested in taking over the whole show, because the return isn't good enough. I have another theory though. It isn't that we are a backwater community which doesn't interest the big players - it is that we built our own networks in the 1st place, and that scares the POOP out of the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world? If you are not happy with your competition in your market, band together and build your own customer owned association to build a new network that you profit from!! The old contracts that used to block this 100 years ago have long expired, and in fact were declared illegal in the courts, so as long as you are building fiber and not cluttering up the airwaves, you can own your own network and profit from it your selves.
This is the true American way, and it scares the HELL out of the fat cats! That is why there is so much "competition" in my area, because they want to destroy the last bastion of customer owned networking, and they will spend everything they can to do that - even if they have to lose money in a back water(desert) community. Bear in mind folks that we also built the fiber back bone in the middle west, so even Sprint used to borrow our assets to reach from the eastern US to the west. So far the associations are still winning however, because one of them still has the best deal on unlimited everything for 29.99 a month on 3G wireless. I was shocked when I visited a buddies house who uses this service. He can add any device for a small stipend and one of them was a 3G dongle for his smart TV. He was watching video movies on it that rivaled anything Netflix had, but I'm not sure which video streaming service he was using, and he was picking them on his smart phone to command the HDTV. He also has unlimited voice, and text/email. Life doesn't get any better than this! :D
Biting the hand that feeds IT
