AT&T allegedly “discriminated” against poor people in broadband upgrades
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
If we want to build broadband to poor neighborhoods, we should just tax people and have to government build it. The municipal franchising model is an awful way of accomplishing that goal. In return for building broadband to poor neighborhoods (where most people can't afford it anyway), you basically kill competition. Nobody but the incumbent can make enough money in an environment where they have to build everywhere in order to receive permission to build anywhere. And it basically bans "MVP" models of deployment, where a provider starts in a focused area with demonstrated demand and expands gradually.
Instead of just providing food, shelter, and basic medical care - helping them to get a job turns them into tax providers rather than consumers. Helping them to eat and live healthier reduce the medical cost.
> helping them to get a job turns them into tax providers rather than consumers
So does cutting welfare.
...and watch AT&T lobbyists start crying and screaming about the "unfair" competition from local governments. Rememeber, government is good when it helps the rich, but bad when it helps the poor!
Another commenter complained how it would raise taxes on the middle class. I wanted to disagree but can't because the upper middle class has its tax credits/deductions and the upper class has even better loopholes leaving the rest of the middle class to pick up the tab.
Money is a difficult topic. Looking at Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri hand out tax breaks to attract businesses to come to their side of town. Can we put a tax on the national level? Then we need to distribute the money and it gets messy.
While I dislike Comcast, AT&T, and their contemporaries as much as the next person, I don't really have a horror story of my own with them; I just greatly preferred the service and support for a home-grown ISP instead of having the looming threat of bandwidth caps or other such changes over my head for time to come.
Municipal broadband is VERY easily doable and a great solution for many places where the incumbents refuse to meet the needs of the taxpayers that are subsidizing the networks. Having internet as a public utility resulted in some really great service and a fantastic product.