San Diego missing fast-Internet future | UTSanDiego.com

The US is clearly falling further behind the rest of the world in internet connectivity.  Yes, we could blame it on the large corporations such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast & Time Warner.  However they are simply playing the "business game" by following the rules laid down by the Government.  It is a partnership between Government and industry that must share the responsibility.



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In the 1950s and 1960s the AT&T telephone monopoly received a lot of blame for bad telephone service, and abusive practices.  However it was a "regulated" monopoly and the various state regulators shared the responsibility.  They continually taxed the phone service as a revenue source.  They insisted that the phone company use very long depreciation periods (to keep their reported cost down) even though their equipment was becoming obsolete in 2 or 3 years as electronics advanced.  This forced those companies to delay upgrades in equipment. When AT&T was broken up, it inspired competition, but much more importantly, it released the stranglehold that the state regulatory agencies had over the company and allowed the new companies to be able to rapidly upgrade their equipment and align their financial management (depreciation) with the realities of the new technology available (Moore's law).



Now, our Government has not declared internet or cable connections as a "utility" even though it is replacing the telephone service and the industry is highly concentrated.  The Government has also allowed these companies to continue to consolidate and become a larger monopoly with no regulation.  We need a balance!  We're now going back to the situation where technology stagnates, service becomes abusive and executives in those monopolies pay themselves obscene amounts of  money for taking very little risk. .