Subscribe[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bill Moyers How Big Telecom Increases Our Digital Divide 2-5-13.mp4[/flv]
Susan Crawford appears this weekend on Moyers & Company (check to see if it airs on a local public television station) to explain the real reason America has a digital divide with broadband have’s and have-not’s. The heart of the problem is America’s largest telecom companies, who are only interested in picking off the low hanging fruit — urban customers they can wire cheaply for service and demand monopoly or duopoly-style high prices. Rural America is being left behind, putting profit ahead of the public interest.
America has seen this before during the era of electrification, when power was denied to small towns and family farms. Then the country decided electric service was a utility and must be provided to all Americans. So it should be with broadband. Only the same ideology that argued rural Americans should pick up and move if they want electric service is back in force with broadband, where some argue companies should not have to spend money to provide universal service when they can sit back and reap enormous profits from the areas they choose to serve.
Check out this preview. (2 minutes)
Is there a reason Crawford gives the big cable companies a pass?
She doesn’t always. Comcast gets a lot of heat from her over their merger and Time Warner also gets slammed for blocking community broadband.
I think she’s been focusing a lot on rural digital divides — the places cable companies never go anyway.
Gotta hand it to her. She’s being diplomatic with the big co’s. I couldn’t say “these are good companies” out loud without gagging, lol.
They are companies doing what companies are supposed to do, make money.
Hob
But they ARE LYING to the public and to the FCC in order to avoid regulation and the attention they deserve for being so destructive of our economy. A company is entitled to find a successful business plan, but not to warp the law to fit it’s ambitions.