oh boy, time warner and att merger :(
@cwebber eh, seemed inevitable. With Netflix and Amazon getting into content the bigger players had to as well in order to compete.
Unless you were willing to break up those two with anti-trust actions this was the most fair.
@ted Erosion of net neutrality + ISPs also being content producers is pretty much a path to disaster
@ted @cwebber I think that as long as the United States relies on a model where the distribution infrastructure, even the airwaves themselves, must be "owned", this is unavoidable. The only viable alternative I can see is a model where the physical infrastructure is owned by the government and operated under an open access model. There has been a movement since at least the early '00s to do this for wireless spectrum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_spectrum
@freakazoid @cwebber I agree with you that the last-mile needs to be owned by the local gov't.
I'd make a different case in that I think that it is a critical resource that should be managed like water/sewer/electrical etc.
I'd be willing to trade wireless ownership to get the wires owned by the public. I still view wireless as a bit of a luxury.
@ted @freakazoid There's no reason if the internet was a public utility that you couldn't set up home wireless routers anyway.
@cwebber @ted I think wireless is far easier to do politically, because nobody built the air. If by "managed like" you mean "grant a monopoly to a private company that will then only barely be accountable" then I strongly disagree. That's how we got into this mess in the first place. For-profits need to be kept out of the operation entirely.
@cwebber @ted There are also a few cities that have their own power systems, and they are both cheaper and more reliable than the one operated by PG&E.