In the US, affordable quality access to the internet continues to be problematic. Despite recent moves by the FCC towards a potentially enforceable version of net neutrality, government regulation doesn’t always manage to get the job done. Sometimes it’s because the regulation wasn’t able to overcome legal hurdles, or was weakened by lobbyists.
But not surprisingly also because Telecoms are huge entities that tend toward monopoly…and which create their own “market weather”…and more or less go their own way if they can get away with it. Which, with a thousand and one lawyers on the case, they often can. Regardless of the public interest.
“Public Utility” implies a certain exchange of corporate good citizenship for the benefits of monopoly. The Telecoms do not see things this way. Nor did the Rockefellers who had managed to nearly “corner” the market for gasoline in the US. Nor did ATT back before it was “broken up” into the Baby Bells to promote competition. (the creature has come back to life by remerging the Baby Bells to a great degree).
There was a famous battle between the state of NM and Qwest which went to the supreme court in NM, and even after Qwest lost the case there, problems continued. Here’s yet another story where millions of ATT customers are not getting the internet access they should, and that ATT agreed to in exchange for a merger go ahead with Bell South.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Internet-nightmare-ATT-sells-DSL-to-your-neighbors-but-not-to-you-Ars-Technica.pdf”]