US senator accuses FCC of rigging 700MHz auction

FCC does a fukiyakiyokomoto

what's the fuss? Why would the FCC handle the auction any different than they have handled competition out in the rest of the USA?

Take throttling of data:

Directpc has done it forever. They drop you to dialup speeds after just a very few megs of downloads. Verizon wireless drops you completely after 5 gigs of download in 30 days.

Most rural areas in virginia have no real choice of providers. Dialup is the ultimate throttle, and the alternatives are really not attractive. Where I live, Cable internet is 2 miles away, has been for 15 YEARS and cox cable has no plans to expand. The 47 people in the 2 mile area will not provide "enough" profit.

The competition for cox Cable, At 49 dollars for unlimited internet at 15MPS, VS Verizon's 5 gigs/30 days limited internet at 715 KPS for 49 dollars, or Huges Net at 59 dollars for 0.5 gig per day downloads at 1.5 MPS and then you are dropped to 56KPS speed, shows there is no real competition.

We are always throttled, and enraged when we learn Great Britian is 100 MPS always, or Japan just launched a satellite with 1.5 GPS download speeds.

Virginia is behind many 3rd world countries -thanks to our free market system, where a single company comes in and grabs all the high profit areas effectively shutting out competitors by making it too expensive for anyone else to provide service outside the densely populated sections.

Where has the FCC been for the last 15 years????

100Mbps UK

typically the UK users get 1/3rd to 1/2th speed they sold, which is typically upto 12Mbps.

Irish users of DSL, Metro (10.5Ghz system) and Cable get most of the speed they are sold which is typically 3Mbps, but up to 12Mbps is available.

But much smaller percentage of Irish user can get Internet at all (in bottom 4 in Europe).

Japan top apartment speed is 100Mbps.

@Mage

Generally all true except about japan...

Standard apartment speed is 100Mbit/s and 1Gbit/s costs the same that our 1/3-1/2 speed 8bmit costs in the UK. You can still get 10Mbit but there's not much cost saving IIRC.

@Scoured Frisbee

"complain to your city representation"

Who will definitely ignore him, since he stated he's in a *rural* area. Sheesh.

Even if they listened, no company will promise to "cover his area" unless they're required to by law, or heavily subsidised (as is the case now for landline telephone carriers with the universal service fund).

"Of course if the market was unregulated other companies would be allowed to compete in the high profit areas."

Except that they wouldn't. They wouldn't compete in the high profit areas because they'd have to spend the (large amounts of) money to build out a network, *and* try to beat the incumbents on price and service. That's a high barrier to entry, and hurts the bottom line too much. Better to stick it to the customers you already have captive, and without regulation they'd be able to charge whatever they please.

They wouldn't bother with rural areas (poor return on investment), so nothing would change. Maybe the incumbent operators in such areas would even pull out, because operating there isn't profitable without subsidy, and without regulation they have no reason to operate anywhere that they don't profit from.

Less regulation isn't the answer here, we need better-thought-out regulation which allows for real competition, doesn't get in the way *too* much, yet prevents obvious abuses. Something like local loop unbundling perhaps?

It *is* madness that in a supposed free-market economy, such a major part of the communications infrastructure is operated almost entirely by local monopolies. As long as that remains the case we'll never see progress.

complain to your city representation

Our local reps can't require anything as the House of representatives pretty much castrated them on the issue. Cable and the credit industry have free rein, as they own many of our politicians from the ground up.

I have written, pleaded in person and via email and telephone, recieved many promises of " we'll do something soon- it's being drafted as we speak-" only to see days become weeks become years become decades and no movement on the issue.

It's silly that the internet is not declared a utility, that newspapers and other ad-financed business who's web presence could be boosted by the rural people who have no access to major stores -especially the video and music sites- ignore the loss of such a potential market.

Many of us have stopped reading online sites, because due to the content rich webpages it takes so long for an article to load on your computer, we become frustrated and simply don't go there. The new york times and the washington post are excellent examples, any article takes several minutes to load, and are often cut off because of the timeouts on the server, which to add insult to injury is made even worse by their unblockable popups advertizing NETFLCKS new internet downloads! Sheeesh!