[Info-vax] US Broadband

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-04 14:08:35 +0000, Scott Dorsey said:

> Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>> 	kludge at panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:
>>> 
>>> And THAT is a problem that you can bring up with the PUC.
>> 
>> Time to leave that alternate reality and come back to the real world.  
>> The PUC is there to rubber stamp rate increases and couldn't care less 
>> about the customers.
> 
> I have had very good luck getting the PUC involved here in Virginia.  
> Your state may be different.  A letter to your governor can do wonders.

Telco copper circuits and free copper pair shenanigans aside, the 
Virginia SCC (PUC) has no jurisdiction over Internet communications.  
<http://www.scc.virginia.gov/puc/index.aspx> 
<http://www.scc.virginia.gov/puc/resources.aspx>.   Other than on 
copper connections, AFAIK there's presently also no competition with 
optical or other not-copper links; there's no wholesale access 
requirement. 
<http://www.fcclawblog.com/2015/01/articles/fcc/headin-down-the-copperhead-road-the-fcc-proposes-new-rules-for-legacy-infrastructure/> 


This is where there is a terrestrial cellular or a terrestrial 
broadband provider even available.  This availability is very far from 
ubiquitous within the US.

As for referencing state-level PUCs as a solution, the US has 
federalized broadband and internet access regulations, and the FCC has 
seemingly only just started to ponder whether broadband should be 
considered a utility and should be ubiquitous; the modern equivalent to 
the rural electrification and rural telephone efforts of an earlier 
century.  The FCC "common carrier" transition — once we can read and 
can litigate the details of that decision, and can learn where the FCC 
thinks things are now headed — may be a start.   Extending broadband is 
going to be a hugely expensive and multi-decade project, and resolving 
what's currently a patchwork of incompatible hardware and incompatible 
"last mile" equipment designs and placating the competing "last mile" 
carriers won't happen quickly, if at all.

In short, the US FCC hasn't yet gotten to the point of selecting a 
standard track gauge for the Internet railroad, and we're probably 
going to get to go through the whole CDMA and GSM to LTE mess yet again.




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