 |
Senator John Kerry on High Speed Internet in America |
 |
John Kerry is blogging over at SaveTheInternet.com. He hits the major points: broadband access is good for everyone, including small business, minorities, and media. Most importantly, he’s looking for recommendations:
…on Wednesday I will chair a hearing to explore the impact of a lack of adequate broadband access on our nation’s small businesses. We’ll be looking for ways to move closer to making broadband accessible and affordable for every American and every business. We’ll hear from advocates for greater broadband penetration (including Free Press’ own Ben Scott), and 2 FCC commissioners will be there, as well. You can watch the hearing live at http://sbc.senate.gov.
[snip]
And, in addition to watching, please put in comments below your own thoughts, recommendations, and plans to improve broadband penetration.
If you’ve got an idea for a national broadband strategy, tell Senator Kerry. My idea: Internet access should be treated like any other utility. It is a necessity for citizens to be fully involved in society. To be treated as such, it needs to be universally accessible, universally affordable, and completely net neutral.
Kerry will be writing another post later in the week and bringing your ideas to the hearing in Washington. This is a great opportunity to make your voice heard.
most states have this sexy law, that in a city wants to set up their own ISP, then they have togive the telcos 1-2 years time to come up with a competor.
I am living in the boondocks East of San Diego with the only internet connectivity being 1/2 speed (23 Kb/s) dial-up or satellite. Sattelit has the problem of slow upload speed (max. 125 Kb/s, typical 90 and sometimes 30) and a large latency (1+ seconds). This nearly excludes any VOIP. I tried it once and the outgoing conversation was practically unintelligible most of the times and since the satellite is a shared resource with very limited total bandwidth (200 Mb/day) it is no alternative for DSL, cable or WiFi. On the mountain next to me they have a WiFi repeater, supported by the federal government, pointing in the opposite direction towards town to provide WiFi to the Jamul Indian reservation of 8 acres with max. 6 people living on it in the past, none at present. It would be quite inexpensive to provide WiFi for the back country because we have quite a few dominant peaks which could provide a large coverage. At present nobody requiring any reasonable communication capability could relocate into out area, office or home office, because of this very limited internet connectivity. Some African villages have better connections than us, living 45 miles east of downtown San Diego.