Former FCC Head: "We Should Be Ashamed of Ourselves" For State of Broadband

An anonymous reader writes A group of internet industry executives and politicians came together to look back on the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and to do a little crystal-ball gazing about the future of broadband regulation in the United States. Former FCC commissioner Michael Copps was among the presenters, and he had sharp words for the audience about the "insanity" of the current wave of merger mania in the telecom field and the looming threats of losing net neutrality regulation.

Re:About time

[just_another_sean]

I wasn't talking about caps [theregister.co.uk].

Re:About time

[just_another_sean]

Yes, some grandmother does [theregister.co.uk].

I realize that's not typical, but it does illustrate what other nations are doing to continually increase their capabilities. Faster, no caps and lack of monopolies seem to be the norm for all developed nations except than the US.

Re:About time

[RavenLrD20k]

Actually, Copp had this figured out for quite a while. Being slashdot and all, I understand the general inability to RTFA, so here's the pertinent part about this guy's history:

Copps has been a longtime pro-consumer advocate. He was the lone member of the five-person FCC to vote against the merger of Comcast and NBC, and since the 2010 net neutrality rule was vacated in February he has been urging the FCC to reclassify broadband ISPs as a common carrier service. He has also advocated against continued media consolidation and big telecom mergers.

The general gist of the rest of the article goes on to say how the rest of the suits were congratulating themselves on a job well done with the Telecom Act in '96 and generally celebrating the current state and where they see themselves going... until Copp takes the stand and gives everyone a verbal bitchslap:

He led off by agreeing with the several executive speakers that true competition is the way of the future, and the best way to serve consumers. “But we haven’t given competition the chance it needs,” he continued, before referring to how poorly U.S. broadband compares on the global stage. “We have fallen so far short that we should be ashamed of ourselves. We should be leading, and we’re not. We need to get serious about broadband, we need to get serious about competition, we need to get serious about our country.”

What I take from this is that this guy is a single life jacket trying to defend us in a sea of self-serving destruction bound sharks. Good luck to us all.

Re:About time

[Sarius64]

Bullshit. I'm in Hartford, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, England right now. 161Mbps down/12Mbps up/unlimited bandwidth for 35 pounds a month and I check the speed daily. My family is in San Diego where I pay $100/month for supposed business connection unlimited bandwidth (home version had a 300GB limit) 80Mbps down/20Mbps up and I actually get average of 20Mbps down/2mbps up (with a signed business contract) and I check speeds daily. Cox tells me to sit and spin or go somewhere else. They've bribed the government to give them the broadband in my area with not a single carrier that is higher speed. Fiber is available, if your the right government entity. Don't even talk about AT&T; they're worse than dirt.