I was watching an episode of the Patriot Act, and it went into detail about the monopoly of ISPs and how they falsify coverage maps of internet service and end up undeserving poorer communities to help their bottom line. Congress created the Universal Service Fund to try and bring internet to undeserved communities, but due to these badly drawn coverage maps, they cannot distribute this money accurately because they do not have good information about where it needs to go, and Ajit Pai, the head of the FCC wants to let private companies solve the problem.This is called internet inequality and I was wondering people’s opinions on this topic. Should we as a community be promoting Municipal Broadband (where communities start their own ISPs and force the big companies like Comcast and AT&T to compete)? I definitely thing we should launch some kind of information campaign about it. Here are some sources:
https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/37/inequality-and-the-internet/
I lived in a place like this far too long!
City attorney made franchise agreement with cable providers when most of my old city was no developed with housing and fiber optic was not being offered (1970s).
City requires cable to cover 75% of the city land mass. I was not alive in the 70s and was born in this poverty zone, they still do not have even dsl.
Vice calls it the digital divide. Never heard of any show the Patriot Act but Vice are the only ones I have seen reporting on it and trying to expose it. But yes it’s old school oligarchy and monopoly in full effect, I lived there maybe a decade?
One vice article was about how people’s ability to earn a living they can’t compete because of this and where they live. It showed a cattle rancher trying to get a bull to breed cattle with at auction online. By the time he loads the page to bid the auction is over, what is he supposed to do? Some of these places have no school the kids are home-schooled with no high speed internet. Even if they had a school to go to they couldn’t hang with the suburban kids because they homework is not possible for them to complete.
On and on like that. Some have dialup where the copper phone line was laid in the 1940’s. When it rains they cannot run a credit card and their business stops.