Robert Cringley, over at PBS.org, has an interesting piece on the legislative moves on behalf of supposedly fragile telcos.

This snippet, sums up my thoughts on the whole issue:

All the backbone providers can say is that bandwidth prices have gone so low they can no longer operate at a profit.

So go out of business, then. And if you don’t go out of business, explain to us why not.

Tim Bray’s mantra is also applicable to this issue:

Give me a Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way

Exactly.

If telcos did just that, I would pay for it. A lot of people would, meaning big dollars for telcos.

Today, I pay $40/month for a cable line to the house. Not for television, just data.

Why don’t I pay SBC for anything?

Their pathetic network can’t even provide a 384K connection to my home, in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina.

Time Warner saw the market full of consumers like me, prepared for it and are grabbing the business.

Telcos, long used to everyone needing them, don’t have the culture to adapt in this environment. Instead they are asking businesses and Congress to protect them.

Isn’t it called a free market economy for a reason?

These telcos are a key reason other countries are passing us by in terms of broadband adoption.