On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Naslund, Steve <SNaslund@medline.com> wrote:
I think what will really drive everything is the market forces. You either provide what your end user wants or you go out of business.
There's the problem. In my neck of the woods, there is one and only one provider. They have a guaranteed monopoly for the next few decades. They got a huge grant to put in FTTH from the government and they still have pricing from the last decade. An 8/1 connection is $120/mo and require you to get dialtone (they say it's FCC mandated) to the tune of an additional $20/mo (that's with no long distance and every possible feature stripped). (Side-note: when the power fails during the winter, they turn off all internet access after 5 minutes so they can save battery power for the phones--which travel the exact same fiber path as the interntet). I'm not a huge fan of Comcast's recent actions, but if they rolled into the area with the same offer they have "in town" (100/25 for ~$75/mo), I would switch faster than you could spell monopoly. There's plenty of fiber lying within 1/4 mile from my house (runs between Seattle and Portland), but none of the companies are interested in being a local ISP, or leasing to a non-business, and I couldn't afford to start my own, let alone trenching my own fiber to other residents who are also fed up. It doesn't matter to me what "the big players" do because as a consumer, I still don't have a choice. So while I find my local provider's practices utterly despicable, I can't exactly speak with my wallet unless I quit being an IT guy, cancel my internet, and start raising goats or something. -A