The increasing trend of big companies to stifle innovation in the name of profit is pissing me off. I just read a couple articles about the baby bells, most notably SBC and Verizon, that were pretty disturbing. Have you ever heard about this?
Starting in the early 1990's, the Clinton-Gore Administration had aggressive plans to create the "National Infrastructure Initiative" to rewire ALL of America with fiber optic wiring, replacing the 100 year old copper wire. The Bell companies - SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest, claimed that they would step up to the plate and rewire homes, schools, libraries, government agencies, businesses and hospitals, etc. if they received financial incentives.
They got their money - a low estimate is $2000 per household - and the new infrastructure still isn't in place. You can get a lot more detail about it here, but the bottom line is that while it was a great idea, the phone companies just decided to ignore their responsibilities once they got their money, and nobody did anything about it! It's as if you bought a car, made your payments every month, and never got the car!
MetroNetIQ Has a very good Declaration of Independence for Broadband Connectivity which you should read if you get some time. I truly believe that were it not for the interference and lobbying on behalf of telecoms, free municipal wireless broadband would be popping up everywhere. I'll say it again: the increasing trend of big companies to stifle innovation in the name of profit is pissing me off.
It's the PHONE company.
Maybe I've just been around too long, but this is business as usual for these guys. Since the memory of the average voter is on the order of a week and a half, I don't think it's going to change anytime soon.
That is, of course, unless you know some 30-somethings who care to do something about it.