Comment Re:So when did... (Score 1) 433
That's the same excuse I see all the time. And it's a meaningless excuse. Subsidies are paid by the government to compel a company to provide goods and services according to certain guidelines, which the company might not or will not do on its own. For instance, a phone company might determine that there is no financial incentive to provide service in markets that are excessively rural, or providing such services in those areas would require compensation from the customers that is too excessive to be considered reasonable. So the government pays them to be sure they provide service to those remote areas even though it's not cost effective for the company. They might even agree to pay that subsidy indefinitely so the phone company continues to provide service to those remote areas at reasonable prices. So now you come along and claim that their infrastructure was partially funded by the government, and you're right. But that doesn't matter. If the government instead agrees to pay AT&T to build a wireless phone network capable of handling 24/7 netflix streaming for 100% of their customers at the same time, all the time, then yes, I would agree with you. But that's not what the subsidies were for, and therefore AT&T has no obligation to provide endless services for all customers at an unreasonably low charge just because money once changed hands for an unrelated reason.
-Restil