Too much crap...

No, it only prevents them from scooping up US communications, the NSA's actual mandate is to do whatever it wants outside the US, however a loophole in many of the rulings and laws allow them to practically scoop up all US communications. Close the loophole, and hopefully it would solve the problem, however I do not see that happening.

This may have worked to, however when Mandela was replaced, it all went to shit pretty quick.

Go read this http://www.moneyweb.co.za/arch... to give you a pretty good idea of how things are. The current president is a moron. Thabo Mbeki, slightly less a moron, but still a moron.

Mandela had lofty goals, and I truly (as a white person no less, who grew up in South Africa) believe he had the best intentions, but his successors have done nothing but consolidate power and money, cronyism is rife in SA, they are the cause of many of the problems. Eskom used to be at the forefront of power generation and research, and now, they can barely keep the lights on. As of today, they are currently practicing load shedding (think planned.. or in many cases un rolling blackouts).

Until the current parties figure out how to replace the stupid people with those who have the best interests of the country at heart, instead of their own power and finances, nothing will change. In that respect, SA is very similar to the US, voting along party lines rather than voting for the best candidate.

The same can be said for any president. Government moves at a glacial pace at most times. What one president fixes during his term was caused by a president many years prior, and at the same time, any problems the current president causes will take many years for the next one to fix. This is the way it is, and is not specific to Republicans or Democrats, or any political entity in any country for the most part.

Verizon has been trying to shed their wireline service for years. They have done a few here and there, using Reverse Morris Trust (basically a way to fuck the company buying VZ's assets, and the constituents... Frontiernet has screwed up everything they have touched)

The timing just coincides with the FCC ruling, and a great opportunity for VZ to talk out of it's collective ass

My guess is that existing contracts will remain in place till they expire.

WTOP actually has been running ads from both sides of the argument. They are somewhat impartial (for now).

Well, that can be a little ambiguous. For example, The Pirate Bay (yes we all know 99% is illegal content), it provides a service, that has legal uses, albeit very very small. So blocking a legal service with illegal content might not fly. The fact that TPB is not in the US might make things difficult, since as long as the service complies with requests to remove illegal content (even if they are slow about it), it is still technically complying with requirements of a legal service, and therefore should not be blocked.

I guess we will see.

You do realize that is what he is trying to do... Give you, and your neighbors the choice and opportunity to build your own (well vote to have someone build it for you) broadband network. The reason he is getting involved is that there are about 20 or so states that have laws on the book, written by the telecoms themselves, that outright ban cities, counties, municipalities, etc from building out there own network should the populace decide they want to, or puts restrictions in place that make is almost impossible to build out the network. These are protectionist laws for the incumbents, and removes YOUR choice, which you are bitching about.

Do a little research before making stupid statements, otherwise you look just like the me to people who vote straight down party lines regardless of how stupid their party is (that goes for both sides).

You do realize that Franchise Agreements are not necessarily bad. They are typically a double edged sword, both protecting consumers in that locality, but also providing (in some cases stupidly long term, 1 VA area did a 100 year agreement) a monopoly to a particular content/broadband provider.

VZ, ATT and Comcast have all lobbied the crap out of those localities, and gutted the franchise agreements, removing requirements like they have to wire up the entire area, and removing consumer protections such as limiting price hikes.

So eliminating them might not be the answer, better enforcing them when they are signed and making sure they are not stripped of any meaningful content that does not benefit the telco would be a good start.

As much as I hate Verizon (and I do really hate Verizon, but not as much as I hate Comcast), Verizon offers fixed LTE (http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/lte-internet-installed/) It's not cheap mind you, but it at least uses the same network and bands as their LTE phones, so if you get LTE phone service from VZ where you live, you should be able to get their home LTE service.

Or maybe he runs a server, or maybe he is a developer pushing out udpated ISO's every night or every few hours.. Or maybe he lives in a house with 5 roommates who all constantly play games and stream movies...

Or maybe, he just works from home and transfers allot of data between his home office and his corporate office...

Don't be a dick..

Edit: Damnit, I hate having to reply to my own post, I got the fine value wrong, it was not 45B, I just cannot find the value right now.

Actually, yes, yes I do. Go read this https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

But here is an excerpt from the story in case you are too lazy to go read.

A decade ago, we wrote about how Verizon had made an agreement in Pennsylvania in 1994 that it would wire up the state with fiber optic cables to every home in exchange for tax breaks equalling $2.1 billion. In exchange for such a massive tax break, Verizon promised that all homes and businesses would have access to 45Mbps symmetrical fiber by 2015. By 2004, the deal was that 50% of all homes were supposed to have that. In reality, 0% did, and some people started asking for their money back. That never happened, and it appeared that Verizon learned a valuable lesson: it can flat out lie to governments, promise 100% fiber coverage in exchange for subsidies, then not deliver, and no one will do a damn thing about it.

Same exact promise in NJ, Verizon backed out of that as well, and managed to avoid a 45B fine http://www.dslreports.com/show...

Oh hey, look, NY City has the same problem... http://www.theverge.com/2013/1...

So yes, I do expect Verizon to wire every single household in a particular area. They made billions of dollars on tax breaks, cities, counties and states gutted consumer protections and franchise laws to appease the likes of Verizon, ATT and Comcast, and those companies turn around, and screw the residents.

This is because the way the telecoms provide coverage data, which the FCC has typically been too scared to challenge because of the revolving door of politician to telecom employer (pretty much every FCC head has joined a major telecom, or telecom related lobby after leaving office for a shit ton of money), and they don't want to rock the boat.

Surprisingly, the current FCC head appears to have a pair of balls... although they are small, at least he is doing more than anyone else ever has.

As for why the offerings appear better than they really are. The telecom industry counts an entire zip code as being serviced as long as 1 property in that zip can get service from a particular ISP. Obviously there is usually more than 1 property getting service, but the telecoms typically cherry pick the most profitable areas in a zip, and provide them with service, and leave the rest to rot. in some cases that means maybe 25 to 50% of a zip will have actual service, but the in the numbers game, the entire 100% is counted as being serviced.

It makes things look really rosy, with lots of competition which in reality is non existent. The ISP's protect there actual broadband deployment data secret, even from the feds claiming it would harm their ability to operate. To some extent that would be true, seeing as the gov would see what is truly happening, and that would allow smaller communities (which these laws currently ban) to build out their own infrastructure.

As for all the others in the entire thread claiming this is about the gov running the internet, well, that is typical political posturing. This has absolutely nothing to do with gov control.