From TFA:

"The best way to resolve chronic network congestion in the long term is to invest and expand capacity. Yet, a review of the publicly available financial document for some of the largest ISPs in the country shows a decline in capital expenditures—the costs associated with building, upgrading and maintaining a network, such as construction, repairs, and equipment purchases—for their wireline networks.Many ISPs are spending less money on capital expenditures now, both as a ratio to revenue but also even in raw dollars,than they have in years past."

Lack of competition coupled with the payment of lucrative dividends by telecommunications is the culprit. AT&T pays 6% and Centurytel pays 7.5%. There needs to be an incentive to redirect the money to modernizing the networks. Maybe a tax credit for re-investing in plant and equipment, or a lower corporate tax rate if the dividend rate is reduced, and the money used for plant and equipment.

As I've said in prior posts, telecom dividends are evil. AT&T pays a 6% dividend, and Centurytel pays a 7.4% dividend. Dividend payments cause the telecom companies to put off upgrading infrastructure as long as possible because of the cost of the dividend payout. If dividends were unlawful or heavily taxed for telecom companies, you'd see the incentives change for the better: More overbuilds and therefore more competition which would drive the upgrade of the cable plant.

Additionally, those companies paying high dividends also treat their customers badly since they have a defacto monopoly or duopoly, and thier primary purpose of existance is to ensure management is overpaid, then pay out highest quarterly dividend possible. This is a perverse incentive. Corporations need to have balanced corporate charters which balance the need for profit against the needs of other stakeholders such as customers and employees.Persuing short term profits and quarterly results versus delighting your customers is one of the things which has ruined this country.

Speed is not as relevant as it once was. Caps are the big problem now for residential service. The providers are offering speeds in the 10's of megabits per second, but the caps are set so low that the service has no value for the money. There needs to be more competition in residential broadband or more regulation if there is not sufficient competition. The only way out of the caps is to order business service in my area (which I have done, but at $119/mo is quite expensive).

Both AT&T and Cox have caps in place for residential customers in my area. Cox has no cap (yet) for business customers.

If it can only be solved by regulation in certain areas of the country, then a moratorium on dividends or a 100% corporate tax on dividends of companies in areas with little competition might provide the necessary incentives to change things. Communications companies pay ridiculously high dividends to shareholders, and I'm convinced this is one of the roots of the problem. This money could be redirected over the long term to build a better Internet in this country, and the communications companies would stand to benefit from it.

There has been talk recently of the FCC investigating the cap thresholds, but that is just going to lead to a court battle in my opinion (at least in the past it has)

If you have registered your domain with Godaddy, and used a third party DNS, everything will be fine. I've found it's better to use a 3rd party DNS as it allows more flexibility in managing the domain name.

If it is something you can do without, then these types of pricing models are acceptable, as the buyer can always say: "No I'm not going to pay that for the product". Examples of products which could be dynamically priced: music, movies, sporting events, airline tickets, cable tv, communications (i.e. mobile phones, ISP's), concerts, hotel stays, restaurants, and theme park admissions.

If it is something which is income dependent, or the cost to provide the service varies with risk and complexity, then a regulated form of dynamic pricing applies. Examples: Taxes, Insurance, Home improvements, Loans.

If it is an essential item such as food, clothing, housing, healthcare, prescription drugs, or energy, then dynamic pricing should be prohibited, and everyone should pay the same price.

What's stopping the credit reporting agencies from getting in to this as a business opportunity?

Say I get disconnected because of infringement from AT&T and sign up for service with Cox. How tould Cox know I was an infringer?

I can see it now... Order up a copy of your "infringement report" for $25 from Choicepoint, Experian, or Trans-union, and fly-by-night outfit offering to clear your record for an up-front fee.

Ah, the American way....

The IPO process is broken and needs to be reformed in a bad way. Company insiders and brokerage houses are gaming the system. They are trying to use the public markets as a dumping ground for new public companies so that the new public companies and the brokerages can "take the money and run" and leave public investors holding the bag.

There needs to be new federal legislation enacted to level the playing field for public investors.(BTW: information asymmetry is one of the things destroying the US and preventing everyone here from seizing on opportunities, but that is a subject for another thread). Public investors need to have the same information that the insiders, brokerages, and road show attendees do. Unless this is corrected, public investors will lose faith in IPO's and the country will be sorry for it.

Disclosure: I own no FB stock.

There are UL, CSA and CE marks which go on equipment which convey "This product was tested and found to be reasonably safe". There could also be a mark which goes in the product documentation and on the nameplate which is recognisable by consumers who are concerned about exploitation of workers. The safety marks require bi-annual inspections of the factory and also the submission of objective evidence that the product was manufactured with all the safety critical components in place. The same thing could be done with the supply chain for a procut all the way up to final assembly similar to what has been done with RoHS

Maybe the EU could incorporate this requirement right into the existing CE mark. If you then wanted to sell your product in the EU, you would have to prove that it was manufactured in a way which did not exploit workers throughout the entire supply chain. This would never happen in the US, though, as the Corps control the government there, and there is a culture of only caring about the price and not about the workers who made the product.

A consumer contract for a cell phone, or other consumer items is a contract of adhesion and is presented on "take it or leave it" terms with no chance of modification. Strike outs will not be accepted as they typically have to be reviewed by a legal team, and the cost to do so exceeds the value of the new business in most cases. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_of_adhesion#Contracts_of_adhesion for more details.

Are you willing to run a business where you can't fire someone at-will? Most of those countries have stricter employee protection laws. In fact, only the US (49 of 50 states) has at-will employment. Also most of the countries you mention have single-payer health care and high taxes because of it.

If you are programming in Maple or Mathematica, then you are worth more than $80K/yr as you likely have a Masters or a Doctorate in Engineering or Applied Mathematics. These guys are a rare resource. As soon as something better comes along and/or the economy improves, you'll lose your talent if you aren't careful.

Some businesses and people may leave. It's their loss. There will always be businesses who will remain in California because a significant portion of the best talent available will not live anywhere else for a number of reasons.

No, but as an employee I am enjoying section 16600 of the California Business and Professions Code.
California is one of two states where this employee friendly law is on the books. The other is Oklahoma.
Never ever let employers take advantage of you.

Yes, that is the way it should work. Consideration for signing the non-compete should not be a condition for future or continued employment. The consideration should be that if the non-compete clause is invoked, the company must pay a salary for the duration of the non-compete or until the ex-employee has found a non-infringing job at a comparable salary with another employer. The financial incentive of this approach will make the old employer help the released employee to find a non-infringing job to cut down on the salary expense. And the released employee can't milk the system for the duration of the non-compete. This would also stop the practise of non-competes being required for all employees.

Beck/Limbaugh alert: This thinking would be viewed as "socialist" and "un-american" by the brainwashed conservative masses.

Given our federal government and constitution was designed to protect the "opulent minority" this would never see the light of day. One possibility is the Article 5 Constitutional Convention, but 38 states would have to tell Congress to call a convention, and Congress will probably ignore the request unless we are the brink of a second civil war. You can try voting out all the incumbents, but since the campaign finance law has been invalidated by the Supreme court, you'll just end up voting someone else in who is a puppet for the opulent minority. The constitutional framework to protect the "opulent minority" is what needs to be rebalanced as the playing field is not level. Back when the framers designed the constitution, it probably had to be done this way. I'm not advocating a "pure democracy". A pure democracy probably would not work today either, but our current constitution is in dire need of some revisions.