The major incumbents do not want fast low-latency broadband. It will cut into their profits. Right now they make 15.99/month of a me for basically doing nothing. That's what I pay for most basic land line in order to have DSL from my ISP. The only time I hooked a phone up to it was to figure out which phone jack to plug my dsl modem into. My DSL provider also has to pay AT&T $20 for access to provide my DSL. So, of the $40/month I pay for DSL, AT&T gets $35 and my provider gets $5.
For my cell phone I pay $49.99. I suppose I only need the phone minutes because my carrier requires it. So I got the minimum. Why it costs $10/month for unlimited texting is beyond me considering I have "unlimited" internet for the same amount. Why can't I just get a mobile phone with unlimited internet and use that for voice, data and text? Why does it need to be split up? Oh, I forget profits.
And for those who think well it's just all capitalism and AT&T has to recoup the costs of maintaining their infrastructure let me tell you a story.
I work for a public access television station and when Uverse came to town I was involved with getting our signal on to their system. The process went like this:
- Conference call with four AT&T reps. They spent the first 15 minutes gabbing a bunch of marketing crap about the Uverse system. I asked them what this had to do with getting our signal to them and could we please talk about that. They remarked "I didn't realize your time was so important". Apparently theirs isn't but we had four reps from our end and I sure didn't want to waste a bunch of time.
- Then we had a site visit. Three reps in stinky leather jackets who could easily be mistaken as Mafioso. They took a bunch of pictures and asked a bunch of lame questions.
- Then we had yet another conference call with four of the reps to make sure we did everything required as determined by the site visit.
- They then sent out an installer for a T1 line. Not once but twice. The installer had absolutely no clue they were installing the T1 on behalf of AT&T not us. I didn't order it. I did not care. He kept handing me cards and telling me where the POE was. I threw the cards away. Not my responsibility.
- Finally the day of installation came. Two techs and their manager drove up 350 miles from LA in two separate vehicles to install the equipment. All eight rack spaces of it. Took them all day.
Contrast this with how Comcast got our signal:
- Head end tech calls me to make an appt to install the equipment. Five minute call.
- Head end tech arrives with one rack space unit hands it to me and says plug audio in here, video in there and the fiber in here. Then leaves.
- I spend 15 minutes racking the unit and the job is done.
