The "fatter pipes" lie (Score 3, Interesting)

Once again the lie that broadband content is "overtaxing" and "choking" the internet rears it's head. The "fatter pipes" that the telcos are claiming they need to build already exist and it's called "Dark Fiber". This is due to the fact that building the fiber optic infrastructure is what costs a lot of money, so when it was built, it was built to a capacity many times greater than was necessary at the time and for the foreseeable future. Not to mention the fact that data compression technologies advanced rapidly thereafter, creating even more bandwidth. We are using a small fraction of the capacity of these fiber optic cables and the telcos are trying to extort money from us all for simply putting unused cable into general use. This would be like building a twenty lane highway, allowing the public to travel on 2 of those lanes, and then when it began to get congested, claiming that new fees are necessary for "fatter highways" that already exist.