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His latest blunder is an article in Salon:

Who’s afraid of the AT&T merger?
American antitrust law is a relic of 19th century agrarian populism

I can only suspect that his organization, New America Foundation is just another one who is getting paid by AT&T just like they did other allegedly “left” organizations like GLADD, NAACP, NEA and many others.

Lind gets off spouting things like Anti-Trust  is so 19th century and there is nothing to fear from AT&T / TMobile merger getting more “efficient”. He had a problem getting cell reception at a National Park, so he things “I am tempted to favor any monopoly that allows all phones to work everywhere in the U.S.” That is so not what will be fixed if AT&T gets to consolidate its monopoly. What we’ll get is no more investment in infrastructure. That is the modus operandi of the Southwest Bell DNA in AT&T. How do you think the worst of all the Bells, Southwest Bell, got to roll up most of the Baby Bells back into AT&T? It was by NOT spending on infrastructure, collecting monopoly rents and using that as the war chest to buy up PacBell, Ameritech, Cingular, Bell South, and AT&T.

Have you seen AT&T spending much on DSL in the last few years? They have frozen any new spending that wasn’t already allocated. Verizon has stopped deploying FIOS. When you are an unregulated monopoly with only the illusion of competition from  regional duopoly of Cable TV, you don’t have to spend on infrastructure. Your only cost is advertising and buying off PUCs, state legislatures, Governors, the FCC, Congress, and Presidents.

Here’s what I wrote as a comment to his post:

Totally ignorant about how destructive Telecom Monopoly is

Wow, All I can say is this guy out of touch with reality.

Yes, there are some arenas where there are “natural monopolies” and efficiencies of scale. But they are rarely leveraged for the common good if the monopolist is not tightly regulated or forced to not use their monopoly to control everything touched by their monopoly.

If an entity has control of the an element that really stems from a common substrate, then that entity must be made to operate to the benefit of the community.

In the case of telecom, the monopoly doesn’t come from technology advance, or innovative business technique. It comes from the fact that there is a limited amounts of ways to connect homes and businesses to each other. Particularly in the last mile. AT&T, Verizon, ComCast and Time Warner all inherited their rights of way from when they were regulated monopolies. Those rights were immorally if not illegally transfered from regulated monopolies to unregulated monopolies. They have similarly monopolized the public spectrum but this time thru bribery and regulatory capture.

They have now used those choke-points of last mile to limit innovation (notice how countries with proper regulation and competition have much higher bandwidth at lower costs and bandwidth growth has stagnated and gone up in price in the US since re-monopolization)

And now they are using their stranglehold on transport to control content. The Government jumps in and supports the Telcos and the RIAA/MPAA to use “piracy”, child porn and terrorism as excuses to consolidate further control of communication and spy on citizens.

AT&T should not be allowed to consolidate their control of communications. They and Verizon, ComCast and TimeWarner should be broken up, but this time do it right. Break them up horizontally.

Make the physical plant ether a regulated monopoly or municipal utilities that just do the physical transport. Just like they do roads and water distribution. Then allow a true market of lighting the transport and offering services on top of that. Then we’ll see huge economic, cultural and political innovation, growth and abundance.

The post Totally Ignorant Article By Michael Lind on “Who’s Afraid of the AT&T Merger” first appeared on Cognizant Transmutation.

None! (I don’t count unreliable wireless with less than 1Mbps for more than $100/month a viable consumer broadband offering).

AT&T and Comcast are the “franchised” service providers (I.E. monopolies) for the area and they have no plans for covering this neighborhood.

Areas that do have “broadband” are at 3rd world speeds. Worldwide speed tests don’t even have the US in the top 10.

The US is no where to be seen. But Russia, BULGARIA, LATVIA, ROMAINIA!! Where’s the US? I know I don’t have ANY broadband in my house HERE IN SILICON VALLEY….

My startup’s office is in Mt. View California. Right in the heart of Silicon Valley. The only “high speed” service we could get is 1.5Mbps down / 512Kbps up ADSL. To get anything significantly faster we would have to pay thousands of dollars a month. WTF!?

This should be considered a National Shame.

Its time for re-divestiture. AT&T / Verizon should never have been allowed to reform the Bell Monopoly. Comcast and Time Warner should never have been given exclusive franchises and allowed to grow so big.

This time lets do Divestiture the proper way: horizontally.
The physical plant is a natural monopoly (there is no marketplace for multiple last mile capital intensive physical plants with fleets of men in trucks) and a societal common good (the value to society is high) that can not be paid for by normal corporate ROI. (See the slightly dated, but still accurate Paradox of the Best Networks)

We need to treat telecom physical plant (rights of way, conduit, dark fiber, utility poles and physical meet points) like we do roads, water and sewers. Sometimes called the “LoopCo”, it could be government owned, community owned and operated or be a regulated monopoly that is mandated and overseen to operate for the common good as open access common carrier. The Singapore National Broadband Network has it close to perfect as far as I can tell.

The upper layers can be competitive vibrant marketplaces, enabled by a societal common good physical infrastructure.

This is being done in other countries. Similar concepts are being pioneered in Sweden, Netherlands (Now testing 1GBps!), Singapore, Canada, and Vermont (they keep threatening to succeed, so they can count as another country) as well as many other places even in the US.

The fundamental axiom of Telecom must be Structural Separation: the entities that own/operate the transport layer must not have any say or vested interests in the Content. Some countries are making it the Law such as New Zealand, Singapore, Europe (to some degree)

We can not allow Big Telecom (along with Big Media but that’s another rant) to continue to warp the fabric of free speech, commerce, arts and culture.

Its time to start pestering your Congress-Critters, City Hall, State Legislators and Governors. Create Meet-ups, organize your neighbors. We must take back OUR communications. And learn about those who are making it real around the country and around the world. Tell them its time to break up the monopolies again. But this time lets shut them down for good.

The post National Shame: Swaths of Non-Rural US without Broadband; Time for Re-Divestiture first appeared on Cognizant Transmutation.