wnes, you are the one who got uptight and said you were done with this thread. Scroll up and see for yourself. I don't have faith in cable industry's self discipline and its concerns for consumers, that has nothing to do with this. The question is what regulation the government should pursue, and evidence shows that broadband linesharing is bad for consumers. Scroll up and see for yourself. Yes, of course FCC should, and will continue to provide oversight. The question is what KIND of regulation it should have. Closed broadband has worked better for consumers! It isn't really that complicated, wnes. Stop trying to make this into a black and white issue. If you were head of the FCC I think we'd have the dumbest policies because you would always listen to consumer advocate groups and always think businesses are "evil."
Alright, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Hehe, kidding! Anyway, I'll D&D with you on this after I have some fun. BTW, happy July 4th! Any enjoy liberty while you can.
Digital (TV) is NOT the brainchild NOR the sole proposition of cable company. iControl to order movie? Wow, what a revolutionary and exclusive technological advance cable company brings to home entertainment! Perhaps the cable company in your area is more benevolent to its subscribers - a model corporate citizen? Please do share with us a feel-good story or two about your cable company if you have one. In my area where Time Warner Cable reigns, flexibility/choice in TV programming package is the last thing one can hope. With cable subsription, if I want to order a pay-per-view or simply have just a premium movie channel, for instance, I have got to have 1) basic tier plus 2) standard tier plus 3) digital tier to begin with, total cost >$55/mo. With satellite (Dishnetwork), I can just pay whatever premium channel(s) I want to watch and don't have to subsribe to anything else. Then again, if one truly enjoys the "bundled" programming package the cable company provides with no real discount, then one certainly deserves all the craps. I am not saying, though, that satellite is better than cable in every aspect of TV programming - the middle-tier packages Dishnetwork puts together are not more appealing to me than what cable provides, although still cheaper. Now back to home broadband service. When cable modem first came out in my area about 6 years ago, I was told that I needed to have cable TV subscription. Time Warner has since dropped that requirement but it has nonetheless ripped me off for a number of years. The internet broadband service it provides is mediocre at best. The large fluctuations in available bandwidth can sometimes be undesirous. The disruptions and delays in transmission I have experienced still occur too often. I don't know how long you have had cable modem service to sing its praise, but for last the 5.5 years I have NOT noticed much improvement on my broadband connection with cable modem. The claims by cable industry that without federal regulation and the fear of lending its proprietarized cable lines to outside ISPs that cable companies and their partners can invest more to improve residential broadband services are bogus at best. No matter how much cable companies invest (which is itself a big question), as long as they rely on their existing TV coaxial copper cables for internet transmission, there is not much more they can do to improve the bandwidth, since it has approached its capacity. Can you imagine cable companies rewire their network infrastructure with fibre optics? On the other hand, allowing outside ISPs to compete for residential broadband services doesn't mean to preclude these smaller companies from contributing to the improvement of the infrastructure. If they are unwilling to pay a fair share of the cost, FCC can "force" them to do, and cable companies will then have legitimate reasons to deny their access to the hardware.
