Every telecomm company is as big a corporate welfare bum as you could ask for. Try to imagine what it would cost at market rates to go around to every house in every town in every country and pay for the right to block traffic and dig up roads and erect poles and string wires and pierce every home with cabling. The regulatory fiat that allows these companies to get their networks up and running is worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars.If phone companies want to operate in the free market, then let them: the FCC could give them 60 days to get all their rotten copper out of our dirt, or well buy it from them at the going scrappage rates. Then, lets hold an auction for the right to be the next big telecomm company, on one condition: in exchange for using the publics rights-of-way, you have to agree to connect us to the people we want to talk to, and vice-versa, as quickly and efficiently as you can.
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About Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow was a contemporary British british writer. Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of its licences for his books. Read more on Wikipedia →