Its hard for the average American citizen to realize how much weve lost over the past 4 to 5 decades when it comes to basic freedoms and our right to know whats going on. But here we are today being manipulated and corralled by the most toxic of entities - our own government at the behest of the corporate and banking monsters that control it. Weve lost the freedom to see and hear what we want on TV and radio and now the cancer is spreading to the internet. US freedom at risk from a lack of affordable open broadband internet access by Ed Lyell America is on the verge of losing its last vestige of real democracy-internet access. Big business is taking control of the internet through consolidation and pricing mechanisms that will drive out the little guy, the innovator, the protester, and the student who wants to learn more than what big business wants to provide. Several billionaire families already control the bulk of US TV, cable, movies and internet infrastructure and content. Documentaries on in- equality, the exploitative health care system, and other negatives are not even shown on cable, TV or in movie theaters. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is letting the big cable and telephone companies end open fair access to the broad- band internet pipelines. These monopolistic companies want privileged access to distribute only their content, their version of truth. This reminds me of past governments taking control of their media to en- force fascist views. America is acting more and more like the 1950’s Soviet Union, the 1930’s Nazi Ger- many, and many other countries that have shut down their newspapers, radio stations, TV and other media in order to keep truth and opposing viewpoints from being heard or shared. America is already well be- hind every other developed nation in both speed and affordable access to the internet. Countries like Japan, Korea, and many in Europe have used government tax money, rules, regulations and en- forced competition to provide their citizens with low cost very high speed internet access. The USA is 15th in the world in speed and cost of broadband wireless and fiber based internet. The average American home gets only 4.8 mbps (million bytes per second) whereas world leader Japan is at 61 mbps. Not only are we slower but Americans pay $3.33 per month per mbps while Japanese citizens pay $0.27. We get less than 10% of the speed at 10 times the cost. Four- teen other nations are between Japan and the USA, but even 10th place France is only $1.64 per mbps. (visually/internet-speeds- and-costs-around-world). Thus we can see why the Social Progress Imperative ranks the USA 17th in access to information and communication, behind Canada, Australia and most of northern Europe. (socialprogressimperative. org/data/spi). We also have fewer users than many other countries with Asia having four times more users. (internetworldstats. com/stats.htm) When fiber optics infrastructure was being implemented most countries used government policy and funding to create fiber to the home and office at low cost. The USA, under the mantra of deregulation, encouraged multiple companies to pursue short term profit at the cost of long term access for most Americans. I remember working for a think tank on Denver’s 17th Street and watching 5 companies take turns digging up the pavement to each install a fiber cable to the office buildings. We all suffered from traffic disruptions as streets were torn up, fixed, torn up, fixed, etc. In other countries the government would have an auction or regulations awarding territory to a few competitive companies, and have them share the cost of putting in the fiber. Some governments installed fiber and wireless themselves. Others forced companies to not just serve profitable urban business but to also make their fiber available in rural and poor areas as the US did early last century providing electricity and telephones to everyone. It is estimated that American business wasted one trillion dollars putting in redundant fiber to office buildings while not providing fiber to rural or poor areas. In today’s globally connected world broad- band fiber and wireless should be treated as a public necessity like water, sewer, and electricity. Most of the world under- stands that 21st century opportunity and economic prosperity requires affordable access to very high speed broadband internet. If everyone had a high-speed level playing field we would create more innovation and competition in every industry and region. Instead we have even more concentrated capitalism by limiting access to low cost information and communication. America seems less democratic than the countries that created affordable broadband inter- net access to every home in their country. Instead, America has let cartel-like private for-profit companies take control of the pipeline (fiber optic and wireless), and now the content that will be delivered. In the 1920s when private companies would not provide electricity to rural and poor America, local government stepped up and created public and cooperative electricity companies to best serve everyone. Many cities have been trying the same public solution for internet access but have been shut down by private companies using their political power to pre- vent more cost effective broadband internet un-hindered by big business-controlled content. (bloombergview/articles/2012-02-15/ the-case-for-publicly-owned-in- ternet-service-commentary-by-su- san-crawford) The American public is slowly waking up to the immense power of the world’s wealthiest one percent. Revolutions around the world have used Twitter, Face- book, and other bottom-up media on quality internet pipelines to share information on government oppression of the majority by the wealthy minority. Instead of embracing real freedom and democ- racy our biggest companies and richest people, both Republicans and Democrats, are taking control of America by controlling access to information. Ed Lyell is a professor of Business and Economics at Adams State University (edlyell@amigo. net). The Crestone Eagle • June, 2014 •
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 22:06:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015