Elizabeth Warren’s bizarre anti-tech billboard

[Zorro!]

I agree with her on this issue. I will never vote for her though. Actually I agree with her on a handful of issues, but still wouldn't vote for her.

Really? Why break up successful companies and destroy jobs? For what?

When they broke up the telephone company, all it did was drastically increase the cost of calling long distance. Nothing good came from it. Nothing.

Why would you support this? For what purpose?

I get free unlimited long distance, Can't get cheaper than free.

That's today. Today, the effects of breaking up the telephone companies are muted.

Using the technology today, a call can be placed in New York, that goes all the way to California, and never uses anything but the infrastructure of the company you are with.

That is now how it was in the almost 100 years before cell phones, and digital transmission.

Before that, everything was carried by copper, from one phone network, to another network, to another, across the entire country.

When the Telephone company was one large company, all those networks were owned by Bell Telephone. Thus it cost them nothing to patch a call across 20 different networks, since it was all their property.

But when they broke up Bell, each network became a separate company, that started charging to use their lines.

Consumers were much worse off.

The damaged done to consumers by the breakup of Bell Telephone was only un-done, by technology.

Consumers were worse of and now they are better off. This is why europe can deliver internet so much better than the US---they actually force competition into the marketplace.

Consumers were better off before Bell Telephone was broken up. They were worse off after the phone company turned into a bunch of baby bells. Prices went up, not down.

What are you talking about? You had to track whether a call was long distance or local, go through pages and pages of calls all charged to the minute, rounded off, and pay tolls by the minute? It was ridiculous

...Consumers are better off today, than they were under the regulation of broken up Bell Telephone, but it is because of less regulation, not more.

Before GWB, the FCC had the spectrum used for cell phones tied up in regulation. As a result there were very few cell phone networks, and the technology was hampered by government.

In 2001, under GWB, the FCC transitioned from a regulation based system, to a market based system.
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~stancil/SPECTRUM_MANAGEMENTv43.pdf

For review and comment – not for quotation or circulation We present this proposal in broadest conceptual outline, without pretense that the technical details have been worked through. We do not claim authorship of this proposal;this transition plan has been put forward by Kwerel and Williams (2001) of the FCC. We endorse this plan as a starting point for a “win-win” transition to the market-based technology-friendly regime we believe we need
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So even the current drastically better telephone system we have today, is not due to government involvement, but government getting un-involved.

Now as for Europe... people tend to lump all of Europe together, and quite frankly, not all of Europe has good internet. In fact, not even most.

The UK is the most often cited example of fantastic internet, but even that is a questionable comparison.

High speed broadband internet costs roughly $56 a month in London. Well I'm paying $41.95 for high speed broadband. That does not seem spectacularly better.

Regardless, the problem in the comparison is population density.

The distance you have from the network provider to your home, will determine the relative speeds you are able to achieve. If you are physically closer to the provider, you will have faster speeds.

Thus, as people are more spread out over a larger area, the speeds will naturally be slower. This is largely unavoidable.

London has a high level of density, being nearly 15,000 people per sq.mile. Whereas for example, Columbus is only about 4,000 people per sq.mile.

The bottom line is, they have to run the internet across a larger distance, to reach the same number of people.

That makes sense.

 

[Bootney Lee Farnsworth]

It looks like there is a huge opportunity for somebody to compete with Google/Facebook/YouTube etc. There seems to be a pretty solid market of dissatisfied individuals who are politically motivated to spend their time/dollars elsewhere.

Oh, to be a young tech guy with a bunch of rich, politically motivated potential investors....

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