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from the socialize-the-costs-and-privatize-the-profits dept.
Broadband providers have spent years lobbying against utility-style regulations that protect consumers from high prices and bad service.
But now, broadband lobby groups are arguing that Internet service is similar to utilities such as electricity, gas distribution, roads, and water and sewer networks. In the providers' view, the essential nature of broadband doesn't require more regulation to protect consumers. Instead, they argue that broadband's utility-like status is reason for the government to give ISPs more money.
[...] "Like electricity, broadband is essential to every American," USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter and NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield wrote Monday in an op-ed for The Topeka Capital-Journal. "Yet US broadband infrastructure has been financed largely by the private sector without assurance that such costs can be recovered through increased consumer rates."
[...] While ISPs want the benefits of being treated like utilities—such as pole attachment rights and access to public rights-of-way—they oppose traditional utility-style obligations such as regulated prices and deployment to all Americans.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Friday August 17 2018, @01:13PM
I'll let you in on an 'American' secret, but you can't tell anyone: we're very proud of our masses-hating ultra-rich. We work very hard to create and nurture them. It's tiring but very rewarding based on the outcomes, which are beyond expectations. They are the gladiators of the one-world economy. They're achieving outstanding results in keeping the people arguing, fighting, caught up in details, and wasting their lives writing on websites.