[nitrogen]

My first encounter with the Internet was on a 10hr/mo. dial-up connection with a 14.4kbps modem, and I'd been using BBSes before that. I definitely appreciate how far we've come :). Still, ISPs have reached the point where they're holding back technological progress to satisfy their own ends. Municipal fiber projects and independent ISPs often don't impose the same restrictions as the monopoly players, which suggests that it's possible to run a network without, for example, forcing Netflix to pay an extra fee on top of its existing bandwidth payments.

So does the extended depreciation force equipment owners to pay the taxes they would've written off for the extra years if they just disconnect the equipment and let it sit in a closet?

[Nrsolis]

How many municipal ISPs are there? Municipal fiber companies?

Careful. I used to work for a municipal fiber company and they are FAR from being the best group to build the kind of Infrastructure we need. Don't even get me started on the problem of politicizing the communications infrastructure of a city.

The only path forward is for us to get some real competition between the cablecos and the telcos.