[bradford]

This excerpt is sure to provoke some opinions:

> Worst: Government intervention. They ruined the railroads and the phone companies, and now they're after the Internet. It works like this: Something is good, and private companies are selling it and making it work. The government decides it's a "right," and subsidizes one of those private companies to give it to people who can't afford it. The subsidized company soon runs the competition out of business and becomes a sponsored, sanctioned monopoly. The process has started with the Internet under the guise of "making the Information Superhighway available to everyone." It may sound good at first, but it's a bad idea. We may look back at 1994 as the beginning of the end of the high-quality Net.

[nemothekid]

I feel like the prediction came true but without any government intervention required.

[anthk]

That happened with Spain and Telefonica, the state phone/telco company.

Then they opened the teleco sector, prices went down, but then lots of small telecos and ISP's were eaten by the biggest fish, and the prices went a bit higher again (not as high, OFC, until we got a flat rate conn in Spain it was around ~1999).

We still don't have a free local call contract for example. SMS' are still paid, but everyone switched into Whatsapp around 10 years ago with smartphones and you get free calls to anywhere in Spain with an $20 internet connection, but not like the US where you have free local calls without doing anything.

Today there should be some connection for 10 EUR (~$10?) with a slower bandwidth, not everyone nets a fiber conn. And OFC I would declare 56K internet free, forever, with just a land line. Basic for IRC, Jabber, WA, small web pages, goverment pages such as the ones for applying for dates at the healthcare service, (hello Spanish ministries, you should copy the UK one, it runs on any browser) and so on.