On Wed, 31 May 2006 auditodd at comcast.net wrote: > Funny, I've read more than one article that the United States public has > already funded a faster backbone to the Internet, but the Bells took the > money and pocketed it. > > According to what I've read, we should already have 50Meg up/down > Internet connections to those homes that want it for much less than we > pay today. > > The Bells were given tax concessions with the understanding that it > would go towards improving the nations infrastructure, but all we saw > was a bunch of false promises and chest thumping and now they want us to > give them even more money just to maintain the status quo? Time for a > revolution. If that is what happened, the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of legislators. Corporations are very predictable and easy to control, but they don't work by "honesty" or "trust" and they don't understand those concepts any better than a tiger or snake understands them. Corporations work by a profit motive and they will obey laws if it pays them to obey them. Legislators know how this works. If they made a law that gave money to corporations without getting what they requested in return, those legislators were either stunningly incompetent or they did it intentionally. Mike