Practice Management

My cable high speed Internet access stinks of late.  It appears that Comcast has finally started slowing down certain types of content.  In return, they have against reduced service and hiked prices higher into the stratosphere.  AT&T, for whom I have no love loss, has finally strung fiber optic to my neighborhood, and I can replace my cable with their fiber optic.  They have also stopped the requirement of having a land line through the company and a long term contract, so I will give that a try for a while.

Houston, Texas first fought hard to get the right to build a citywide wireless network, and Earthlink has defaulted on that obligation.  It did pay Houston $5 million for not doing what it promised, but so what.  Houston still does not have citywide wireless access.  Forget what this would have done for me, it was planned that all police, firemen and city services would use this service, saving  the  City of Houston hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as a result of this network.  It is beyond me why cities just will not build the wireless Internet backbone themselves.  Remember when cities use to actually build and provide necessary services themselves, such as water and electricity, instead of bidding out work and acting like a giant ATM for big business?

This stuff is just not that hard and, at least in the overall scope of things, it is not that expensive.  The problem comes in that companies have to figure out how they can first make a fortune off of us for the privilege of substandard services.

It is a matter of staying ahead of the curve and remaining competitive in this World.

Google built a FREE WiFi network for its hometown of Mountain View.  It is free to all residents and visitors.  All anyone needs is a laptop or other wireless-enabled device and a web browser.  It truly represents the "power of free".  They are now working to repeat this success in San Francisco.

And now Beijing, China is working to provide wireless access throught the entire city ahead of the Olympics.

Instead, as I reported earlier, we have companies like Time Warner who are trying to turn Internet broadband access into something similar to a cell phone contract, where you only have so much bandwidth, and you pay dearly if you have overages. 

We need to stop this foolishness and oust these thieving companies -- these opportunists who want to treat your pocketbook like their own personal piggy bank.  They are not just inconveniencing me, they are holding back our towns, our counties, our states and our nation.

I think we are just going to have to stand up as a people or a group and purge these companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable that disrespect us and oppose the objective that are so necessary for our competitiveness in this World.