Practice Management

We are in trouble as the big three - Comcast, AT&T and Time-Warner - try to turn the Internet into the equivalent of the cell phone bill system.  They want to begin metering bandwidth used by you, and me and the next guy or gal.

One of the problems with capitalistic greed is that once anything becomes almost a necessity -- oil, water, electricity -- some bigwig wants to figure out how to use it to suppress advancement, personal freedom, and the economic livelihood of many by trying to contrive a way or means to charge the bejesus out of people for it.  Boone Pickens, for example, is busy trying to corner the market on water rights in Texas and to submit life sustaining water to trading (like the problem we are having with oil right now), for sale to the highest bidder.  Sorry poor parched person.  You will just have to die!  The big three are wanting to do the same to the Internet, which is as well the lifeblood for commerce now in this country and around the world.

Worse for the Internet is that the big three want to make you believe this is something you can personally regulate by constantly watching how much bandwidth you use for doing things like reading this blog.  Then, just to make this easy for you, they will just charge you bookoos for overages just like our wonderful (I mean criminal) phone companies do.  (SURPRISE!!  I KNOW YOU NEEDED TO FIND THE DIRECTIONS TO THE EMERGENCY MEDICAL CLINIC, BUT THAT PUT YOU OVER THE TINY AMOUNT OF BANDWIDTH ALLOWED AND NOW YOU MUST PAY US A PUNITIVE AMOUNT FOR THE PRIVILEGE).

These companies spend decades lobbying the state legislatures, Congress and municipalities for the right to pipe our homes and offices for TV, then they add on all of these services like broadband, VoIP and security systems that eat up bandwidth, then like that teaser rate on your credit card, they jack up the rates in really unseemly ways.

I find interesting, for example, that Comcast goes out of its way to promote its Internet phone and they encourage you to forsake your old fashion land line, using instead their broadband services to talk "FOR FREE", without the worry of overages.  The lady on the phone just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks.  Then, of course, they are now slowing down bandwidth and broadband to these phone making sure the quality of their phone service stinks.  And, of course, if they start charging for overages for cable bandwidth, you will start paying similar to how you pay for cell phones right now.  So who needs the deception?  Just stick with your cell phone company.  At least you can see how they are taking advantage of you.

Can you imagine being charged just to enter you local mall or shopping center?  Of course not, yet that is what cable and AT&T do.  Like the mall where stores pay for space that subsidizes your entrance, those offering things on the web do the same thing already.  They pay for broadband and bandwidth.  But, like a credit card company that wants to collect from both the store and the borrower, so do Internet providers.  Now, however, they have come up with this insidious scheme that would be like the Mall charging you for not only how long you were in the Mall but how much stuff you tried to take out of the mall when you left.

As well, can you imagine going to the County Fair and paying a good some of money to get on the amusement ride only to be told after you are nauseous from the ride that you would have to pay another large and unexpected some to get off the ride based upon the actual time you spent on the ride?  Yet, that is again what the cable companies and AT&T propose.

I am personally getting sick of this pay as you go economy.  If I want to drive, I pay by the gallon.  If I want to talk on the phone, I pay by the minute.  Texas is busy selling its roads (you know the ones we taxpayers already paid to have build) to private investors that will turn each into a separate toll road.   The water fountains are basically gone.  You can now pay a buck or two for some dead water in a plastic bottle that has chemical residue from the plastic.  The conservatives want everyone to go to private schools that get to charge by the hour.  And, then people complain about attorneys billing by the hour.  How else can you expect to  keep up and to pass these incremental costs onto clients so we can make a living? 

I remember as a kid that the greedsters tried to get you to pay to use the bathroom.  And, now they chant about personal responsibility.  In the meantime, people are hurting, the economy is in shambles for Joe Blow and his family, and the corporate executives are driving a shortage of things like luxury yachts and private jets.  They want us to enter a world reminiscent of Enron.  As far as I am concerned they can all go to hell.

Call me what you want, but it is time we socialize the Internet backbone.  Bandwidth is much to precious to the future of this country to leave it to the greedy Mongoles whose joy in life is to figure out how to break us ordinary citizens by corning a market and then tricking us, deceiving us, and milking us for all that we are worth.

Do not like what I say, then that is fine, but we have to start looking for alternatives to the Big Three.  We have to begin to figure out how to deprive them of financial security so they will think twice about their avarice, their cupidity, and their evil desires.

Below is a video of one of the reports about what is coming.