wow, what. The dude made net neutrality the law of the land, set a reasonable definition for broadband, and made it illegal for hotels to block your wifi.
Much has been made of his lobbying past, but people fail to realize that he was lobbying for small, upstart cable companies in the 1970s. The landscape has changed so much that it isn't relevant now.
The proposal as written seems good on the surface, the issue is it opens up the internet to greater regulation in the future, which could end up being VERY bad for US citizens.
I would agree with you if we did not have such horribly bad monopoly/oligopoly problems here in the U.S. and complete unwillingness by ISPs to cooperate with the FCC's transparency requests.
Net neutrality would sort itself out in the free market if there was competition between ISP's for consumers. I am hoping that eventually last mile unbundling becomes law of the land, which will help in that department.
I would contend that that the current ISP monopolies are already VERY bad for US citizens as demonstrated by the high cost for low bandwidth service when compared to other developed countries. The slippery slope argument is baseless, as anyone fighting for regulation now can always fight greater regulation later.
I agree with both you and ArcticFury. The problem is we have to tred lightly to make sure we're not trading one devil for another. What benefit is it to have more competition if they end up taking $30 or $40 a month in taxes and fees. Or if the government starts to decide that because you are an overweight smoker you should pay more taxes on your internet to comply with obamacare mandates, etc. Again these are all hypotheticals, but the goal is to improve things, not to just starting digging the same hole with a blue handled shovel instead of a red handled shovel.
That second thing is not a hypothetical, it is a bunch of fearmongering BS big time. They are NOT going to put higher taxes on your internet just because you are an overweight smoker, the courts would immediately throw that out as an unconstitutional tax.
Maybe, but I am dismissing the 'more regulations' thing because they said that about the Telecom's back when Title II was pushed on them and it turned out to be bunkus.
IF it comes to that we "rage". People can do that, and internet is something people would be willing to get out of the bed for. Anyway, we kinda need this rules...
And if anyone wants to see how this will play out, look at the history of the telephone. They fought tooth and nail but we eventually got real competition and many thing that phone companies use to charge for are now included in basic service.
It will take at least a year or more before the average user sees any change in this I bet but in the long run its great for consumers.
i really hope they open up Coaxial Cable Lines to Anyone willing to provide service over it. I also want to see more Coaxial deployed. Fiber is great and all, but 50% of the people in my area just have access to skinny telephone wire which cannot support anything over 24 Mbps (in the best possible conditions). most people with DSL only have access to 3 Mbps, and you never get 3, it's around 1, and even .50 during peak hours.
Cable companies are unwilling to run more cable if you don't live in a neighborhood with at least 50-100 houses. They require very high penetration.
10 years from now, i hope that at least 90% of homes have access to 25 Mbps or greater but that's a pipe dream unless some serious incentives and competition happen.
Unfortunately, we won't see unbundling. Wheeler already said he doesn't plan to enforce that part of Title II, even though properly implemented it'd give a BIG boost to actual, real competition in the ISP space. But of course, that's not Free Market, right? *sigh*
There are talks that pro-consumer groups are planning to sue the FCC if they do not apply *all* Title II provisions, especially the unbundling provision, to ISPs.
I am hoping that unbundling will happen sometime in the future, despite Wheeler's comments to the contrary.
This is Netflix/Hulu, etc., versus Comcast/Verizon, etc. The big ISPs sell TV and (more and more) on demand video, so directly compete with the former. They would like to be able to give priority to their own service's packets by throttling access to Netflix/Hulu. They claim that unless they are given an advantage over Netflix/Hulu they won't be able to afford to expand broadband access. So , Wheeler siding with Netflix/Hulu, (according to Comcast and Verizon), will prevent you from ever getting your wider pipe. (As if they were going to jump right on that if Wheeler would have went the other way.)
No, it is not Netflix/Hulu etc vs Comcast Verizon.
The cable company and I have an agreement: 50/5 at $65 month. unlimited data and no throttling of the connection.
Netflix and I have an agreement: $16 / month unlimited streaming and 1 DVD at a time.
This isn't a hard concept to grasp. I need each company to provide me with what I agreed to. Nothing more nothing less.
An ISP that throttles, blocks, gives preference to their streaming service over a 3rd party or double dips by charging ME for bandwidth and then a 3rd party company for the same bandwidth is in violation of our agreement.
If anybody is going to lay down anything, it should be fiber. It's the 21st century. For a time in the early 00's, Fiber was actually cheaper to produce than coax because of the price of copper. It's pretty much a wash now, and there is added cost for media converters with fiber to the node, but they would come down in price if fiber was used more, just like cable modems came down in price (and improved in performance) as cable internet became more common.
Looking forward, coax simply cannot provide gigabit ethernet. Current multichannel/ multistream standards on DOCSIS 3.1 limit it to 600Mbps, which is good, but only for the next decade. Fiber is virtually limitless physically as multiplexers and media converters improve technologically.
Telco's were given billions in tax credits and incentives in the 90's to run fiber in major metro areas, but most of it is lost and unused now because of bad management and merger confusion (purchasing Ameritech, SBC Global, etc) when AT&T purchased companies and halted ongoing projects. Cogent recently purchased decade old remnants of SBC's network here in Chicago for pennies on the dollar for what it cost to roll out, all the the loss of tax payers. But at least somebody is doing something with it...the problem is, Cogent is a corporate ISP with starting prices in the $400 range for 100Mbps internet.
It's just a mess, because it wasn't regulated.
Look what happened to the banks when Clinton deregulated them in 1998-1999. These big companies can be reckless just like Wall Street when it comes to lack of federal oversight, because they're so big, when the do fail, we need them and have no choice but to bail them out.
It happened with the banks, it happened with the airlines, and it will happen with the telco's unless we regulate them. But because of the anti-big-government mentality of people, the United States government isn't "allowed" to do what most other governments do: built out the network infrastructure and license it to service providers at utilities...where the consumers best interest is in mind; ie, high speed and reliability. The flip side is "less security" ie spying that creates paranoia for the tin-hat wearers when their pipe is owned by the government. It doesn't matter who owns it, it matters who OPERATES it.
The reason they do not want to run broadband everywhere is that your coaxial type loses speed over distance. So they only can go so far from a distribution center and keep the promised speeds. Thats the only reason they really have a range issue with broadband (coax). And the fiber optics are very expensive and fragile so they must be buried. making it expensive. But each company is going to pick a city and they will monopolize with fiber, its a race to secure the most cities with google taking the lead. But i have yet to hear of any solution for total saturation of high speeds
High speed fiber often isn't buried. It's run on telephone poles with metal straighteners that look like triangles. You'll probably see some of it around if you look. Having fiber on poles is very common around here (Front Range) anyway.
Actually, fiber is no longer that fragile as low-loss plastic fiber has been available for some time. All fiber also needs repeaters in the network just like coax does.
From those whom I have talked to who actually live and breath in the network bandwidth world, last-mile ISPs are increasing speeds slowly and incrementally, while also opening up higher extremely expensive bandwidth tiers. Classic example would be Verizon FiOS. They have the capability to give every connected house 300 mbps, easily, and have been increasing their overall tiers by about 10-25% every 2-3 or so years, all for the same fiber cable that was laid a decade prior. They have the bandwidth, but are just milking their customers for as much as they can get.
Unless if you live in area with Verizon FiOS VDSL, then you are just completely out of luck. They have publicly stated they will never upgrade them to FiOS Fiber unless forced contractually.
Not to be lost in this wall of words: I like the subtle change from "net neutrality" to instead call it "open internet protections."
This simple change in verbiage may change some people's
perception that the government is trying to regulate the internet.
The people I'm refering to are those whose knowledge of the topic goes only as deep as the headline ticker scrolling across the bottom of their favorite news channel.
Ooops. Apparently the use of a * wrapped in square brackets causes a {carriage return + line feed + horizontal line} to be inserted in the middle of the comment. Harrumph.
The "we won't be able to upgrade service as fast" line is total crap. It wouldn't happen in either situation. Net neutrality maintains competition, especially when the service provider has a competing solution. With net neutrality the service provider will have to produce a better product to pull people away.
Indeed. Nothing about the proposed tier 2 regulation has s*** all to do with anything that would affect whether an ISP builds out infrastructure, improves speeds, or lowers prices. It's an enormous and blatant red-herring.
I'm in total agreement. The approach of service providers is all about charging more without investing more. When voice mail was first offered by telephone service providers, many of them charged more to up the limit of how many messages you could have in your message box. What they did not mention was that the servers that host the voice mail had the same storage capacity either way. In other words, they did not run out and buy more hard drive space just because someone was paying them to store more messages.
Some of the regulation details that haven't been publicized includes: -VPN will be illegal unless tied to your work -Your internet will be controlled via a "whitelist" or "blacklist" approved by the net neutrality act.
I cannot refute it with a citation, but I highly doubt this. As an example. this would mean that people who have remote home monitoring/automation setup through a VPN would no longer be able to do this. If this were the case, I imagine that the public outrage would be extraordinary.
"ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services"
Until "lawful content" is defined. it's all hand-waving.
I don't see how having an open internet requires defining what's lawful content and what isn't. It's one or the other people. You can't call something bad and not ban restricting it, then also say it's a more open internet.
The influence of 'big content" in the FCC's pants?
That wording simply means that it won't punish ISP's for blocking unlawful content.
ISP's will be allowed (possibly required) to block access to known child porn sites that the US cannot take down. That is not lawful content, and possessing it or downloading it is illegal. It's not up to the FCC to define what content is lawful or not, it's up to congress.
The purpose of purchasing high speed bandwidth is to receive high speed bandwidth. This means if I want to sit at home and watch Netflix all day and all night long, I should be able to do just that. Why pay for high speed bandwidth if it is not delivered. If I wanted Dial-up speed that is what I would buy. Cant fix stupid. Don't sell broadband if you cant deliver it.
I live in the USA. I have no access to a land based broadband provider. I live off a paved road. The sunshine does not need to be piped in. The last cable drop is exactly 1 mile from my location. 14 years have past and no additional build outs have occurred, regardless of my and other neighbors plea. I felt it necessary to provide service to my home on my own. I spent thousands of dollars erecting a 120' tower to provide a point to point wireless link. 8 years this worked. I used 900mhz, 2.4ghz, & 5.8ghz free spectrum for the link....all failed after a time because its not protected spectrum. 700mhz or less does cut through all the interference....of license free spectrum. LTE works very well. Verizon was the first to provide access in my area. The cost is however ridiculous... $120.00 per month for 30GB of data TOTAL up/down. They will still provide me with service should I go over 1 byte of the 30GB, but its another $10.00 up to a GB. I have 1 child in his second year of college, another is a sophomore in HS. A family of 4 will blow 30GB easily by the 15th day of the billing cycle. I want equal service provided to my family, as do families in urban areas. AT&T & TWC are the incumbent carriers where I live. They have both received tax abatements to build out their services over the past 20+ years!!!!!!!Time to hold them accountable. Thats our money, hold them accountable.
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smartthanyou - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Given his track record, it is reasonable to assume that if Tom Wheeler supports something it benefits corporations and not consumers.Deelron - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
In this case it's one set of companies vs others, and the consumers may side benefit.mindbomb - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
wow, what. The dude made net neutrality the law of the land, set a reasonable definition for broadband, and made it illegal for hotels to block your wifi.Much has been made of his lobbying past, but people fail to realize that he was lobbying for small, upstart cable companies in the 1970s. The landscape has changed so much that it isn't relevant now.
Kutark - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
The proposal as written seems good on the surface, the issue is it opens up the internet to greater regulation in the future, which could end up being VERY bad for US citizens.bnjohanson - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Bingo.extide - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
It's always open to greater regulation. Always has been, and always will be.ArcticFury - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
I would agree with you if we did not have such horribly bad monopoly/oligopoly problems here in the U.S. and complete unwillingness by ISPs to cooperate with the FCC's transparency requests.Net neutrality would sort itself out in the free market if there was competition between ISP's for consumers. I am hoping that eventually last mile unbundling becomes law of the land, which will help in that department.
Christopher1 - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
We are NEVER going to unbundle the last mile in America. Never. Not unless we get some sane people on the Supreme Court.Frihed - Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - link
True that. It's a shame free market is a lay, as it's not worth for companies to compete with each other.rocktober13 - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
I would contend that that the current ISP monopolies are already VERY bad for US citizens as demonstrated by the high cost for low bandwidth service when compared to other developed countries. The slippery slope argument is baseless, as anyone fighting for regulation now can always fight greater regulation later.Kutark - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
I agree with both you and ArcticFury. The problem is we have to tred lightly to make sure we're not trading one devil for another. What benefit is it to have more competition if they end up taking $30 or $40 a month in taxes and fees. Or if the government starts to decide that because you are an overweight smoker you should pay more taxes on your internet to comply with obamacare mandates, etc. Again these are all hypotheticals, but the goal is to improve things, not to just starting digging the same hole with a blue handled shovel instead of a red handled shovel.Christopher1 - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
That second thing is not a hypothetical, it is a bunch of fearmongering BS big time.They are NOT going to put higher taxes on your internet just because you are an overweight smoker, the courts would immediately throw that out as an unconstitutional tax.
Christopher1 - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
Maybe, but I am dismissing the 'more regulations' thing because they said that about the Telecom's back when Title II was pushed on them and it turned out to be bunkus.Frihed - Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - link
IF it comes to that we "rage". People can do that, and internet is something people would be willing to get out of the bed for. Anyway, we kinda need this rules...Marlin1975 - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Good. version brought this on themselves.And if anyone wants to see how this will play out, look at the history of the telephone. They fought tooth and nail but we eventually got real competition and many thing that phone companies use to charge for are now included in basic service.
It will take at least a year or more before the average user sees any change in this I bet but in the long run its great for consumers.
bnjohanson - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Let me guess.....You're Ready For Hillary !Morawka - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
i really hope they open up Coaxial Cable Lines to Anyone willing to provide service over it. I also want to see more Coaxial deployed. Fiber is great and all, but 50% of the people in my area just have access to skinny telephone wire which cannot support anything over 24 Mbps (in the best possible conditions). most people with DSL only have access to 3 Mbps, and you never get 3, it's around 1, and even .50 during peak hours.Cable companies are unwilling to run more cable if you don't live in a neighborhood with at least 50-100 houses. They require very high penetration.
10 years from now, i hope that at least 90% of homes have access to 25 Mbps or greater but that's a pipe dream unless some serious incentives and competition happen.
Drizzt321 - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Unfortunately, we won't see unbundling. Wheeler already said he doesn't plan to enforce that part of Title II, even though properly implemented it'd give a BIG boost to actual, real competition in the ISP space. But of course, that's not Free Market, right? *sigh*ArcticFury - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
There are talks that pro-consumer groups are planning to sue the FCC if they do not apply *all* Title II provisions, especially the unbundling provision, to ISPs.I am hoping that unbundling will happen sometime in the future, despite Wheeler's comments to the contrary.
Jaybus - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
This is Netflix/Hulu, etc., versus Comcast/Verizon, etc. The big ISPs sell TV and (more and more) on demand video, so directly compete with the former. They would like to be able to give priority to their own service's packets by throttling access to Netflix/Hulu. They claim that unless they are given an advantage over Netflix/Hulu they won't be able to afford to expand broadband access. So , Wheeler siding with Netflix/Hulu, (according to Comcast and Verizon), will prevent you from ever getting your wider pipe. (As if they were going to jump right on that if Wheeler would have went the other way.)ChackoDeluxe - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
No, it is not Netflix/Hulu etc vs Comcast Verizon.The cable company and I have an agreement: 50/5 at $65 month. unlimited data and no throttling of the connection.
Netflix and I have an agreement: $16 / month unlimited streaming and 1 DVD at a time.
This isn't a hard concept to grasp. I need each company to provide me with what I agreed to. Nothing more nothing less.
An ISP that throttles, blocks, gives preference to their streaming service over a 3rd party or double dips by charging ME for bandwidth and then a 3rd party company for the same bandwidth is in violation of our agreement.
Samus - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
If anybody is going to lay down anything, it should be fiber. It's the 21st century. For a time in the early 00's, Fiber was actually cheaper to produce than coax because of the price of copper. It's pretty much a wash now, and there is added cost for media converters with fiber to the node, but they would come down in price if fiber was used more, just like cable modems came down in price (and improved in performance) as cable internet became more common.Looking forward, coax simply cannot provide gigabit ethernet. Current multichannel/ multistream standards on DOCSIS 3.1 limit it to 600Mbps, which is good, but only for the next decade. Fiber is virtually limitless physically as multiplexers and media converters improve technologically.
Telco's were given billions in tax credits and incentives in the 90's to run fiber in major metro areas, but most of it is lost and unused now because of bad management and merger confusion (purchasing Ameritech, SBC Global, etc) when AT&T purchased companies and halted ongoing projects. Cogent recently purchased decade old remnants of SBC's network here in Chicago for pennies on the dollar for what it cost to roll out, all the the loss of tax payers. But at least somebody is doing something with it...the problem is, Cogent is a corporate ISP with starting prices in the $400 range for 100Mbps internet.
It's just a mess, because it wasn't regulated.
Look what happened to the banks when Clinton deregulated them in 1998-1999. These big companies can be reckless just like Wall Street when it comes to lack of federal oversight, because they're so big, when the do fail, we need them and have no choice but to bail them out.
It happened with the banks, it happened with the airlines, and it will happen with the telco's unless we regulate them. But because of the anti-big-government mentality of people, the United States government isn't "allowed" to do what most other governments do: built out the network infrastructure and license it to service providers at utilities...where the consumers best interest is in mind; ie, high speed and reliability. The flip side is "less security" ie spying that creates paranoia for the tin-hat wearers when their pipe is owned by the government. It doesn't matter who owns it, it matters who OPERATES it.
Murloc - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
given that the US have been spying international networks too, it absoltuely doesn't matter who owns and operates a network.Shakers - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
The reason they do not want to run broadband everywhere is that your coaxial type loses speed over distance. So they only can go so far from a distribution center and keep the promised speeds. Thats the only reason they really have a range issue with broadband (coax). And the fiber optics are very expensive and fragile so they must be buried. making it expensive. But each company is going to pick a city and they will monopolize with fiber, its a race to secure the most cities with google taking the lead. But i have yet to hear of any solution for total saturation of high speedsbarleyguy - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
High speed fiber often isn't buried. It's run on telephone poles with metal straighteners that look like triangles. You'll probably see some of it around if you look. Having fiber on poles is very common around here (Front Range) anyway.wiyosaya - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Actually, fiber is no longer that fragile as low-loss plastic fiber has been available for some time. All fiber also needs repeaters in the network just like coax does.ArcticFury - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
From those whom I have talked to who actually live and breath in the network bandwidth world, last-mile ISPs are increasing speeds slowly and incrementally, while also opening up higher extremely expensive bandwidth tiers. Classic example would be Verizon FiOS. They have the capability to give every connected house 300 mbps, easily, and have been increasing their overall tiers by about 10-25% every 2-3 or so years, all for the same fiber cable that was laid a decade prior. They have the bandwidth, but are just milking their customers for as much as they can get.Unless if you live in area with Verizon FiOS VDSL, then you are just completely out of luck. They have publicly stated they will never upgrade them to FiOS Fiber unless forced contractually.
I hate monopolies.
Mikemk - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
If an ISP blocks content altogether, for example, suddenly blocking port 6667 (IRC), would such behavior still be permitted?Mikemk - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Suddenlink*Houdani - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Not to be lost in this wall of words: I like the subtle change from "net neutrality" to instead call it "open internet protections."This simple change in verbiage may change some people's
Houdani - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Ooops. Apparently the use of a * wrapped in square brackets causes a {carriage return + line feed + horizontal line} to be inserted in the middle of the comment. Harrumph.Murloc - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
oh really?I wonder whether you can add reply buttons too :P
Murloc - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
this is clearly a bug, where's my money?eanazag - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
The "we won't be able to upgrade service as fast" line is total crap. It wouldn't happen in either situation. Net neutrality maintains competition, especially when the service provider has a competing solution. With net neutrality the service provider will have to produce a better product to pull people away.kyuu - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Indeed. Nothing about the proposed tier 2 regulation has s*** all to do with anything that would affect whether an ISP builds out infrastructure, improves speeds, or lowers prices. It's an enormous and blatant red-herring.wiyosaya - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
I'm in total agreement. The approach of service providers is all about charging more without investing more. When voice mail was first offered by telephone service providers, many of them charged more to up the limit of how many messages you could have in your message box. What they did not mention was that the servers that host the voice mail had the same storage capacity either way. In other words, they did not run out and buy more hard drive space just because someone was paying them to store more messages.Christopher1 - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
Plus, they get massive tax breaks to expand service and just put that money in their pockets.SteelRing - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
I guess he's not a dingo after all.kyuu - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
But he may still eat babies.wiz329 - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
I've heard the following:Some of the regulation details that haven't been publicized includes:
-VPN will be illegal unless tied to your work
-Your internet will be controlled via a "whitelist" or "blacklist" approved by the net neutrality act.
Can anyone confirm or refute this?
extide - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
I havent heard of anything like that.wiyosaya - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
I cannot refute it with a citation, but I highly doubt this. As an example. this would mean that people who have remote home monitoring/automation setup through a VPN would no longer be able to do this. If this were the case, I imagine that the public outrage would be extraordinary.AnnonymousCoward - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Good decision. This should prevent all sorts of backside deals and politics due to ISPs prioritizing certain traffic.hamiltenor - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
"ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services"Until "lawful content" is defined. it's all hand-waving.
I don't see how having an open internet requires defining what's lawful content and what isn't. It's one or the other people. You can't call something bad and not ban restricting it, then also say it's a more open internet.
The influence of 'big content" in the FCC's pants?
Etsp - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
That wording simply means that it won't punish ISP's for blocking unlawful content.ISP's will be allowed (possibly required) to block access to known child porn sites that the US cannot take down. That is not lawful content, and possessing it or downloading it is illegal. It's not up to the FCC to define what content is lawful or not, it's up to congress.
piasabird - Sunday, February 8, 2015 - link
How about a fine for any website that keeps sending you e-mail when you ask them to stop!piasabird - Sunday, February 8, 2015 - link
How about a requirement for all e-mail to be licensed and traceable?piasabird - Sunday, February 8, 2015 - link
The purpose of purchasing high speed bandwidth is to receive high speed bandwidth. This means if I want to sit at home and watch Netflix all day and all night long, I should be able to do just that. Why pay for high speed bandwidth if it is not delivered. If I wanted Dial-up speed that is what I would buy. Cant fix stupid. Don't sell broadband if you cant deliver it.Antronman - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
Well the FCC did change the definition.Bullettrap - Saturday, February 14, 2015 - link
I live in the USA. I have no access to a land based broadband provider. I live off a paved road. The sunshine does not need to be piped in. The last cable drop is exactly 1 mile from my location. 14 years have past and no additional build outs have occurred, regardless of my and other neighbors plea. I felt it necessary to provide service to my home on my own. I spent thousands of dollars erecting a 120' tower to provide a point to point wireless link. 8 years this worked. I used 900mhz, 2.4ghz, & 5.8ghz free spectrum for the link....all failed after a time because its not protected spectrum. 700mhz or less does cut through all the interference....of license free spectrum. LTE works very well. Verizon was the first to provide access in my area. The cost is however ridiculous... $120.00 per month for 30GB of data TOTAL up/down. They will still provide me with service should I go over 1 byte of the 30GB, but its another $10.00 up to a GB. I have 1 child in his second year of college, another is a sophomore in HS. A family of 4 will blow 30GB easily by the 15th day of the billing cycle. I want equal service provided to my family, as do families in urban areas. AT&T & TWC are the incumbent carriers where I live. They have both received tax abatements to build out their services over the past 20+ years!!!!!!!Time to hold them accountable. Thats our money, hold them accountable.