# Critical Sarcasm for the knees

# Old Ass Sudotask

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## On the internet becomming a utility

Why regulate the Internet? Especially as a utility. It is doubtful many people even knows what this means.

It is entirely possible that the Internet will be fully regulated by the government. Oh, hi ma Bell, ready to come back?

Government sponsored monopoly isn't the only option on the table.

People have hinted at only reclassifying certain parts of the Internet as utility, which may be the best way to do it.

Way back in the days of dial-up we had phone lines all over the country. Anyone who wanted to could get into the ISP market by simply setting up some servers and connecting out via the old phone network. There were dozens of ISPs to choose from in any town.

What happened? Why has cable suddenly dominated the area? More importantly, why are only a few select companies using these lines?

Perhaps that's what we need to regulate; we could transfer all private cable/fiber/etc lines in the ground to the public. The taxpayer would, over several years, buy the lines at a fair market value from private companies who currently have infrastructure in the ground.

The taxpayer would also take over some of the maintenance costs. Any company wanting to use the lines to become an ISP would be free to do so, however like other utilities, these companies will be charged a fee, or a percentage of their profits, for access which will be used to fund infrastructure growth and maintenance.

Net neutrality, as it is, is not the problem. The problem is all the local monopolies that certain companies hold. What makes it worse is that they are sponsored by the local governments.

What we really need to do is stop these monopolies and foster some honest to goodness competition.

According to this article by Marguerite Reardon on cnet, in Austin "Google Fiber ... was announced in April 2013." Soon after this, a local resident who complained of "spotty performance of the 20Mbps connection available through his AT&T U-Verse" was suddenly offered 300Mbps service. All because competition appeared.

Regulation almost always cripples innovation (See: Ma Bell), and bureaucracy is always slow. There are also concerns that the government will have an easier time recording all Internet traffic once they have their grubby paws on the infrastructure.

What do you think? Should we just take over the lines so we can foster better competition? Should we regulate it till it dies of starvation? Will Internet regulation happen and become another failure such as the Affordable Health Care Act? Comment below.