Let them have dialup

From S. Meinrath's recent post on broadband (cause what's more fun than a summary of a summary):

In the US, we pay 10-25 times more for broadband than users in Japan (per megabit).

Residential connections in France and South Korea (where I hear, gaming is a spectator sport and some have corporate sponsorship) are 10-20 times faster than they are in the US.

98% of the residential and small-business broadband market is cable and DSL providers.

(So it seems that fewer of us are paying more to get less and currently things are structured such that there is little market pressure to change that. And the FCC seeems eager to keep it that way.)

60% of households with income above $150,000 have a broadband connection
10% of households with incomes below $25,000 have a connection.

(I wonder what the numbers look like in the $25,000 - $150,000 income bracket ...)

Some may argue that you need to protect fledgling industries from destructive outside forces. If this is the case, that without protection Comcast and SBC are going to price themselves out of business, well, that is very sad indeed. But it does seems kind of unlikely.