Cringely Details Why Your Broadband Stinks
By David A. Utter

Tech pundit Robert X. Cringely took a deeper look at something we've noted previously. Thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, telecoms profited handsomely from a broadband future that looks like a pipe dream today.

Cringely noted the efforts to deliver faster broadband services were meant to create a National Information Infrastructure at the federal and state levels. Federal deployment amounted to a mixed bag of success (schools and libraries) and failures (healthcare and public safety).

The state level represents where Americans were taken to the cleaners by an assortment of telecom interests. Per Cringely:

All 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia contracted with their local telecommunication utilities for the build-out of fiber and hybrid fiber-coax networks intended to bring bidirectional digital video service to millions of homes by the year 2000. The Telecom Act set the mandate but, as it works with phone companies, the details were left to the states. Fifty-one plans were laid and 51 plans failed.

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