[manasecret]

This is a complex issue, and I don't know all that much about it except from the consumer side. But I'm not going to let that stop me from getting my foot halfway to my mouth.

Most broadband internet markets are essentially monopolized by one provider, or at most two. Now, how that happened, through regulation or just plain it being expensive to roll out a grid, I don't really know.

I do know that made innovation in both internet and tv for the past 15 years or so, slow to a crawl.

Recently, though, AT&T and apparently Verizon are rolling fiber optic solutions (for gobs of money). And with it, I have seen by far the biggest innovation in both broadband and tv. With AT&T, I can now get up to some 20 Mbps I think it is (about three times faster than cable I believe), and the tv is leaps and bounds better than Comcast. That is, the visual quality is much better, but also the remote-control to tv-box interface is so much better than Comcast that I would never go back just for the damn interface.

So, I'm happy with the private competition here, and I don't see how the government getting involved would improve things here.

More rural areas, though, and even smaller cities than Houston, who are still monopolized or close to it, I think would love to have government rollout.