I'm so glad the concept of "dial tone", video or otherwise, never crossed the demand for and rollout of content-neutral, flat-rate-billed, backbone-peering-supported Internet Service.
Having worked in voice telecom billing for 11 years, it is my observation that phone companies adore detail billing. Imagine an ISP bill which details all the websites you visit, and bills each visit according to some value the phone company might opaquely ascribe. It might have gone that way with a thankfully unimplemented evolution of the amorphous notion of "video dial tone".
Had this $200 billion boondoggle actually given us megabit access, then it would be... access to what, exactly? I can't imagine phone companies providing access to the flat-rate, always on, servers-allowed, content-neutral Internet we have now, no matter the bit rate.
The thought of all phone companies collectively coming up with a service like Netflix is, to me, as unimaginable as the thought of those same phone companies coming up with the iPhone.
Yes, $200 billion is a shameful waste of ratepayer funds and a regulatory failure. But thankfully, it neither collared nor crossed with the Internet.
In my opinion, separation of ownership of content (and applications, and platforms, and end users) from the common carriers who own some of the "plumbing" which connects routers to routers to routers becomes fundamental to a free Internet.
Having worked in voice telecom billing for 11 years, it is my observation that phone companies adore detail billing. Imagine an ISP bill which details all the websites you visit, and bills each visit according to some value the phone company might opaquely ascribe. It might have gone that way with a thankfully unimplemented evolution of the amorphous notion of "video dial tone".
Had this $200 billion boondoggle actually given us megabit access, then it would be... access to what, exactly? I can't imagine phone companies providing access to the flat-rate, always on, servers-allowed, content-neutral Internet we have now, no matter the bit rate.
The thought of all phone companies collectively coming up with a service like Netflix is, to me, as unimaginable as the thought of those same phone companies coming up with the iPhone.
Yes, $200 billion is a shameful waste of ratepayer funds and a regulatory failure. But thankfully, it neither collared nor crossed with the Internet.
In my opinion, separation of ownership of content (and applications, and platforms, and end users) from the common carriers who own some of the "plumbing" which connects routers to routers to routers becomes fundamental to a free Internet.
(Edits for grammar, clarity, tone)