Friday, July 28, 2006

Take ISPs out of the Equation

You know.. I never thought about this in this way before, but ISPs really don't need to exist any more. The Internet is simply a network or networks and the only reason ISPs came into being was that it was hard to connect to this network. They were little mom and pop organizations with phone banks. They would split the cost of their dedicated line to the net across all those accounts. Eventually they grew into what they are today, effectively they connect what's called "the last mile" from their connection to the net to our homes.

What if, as it is expanded on here each city or county were to finance their own public works project to create their own fiber network to each and every home? Give each person a static IP address and just take the ISPs out of the equation? This would level the playing field and allow everyone to do whatever they pleased with their net connection.

It is the future.. Eventually we all will no longer have cable lines and phone lines and DSL lines.. there will eventually be one single connection per household to the internet and it will be super high speed so it can carry phone, data, tv, etc.. Why not remove all that regulation and all that needless overhead of the ISPs?

I proposed (personally) to mayor Rendell a long time ago that the city build a fiber network, connect it directly to the Internet Node in NJ and give access away for free. My thought was that we build a ring and allow schools and companies to connect to it. I'd never thought of doing the whole deal to each household.. at the time it would have been prohibitively expensive.. I think we can do it now and I think we should!

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