it's kind of wasteful and stupid to suggest running competing lines side by side. but, our regulators have agreed that a monopoly is anti-competitive, so they've forced the line owners to rent the lines out to smaller companies. there are a few quirks to going with a smaller company, but one of the things they offer is cheaper access rates at lower speeds. ultimately, it just exposes how much of a rip-off the major carriers are: how else could a smaller company turn a profit by buying bandwidth from them, then undercutting them on it?
the process of moving down here and switching had me think a lot about it. is an internet line a public good? the analogy that keeps coming through my mind is public roads. we even have the language of an "information superhighway". there are some fringe opinions that disagree, but we mostly all agree that roads should be owned by the public and maintained collectively through taxation. one of the reasons we mostly all believe this is that it provides equal access for everybody. the idea that large companies could take over our roads and start charging us whatever they want for whatever access they advertise is inconceivably backwards to most of us.
it's one thing to stand up against this and argue that things are fine as they are, but the machinery of private property laws is staggered against us. should we not change our perception of what the internet is, it's inevitable that these sorts of changes will take place. what that means is that it's necessary to articulate an alternate vision of how internet lines are owned in order to maintain net neutrality.
