Could there possibly be some way AROUND Comcast?

May 19, 2014 12:26 AM

This whole net neutrality thing has got me really upset. I'm miserable about it. I feel like we're going to lose everything. I see the pieces falling into place. An FCC chairman who clearly supports and represents the interests of the major ISPs such as Comcast. An impending merger between Comcast and Time Warner that will make the resulting corporation master of Internet access for 2/3 of the U.S. population. Then the FCCs allow ISPs to offer higher-priced fast lanes to corporations that can afford it. And telling us that somehow you can have a fast lane, without effectively making everything else a slow lane. If you read the proposal, it's absolutely Orwellian: "All Internet traffic will be equal. It's just that Comcast-Time Warner will be allowed to make some websites 'equaller.'" What follows next is plain as day. Maybe not immediately, be within a few years at most, we go from a situation where anyone gets to have a website, to one where it's like having a radio station or a television network. Only corporations will get to have websites. Could there possibly, somehow, some way be an engineering solution to this problem?

Could there conceivably be some way to just bypass Comcast altogether? Something?

I mean at this point, every computer has a radio transmitter/receiver, right? Maybe something using that? The original concept was of a decentralized network. Could we take that even further and decentralize it to the point where every wi-fi-enabled computer is a little local ISP?

Or maybe something totally different.

Small, non profit, community ISPs? A nationwide, non-profit ISP?

What does it take to provide home Internet service? We can send it over the air now, right? Could that be helpful in some way?

I'm sorry this question is kind of garbled. It's late and I'm tired, but I'm so worried about this.

posted by eeby to Computers & Internet