The FCC must be the best friend of all the right wing christians in the US... and Flint cries about the FCC getting more power over the people... Flint turns left!

radio waves cost more in America, that's why we pay 500 times what Thais do for cell phones!

"Obama paving the way for tyranny."

Say what you want about tyrants they get things done.  Not good things admittedly but things none-the-less.

Have to agree with the thread title though.

The FCC is why caller ID is not a standard feature on land line phones, why prices for land line phones are higher than cell phones, why land line phones do not have guaranteed free long distancee, and why you get 1 choice of land line companies in a region.

Cell phones were less regulated at one time, thus the incredible growth for them.

Now that the regulation ban hammer is coming say goodbye to low costs and to innovation.

Actually TP there was no charging money. There was no priority.

There was throttling of p2p users who were using so much bandwidth (maximum bandwidth, 24hours a day, 7 days a week) they were killing other customers speeds.

The service was never meant for server type activities, thus why the court slapped the FCC down. Well that and the lack of regulatory power.

Comcast did it because other customers were being affected.

This I have no problem with.

5-member panels of appointees don't screw with 300 million Americans without sounding out the President first...

Einstein, I think your being an alarmist.

I already pay a divided fee for internet use.  One to the internet provider and one to the phone company.  And both in my state were slammed by local cable and communications laws for giving priority access to those who pay more over those that pay less.  Both Qwest and Pioneer Net (now known as Peak Internet Service) were told, that neither owned the physical cell phone towers or the land lines.  They were both renters, and better remember who owns the cables that run the through the cities and out into other states.

Which is fine, since they complied to "temporarily" improve internet service to all customers, until they can come to some sort of "accomindation" more suitable to our region.

The free market would have taken care of this without the FCC decreasing the quality of this service we all use and increasing its price, which is all the FCC is capable of. If a company like Comcast was my provider and did anything to decrease the quality of my internet service, I'd switch providers. Problem solved. This is completely unnecessary. And pointless. Except if you work for the FCC and feel that you don't get to do enough to bother people. Then it's a step in the right direction!

The constraints of the land lines, fiber optics, and satellite dish systems are currently not up to the task of dealing with 20+ million Iphones, Ipads, Blackberries, and current phone-slash-internet connection communications devices which are currently causing intranet (not internet) traffic jambs.  All that broadband, 3G/4G networking crap has really taken a toll on our communications infrastructure.  All that livestreaming movie watching on your cellphone, movie making camera active programming is all crap that the current american and world community doesn't need.

They already got lawsuits about making the picture screen larger on cellphones so the customers eye strain doesn't blind themselves from squinting.

Let's make a lawsuit forcing companies to make their cellphones...larger... after how many decades they worked to make them SMALLER?!

Seriously though every person making movies with their phones, and there little star trek data pads surfing the net...well...actually made service worse, and that's when "customer complaints" starting pouring in.  And they been pouring in the last 5 years at a good steady pace, with the providers telling the customers.  No, there is no problem, it's working just like it's supposed to.  But the towers that pick up your cellphone, and your wifi that push that info down cables of fiberoptics (very few), and old style phone land lines (very many) can no longer handle the brunt of so much data.

So enters the FCC who got involved, because YOU the customers kept yelling until you were blue in the face.  Dropped connection?  Disconnected?  Conctractual obligations?  So every time you complained to your phone company, every time you complained to your internet provider and didn't get service or proper answers...some of you went to the next best thing for complaining.  Here.  No just joking.  Many customers decided to deal directly with lawyers, and the lawyers said "you'll have to check with the FCC laws concerning communications, and how they can be adapted to your situation."

Meaning the lawyers weren't going to get involved UNTIL the FCC got involved.  Now that the FCC is involved, we'll be seeing quite a few more lawsuits.

Either that or certain phone-line companies will begun to push cities to "pay up" on allowing them to build better and more modern land line connections.

Sort of like, how a fiberoptic cable system runs from washington to california, and it pushes through our city, but because our city didn't pay the entrance fee, we were never connected.  So YES, our city has a fiberoptic cable that "runs through it"...but it doesn't connect to anything here.

Do you? Have a fiberoptic cable that "runs through" your city?  Better check again.

No, I disagree.  They're coming up with new technologies.  But they are not barely touching 1% of those billions in order to add new fiberoptic lines.  That's the job of city contractors I found out.  When I called and started asking questions, I got the "spin" doctors of telecommunications for both AT&T, Qwest and the guys that make the Blackberry.  They may have people that hook up lines, and also provide personel for installation of new cable lines, but they will not do so, until they are given permission by either City, State, or Federal services, to do so.  Which means a City or State government has to hire them to install new communication lines through either the city or run through the state.

Which means you reading up that their spending billions of dollars, on new technology, only relates to new phone systems.  Not telecommunications lines.

The city government contracted them to lay down the network you doofus, and were invited to install.  But the installation fell down to private contractors.  And the entire city wasn't even done.  Go down to city hall and ask to look at the city phone line plan-a-gram.