Well Phil, when you consider that Hong Kong gets gigabit speed for $20 a month and Korea gets 100 mb for $20 a month, it is not such a good deal and in fact is indicative of a monopoly that actually hurts people as opposed to say, the Microsoft monopoly. Except this one is based on publicly owned, bought and paid for, phone lines.
Also, more than likely this service will provide a USB modem that is not sharable to other computers. Some of these types of offers not only have a contract but also a requirement for full featured phone services, ala SBC. Actually what they should do is offer a useable value, say 2 to 5 mb, for a competitive price. Oops, I forgot. No competition. And the Supreme Court says they don't have to share if they don't want to. Long live wireless, and may the Internet kill all monopolies. Michael F. Pitsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Phil Shapiro Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 6:47 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [DDN] verizon's new 768kbps dsl service for $15/month hi everyone - verizon will be announcing today a low-tier dsl service to attract dial-up uesrs who haven't switched yet. i think this is wonderful news, especially for families (or households of unrelated persons) with more than one computer. the most important aspect of this news is that it allows persons who formerly had dial-up to now have a phone line open for voice communication while they're using the internet. people need an open phone line for communications regarding work, family, friends, etc. busy-phone-line dial-up has caused people to lose work opportunities and placed undue strains on relationships between family and friends. this dsl service also brings free internet telephony, such as skype and gizmo (http://www.gizmoproject.com), within the range of many more people. increasing the speed of this dsl service will be google's web accelerator (for windows) and firefox (with its effective popup blocking.) http://webaccelerator.google.com) this dsl service will put rich media within the reach of many more people. we haven't yet seen the development of large scale community video being distributed over the internet, but that opportunity is now available using the free video aggregator software called fireant. http://antisnottv.net on the other side of the coin, the year-long requirement for this service could end up being unduly burdensome on a large number of people. we live in a very mobile society. people who most need this service are the ones who will need to move for work reasons or for other personal reasons. (spouses trying to escape abusive relationships, as an example.) being locked into a year-long contract means that not a small number of people will be paying for service they're not using -- at their former residence. a six-month (or nine-month) service contract requirement would be more appropriate. if this is economically not feasible for verizon, they ought to consider raising the rate of this service to $17 or $18/month to make it more feasible for people to use a service without a year-long lock-in. (or offer an option to go with $15/month with lock-in, and $18/month without lock-in.) - phil the giant sucking sound you'll hear in september is the sound of dial-up users canceling their AOL accounts. it's my view that AOL may potentially lose 5 million or more dial-up accounts as a result of verizon's low-tier dsl initiative. -- Phil Shapiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.his.com/pshapiro/ (personal) http://www.digitaldivide.net/blog/pshapiro (blog) http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/pshapiro (technology access work) http://mytvstation.blogspot.com/ (video and rich media) "Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others." - Desiderata _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
