FCC Broadband: Whoa!

I'm not sure if I can believe it when reading that a department in charge of developing internet policy and distributing stimulus funds might actually understand the internet AND wants public comments. Could this be real? The FCC has opened a blog and a twitter account to keep us informed on broadband stimulus funding and get our thoughts. I know I have some comments for them.

However, the last update on Twitter mentioned they had just discovered RSS feed ...

"US broadband might now be widely available, but it's slow and relatively expensive. Between 1999 and 2006, the US fell from third place to 20th in the International Telecommunications Union's broadband usage measurements. When it comes to average connection speeds, the US isn't beaten just by Japan but also by France, Korea, Sweden, New Zealand, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Australia, Norway, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, and Germany. And it's not about population size or density, either; Finland, Sweden, and Canada beat us on most broadband metrics despite having lower population density. Finally, we're getting beat on price, coming in 18th worldwide when it comes to cost per megabyte." - - ars technica

"... the market hasn't worked as well as it might in part because there's little competition. Consumers are lucky to have two choices, but even in those cases the costs (in time, money, and hassles) make it nontrivial to switch."

The word they are missing is monopolies.