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If you are paying close attention to discussions about broadband policy, you may have come across Fred Pilot's reminders that competition is not a cure-all for our Internet access woes across the United States. The blogger and author joins us for episode 196 of Community Broadband [no-glossary]Bits[/no-glossary].
Fred Pilot's new book, Service Unavailable: America's Telecommunications Infrastructure Crisis, discusses some of the history behind our current challenges and proposes a solution centered around federal funding and cooperatives.
We discuss the switch from telecommunications as a regulated utility, to which everyone was guaranteed access, to a system relying on competition, in which some people have many choices but others have no options. We also discuss the merits of a national solution vs encouraging more local approaches with federal financial assistance.
Fred's blog is Eldo Telecom and you can follow him on Twitter.
Read the transcript from this show here.
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Thanks to Kathleen Martin for the music, licensed using Creative Commons. The song is “Player vs. Player.”