Hey, hey, hey who really cares about faster internet anyway? |
In a rare senatorial act, full-time Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio joined with a handful of fellow legislators on Friday in an attempt to block local municipalities from undercutting big telecom companies by providing cheap, fast internet service.
Rubio, who is raising campaign cash from the telecom industry for his presidential campaign, fired off a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to allow states to block municipal broadband services.
The letter was the latest salvo in a long-running effort by the major telecom companies to outlaw municipal broadband programs that have taken off in cities such as Lafayette, Louisiana, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, because they pose a threat to a business model that calls for slow, expensive internet access without competition.
In Chattanooga, for instance, city officials set up a service known as “The Gig,” a municipal broadband network that provides data transfers at one gigabit per second for less than $70 a month — a rate that is 50 times faster than the average speed American customers have available through private broadband networks.
I would say that is a fairly ridiculous position to take for a Republican who espouses the virtue of capitalism and the free market.
And it is really going to cost him the support of every young gamer, constant internet user, and, let's face it, porn watcher in the country.
By the by my daughter has visited Chattanooga and goes on and on about their high speed internet. And because of that businesses are scrambling over themselves to build there.
Clearly Rubio is a big telecom's bitch, and just because he looks young does not mean that he understands what it takes to attract the youth vote. Because this ain't it.
P.S. And if this were not enough Rubio also has a plan to make gay marriage illegal again.