I'm paying $35 a month for about 4 MB/s download speeds over a phone line I share with my fax machine. I call that damn good for a phone line, since I remember having to park a reciever in two rubber cups to make a connection. I am probably grandfathered in some way, but the price reduction is relatively recent. Used to be twice that much for a slower speed.

I could do better, at least for speed, but I'm too lazy to reconfigure everything and change all my e-mail addresses and crap like that. Besides, I don't do the kind of crap that needs top speeds. I have plenty of choices. Hell, my parents in a small rural town have two or three choices.

As for the rest: Any of this beginning to sound familiar?

- Everything would be cheap, abundant, and technologically marvelous if it wasn't for those greedy bastards trying to make a buck off of it.

- We can fix this by giving the government more power over the industry.

Lather, rinse, repeat for every known commodity and service.

I guarantee you, Robert, putting technologically ignorant idiots in charge of things is not going to improve anything.

It's worth noting that the countries who are doing better than we are on broadband penetration are all either the size of my back yard, or have most of their population concentrated in a few urban areas.