James,
H&Q's clients are the ISPs, the web-content-creators, the computer companies, etc. They would have absolutely no motivation to put out a "propaganda sheet" as you put it.
By RBOCs subsidizing the ISPs, I mean that they are de-facto subsidizing them by not being allowed to charge them a fair rate for the burden they put on the phone system.
The reason that the ISPs are not profitable is because competition amongst themselves killed their profits. The AOLs and MSNs and EarthLinks and Netcoms , etc , of the world pulled a giant scam with their marketing efforts. They made it impossible for the small ISPs to charge a fair rate.
The average internet user understands nothing of infrastructure and network management , etc , . But he is unwilling to pay more than $20 a month thanks to Netcom. (Netcom quit that business, BTW, after they killed it, paving the road for the porno freaks in the process). $20 a month is absurdly low. It can only be justified with bs accounting tactics like the AOL's and EarthLink's, where they justify their ridiculously high subscriber acquisition costs as "cost to gain market share", with suppossed profits coming along sometime in the 4th millenium.
Short AOL!
Short ELNK! |
