[Cu-wireless] southern Illinois

[Mike Lehman]

Mark,
Thanks for the rundown on the sad state of the Internet in one of the
places where it was born. Maybe Susan won't feel quite so left out when
she hears that we're pretty much stuck in the same boat as she.

I have been getting solicitatiosn for months now from both my ISP,
Earthlink, and the telco, SBC-Ameritech, saying that I should "Sign up
for DSL service now!" Sadly, it's a rather stupid joke on the consumer.
They repeatedly tell me they can't deliver. Then why all the
solicitations? Other than keeping the lowlifes in their marketing
departments in a job (when the bums should be thrown into jail for
consumer fraud), well, SOMEDAY, when they are in the mood, we _might_
get DSL.

I asked someone I know on the city council here in Urbana why the city
shouldn't be more involved in pressuring these bums to give the public
some service. She said that they are counting on CU-Wireless to do that
(I suspect because the feds have made sure that no one can hold what
used to be considered utilites accountable for their lack of service.)

PROGRESS (defined in our modern America) is when you remember hearing in
the good 'ol days that those poor people in the Soviet Union had to wait
years to get telephone service...and then the government spied on you
through it. And that's why our system was superior to theirs. Now that
capitalism has (supposedly) triumphed and history has ended, we have to
wait years to get a DSL connection...and then the corporations spy on
you through it to be sure you aren't "abusing" their terms of service.

The more things change, the worse they get for ordinary consumers. Screw
deregulation.

Keep up the good work. We're looking forward to wireless on our block
ASAP.
Mike Lehman

Illustrious niteshad wrote:
SNIP
> Unfortunately, the telecommunications companies are not rolling out
> and marketing DSL (particularly the _very_ cool Symmetric DSL,
> typically sold as "business-class DSL," more on this later) very well
> at all.   Now that I stop and think about it, I'll say this about
> _all_ current Broadband ISPs and technologies.  My particular beef
> with them is that, with the exception of "business-class" SDSL--which
> costs on the order of $200/month, all of the broadband offerings in
> Champaign-Urbana are crippled in various ways.
SNIP