Something big is happening under our noses and very little is being done to represent consumer’s best interest.  There is a fight to control the Internet and the telecommunication industry is doing its best to decide which services comes to you first and which services isn’t worth their time.  The problem is that it is our time and money.

The National Information Infrastructure program of the 1990s, which was intended to bring fiber straight to most American homes.  About $200 billion in tax credits and incentives went primarily to telephone companies participating in the NII program. What happened with that?  Where are our fiber super fast Internet connections at home?  They took the money and gave us little or nothing in return.  The same people that now want to control and prioritize what services travel through their Internet backbone.  And neither Congress nor the Senate is being much help either, having sided with where the money is.  The thing is, I am tired of being used as a cash cow with the Verizons and Charters in my area.  I’d rather own my fiber drop and have ISPs come to me and not being held at revolver point.  How could that work?  Have a neighborhood pay for the highest number of a fiber drop with no bits.  NerdTV rates the amount of bandwidth used by a median U.S. broadband customer would be less than $2.00 per month.  The drop would be over $15 a month for ten years to amortize the initial installation.  Hum, blazing fast Internet for $20 a month?  This idea is according to Bob Frankston.  Bob is best known as the programmer who wrote VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet, realizing the design of his partner, Dan Bricklin.

What is scary is that big corporations are stifling competition and innovations while the rest of the world moves on.  Last I checked, the U.S. is still the place to innovate and make dreams come true but lately it has become very restrictive with buy-outs, IPOs and monopolies.  The way things are going, in another 10 to 20 years we will be behind Europe and Asia.  These companies must stop restricting the market and work again.  The biggest problem in our current telecommunication system is that the big telcos own the copper wires.  Bottom line, they can do, and have done whatever they like. Sure they were "forced" to open up to incumber providers but gave the worse spot in their central office and behind doors, bullied them.  That’s why our bills are still climbing, that is until VoIP changed that situation, at least until now.

This article was greatly inspired by Robert X. Cringely and his amazing articles at PBS.org.

DataQuick released a study and found Southern California housing sales are at 1999 Pace.  Yet prices for Southern California remained unchanged in April, up 6.4% from May 2005.

See here at Calculated Risk’s excellent blog.

I May, the median price for the six-county Southern California region reached $485,000, a 6.4% increase from the year before.  Analysts believe it was to be expected after a two years sprint record growth in sale prices.

The number of transactions that closed in the six-county region fell for the sixth consecutive month even though the total was above the average for the month.

The slowdown hasn’t affect much median home prices, as Los Angeles rose to $509,000, a 10.9% hike as well as Orange gained 7.6% to $635,000, Riverside, with 9.4% to $417,000 and San Bernardino County’s median rose 17.2% to $361,000.  Last month, San Diego prices gave up a year’s worth of gains with $490,000 as a median.

You can read the LA Times article here.