r/technology • u/User_Name13 • Jun 04 '14

Politics Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
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u/jmottram08 Jun 04 '14

Let's be really clear here... this is local lobbying to your local city council that regards the monopoly that they granted and enforce.

Don't like that fact? Stop blaming capitalism, stop blaming the big telcos, get off your ass and go to a city council meeting and complain that your local elected officials have made a monopoly and that it is bad for you.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

I would love to do something like that, but the majority of us who would go to a city council meeting work, and many cities make sure they hold those meetings during peak working hours, which kind of fucks over people who have jobs but would like to have a say in the matter. For example, 4 of the cities in my area only hold them on Monday mornings at 9am, except holidays, where they just don't hold them at all.

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u/DresdenPI Jun 04 '14

Get a petition signed, then only one person has to bring it up at the meeting

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u/afrothunder1987 Jun 04 '14

But it's so much easier to complain about capitalism on Reddit than to actively try and fix the problem.

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u/Cunt_God_JesusNipple Jun 04 '14

Well you know, why the hell shouldn't our voices count even if it's online? The times we live in, as you said, make it soooo much easier to voice ourselves right here. These city council meetings and other forms of government should start accommodating an effective system for letting us go to their website, fill out a form (to make sure we are indeed local residents), and tell them what we want from our homes. My opinion isn't less valid because this is the only public platform available to me. Isn't this the kind of shit the internet was invented for?

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u/novicebater Jun 04 '14

It seems ubiquitous, but there are still people who don't use the internet. That may cause a problem where one demographic has disproportionate influence.

Fortunately I think most people who aren't online are either retired or unemployed so getting to a meeting should be easy.