Optim, Spectr, ...um. um... This is not free market capitalism. These are companies with a stranglehold over their markets. How much longer until the Internet is a civic utility, like sewage?

Does anyone recall the Mbone? The multicast backbone of the Internet now thirty years old? It's how one can send a live broadcast to tens of millions of people for the resource usage of a few dozen (like we did fifty years ago). Tonight's NFL game is barred from broadcast. The quality sucks, obviously, but what an insane waste of resources. The Internet can broadcast live content. It was squashed. Your router accepts multicast but cable blocks it. Instead we send the same signal millions of times over. Perhaps no one cares. Our electric grid pays for this stupidity.