Internet Being Considered a Right Instead of A Privilege

Pro has clarified his position somewhat, focusing on those Americans who desire broadband but cannot get it. Based on Pro's language, I assume this means those who do not have service available at their home. As I've shown, the number of Americans in this category is around 2.9 million. I have also shown that this number is shrinking. Pro states "I believe that people should be entitled to their wants and desires in this country". I would ask, why? What entitles you to these things? It seems Pro's answer would simply be that these companies have the money, therefore it should be given to them. This debate has become a question of moral obligations centered around wealth redistribution. Pro also states these companies are "drowning in billions". Let's take a look at Comcast, the largest cable and Internet provider in the United States. Comcast currently has $9 billion in cash (1). However, they also have $17 billion in short term liabilities and $96 billion in total liabilities. Note also that Comcast's cash holdings in the recent past have been closer to $2 billion. Comcast is a publicly held company, with 2.6 billion shares outstanding. That comes to $3.46 per share. This is a reasonable amount given it's share price of $38.60. This cash is money that shareholders expect to get back in the form of dividends and is also used for long term build out of infrastructure. Now, let's say I owned shares in Comcast and was about to sell them to pay for repairs on my broken down 95 Camry. An FCC study in 2010 indicated it would cost $23.5 billion to build out the last mile for broadband (3). Comcast has about 1/3 of the cable market so their share would be $7.8 billion. That's nearly all of Comcast's cash and cash equivalents. Comcast would likely have to discontinue dividends. Share prices would fall. Is there really any fundamental difference between Pro's argument and someone who desires broadband stealing the money from me directly?How would we define the rules whereby it is ok to do this? Certainly this would have to be done be force and only the government could accomplish such a feat. Additionally, Pro does not even address the issue of timeliness. In fact, the FCC's own report shows that the roll-out of broadband is progressing well (4):Since the first cable modem was introduced in 1997, America’s broadband infrastructure has been built almost entirely with private funding. Broadband network operators have spent over $1 trillion dollars to lay cable and fiber, and upgrade network equipment to reach ever-faster Internet speeds. (The report currently defines broadband as 4 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload, but newer networks will are capable of much faster speeds.)Nearly 300 million Americans—roughly 95%–had access to at least one and in most cases two or more broadband providers as of June 2011.Between June 2010 and June 2011, an additional 7.4 million Americans had access to broadband connections, the result of $66 billion in new investments by providers. That reflected a 24% increase in private infrastructure spending from the prior year.Nearly 20% of Americans now have access to broadband from fiber-to-the-home, which today can reach speeds of up to 300 Mbps and the promise, soon, of 1 Gigabit speeds.Despite its vast geography, sparsely populated mid-section and entirely taxpayer-free communications spending, the U.S. ranks first in the world in cable modem coverage and remains competitive on every other broadband measure.The way politics works is you find fault somewhere and you muscle in to gain power. Given our federal governments inability to "police" the Internet by passing SOPA and PIPA, of course they will be looking to gain power any way they can. Long term, I we will look back on this time and say that the internet was the most important tool for fighting tyranny in history. The internet must be kept free. It is simply to risky to allow governments any form of control. And to be sure, he who pays the piper calls the tune.Thanks to Pro for the debate and welcome to DDO!(1) http://finance.yahoo.com...(2) http://en.wikipedia.org...(3) http://www.gwi.net...(4) http://www.forbes.com...