AT&T said it will continue to offer its 'Access from AT&T' plan " which provides 100 Mbit/s speeds for $30 per month " even after the US government's Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) ends.

I can't stand ATT but good on them for this. I hope all companies with these programs do this.

In fact that give me a brilliant idea, give tax cuts to corporations who do this. It's framed as a tax cut for corporations so republicans will support it, and it achieves the same end goal.

#19

As a libertarian I hate the idea of the government "making" a company do anything. That said companies get a pretty large free pass often supported by the government largess.

If your company is going to take government money, as most telcoms have and do, then you can't whine when the government attaches strings to that money.

So yes if you are going to get taxpayer funding then you better be willing to run service to all taxpayers, even unprofitable ones.

#22

Most of the libertarians I know don't deny that. It's about 50/50 the ones who lean the might makes right way of thinking and saying that was good and the ones who say libertarians shouldn't hurt others so it's a shameful history.

Human belief structures can and do evolve over time. Just because this country has done tons of messed up stuff in our history doesn't mean we can't do better in the future. A libertarian ideal where we try and live without harm to others isn't such a terrible thing.

We got cable TV by eliminating the competition. That was the only way to make it worth it for companies to dig a trench.
It's the opposite of how Capitalism is supposed to work, according to the Republican/Libertarian mythology. There was no competition, there was no market deciding, there was no freedom of choice.

Yes which is why I have no problem forcing those companies to run a low cost service or unprofitable rural service. There are a few libertarians who accept that we are a long way from the libertarian ideal and try and deal with the world as it is not as we wish it were. Or as it was put more eloquently than I could: "But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world ... aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure."