There is a good story at dailywireless about statements from Bell South and Verizon.
Quote
“During the hurricanes, Google didn’t pay to have the DSL restored,” said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher. “We’re paying all that money.”Says Malik... "If you charge people about $75 a month for DSL and phone service, it is your job to fix the line".
If qwest starts kicking out independent DSL providers, what choice will consumers have? The choices will be between the big telcos. In portland that means just one - qwest.
A participant-owned, meshing wireless system could step up to provide another choice. The PTP is looking closely at the amazing combination of the netgear wgt634u+roofnet. The 802.11 MAC in 2.4GHz space is in general is prone to interference issues from other 802.11 radios and has relatively low bandwidth. Given the installed base of 802.11 and its very low cost, its going to be with us for a long time.
Other options are an alternative MAC with high resiliency, and better spectrum management. Fiber to the home has amazing capacity and can work as seen in Utah. Home made freespace optics are interesting in that they have high bandwidth and no licencing issues.