Be Bold With Broadband Plan, Wired Readers Tell FCC

Wired magazine collected readers' input on the National Broadband Plan, allowing them to also vote on proposals. Editors then took the most popular and significant proposals and added them to the docket at the Federal Communications Commission. Wired.com readers are asking policymakers to be bold. Readers support a model where the Internet's pipes aren't owned by ISPs anymore. They'd rather multiple companies be able to rent the shared lines and compete on service, a model that has worked in Britain. Australia is using a version of that model to build a national fiber and wireless network that will serve all Australia. Or, as one anonymous submitter put it: "Internet cables/routers are 'infrastructure,' and no company should be allowed to control them more tightly than we would allow a company to control our roads, electricity, water, sewage, etc. The Internet's is not an entertainment service." And the word fiber, as in fiber optic cables, proved popular with readers.