Why Phone and Cable Companies are Evil

As Philly is getting close to finally ink a deal with private businesses to develop a city-wide WiFi network to help bridge the digital divide, the phone and cable companies lobby and scare machines are in full-force. Once again, "studies" are "emerging" advising against the project:

His firm's analysis, which was funded by cable and phone companies that stand to lose customers to the Wi-Fi initiative, shows that providing Internet access wirelessly over 100 square miles would cost $31 million over five years. [ Read the Article from mcall.com ]

Of course phone companies are just a little bit scared. I can't say they didn't have it coming. Once residents start realizing that they can pay $10-$20/month for Internet connectivity and perhaps another $20-$25/month to a company such as Vonage, Lingo.com ( my favorite so-far ), or even EarthLink for Internet-powered phone service, allowing them to make unlimited calls to anybody in the U.S., while preserving their current normal phone number, suddenly, paying phone companies $20/month just to have a phone line (no voicemail, call waiting, call forwarding, or any of the stuff you get for free from VoIP providers), an extra $10-$20/month in metered long-distance charges, and $50/month for basic broadband will no-longer make that much sense.

See also: Video Prodcasting, Broadband, and You