(M)an: Dude! None of the major American television networks,
noncable and cable, broadcast the entirety of the President’s barely 20-minute
speech in San Francisco, California yesterday. Even MSNBC chose to preempt it
with commentaries about Iran and what took place in Geneva, Switzerland early
Sunday morning.
(D)ude: Man! I tuned into CSPAN after being fortunate enough
to have become cross with MSNBC the last time they preempted the President’s
address.
M: Dude! And then there’s the term of the week that the
political commentators have latched onto since Sunday. They are saying that
immigration reform is a quote unquote distraction from what’s happening
elsewhere in the world, specifically Iran.
D: Man! I’ll tell you what I’ve come to realize since my parents’
broadband services through AT&T U-Verse have been interrupted off and on
now for over two weeks. Government intervention is necessary to balance the
scales in favor of the customers. My parents’ home business and office has been
nonfunctioning for almost three weeks because of the lack of quality in
services provided by AT&T.
M: Dude! You’re mother called me by cell phone yesterday to
inform me that the electric company blamed the power outages in the
neighborhood to the change in weather and the onset of winter. It reminded us
of how your parents’ power was turned off abruptly by Reliant Energy four years
ago.
D: Man! The guy from Reliant Energy did not even acknowledge
our inquiries and inconsiderately went about my parents’ back porch like he had
every right to enter the property and carry out whatever instructions Reliant
Energy had given him.
M: Dude! You called Reliant Energy and they placed the blame
upon your parents’ shoulders initially and then apologetically admitted later
on that their guy had mistakenly turned off the electricity at the wrong
address.
D: Man! And now AT&T is giving my parents free movie
channels for the duration of November only, but the phone line and the Internet
and the television all are still lacking clarity and there is no certainty that
AT&T U-Verse will remain throughout the evening and into the night. All the
services go dead around 7 PM.
M: Dude! I read an article in the November 2013 AARP
Bulletin that reminded me of the unfair practices that are exercised against
everyday Americans because of this privatizing of services like broadband in
the homes of self-sufficient folks like our parents.
D: Man! Lawyer and writer Robin Gerber contributed a story
about Sharon Green, the 68-year-old great-grandmother who was evicted from her
government subsidized apartment unit by the private company who managed the
apartment complex. Right?
M: Dude! Yes! A divorcee with an independent exuberance that
defies all the stereotypes of how women age and the elderly interact within
their community, Sharon Green chose to setup tent in a local campsite and step
up to the hurdles placed before her by Anchor Pacifica Group, the private company
that evicted her, without a concrete reason why, in 2009.
D: Man! Robin Gerber sums up the private sector versus
government intervention debate clearly and succinctly on page 28 of the AARP
Bulletin, Anchor Pacifica argued that, as a private company, it had no duty to
give cause for an eviction and that only a government entity is required to provide
the due process that [Sharon] Green requested.
M: Dude! Professional accountability is what is in peril
right now in the United States of America. There is no competition in the
broadband services market, at least not the kind we would like to have. In
order for US to move forward with fortitude, we’ve got to start with the
monopolistic highway of loopholes that Cisco, Motorola, AT&T, and others
have built into the simplistic equation of providing Broadband WAN, or Wide
Area Network. According to Harry
Newton’s Telecom Dictionary [1999], Broadband WAN is essentially a
transmission facility providing bandwidth greater than 45 Mbps (T3).
D: Man! Professional rascality is what we’re facing! Fiber
optic cable is better than copper and far more capable of handling the rigors
that these telecommunication companies claim their transmission services cannot
handle due to extreme weather conditions. The next several generations of
insight into fiber optics is here, but in the hands of the private companies
that patent practically every nook and cranny they discover in their daily logistics.
M: Dude! According to Harry Newton’s Telecom Dictionary [1999],
T-3 is the North American Standard for DS-3, or Digital Signal Level 3.
Capable of handling 672 voice conversations, T-3 runs on fiber optic or
microwave transmission media, as twisted pair [two insulated copper wires
twisted around each other to reduce induction (thus interference) from one wire
to the other. The twists, or lays, are varied in length to reduce the potential
for signal interference between pairs] is not capable of supporting such a high
signaling rate over distances of any significance. Running on fiber, it is
typically called FT-3. Both Bill Gates and George Lucas have T-3 lines coming
into their houses.
D: Man! Fiber optics is here and the wealthy think they are
entitled to such a services while overlooking that people like us are in need
for our families to remain in touch and in safety. My parents fall asleep with
their iPhones and iPads charged thoroughly since the phone goes dead in the
evening and remains dead throughout the night and next day.
M: Dude! What if the electricity were to go out?
D: Man! I don’t know. My parents use the light emitted by
their Apple devices as a flashlight with which to maneuver in the dark.
M: Dude! It’s criminal to keep an entire community, like my
parents’ neighborhood, out in the dark without a decent land line or access to
the their television and Internet. With global warming’s devastating onslaught
of terrible storms and catastrophes like earthquakes due to nearby fracking facilities,
we deserve justice.
D: Man! And my parents are paying AT&T over $3,000 annually
for keeping them in the backwoods through refusals to install fiber optics!
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