Thom Hartmann: Are you being ''throttled'' by AT&T?

Just gimme a second - I'm trying to check my email...

Normally it takes like two seconds - but for people who've used "too much data" - the wireless providers are throttling down their connections - basically giving us dial up speeds. It should take just a few more minutes... My service provider says it's necessary so they can "manage data usage on their network."

So why is it that in the United States - which is supposed to be the best at everything - especially connecting to the Internet - people have to wait 2 minutes for data to load on the Internet? Especially when they pay a pretty penny for the so-called unlimited data plan? The answer is...because our government has coddled the major telecommunications corporations in America for far too long - giving them monopolies in the marketplace. And with no competition - consumers are screwed - having to choose between one plan that costs too much and one plan that's far too slow - or both too slow and too costly. Without competition - there's no real drive in America to produce faster connection speeds at lower costs.

As a result - the United States is rapidly falling behind the rest of the world. In 2009 - our average connection speed was just 3.9 mips - that puts the United States comfortably in...18th place in the world. Oh and here's something else you might find interesting - we pay a lot more for our shoddy Internet connections than anyone else in the world. We pay about 40 bucks a month JUST for a crummy 3.9 mbps connection. That's just Internet - no TV - no phone - just Internet - 40 bucks a month.

But in France - guess what customers get for 40 bucks a month? Try Internet at a blazing 20 to 30 mips - PLUS unlimited phone service, plus HD TV with over 100 channels and a DVR - all included. You'd be looking at close to 200 bucks a month for a package like that in the United States - but it's just 40 dollars a month in France. And in Japan and South Korea - download speeds are reaching 100 mips - again, the United States averages about 5. Does that make any sense to you??

Still no email yet...

So what are France and Japan doing that we're not doing? They're forcing their telecom giants to compete - basically telling providers that they have to share their Internet infrastructure - so multiple, competing companies can use the same wires and satellite towers. That blows open the market for competition since a start-up company doesn't have to make a massive investment to lay wire and put up satellite towers all over the place. It then comes down to who can deliver the faster speeds on that wire, offer more channels, and who can give lower prices and better customer service.

When the Internet first started - and we were all using dial up - regulators in the United States forced phone companies to allow competing internet service providers to use the same telephone lines - the phone companies couldn't lock companies out. And that's why we had an explosion in telecom competition - from CompuServe and AOL to the little startup ISP in the basement down the street - there were literally thousands of them. But once broadband came around - then Bush's FCC regulators jumped in - and handed the telecom giants like AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon monopoly power over their wires and infrastructure so they could be exclusive providers on that infrastructure - no competition of consequence. As Paul Krugman points out in his New York Times article "The French Connections", "...f the companies controlling these passageways can behave like the robber barons of yore, levying whatever tolls they like on those who pass by, commerce suffers."

And so, too, do our Internet connections. It's time for our government regulators to stop giving monopolies to the giant corporations - something that's pretty much only done here and in third-world countries like Mexico - and force open the marketplace to competition like most European countries do. Our broadband infrastructure - even though privately built - is a part of our commons - including the wires passing under and above our common streets, and the satellite towers broadcasting over our common airways. Big telco and cable companies should only be able to own such infrastructure so long as they're willing to share them with competitors at a reasonable price. Only then will Americans be able to surf the Internet at the same speed as the rest of the developed world.

Here comes my email - It's about time...

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings