AgmLauncher - 4:54 am on Jul 27, 2006 (gmt 0)

Quite frankly, I think the people who should be paying for the upgrades are the telcos. Not their customers, not the companies who want to put sites on the internet.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but businesses generate this thing called profit. That is money they can take home or invest into growth and R&D. Im willing to bet Charter, Comcast, Adelphia, and many others turn over a substantial profit. God forbid they invest their profits into future technologies like every other company does :S

Moreover, I think this whole "we need to upgrade our hardware for future growth" is nonsense. Here's an idea, STOP HANDING OUT SIX MEG CONNECTIONS. No one needs them. I'd be PERFECTLY happy with a 2 meg connection and I am what I would consider an internet power user. I spend 100+ hours a week on the internet maintaining and managing a large website. If they just restricted everyone to 2 meg connections, they've instantly tripled their capacity without having to charge anyone else a dime.

But barring that fact, there's no reason why they can't dump their millions in profits into fiber optics and better hardware. It's not like the internet is just suddenly going to explode with activity. They can start changing over the infrastructure slowly.