10/19/2022

How We're Going to be Impacted by 'Chokepoint Capitalism'

How it will crush competition and lock customers into relationships

Ten minutes into our Zoom call, Cory Doctorow’s voice begins to stutter. His internet connection is giving out—first the audio goes, and then the video, too. He fiddles with cables for a few minutes while I, halfway across the world, wait behind a black screen.

When Doctorow reappears, he tells me a story. The city in California where he lives borrowed money to lay high-speed internet cables to serve businesses in the center of town. But the terms of the deal prohibited the city from connecting the cables to people’s homes. A cable carrying a 100 gigabit-per-second internet connection runs directly under the foundation of his house, Doctorow said. But he’s stuck using low-speed Internet—even though his taxes pay for servicing the bond the city took out to build the high-speed network.

“I’m standing on the fiber,” he said. “I just can’t use it.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.