Desolate Landscape

Happy broadband to me!

It was over a year ago that I lost my broadband Internet connection. The cost of a business-class service became beyond my budget. Plus, my old ISP initiated a novel business strategy: let's act like a bunch of morons and chase off our customers. The parent company eventually crashed into bankruptcy, which I assume was the desired result of their "act like morons" business strategy.

Since then, I've been running across a 56K dialup modem attached to my router. It was serviceable, because I moved the servers out of the apartment and into a downtown data center. But, still, it sucks.

This morning, my cable Internet service was turned up. First thing I did was download a badly needed bunch of operating system upgrades. Next thing I did was point my browser to Shoutcast to tune into some of those delicious music streams I so badly missed. I was aghast to find I'd stepped into the middle of an empty ghost town.

It seems in the interim, the big Internet content providers succeeded in killing off the burgeoning Internet radio movement. Very few of the stations have survived. My favorite station had to abandon the open MP3 streaming format for a lower fidelity, proprietary system. I don't have a problem paying a subscription fee, but no way am I going to pay for a non-portable, proprietary format stream.

Why is it that whenever the big content providers get involved, it all goes to shit?