Verizon really does come across as a Bond-style corporate villain in stories posted to Hacker News. I'm currently a TMobile customer, and I wonder how many of

Verizon really does come across as a Bond-style corporate villain in stories posted to Hacker News. I'm currently a TMobile customer, and I wonder how many of Verizon's shenanigans are actually just the common MO of all American telecoms. It would otherwise seem egregious if only Verizon is throttling customers on "unlimited" plans, and only Verizon is selling their privacy for money, and only Verizon is pushing garbage smartphones onto customers that don't know any better. How can they be so big if they suck so much ass? Are they successful only because they get their network deployment right? Are regulatory barriers protecting them from competition (I find that hard to believe because wireless, unlike broadband, seems to have multiple competitors in every market). Maybe we just need to take public spectrum away from these donkeys and give it up for use by ad-hoc technologies. I suspect that if we make some standards (or even just broad rules of the road) some peer2peer telecom technologies might emerge and surprise us with their quality (just like BitTorrent is surprisingly good for file downloads, even though its decentralized completely).