Progress

iPhone now available for business users. Naturally, it costs more for a business to get the same product, but that's AT&T for you.

Tangentally, here in Michigan the Comcast cable network has been waging a propaganda war against the Big Ten around the issue of whether the Big Ten Network will be included in basic cable packages. The whole affair is sick with bizarrely bad judgement from Comcast, which is filling its own airwaves with anti-Big Ten attack ads. To make the resemblance to a political campaign complete, the latest Comcast ad is accusing the Big Ten of imposing a tax on Comcast customers.

Since the major effect of attack ads in politics is to suppress turnout, you have to wonder what Comcast thinks it's going to accomplish here. Then ask yourself, who is the median television sports viewer going to side with? My guess is that the cable company which customers already dislike is going to lose out to the incredibly popular major sports conference.

But let me bring this back to AT&T. I was thinking the other day about the companies that I hate but purchase services from anyway. They are, without exception, providers of various kinds of utilities. I hate Comcast, I hate AT&T, and once I get them to send me a bill I'm pretty sure that I'm going to hate DTE. If I were a right winger I might have something to say about the way that utilitity providers have a kind of quasi-governmental way of doing business, but I'm not and I think that the explanation here is a little deeper than 'government is bad.' As to what that explanation is...are there any sociologists in the house?