Coke and Pepsi do not represent competition. It's a shared monopoly, the Drinks Trust.

The same is true for Wal-Mart and Target, Home Depot and Lowe's, and, to cut to the chase, your phone and cable companies.

By endorsing duopoly calling "competition" what is in fact a Trust, new FCC chair Kevin Martin has shown us clearly where the Bushies stand. Those who believe in competitive markets that can compete in the world need to digest this.

And Martin's model for the Internet policy? China.

So, do you want to be an ISP?

There is only one way to do it now. You have to be a WISP. You have to connect WiFi to WiMax, and reach competitive fiber.

Otherwise you're officially dead.

The FCC ruled, over Friday and Saturday, that Bell companies no longer have to wholesale their lines to competitive ISPs. They don't even have to charge competitive prices for backhaul to the Internet. They essentially repealed the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

Those phonr lines that were built with government-controlled monopoly powers over decades? They're now the sole property of four corporate entities. And they can do with this monopoly power whatever they want.

What are the phone giants doing in response?

Well, BellSouth is installing WiMax. http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=78527&WT.svl=wire1_8 They're not adding fiber, they're extending their monopoly into the wireless space, in Athens, Georgia.

So if you do go wireless know what you're up against.

You must find competitive fiber nodes, and you must make your marketing into a political call against the local incumbents. There's a big market that will respond to such a call.

I will, for one.

The first WISP with competitive fiber to get into my Atlanta neighborhood gets the business, I can tell you that.