Pipes For The Internet

Most people have cable lines, telephone lines, maybe satellite dishes and of course cell phones and other methods of wired and wireless transmission in there lives today – which is great. However, why do they all have still different methods of communication? Why are there no standards? You can’t plug a cable line into a telephone line or satellite dish and expect it to work. That’s just silly in today’s world. I envision a future with many methods of transmission and one method for communication (which today would be TCP/IP). This to me is the best of both worlds. It breaks the link between the service and the provider. All providers would provide the only thing we needed – Internet. Everyone else would then be a service available on the Internet – access itself, but also things like phone service, television, and other previously “proprietary” services would now be sent across the same network. As I’d move all my services would follow me – everywhere I have Internet. There’d be less cabling, more open frequencies, and a lower cost I’d imagine to maintain this network. It feels as if we may be moving in this direction slowly, but I think quicker is better. I can’t think of a reason not to do this – can you?