What's the state of universal internet connectivity?
johngunderman: While I can't answer the actual question, I can give you my best guess at what the future will hold.
In short, I think WIMAX will eventually come out of hibernation, allowing for cities to be covered by ubiquitous access. This, in turn, will hopefully lead to hub-bridging between cities, which basically will transform the internet from being the scale-free network it currently is into the scalable network it should be. At that point, current ISPs will be forced to dramatically alter their business plan, because it is impossible for them to keep their current business plan with a non scale-free network.