If you had genuine competition (instead of monopolies or anti-competitive oligopolies like Comcast and Verizon and AT&T) then the dinosaurs would be forced to do better to compete.
The fact that the dinosaur ISPs are going to such great lengths to try and stop any new competition shows how scared they are of actually having to operate in a genuinely competitive market.
Make the market competitive and free and let the marketplace sort things out with whichever providers provide the best product (whether that be on price, on value, on service, on speed or whatever consumers want) win.
Why is water service not provided via a competition-driven capitalistic solution? It's because someone had to lay those pipes and they want a return on that investment, so they're not going to figure out a way to let some competitor's water use those same pipes. When Comcast pays the money to lay the fiber to a neighborhood, they want to sell internet services to those residents to recoup those costs and to earn a profit. Would it be moral for us to compel Comcast to carry their competitors internet serv
Uhm... Yes it would be moral to compel Comcast or anyone else to share the fiber they put in the ground, for a fee of course, so they can recoup their investment and make a profit. It's simple, if you want the special privileges such as right of way access to lay fiber in places, you have to agree to share the access. And yes, Comcast does get special privileges, for example they can dig right through my private property, dig up my front lawn if they want to run a fiber through it, and there is absolutely n
Iâ(TM)d go further. Force Comcast to either stop providing Internet service over the physical network they own, or to sell the physical network to a company (or the government).
The fact that they have privileged access to the infrastructure means we canâ(TM)t trust them to compete fairly. I donâ(TM)t really trust regulators to ensure that they do.
At least where I live, the city residents paid for the cable infrastructure through a bond issue (for the up front cash) and a millage (to buy back the bonds over time). The original cable company also got a 30 year monopoly guarantee as part of the deal. Granted, both the original and current cable companies did upgrades, but the highest speed offered is still only 50 mega bits per sec - far from the giga bits per sec service I see advertised. After a little research, I determined the giga bit service in o
The last few miles should be a pubic utility, but allow multiple ISP's to compete for the rest. If they don't have to lay down wires to each house, then we'd have more competitors, and it would be easier to switch.
Last mile infrastructure investments already guarantee you will have a handful of providers at best, and market consolidation will do the rest to ensure you're left with a monopoly at end of the day. Just see the chart [theverge.com] on how the Baby Bells eventually reformed AT&T after being broken up in an anti-trust suit. Competition is a mirage, not a solution.
There are many cases where municipalities or other providers want to run fiber in competition to dinosaur telcos but can't because the dinosaur telcos have stopped them from doing so. Now I am not saying that municipal fiber (or fiber from Google or some other commercial provider or from anyone else) is a magic bullet but its certainly better than the current dinosaur monopoly.
Heck, the idea that someone (municipality or local entity or someone else) builds out fibre to everyone and then ISPs compete to pro
"If a computer can't directly address all the RAM you can use, it's just a toy."
-- anonymous comp.sys.amiga posting, non-sequitir
Competition is the answer (Score:5, Interesting)
If you had genuine competition (instead of monopolies or anti-competitive oligopolies like Comcast and Verizon and AT&T) then the dinosaurs would be forced to do better to compete.
The fact that the dinosaur ISPs are going to such great lengths to try and stop any new competition shows how scared they are of actually having to operate in a genuinely competitive market.
Make the market competitive and free and let the marketplace sort things out with whichever providers provide the best product (whether that be on price, on value, on service, on speed or whatever consumers want) win.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Uhm... Yes it would be moral to compel Comcast or anyone else to share the fiber they put in the ground, for a fee of course, so they can recoup their investment and make a profit. It's simple, if you want the special privileges such as right of way access to lay fiber in places, you have to agree to share the access. And yes, Comcast does get special privileges, for example they can dig right through my private property, dig up my front lawn if they want to run a fiber through it, and there is absolutely n
Re: Competition is the answer (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)d go further. Force Comcast to either stop providing Internet service over the physical network they own, or to sell the physical network to a company (or the government).
The fact that they have privileged access to the infrastructure means we canâ(TM)t trust them to compete fairly. I donâ(TM)t really trust regulators to ensure that they do.
Re: (Score:2)
At least where I live, the city residents paid for the cable infrastructure through a bond issue (for the up front cash) and a millage (to buy back the bonds over time). The original cable company also got a 30 year monopoly guarantee as part of the deal. Granted, both the original and current cable companies did upgrades, but the highest speed offered is still only 50 mega bits per sec - far from the giga bits per sec service I see advertised. After a little research, I determined the giga bit service in o
"Last mile problem" (Re:Competition is the answer (Score:2)
The last few miles should be a pubic utility, but allow multiple ISP's to compete for the rest. If they don't have to lay down wires to each house, then we'd have more competitors, and it would be easier to switch.
Re: Competition is the answer (Score:3)
Um, no. Competition is the benchmark, not the answer.
It's kind of like the cannary in the mine, or fish in the lake. But fish in the lake do not create clean water, it's the other way around.
What is the answer, then? Pretty much the submission summay: treating internet like a public utility and regulating it as such.
Last mile & consolidation laugh at competition (Score:2)
Last mile infrastructure investments already guarantee you will have a handful of providers at best, and market consolidation will do the rest to ensure you're left with a monopoly at end of the day. Just see the chart [theverge.com] on how the Baby Bells eventually reformed AT&T after being broken up in an anti-trust suit. Competition is a mirage, not a solution.
Re: (Score:2)
There are many cases where municipalities or other providers want to run fiber in competition to dinosaur telcos but can't because the dinosaur telcos have stopped them from doing so. Now I am not saying that municipal fiber (or fiber from Google or some other commercial provider or from anyone else) is a magic bullet but its certainly better than the current dinosaur monopoly.
Heck, the idea that someone (municipality or local entity or someone else) builds out fibre to everyone and then ISPs compete to pro