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 th
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 nothing I can do about it. Had they had to negotiate with each and every land owner to dig through their property, that would be an open and fair competition, but that is not practical, so the better solution is to sell the right to wire up a city or a neighborhood, in exchange for some service guarantees, such as a commitment to connect up all locations (not just he ones closest to the main track), and allow others to ride the same network (again, for a fee, but capped). Think along the lines of when governments allow private companies to build toll highways - in exchange for being allowed to do that, they must provide certain services at agreed price caps, etc. Oh, learning from the Comcast billing mastery of inventing fee after fee, claiming that a customer has a fixed price contract while their actual amount due goes up 250%+ over the duration of the contract (and then when contract unlocks another instant 100%), the government should make sure they get good lawyers who avoid such loopholes in the price caps.
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.
"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 th
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Competition is the answer (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 nothing I can do about it. Had they had to negotiate with each and every land owner to dig through their property, that would be an open and fair competition, but that is not practical, so the better solution is to sell the right to wire up a city or a neighborhood, in exchange for some service guarantees, such as a commitment to connect up all locations (not just he ones closest to the main track), and allow others to ride the same network (again, for a fee, but capped). Think along the lines of when governments allow private companies to build toll highways - in exchange for being allowed to do that, they must provide certain services at agreed price caps, etc. Oh, learning from the Comcast billing mastery of inventing fee after fee, claiming that a customer has a fixed price contract while their actual amount due goes up 250%+ over the duration of the contract (and then when contract unlocks another instant 100%), the government should make sure they get good lawyers who avoid such loopholes in the price caps.
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.