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The U.S. market is smothered by local monopolies[1] and a global duopoly. Your argument would hold water if the free market has been given chance at all. [1] h

• simoncion 11y ago
  > Your argument would hold water if the free market has been given chance at all. The largely-unregulated market was given a chance. It created local monopolies and duopolies. It's long past time to try something else.
  • nine_k 11y ago
    What kind of market has it been? Local monopolies were granted by municipalities, certain officials and not the prospective end users. The very first winning bid from a cable company carried the monopoly clause. Once the monopolies had been granted, the market was no longer free; basically the market was (and is) no more. I'd argue that a free market for cable / broadband access never ever existed.
    • simoncion 11y ago
      > I'd argue that a free market for cable / broadband access never ever existed. I agree. This is because that market was never regulated. A free market for POTS/DSL access did exist (and to a large extent still exists). Federally regulated mandatory line sharing made it happen. It does not benefit the public good to run multiple, competing sets of infrastructure to carry commodities. However, -as we see in things as disparate as Instant Messaging networks, remote-controlled lightbulbs, and wired Internet access- private business places far more value on capturing and walling in sections of the population than they do helping to facilitate a vibrant, competitive marketplace that promotes customer choice. From a business perspective, this lock-in makes sense. This isn't the best thing for society, though.
    • pdabbadabba 11y ago
      I think GP is thinking further back to ol' Ma Bell. If Bell hadn't been broken up, and competition-promoting regulations put in place, there would have been no need for municipal exclusivity agreements--Bell would have been the only carrier out there in the first place. It's possible that Cable could eventually have grown to compete technologically, but in a world where Bell was still a single unregulated entity, it strikes me as unlikely that cable could have survived independently.
• superuser2 11y ago
  The free market gives us those monopolies. Other companies could emerge and get the funding to build another set of infrastructure, but they don't.
  • ropiku 11y ago
    As far as I know in many markets they can't, the monopolies were granted by cities. Comcast even sued some cities trying to build infrastructure: http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast-fcc-high-speed-internet-gigabit http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast...
  • rdancer 11y ago
    In a sense, yes. I would argue that the cabled infrastructure is not a natural monopoly at this stage of technology development, but the pre-existing regulatory framework and the local municipalities treated it as such. The effect was a market where local monopolies were bought and sold. Which leads to no free market for buying and selling last mile Internet access. To build a parallel tax-funded infrastructure like the fine article says, would be just silly in those monopoly markets (instead of enabling commercial competition first; not sure if New York in particular has any meaningful competition, so this may not apply there).
    • spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
      Local Loop Unbundeling is the answer.