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Market forces are slow in some markets. It's very hard to get started in the telecom industry in india, so you pave the way for an oppressive ologopoly instead.

Market forces are slow in some markets. It's very hard to get started in the telecom industry in india, so you pave the way for an oppressive ologopoly instead. There's no reason to believe that Romania's telecom industry and market is comparable to that of India.

jacquesm 11y ago
Hence my suggestion to make it a free for all, let the market sort it out. The long term beneficiaries of that strategy would be the general public rather than the current crop of incumbents. If there is one thing they hate it is a level (and unregulated) playing field with a bunch of upstarts with absolutely nothing to lose.
- Manishearth 11y ago
  "let the market sort it out" only works if the market is easy to enter in the first place. Politics and high bootstrapping costs are roadblocks to entering the telecom market. If an oligopoly is formed, where everyone has terrible service at terrible prices, the market will stay stuck there. Capitalism isn't a magic wand you can wave over things and have them fix themselves.
humanfromearth 11y ago
What are the reasons to believe that it wouldn't work? ANRC (the body that governs communication) in Romania I think did more (by doing very little) for the Romanian economy than any other government agency. It's funny because we used to hate them for not allowing us to get more ethernet cables on the public infrastructure (which we payed for a nominal price) because of some safety issues. I was working as and admin working for one of those free for all ISPs. It's crazy how good and cheep the internet has become since then. What happened is that in a small city (250k people) we had about 30 independent ISPs and we had gigabit peering between ourselves. Scroll 5 years, big companies come in and buys us all out, then slowly start replacing ethernet with fiber. Scroll another 5-10 years, most have fiber in the cities and gigabit connections at very low prices. It can be argued that the little guys (ISPs) got a little screwed especially those who haven't been bought, but overall the romanians got a really good internet and that's all that matters in the end. The take away here is that once people started getting used to low-cost mostly local network + internet within a highly competitive environment, the "big" ISPs had no choice than to provide at least an equal service. It's true, that was a different time, but now it's even better, because hardware is a lot faster and cheaper!
- Manishearth 11y ago
  Looks like in your case you had an overregulating authority that loosened up. That's not the case in India. Also, note that India is much larger and setting up a network is a much harder investment to make. If there's an oligopoly already active, they could simply not let new ISPs get a foothold unless you set up all the infrastructure on your own. And part of the problem of low internet usage is low internet connectivity in rural areas (which is probably less of a problem for Romania). That's not going to be solved by Facebook or market forces.

jacquesm 11y ago

Hence my suggestion to make it a free for all, let the market sort it out. The long term beneficiaries of that strategy would be the general public rather than the current crop of incumbents. If there is one thing they hate it is a level (and unregulated) playing field with a bunch of upstarts with absolutely nothing to lose.

Manishearth 11y ago
"let the market sort it out" only works if the market is easy to enter in the first place. Politics and high bootstrapping costs are roadblocks to entering the telecom market. If an oligopoly is formed, where everyone has terrible service at terrible prices, the market will stay stuck there. Capitalism isn't a magic wand you can wave over things and have them fix themselves.

humanfromearth 11y ago

What are the reasons to believe that it wouldn't work? ANRC (the body that governs communication) in Romania I think did more (by doing very little) for the Romanian economy than any other government agency. It's funny because we used to hate them for not allowing us to get more ethernet cables on the public infrastructure (which we payed for a nominal price) because of some safety issues. I was working as and admin working for one of those free for all ISPs. It's crazy how good and cheep the internet has become since then. What happened is that in a small city (250k people) we had about 30 independent ISPs and we had gigabit peering between ourselves. Scroll 5 years, big companies come in and buys us all out, then slowly start replacing ethernet with fiber. Scroll another 5-10 years, most have fiber in the cities and gigabit connections at very low prices. It can be argued that the little guys (ISPs) got a little screwed especially those who haven't been bought, but overall the romanians got a really good internet and that's all that matters in the end. The take away here is that once people started getting used to low-cost mostly local network + internet within a highly competitive environment, the "big" ISPs had no choice than to provide at least an equal service. It's true, that was a different time, but now it's even better, because hardware is a lot faster and cheaper!

Manishearth 11y ago
Looks like in your case you had an overregulating authority that loosened up. That's not the case in India. Also, note that India is much larger and setting up a network is a much harder investment to make. If there's an oligopoly already active, they could simply not let new ISPs get a foothold unless you set up all the infrastructure on your own. And part of the problem of low internet usage is low internet connectivity in rural areas (which is probably less of a problem for Romania). That's not going to be solved by Facebook or market forces.