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At this point, Cable companies are all members of a single large shadow monopoly not unlike Standard Oil was in the early 20th century. The rational the justice

At this point, Cable companies are all members of a single large shadow monopoly not unlike Standard Oil was in the early 20th century. The rational the justice system used to break up Standard Oil is shockingly similar to the situation we now face with cable: Rates have been made low to let the Standard into markets, or they have been made high to keep its competitors out of markets. Trifling differences in distances are made an excuse for large differences in rates favorable to the Standard Oil Co., while large differences in distances are ignored where they are against the Standard. Sometimes connecting roads prorate on oil—that is, make through rates which are lower than the combination of local rates; sometimes they refuse to prorate; but in either case the result of their policy is to favor the Standard Oil Co. Different methods are used in different places and under different conditions, but the net result is that from Maine to California the general arrangement of open rates on petroleum oil is such as to give the Standard an unreasonable advantage over its competitors" [1] Cable companies regularly adjust prices based on the entrance of competitors (Google Fiber), or when a cable company enters a new market, prices are initially low to prevent competition and then slowly raised to a much higher level. The excuses for vast differences in rates in metropolitan cities are usually paper thin, but accepted by the media and government at face value. Cable companies also operate secondary businesses with a conflicting interest to their cable operations (Cable TV packages now directly competes with Broadband Internet, also see: NBC/Comcast), not unlike Standard Oil's purchase of many railways and control of shipping lanes. This arrangement vastly stacks the deck in favor of cable companies, and further cable company "cooperation" with state and national officials have created new restrictions on municipal competition. Cable companies are our 21st century Standard Oil. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Monopoly_charges_and_anti-trust_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Monopoly_charges_...

nickpsecurity 10y ago
Great analysis. Cartel behavior as I call it should never be ignored in discussions on these subjects as it's been discovered so many times. Even more so when organizations are both non-competitive and taking taxpayer subsidies.
imgabe 10y ago
It really is shockingly similar and a lot of the arguments against net neutrality try to dismiss it as applying "laws made for railroads" to the Internet. Back when oil was getting to be useful, lots of people discovered it. Usually, it was in a remote area. The only way to make money off it was to get it to a refinery and then the market. Standard Oil bullied and bribed the railroads into giving them preferential rates and charging high rates for competitors. It's exactly like what cable companies would like to do by subverting net neutrality, give preferential treatment to the traffic that profits them most. It's just information instead of oil, which is even more insidious since it can control the public discourse.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  (My own views align closely with http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/we-dont-need-net-neutrality-we-need-competition/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/we-dont-need-net-... and http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-13/forget-net-neutrality-what-americans-need-is-net-competition http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-13/forget-net...) Do you have any evidence that cable companies wanted to charge for preferential treatment for traffic? I've seen that claim repeated a lot but never with evidence.
  - throwaway_exer 10y ago
    > Do you have any evidence that cable companies wanted to charge for preferential treatment Did you read your own links? Netflix is being charged to pass bandwidth to residential customers because of a structural lack of competition.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Netflix is the canonical example. A few years ago YouTube got similar treatment on Time Warner -- they funneled everything to a YouTube point of presence on the TWC network that was over saturated. You could modify DNS and use and alternate URL and watch 1080p video with no lag. Verizon also started limiting aggregate Netflix traffic. Through conincidence, it happened to start happening when they launched a video service.
zekevermillion 10y ago
Yes! If there was ever a case for trust-busting. Just noticed last night that Comcast is blocking some streaming apps that I use on my home PC. Certainly not the worst thing they do, but does remind me of how Standard Oil used to tie up rail capacity to keep it out of the hands of competitors.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Cable has a significant difference from oil. Cable is a network technology with value defined somewhere between Sarnof's, Metcalfe's, or Tilly-Odlyzko's laws. Scale, and dominating local coverage, matter. Oil is an extractive mineral resource with very low direct costs vs. use value. Absent some form of central contrl, the price has tended to fall far too low. In the aftermath of the East Texas oilfield discovery of 1930 (the biggest on the mainland lower 48), prices fell fist to $0.13/bbl, then to $0.02/bbl. That's barrels, not gallons. The governors of Texas and Oklahoma called out their state national guards, and the Rangers in Texas, and seized wellheads at gunpoint to cut supply. The quota system imposed, run by the highly innaccurately named Texas Railraod Commission, lasted until 1972. Daniel Yergin's book The Prize covers this in detail. A similar control program applied to strategic minerals was created after WWII, originally called the Hobard list, and remains in effect as part of the Defense National Stockpile Center. Raw material and networking economics differ.
- stormbuilder 10y ago
  Great info thanks. It is entertaining how the stalwart protectors of free markets oppose them when it becomes too inconvenient.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Funny, you noticed that too?

nickpsecurity 10y ago

Great analysis. Cartel behavior as I call it should never be ignored in discussions on these subjects as it's been discovered so many times. Even more so when organizations are both non-competitive and taking taxpayer subsidies.

imgabe 10y ago

It really is shockingly similar and a lot of the arguments against net neutrality try to dismiss it as applying "laws made for railroads" to the Internet. Back when oil was getting to be useful, lots of people discovered it. Usually, it was in a remote area. The only way to make money off it was to get it to a refinery and then the market. Standard Oil bullied and bribed the railroads into giving them preferential rates and charging high rates for competitors. It's exactly like what cable companies would like to do by subverting net neutrality, give preferential treatment to the traffic that profits them most. It's just information instead of oil, which is even more insidious since it can control the public discourse.

ikeboy 10y ago
(My own views align closely with http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/we-dont-need-net-neutrality-we-need-competition/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/we-dont-need-net-... and http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-13/forget-net-neutrality-what-americans-need-is-net-competition http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-13/forget-net...) Do you have any evidence that cable companies wanted to charge for preferential treatment for traffic? I've seen that claim repeated a lot but never with evidence.
- throwaway_exer 10y ago
  > Do you have any evidence that cable companies wanted to charge for preferential treatment Did you read your own links? Netflix is being charged to pass bandwidth to residential customers because of a structural lack of competition.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Netflix is the canonical example. A few years ago YouTube got similar treatment on Time Warner -- they funneled everything to a YouTube point of presence on the TWC network that was over saturated. You could modify DNS and use and alternate URL and watch 1080p video with no lag. Verizon also started limiting aggregate Netflix traffic. Through conincidence, it happened to start happening when they launched a video service.

zekevermillion 10y ago

Yes! If there was ever a case for trust-busting. Just noticed last night that Comcast is blocking some streaming apps that I use on my home PC. Certainly not the worst thing they do, but does remind me of how Standard Oil used to tie up rail capacity to keep it out of the hands of competitors.

dredmorbius 10y ago

Cable has a significant difference from oil. Cable is a network technology with value defined somewhere between Sarnof's, Metcalfe's, or Tilly-Odlyzko's laws. Scale, and dominating local coverage, matter. Oil is an extractive mineral resource with very low direct costs vs. use value. Absent some form of central contrl, the price has tended to fall far too low. In the aftermath of the East Texas oilfield discovery of 1930 (the biggest on the mainland lower 48), prices fell fist to $0.13/bbl, then to $0.02/bbl. That's barrels, not gallons. The governors of Texas and Oklahoma called out their state national guards, and the Rangers in Texas, and seized wellheads at gunpoint to cut supply. The quota system imposed, run by the highly innaccurately named Texas Railraod Commission, lasted until 1972. Daniel Yergin's book The Prize covers this in detail. A similar control program applied to strategic minerals was created after WWII, originally called the Hobard list, and remains in effect as part of the Defense National Stockpile Center. Raw material and networking economics differ.

stormbuilder 10y ago
Great info thanks. It is entertaining how the stalwart protectors of free markets oppose them when it becomes too inconvenient.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Funny, you noticed that too?