3 ms·

Well said. This is why I'm surprised the US hasn't gone the route that both Canada and the UK have: have regulators force ISPs to share lines. This method basic

Well said. This is why I'm surprised the US hasn't gone the route that both Canada and the UK have: have regulators force ISPs to share lines. This method basically allows government hands only on the minimum required to enforce competition. In a few years with this system in Canada I saw basically a 10x speed increase at very close prices and real competition over which ISP I'd go with. I think this is a far better compromise, allow the market to do its job, just use minimal regulation to force the market to actually exist.

toast0 10y ago
The US did go down that route, in 1996. The FCC decided that only applied to telephone operators and not cable operators; then the telephone operators complained it wasn't fair, and eventually it didn't apply to anything. There were issues with implementation as well, AT&T* would commonly offer lower prices to consumers directly through wholesaling; which makes it pretty hard to compete That said, I would prefer a return to the mandatory access regime as well. * which was mostly SBC at the time
- bhauer 10y ago
  For all of the bumps and warts of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as a consumer I remember the era fondly. My personal Internet connectivity improved more significantly (in terms of percentage improvement over time) in that era than it has since. Since that regime was dismantled, innovation in Internet connectivity has seemed far more stagnant and difficult for upstart companies to disrupt. It is a bit disappointing that we have elected to go down the path we have rather than revisit the model from 1996.
st3v3r 10y ago
The US used to have this. Republicans got rid of it.
- Kadin 10y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted; it's pretty much the straightforward truth of what happened. The US had Local Loop Unbundling for copper phone circuits from 1996 to 2005. In 2005 under Kevin Martin, who was a political appointee under G.W. Bush and widely understood to be a friend to the ILECs, the FCC stopped defending the policy and basically gutted it through rulemaking. They could have done then what the FCC is doing now, and either threatened or actually moved forward with reclassification, but decided not to for what were pretty clearly political reasons. These issues are, very obviously, political; anyone claiming otherwise is either being deceitful or deeply in denial.

toast0 10y ago

The US did go down that route, in 1996. The FCC decided that only applied to telephone operators and not cable operators; then the telephone operators complained it wasn't fair, and eventually it didn't apply to anything. There were issues with implementation as well, AT&T* would commonly offer lower prices to consumers directly through wholesaling; which makes it pretty hard to compete That said, I would prefer a return to the mandatory access regime as well. * which was mostly SBC at the time

bhauer 10y ago
For all of the bumps and warts of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as a consumer I remember the era fondly. My personal Internet connectivity improved more significantly (in terms of percentage improvement over time) in that era than it has since. Since that regime was dismantled, innovation in Internet connectivity has seemed far more stagnant and difficult for upstart companies to disrupt. It is a bit disappointing that we have elected to go down the path we have rather than revisit the model from 1996.

st3v3r 10y ago

The US used to have this. Republicans got rid of it.

Kadin 10y ago
Not sure why this is being downvoted; it's pretty much the straightforward truth of what happened. The US had Local Loop Unbundling for copper phone circuits from 1996 to 2005. In 2005 under Kevin Martin, who was a political appointee under G.W. Bush and widely understood to be a friend to the ILECs, the FCC stopped defending the policy and basically gutted it through rulemaking. They could have done then what the FCC is doing now, and either threatened or actually moved forward with reclassification, but decided not to for what were pretty clearly political reasons. These issues are, very obviously, political; anyone claiming otherwise is either being deceitful or deeply in denial.