3 ms·

Agreed, nobody should be able to preempt the law... however, what's crazy is that there are many anti-monopoly laws that exist for exactly the reason of increas

Agreed, nobody should be able to preempt the law... however, what's crazy is that there are many anti-monopoly laws that exist for exactly the reason of increasing competition in favour of the consumer... what I don't understand is how none of these laws appear to apply to cable and telecoms providers. It's the same up here in Canada. Anti-monopoly laws prevent you from establishing a monopoloy, but it still appears to be fine for cable and telecom providers... and Government run businesses such as the LCBO... and in BC, ICBC and I'm sure a wealth of other monopolies that don't appear to fall inside the jurisdiction of anti-monopoly laws that literally apply to everyone else. One law for one, one law for everyone else doesn't appear to be the way the law is supposed to work, I can't fathom why it works this way in this case.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Bluestrike2 10y ago
There are a few reasons, but one of the most difficult is that federal legislators and bureaucrats (hell, we could even include those at the state level) are in a position where they don't actually see that there's a problem. There are a number of telecom companies. Not a lot, but we're certainly not talking about the situation with Standard Oil. At a macro level, there's clearly competition: Comcast, Verizon, Google Fiber, etc. No one can deny that, and that's the level where legislators interact with them. But the problem is that consumers don't actually get to choose between companies; they're largely locked into a particular provider based on geographic location. Franchise agreements, high barriers to entry, etc. all see to that. That's not really an antitrust issue. Utilities, by definition, are functional monopolies. The problem is that broadband is a utility, but a unique one. You can't really differentiate water service or sewage, for instance. But there can be a drastic difference between ISPs and the type of broadband service they provide. At the same time, it's still subject to the same economic factors as any other utility service, making new competition very unlikely. So you wind up with a very dysfunctional market, despite the competition at the macro level. It's a somewhat counterintuitive distinction, but what you wind up with is basically an industry with multiple competitors that don't actually compete with one another at the consumer level because they're just like any other utility at that level. You don't get a choice in water providers, sewage, etc. Everyone is locked within the confines of their particular borders, and while those borders can and do shift, when they do it's more like the trading of pieces of territory than encroachment via competition. And all of this is made worse by the sheer scale of the barriers to entry. As Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber both learned, fiber rollouts are a capital-intensive proposition.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Bluestrike2 10y ago

There are a few reasons, but one of the most difficult is that federal legislators and bureaucrats (hell, we could even include those at the state level) are in a position where they don't actually see that there's a problem. There are a number of telecom companies. Not a lot, but we're certainly not talking about the situation with Standard Oil. At a macro level, there's clearly competition: Comcast, Verizon, Google Fiber, etc. No one can deny that, and that's the level where legislators interact with them. But the problem is that consumers don't actually get to choose between companies; they're largely locked into a particular provider based on geographic location. Franchise agreements, high barriers to entry, etc. all see to that. That's not really an antitrust issue. Utilities, by definition, are functional monopolies. The problem is that broadband is a utility, but a unique one. You can't really differentiate water service or sewage, for instance. But there can be a drastic difference between ISPs and the type of broadband service they provide. At the same time, it's still subject to the same economic factors as any other utility service, making new competition very unlikely. So you wind up with a very dysfunctional market, despite the competition at the macro level. It's a somewhat counterintuitive distinction, but what you wind up with is basically an industry with multiple competitors that don't actually compete with one another at the consumer level because they're just like any other utility at that level. You don't get a choice in water providers, sewage, etc. Everyone is locked within the confines of their particular borders, and while those borders can and do shift, when they do it's more like the trading of pieces of territory than encroachment via competition. And all of this is made worse by the sheer scale of the barriers to entry. As Verizon FiOS and Google Fiber both learned, fiber rollouts are a capital-intensive proposition.