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This whole matter should be left to the marketplace and to contracts. If you don't like the way a service is run, get a different one. Regulations try to get

This whole matter should be left to the marketplace and to contracts. If you don't like the way a service is run, get a different one. Regulations try to get a more optimum combination of costs and features given current conditions, but often what they do is prevent alternatives from developing.

jmtame 17y ago
sounds intuitive, but it's actually the opposite. when telecomms like comcast don't have to lease their lines out to other ISPs, there's nowhere else to go. the end-result is that any given person, if lucky, has only one or two places they can get high-speed internet from (att, verizon, comcast). and the redlining practices alone decrease broadband penetration, so a lot of people can't get to it. to go one step further, telecomms will sue any municipality that tries to install their own fiber optics network as if it were a public utility. even if an entire city supports it and is willing to pay for it, telecomms will ensure that it can't happen, as was the case with monticello. there are cases where regulation is necessary to prevent an oligopoly and encourage competition. right now, the tables are tipped favorably (imo unfairly) for the telecomms.
- stretchwithme 17y ago
  I think there's ATT and satellite, so not sure they are no other options. When I think of the free market, I don't mean the present situation. This is not a free market. Cities set up exclusive contracts with cable providers like comcast. In a free market, people would be banding together to negotiate for better terms and to lower infrastructure costs, but not at a city-wide level where they are frozen into the solution negotiated by grafty politicians. I don't pretend to know how a truly non-coercive free market would play out, but I imagine condo home owner associations being able to choose from a variety of options. They already do so for other services and would probably do the same for utilities if we didn't have the current system of regulated monopolies. In a truly free market, the type of suits you refer to wouldn't work. Municipalities wouldn't even be involved. We can add more coercion to the system, but I think undoing the coercion we already have is a better long term approach. Of course, its not often easy to see that path, especially when it looks so politically impossible.
notauser 17y ago
In the UK I think that network neutrality will 'be left to the market and contracts'. They are willing to do this because every home has 10+ services on offer and switching is trivial. That has happened because of regulation of the physical infrastructure. When it comes to natural monopolies if you want a functioning market you have to make one through regulation. I think the UK approach of regulating how the infrastructure is shared is better than the US one of regulating the resulting monopolies but if you do nothing at all then you will end up with $90/mo connections that can do nothing but display disney.com
- hga 17y ago
  "They are willing to do this because every home has 10+ services on offer and switching is trivial." How can you say that when so much of the rural U.K. is without any broadband? When the rest of the small community that has the/a home of a top dog of BT? only gets broadband when they notice he's the only one who has it? When a tax makes it particularly expensive to get the feeder line out to a community?
  - notauser 17y ago
    That has more to do with the economics of running cable to the middle of nowhere than it does competition. (BT are not the only people who can build broadband infrastructure and the fact that no cable operator has bothered to run a line out there either should be a good indication that it's not viable.) If you want easy access to the countryside and all of the nice things it offers then you can't be surprised to find out that there are some drawbacks to making that choice. It's unreasonable to expect people who live in high density environments to subsidize your Internet access. But that has nothing to do with competition - once BT does enable the exchange all the competing broadband services will be available. You won't be at the mercy of them being able to charge any price they like just because they built the infrastructure, and in a remote location that's even more important than it is in London where building a second competing telecoms network might be profitable.
_delirium 17y ago
I'd be happy to bypass Comcast and AT&T and run my own lines. Can you tell me what the process is by which I can dig up the street and run my own ethernet cable down it? Oh, I can't, because Comcast and AT&T were granted a local duopoly.
- stretchwithme 17y ago
  In a free society, you would own, along with your neighbors most likely, your own street and the rest of the infrastructure. Owning the last mile will make it a lot easier to strike a good deal utilities and the rationale for monopolies collapses. Voluntary cooperation leads to more power for the individual than coerced aggregation, which just gives it to those who get control and whoever who buys them off.

jmtame 17y ago

sounds intuitive, but it's actually the opposite. when telecomms like comcast don't have to lease their lines out to other ISPs, there's nowhere else to go. the end-result is that any given person, if lucky, has only one or two places they can get high-speed internet from (att, verizon, comcast). and the redlining practices alone decrease broadband penetration, so a lot of people can't get to it. to go one step further, telecomms will sue any municipality that tries to install their own fiber optics network as if it were a public utility. even if an entire city supports it and is willing to pay for it, telecomms will ensure that it can't happen, as was the case with monticello. there are cases where regulation is necessary to prevent an oligopoly and encourage competition. right now, the tables are tipped favorably (imo unfairly) for the telecomms.

stretchwithme 17y ago
I think there's ATT and satellite, so not sure they are no other options. When I think of the free market, I don't mean the present situation. This is not a free market. Cities set up exclusive contracts with cable providers like comcast. In a free market, people would be banding together to negotiate for better terms and to lower infrastructure costs, but not at a city-wide level where they are frozen into the solution negotiated by grafty politicians. I don't pretend to know how a truly non-coercive free market would play out, but I imagine condo home owner associations being able to choose from a variety of options. They already do so for other services and would probably do the same for utilities if we didn't have the current system of regulated monopolies. In a truly free market, the type of suits you refer to wouldn't work. Municipalities wouldn't even be involved. We can add more coercion to the system, but I think undoing the coercion we already have is a better long term approach. Of course, its not often easy to see that path, especially when it looks so politically impossible.

notauser 17y ago

In the UK I think that network neutrality will 'be left to the market and contracts'. They are willing to do this because every home has 10+ services on offer and switching is trivial. That has happened because of regulation of the physical infrastructure. When it comes to natural monopolies if you want a functioning market you have to make one through regulation. I think the UK approach of regulating how the infrastructure is shared is better than the US one of regulating the resulting monopolies but if you do nothing at all then you will end up with $90/mo connections that can do nothing but display disney.com

hga 17y ago
"They are willing to do this because every home has 10+ services on offer and switching is trivial." How can you say that when so much of the rural U.K. is without any broadband? When the rest of the small community that has the/a home of a top dog of BT? only gets broadband when they notice he's the only one who has it? When a tax makes it particularly expensive to get the feeder line out to a community?
- notauser 17y ago
  That has more to do with the economics of running cable to the middle of nowhere than it does competition. (BT are not the only people who can build broadband infrastructure and the fact that no cable operator has bothered to run a line out there either should be a good indication that it's not viable.) If you want easy access to the countryside and all of the nice things it offers then you can't be surprised to find out that there are some drawbacks to making that choice. It's unreasonable to expect people who live in high density environments to subsidize your Internet access. But that has nothing to do with competition - once BT does enable the exchange all the competing broadband services will be available. You won't be at the mercy of them being able to charge any price they like just because they built the infrastructure, and in a remote location that's even more important than it is in London where building a second competing telecoms network might be profitable.

_delirium 17y ago

I'd be happy to bypass Comcast and AT&T and run my own lines. Can you tell me what the process is by which I can dig up the street and run my own ethernet cable down it? Oh, I can't, because Comcast and AT&T were granted a local duopoly.

stretchwithme 17y ago
In a free society, you would own, along with your neighbors most likely, your own street and the rest of the infrastructure. Owning the last mile will make it a lot easier to strike a good deal utilities and the rationale for monopolies collapses. Voluntary cooperation leads to more power for the individual than coerced aggregation, which just gives it to those who get control and whoever who buys them off.