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His structural remedy is to remove government from the mix and let the market dictate the price of bandwidth. One thought is that the last-mile problem becomes

His structural remedy is to remove government from the mix and let the market dictate the price of bandwidth. One thought is that the last-mile problem becomes irrelevant when mobile providers are offering high-speed internet. Whether you agree with that sentiment is largely dependent on how you view the world.

anigbrowl 10y ago
Net neutrality is a relatively recent policy development in response to actual market conditions. Deregulators like to avoid the question of why the regulations were put in there to begin with, claiming they were imposed by some ideological interloper but never acknowledging that regulations are often put in place by popular demand.
wtallis 10y ago
> "One thought is that the last-mile problem becomes irrelevant when mobile providers are offering high-speed internet. > Whether you agree with that sentiment is largely dependent on how you view the world." There are readily available objective truths about what wireless networks can and cannot do. They cannot compete with fiber or high-end DOCSIS deployments. Since wired last-mile infrastructure is a natural monopoly, there cannot be any reasonable expectation that a free market will exist.
dv_dt 10y ago
The wireless provisioning of bandwidth to a residential market has basically failed and does not provide any real competition to wired last-mile access. Without that there is no competitive market for the last mile. The current landscape is that mobile service providers basically do not provide any service that meet the needs of residential networks. It is difficult to even connect a network of devices to a mobile wireless hotspot without violating the terms of service from the mobile provider or very rapidly hitting bandwidth caps. As far as I can tell, multiple small companies focused on providing wireless residential network service have failed, or stayed very small regional companies because of an inherent technological inadequacy of wireless to compete with the same level of wired transit... So it becomes not a market for raw bandwidth (which I would be reasonably happy with), but a market for access to bandwidth bundled with whatever junk the provider is trying to bundle. That bandwidth is further encumbered with business agreements restraining travel of data through last-mile access bottlenecks based on secondary agreements not between the customer and ISP (and not disclosed to the end consumer). This also does not make for a good market - choice and visibility are removed from the customer.

anigbrowl 10y ago

Net neutrality is a relatively recent policy development in response to actual market conditions. Deregulators like to avoid the question of why the regulations were put in there to begin with, claiming they were imposed by some ideological interloper but never acknowledging that regulations are often put in place by popular demand.

wtallis 10y ago

> "One thought is that the last-mile problem becomes irrelevant when mobile providers are offering high-speed internet. > Whether you agree with that sentiment is largely dependent on how you view the world." There are readily available objective truths about what wireless networks can and cannot do. They cannot compete with fiber or high-end DOCSIS deployments. Since wired last-mile infrastructure is a natural monopoly, there cannot be any reasonable expectation that a free market will exist.

dv_dt 10y ago

The wireless provisioning of bandwidth to a residential market has basically failed and does not provide any real competition to wired last-mile access. Without that there is no competitive market for the last mile. The current landscape is that mobile service providers basically do not provide any service that meet the needs of residential networks. It is difficult to even connect a network of devices to a mobile wireless hotspot without violating the terms of service from the mobile provider or very rapidly hitting bandwidth caps. As far as I can tell, multiple small companies focused on providing wireless residential network service have failed, or stayed very small regional companies because of an inherent technological inadequacy of wireless to compete with the same level of wired transit... So it becomes not a market for raw bandwidth (which I would be reasonably happy with), but a market for access to bandwidth bundled with whatever junk the provider is trying to bundle. That bandwidth is further encumbered with business agreements restraining travel of data through last-mile access bottlenecks based on secondary agreements not between the customer and ISP (and not disclosed to the end consumer). This also does not make for a good market - choice and visibility are removed from the customer.