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Trying my hardest to keep an open mind, this argument is the closest I've seen to something even remotely sane, but I'm stumped in regards to the specific mecha

Trying my hardest to keep an open mind, this argument is the closest I've seen to something even remotely sane, but I'm stumped in regards to the specific mechanism. I can think of two, and would love to hear if anyone can improve them: (a) There's a house a mile away from the city. Right now, running a cable to it isn't worth it for the X$/mo they would pay for internet. Without net neutrality, Comcast will also get 20% of Amazon's revenue, and Netflix', and the investment starts to make sense. (My criticism: Those 20% will have to be added to Amazon's prices, considering their thin margins, and the customer could have just paid the total directly to Comcast, without all the harm to people not in their situation. Also: this argument rapidly loses plausibility for even a small cluster of, say, a dozen houses. If you want to life in a cabin in the woods, slow internet seems like the sort of trade-off it involves. You get clean air, in turn. Although that may be changing, as well). (b) A simple trickle-down theory of network access: Comcast will make so much money, some of it just has to end up in network investment. (criticism: there really isn't a point at which a company will say "we have so much money, let's spend a little more on investments bound to cost us money")

Aloha 10y ago
It kinda makes sense for me, it increases the effective margin on services, so it could make an area that would otherwise be not cost effective for service, cost effective. Telcos only make expansions for areas that can generate an effective rate of return, if the density required to make a rate of return drops a wider area can be serviced. I'm optimistic but not hopeful - we didn't have these kinds of services long enough to see if they would move the needle.. but I strongly suspect that they wouldn't, and would just line the pockets of the incumbent telcos. For things like utilities I'm a big big big believer in regulated monopolies. It makes no sense from a cost perspective to have duplicated facilities rather than rate of return based financing.. and if you want universal access, you need that cross subsidization that was done before divestiture (high margin services subsidized low margin ones to ensure universal access). In the end, the only way to have universal service is to have some sort of cross subsidization either from higher margin services the telco also sells, or from an external entity.

Aloha 10y ago

It kinda makes sense for me, it increases the effective margin on services, so it could make an area that would otherwise be not cost effective for service, cost effective. Telcos only make expansions for areas that can generate an effective rate of return, if the density required to make a rate of return drops a wider area can be serviced. I'm optimistic but not hopeful - we didn't have these kinds of services long enough to see if they would move the needle.. but I strongly suspect that they wouldn't, and would just line the pockets of the incumbent telcos. For things like utilities I'm a big big big believer in regulated monopolies. It makes no sense from a cost perspective to have duplicated facilities rather than rate of return based financing.. and if you want universal access, you need that cross subsidization that was done before divestiture (high margin services subsidized low margin ones to ensure universal access). In the end, the only way to have universal service is to have some sort of cross subsidization either from higher margin services the telco also sells, or from an external entity.