6 ms·

> ISPs and utility companies are natural monopolies. When you move to a new location, you're stuck with the ISPs that service that location; often just 1 ISP.

> ISPs and utility companies are natural monopolies. When you move to a new location, you're stuck with the ISPs that service that location; often just 1 ISP. This is simply not true. With the wide availability of cellular service that provides broadband speeds pretty much everyone in the country has multiple choices of ISP.

Maken 9y ago
How many of those companies actually have their own network and aren't subcontracting from one of the top companies?
- marknutter 9y ago
  Most of them have their own network, and only in very remote locations do they have to subcontract on top of other companies.
  - forgotmysn 9y ago
    You're almost correct! The truth is actually the complete inverse of your statement.
cygx 9y ago
How competitive are they with regard to latency, speed and pricing?
- eropple 9y ago
  They're not, on any point (especially when you add "reliability" to the list--I've played the "upload a multi-gigabyte file over mobile" game before and paid for it in drop-outs!). There might be a day, ten or fifteen years from now, when I can do three-quarters of what I do today over a mobile link, but it certainly isn't today. It's so prima facie silly that it verges on bad-faith argument.
pikzen 9y ago
If I used the same amount of data on my cellular service than I do on my land line, I would be kicked out of every single provider in the country. And I live in a country where data is cheap.
cnnsucks 9y ago
Is that actually the case? The cell services I know of have very low caps, one or two orders of magnitude higher cost and suffer congestion problems.
nocman 9y ago
If you live near a city this is often true (at least in the US). However, there are at least two problems with this: 1) often the broadband provided by mobile services is capped and/or much more expensive than the services provided by the 1 or at best 2 non-mobile ISPs you have access to. 2) in rural areas, often you do NOT have access to anything close to the same level of broadband speeds. There are a lot of places where the coverage is still spotty, and even where you have it, the speeds just aren't that great. (again, I'm speaking about conditions in the US)
- marknutter 9y ago
  Why do all people need insanely fast broadband speeds and data download limits? I think the fact that a small percentage of the population wants those speeds should not dictate what the larger percentage of the population has to pay for. NN hurts low-income internet users.
  - nocman 9y ago
    First off, I was neither arguing for nor against net neutrality. I was responding to "With the wide availability of cellular service that provides broadband speeds pretty much everyone in the country has multiple choices of ISP." From a practical standpoint, this is not true for many users. Secondly, I was in no way referring to "insanely fast broadband speeds and data download limits". I was talking about practical limits. Where I live, if I depended on mobile connectivity for internet service, it would be impractical to do anything that involved any media of any significant size. The connectivity would at best be barely capable, and the data limits and plan costs would make it hideously expensive. Therefore I have pretty much one ISP that can provide me with tolerable service.
    - marknutter 9y ago
      But you base where you live on the infrastructure available. If high internet speeds are important to you, then moving to a city with better options makes sense. If you want to lie in the boondocks, then that's more important to you than internet.
zanny 9y ago
Cell service is also highly monopolistic. It is honestly very strange we have 4 relatively competitive network operators in the US - it isn't a stable system to say the least, though, and it will almost always degenerate into two (and it almost did - for a while T-mobile and Sprint were non-competitive with AT&T and Verizon, and it took their complacency in the 3G->4G transition era to give the two underdogs a chance to reestablish themselves). Fundamentally, though, nobody in the US can open a new cell phone operator now. The spectrum is bought and owned, the owners know how valuable it is, and owning light is a much scarcer and more valuable resource than any plot of land that billionaires are buying up in the present property investment bubble. It is even worse than the ISP monopoly - ISPs are local monopolies. We have a national cartel of cell operators that can't face real competition because of a state guaranteed monopoly on radio waves. As is the nature of all business with guaranteed profits, eventually AT&T and Verizon will consume T-Mobile and Sprint, possibly even under this administration, where there will be much less anti-monopoly scrutiny, and then we will have two network operators controlling all the usable cellular bandwidth with no intent to let anyone else compete. Just because we are in an... alright situation right now, doesn't guarantee that environment will persist forever. Cellular network operators are absolutely crooked and near guaranteed in a long enough time span to devolve into a duopoly, while we already have collusion between them today to screw over consumers.

Maken 9y ago

How many of those companies actually have their own network and aren't subcontracting from one of the top companies?

marknutter 9y ago
Most of them have their own network, and only in very remote locations do they have to subcontract on top of other companies.
- forgotmysn 9y ago
  You're almost correct! The truth is actually the complete inverse of your statement.

cygx 9y ago

How competitive are they with regard to latency, speed and pricing?

eropple 9y ago
They're not, on any point (especially when you add "reliability" to the list--I've played the "upload a multi-gigabyte file over mobile" game before and paid for it in drop-outs!). There might be a day, ten or fifteen years from now, when I can do three-quarters of what I do today over a mobile link, but it certainly isn't today. It's so prima facie silly that it verges on bad-faith argument.

pikzen 9y ago

If I used the same amount of data on my cellular service than I do on my land line, I would be kicked out of every single provider in the country. And I live in a country where data is cheap.

cnnsucks 9y ago

Is that actually the case? The cell services I know of have very low caps, one or two orders of magnitude higher cost and suffer congestion problems.

nocman 9y ago

If you live near a city this is often true (at least in the US). However, there are at least two problems with this: 1) often the broadband provided by mobile services is capped and/or much more expensive than the services provided by the 1 or at best 2 non-mobile ISPs you have access to. 2) in rural areas, often you do NOT have access to anything close to the same level of broadband speeds. There are a lot of places where the coverage is still spotty, and even where you have it, the speeds just aren't that great. (again, I'm speaking about conditions in the US)

marknutter 9y ago
Why do all people need insanely fast broadband speeds and data download limits? I think the fact that a small percentage of the population wants those speeds should not dictate what the larger percentage of the population has to pay for. NN hurts low-income internet users.
- nocman 9y ago
  First off, I was neither arguing for nor against net neutrality. I was responding to "With the wide availability of cellular service that provides broadband speeds pretty much everyone in the country has multiple choices of ISP." From a practical standpoint, this is not true for many users. Secondly, I was in no way referring to "insanely fast broadband speeds and data download limits". I was talking about practical limits. Where I live, if I depended on mobile connectivity for internet service, it would be impractical to do anything that involved any media of any significant size. The connectivity would at best be barely capable, and the data limits and plan costs would make it hideously expensive. Therefore I have pretty much one ISP that can provide me with tolerable service.
  - marknutter 9y ago
    But you base where you live on the infrastructure available. If high internet speeds are important to you, then moving to a city with better options makes sense. If you want to lie in the boondocks, then that's more important to you than internet.

zanny 9y ago

Cell service is also highly monopolistic. It is honestly very strange we have 4 relatively competitive network operators in the US - it isn't a stable system to say the least, though, and it will almost always degenerate into two (and it almost did - for a while T-mobile and Sprint were non-competitive with AT&T and Verizon, and it took their complacency in the 3G->4G transition era to give the two underdogs a chance to reestablish themselves). Fundamentally, though, nobody in the US can open a new cell phone operator now. The spectrum is bought and owned, the owners know how valuable it is, and owning light is a much scarcer and more valuable resource than any plot of land that billionaires are buying up in the present property investment bubble. It is even worse than the ISP monopoly - ISPs are local monopolies. We have a national cartel of cell operators that can't face real competition because of a state guaranteed monopoly on radio waves. As is the nature of all business with guaranteed profits, eventually AT&T and Verizon will consume T-Mobile and Sprint, possibly even under this administration, where there will be much less anti-monopoly scrutiny, and then we will have two network operators controlling all the usable cellular bandwidth with no intent to let anyone else compete. Just because we are in an... alright situation right now, doesn't guarantee that environment will persist forever. Cellular network operators are absolutely crooked and near guaranteed in a long enough time span to devolve into a duopoly, while we already have collusion between them today to screw over consumers.