3 ms·
ISPs are not natural monopolies though. In the US they are self-made monopolies that over the years pushed for enough regulations to completely thwart competiti
by zzzcpan 10y ago
ISPs are not natural monopolies though. In the US they are self-made monopolies that over the years pushed for enough regulations to completely thwart competition. Compare that with the most competing ISP markets, like Romania, Ukraine, Russia, where most people can choose from a few ISPs and up to 10+ in densely populated areas.
So, net neutrality is an attempt to fix regulation problem with more regulations. Which obviously cannot work for long, they are too big and have too much influence to push regulations that benefit them. At some point this could cause enough problems to become a political thing and new people in power would be forced to actually take action against them.
- endophage 10y agoISPs are natural monopolies due to the incredibly high infrastructure investments required. In countries or regions where there are many ISPs to choose from, it's almost always because the government has required the one or two that own all the infra to rent capacity at cost to anyone who wants to start up a competing service. In return, the governments frequently supply tax breaks. This mechanism may be a viable alternative to net neutrality as it drastically lowers the cost to enter the ISP market, and it would be in the competitive interest of some providers to self impose net neutrality. My guess based on observation though is the infrastructure owning ISPs would probably prefer net neutrality to forced rental of their infra if one of those 2 regulations were to be chosen.
- zzzcpan 10y agoFYI, there is no forced rental in Romania, Ukraine or Russia. Their governments simply didn't bother to regulate ISPs at all for a long time.
- sqeaky 10y agoI don't think we want to use Russia or the Ukraine as examples of Bastions of free speech... for obvious reasons.
- sqeaky 10y agoI don't think we want to use Russia or the Ukraine as examples of Bastions of free speech... for obvious reasons.
- takeda 10y agoMaybe this is because the market is still fresh. Give it a time, and those companies will start merge together like they just did in the US. There's limited amount of space in the city infrastructure to use for laying all of the fiber.
- swsieber 10y agoI wouldn't say that net neutrality is just addressing the shortcomings imposed by other regulations. I think the way forward would be to repeal those other regulations and keep net neutrality