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ISPs are natural monopolies due to the incredibly high infrastructure investments required. In countries or regions where there are many ISPs to choose from, it
by endophage 9y ago
ISPs 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 9y 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 9y agoI don't think we want to use Russia or the Ukraine as examples of Bastions of free speech... for obvious reasons.
- sqeaky 9y agoI don't think we want to use Russia or the Ukraine as examples of Bastions of free speech... for obvious reasons.
- takeda 9y 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.