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I am bothered by it, but I don’t think lack of regulation is going to fix the issue, because an ISP is a natural monopoly. The rights they have acquired from th

I am bothered by it, but I don’t think lack of regulation is going to fix the issue, because an ISP is a natural monopoly. The rights they have acquired from the government and from the private sector to lay all those wires provide too big a hurdle in the absence of regulation, and passing laws to make to easier to lay wires for competition would have to have all sorts of negative externalities for property owners and cities, not to mention the inefficiency of building the infrastructure twice. So that leaves regulating the current ISPs as a public utility, like is done successfully in much of the world, or leaving the market in the hands of monopolists.

Sacho 9y ago
I think one overlooked factor here is the next move for companies should Net Neutrality remain in force. Reading the Telco act that NN is based on, it allows the FCC to decide which ISPs to be burdened with the regulation(the intention being that small ISPs aren't affected). The next natural move for ISPs would be to lobby that their competitors are regulated but they are not. Since clearly ISPs have a strong lobby arm, wouldn't this be a great tool to use to essentially end any competition among ISPs? It'd be very much MAD - don't infringe on our turf or we will start a NN war with you. I think that's one of the unintended consequences of NN. They'll have even less incentive to improve their current offerings, which I don't think many people are satisfied by. Will the end goal here be to essentially nationalize ISPs?
- mattnewton 9y ago
  There are so few competitors making it already that ISP’s clearly have sufficient tools to bully the smaller players out of buisiness currently, and there aren’t any tools for government officials to stop them. I don’t know enough about how infrastructure fairs when it is nationalized but besides that being a dirty word in American politics I’m not apposed on priciniple. My cursory understanding is that it seems to work for other nations, and since I already have to treat anything I send my ISP as sent to the NSA as well I’m not sure what I would be giving up.

Sacho 9y ago

I think one overlooked factor here is the next move for companies should Net Neutrality remain in force. Reading the Telco act that NN is based on, it allows the FCC to decide which ISPs to be burdened with the regulation(the intention being that small ISPs aren't affected). The next natural move for ISPs would be to lobby that their competitors are regulated but they are not. Since clearly ISPs have a strong lobby arm, wouldn't this be a great tool to use to essentially end any competition among ISPs? It'd be very much MAD - don't infringe on our turf or we will start a NN war with you. I think that's one of the unintended consequences of NN. They'll have even less incentive to improve their current offerings, which I don't think many people are satisfied by. Will the end goal here be to essentially nationalize ISPs?

mattnewton 9y ago
There are so few competitors making it already that ISP’s clearly have sufficient tools to bully the smaller players out of buisiness currently, and there aren’t any tools for government officials to stop them. I don’t know enough about how infrastructure fairs when it is nationalized but besides that being a dirty word in American politics I’m not apposed on priciniple. My cursory understanding is that it seems to work for other nations, and since I already have to treat anything I send my ISP as sent to the NSA as well I’m not sure what I would be giving up.