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ISPs are not operating in a pure market. They have been granted billions of dollars in subsidies over the years, and in many places are/were also granted monopo
by orev 8y ago
ISPs are not operating in a pure market. They have been granted billions of dollars in subsidies over the years, and in many places are/were also granted monopolies because communities don’t want wires being run by multiple companies. After all the benefits they have been given, now they want to turn around and cry “free market” and that they should not be regulated.
- ngngngng 8y agoIt's also not possible to operate in a completely unregulated free market when your industry relies on a finite amount of space in the ground to lay fiber or airwaves to transmit on. There's a very limited amount of competition that can operate when a city has to approve someone digging up the roads every time a new company pops up.
- pdonis 8y ago> There's a very limited amount of competition that can operate when a city has to approve someone digging up the roads every time a new company pops up. The solution to this is for the actual physical infrastructure that requires digging up roads to be owned by the city (or other local entity), so it only has to be put into place once, when the city is built; and for competing ISPs to either lease, say, fiber bandwidth from the city, or get a permit to pull their own cabling through already existing underground tunnels. The problem is that every municipality that has tried this solution has been sued into oblivion by the ISPs, who want to prevent open competition by any means necessary.