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In that case, I think the rational thing for ISP's to do is to carve out enclaves where they don't compete for customers. I suppose the new political FCC will f
by noobermin 8y ago
In that case, I think the rational thing for ISP's to do is to carve out enclaves where they don't compete for customers. I suppose the new political FCC will find that competitive.
- Aloha 8y agoThe FCC IMO is no more political than its ever been. What we're ascribing to politics (which it may very well be) is in my opinion better ascribed to regulatory capture - which is a problem many regulatory agencies have had over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- mindslight 8y agoRegulatory capture is the engine driving contemporary politics. You buy off the party whose biases align better with your own mission, then wait for theme to have their turn at the trough.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ghrifter 8y agoUnited States has been a financial oligarchy since the turn of the 20th century.
- bo1024 8y agoI think this is accurate but politics swirl around it or are used as smokescreens. For example I followed Net Neutrality quite closely and it was not initially painted as partisan, until the FCC realized that by calling NN an "Obama-era regulation" they could dogwhistle some republicans over to their side and make it seem like a traditionally partisan issue. (For some reason news sites played along and used this term all over the place.) But this all happened midway through the process as they cast around for justifications for what was really regulatory capture.
- plopz 8y agoThey already have, look at a map of isp coverage in new jersey comparing comcast and optimum. https://i.imgur.com/3oUUw7b.png https://i.imgur.com/3oUUw7b.png
- ABCLAW 8y agoOh look, it's an almost ideal market allocation scheme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_allocation_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_allocation_scheme Edit: I always find it interesting how when a FANG company is called out, an employee will provide a guarded defense, but when an ISP is called out regarding competition issues, the result is dead silence.
- im3w1l 8y agoI rarely see any ISP-employees discuss anything at all on hackernews.
- tylerhou 8y agoI don't think the definition is too unreasonable. Many areas would still be non-competitive according to the FTC: in order to guarantee that most of your customers are within 1/2 mile of another ISP, you'd have to significantly gerrymander your coverage areas into <2 mile wide strips. Or you'd have to ask another ISP to build in a certain fashion such that they have a bunch of isolated nodes or strips going through your large coverage area. For reference, most of the coverage area in the map in another comment (https://imgur.com/3oUUw7b https://imgur.com/3oUUw7b) would probably be considered non-competitive. I think 1/2 might be a bit too far, though. 1/4 seems maybe more reasonable.
- bo1024 8y agoIt's incredibly unreasonable. Economists roughly classify markets as monopoly (single seller), oligopoly (few, powerful sellers), and competitive markets. We are talking about a monopoly that's sort of close to being an oligopoly. A more accurate term would be "just barely not as far as possible from competitive".
- tylerhou 8y agoI'm not saying the current state of affairs is reasonable (i.e. I'm saying that ISPs are currently monopolies). I'm saying that the FTC's proposed definition to determine whether there is competition in a coverage area is reasonable. One heuristic I'm using to support my claim is that the FTC's proposed definition implies there is still an ISP monopoly in the area in the picture I linked.
- bo1024 8y agoIt might start making sense to me if they didn't use the word "competition" but that word means something else.