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More competition is good for consumers. 5G competing with fixed broadband means lower prices for everyone.

Bedon292 6y ago
Its more a way for the same companies to not have to actually physically install wires / fiber to a residence. It just means people will end up with a single carrier of 5G instead of a single fixed broadband provider. With no additional competition.
Spooky23 6y ago
It won’t remain competitive. Wireless is exempt from the restrictions that wired services are forced to accept. Wireless carriers can terminate apps that they consider disruptive and have fewer neutrality and limit restrictions. You’re not going to have meaningful competition, and the national security nonsense attributed to 5G allows for things like siting infrastructure dramatically cheaper than incumbents. The regulation is much easier for carriers to control at the federal level, especially with the courts in the state they are in.
- eru 6y ago
  > Wireless is exempt from the restrictions that wired services are forced to accept. The comment you replying to talked about market competition bringing prices down. Not about regulation bringing prices down.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    Regulation is a key part of the cost of goods sold. Regulation makes markets. For example, 5G antennas have been declared critical defense infrastructure, cable TV has not. That means that your cable company needs to follow local ordinances, get permits, rent existing pole space, etc. The 5G people can drop an antenna wherever they want with 30 days notice — on my block, a 5G millimeter wave pole was dropped three feet away from an existing telephone pole, in the middle of a sidewalk. Wireless also operates under rules that allow it to do more revenue generation for things like prioritization, etc.
    - eru 6y ago
      Well, I'm glad I live in a saner jurisdiction.
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
Except that data caps and data throttling means they don't actually directly compete. Just look at the amount of memes bemoaning that you've been at home for 3h but forgot to turn wifi on.
- Reason077 6y ago
  > "data caps and data throttling means they don't actually directly compete" That depends on where you're located. In the UK, unlimited data plans are common on 4G/5G, and mobile carriers compete directly for home broadband customers. For example: http://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband http://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband https://www.vodafone.co.uk/gigacube/ https://www.vodafone.co.uk/gigacube/ In my case, since there's no fibre installed into my building, 5G wireless with unlimited data (no caps, no throttling) works out both slightly cheaper and much faster than any available wired option.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    In the US, the FCC rules that govern telecommunications treat wired differently than wireless. Congress doesn’t allow states to regulate wireless services in the manner that other utilities are regulated. Regulatory teeth really only exists at the state level.
    - eru 6y ago
      So what? There's no (binding) regulation on the price of bread and yet, people can usually afford the stuff.
      - X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
        The government interacting with the price of food starts well before it's baked into bread.
        eru 6y ago
        Hence my qualification with 'binding'. In most of the world, most of the time retail prices for bread are allowed to vary, and a bakery can offer a loaf of bread for 50 dollars or for 10 cents without issue. You are right that there's lots of regulations and subsidies and taxes in the whole production chain of bread. So if you want a more sophisticated version of my toy argument, then let's argue based on sliding scales, not binary distinctions: There's lots of different products in different industries in different countries, and larger amounts of regulation don't seem to correlate with lower prices or better quality. If anything, it's just the opposite. See especially black markets that are by definition at most lightly regulated and spring up every time the regulations on the formal markets go awry. (I don't want to so 'every time regulations become too much' because it's not about quantity so much as it is about sensible rules.)
donmcronald 6y ago
They’ll just quit maintaining the wireline infrastructure until it’s so bad no one wants to use it. Where I’m from they cut out the copper infrastructure when they install FTTH. They need to share infrastructure where it exists, but I’m guessing there’s nothing that bans the “owner” from tearing out the shared infrastructure.
- zbrozek 6y ago
  Bingo. Already happened on the street behind my house. AT&T has copper where most of the pairs have been damaged over the decades and they just shrug about it.
kristopolous 6y ago
or cartels, or price fixing, or vertical monopolies, or industry consolidation, or effective monopolies ... when you let a thousand flowers bloom, unless you're careful usually all you get are weeds.
- eru 6y ago
  What's your evidence for that?
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    The history of fair competition comes to mind. That's needed for things to work. Competition breaking and being unfair goes back to at least ancient Roman law, here's a Wikipedia article on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_competition_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_competition_law If the 2,000 years of examples there isn't enough I can provide lots more. The competition zealots only have "thought experiments" and pretend like there is no history to this stuff.
    - eru 6y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by only thought experiments. There's lots of history of cartels falling apart, monopolies being broken; or very often also: monopolies being upheld by the government, and sometimes supposed anti-trust law being used to keep out the competition. Lots of the laws mentioned in the Wikipedia article you linked to are pretty anticompetitive. Eg > Under Diocletian, in 301 AD an Edict on maximum prices established a death penalty for anyone violating a tariff system, for example by buying up, concealing or contriving the scarcity of everyday goods. Or just next: > It provided for property confiscation and banishment for any trade combinations or joint action of monopolies private or granted by the Emperor. Zeno rescinded all previously granted exclusive rights.[4] Justinian I also introduced legislation not long after to pay officials to manage state monopolies. It's all about government enforced monopolies. On the more positive side: have a look at eg Herbert Dow and the breaking of the German Bromine Cartel. (Eg via https://fee.org/articles/herbert-dow-and-predatory-pricing/ https://fee.org/articles/herbert-dow-and-predatory-pricing/ or look at any other article you can find on that.) Or George Selgin's Good Money (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3392302-good-money https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3392302-good-money) about an episode in the English Industrial Revolution when the private sector minted coins because the government monopoly was inept.
tomc1985 6y ago
One would think, but that does not seem to be the reality thus far. Once one of those markets can be fully substituted with the other, then we can see if they truly compete, or if it somehow forms yet another abusive oligopoly
- eru 6y ago
  Why do you need 'full' substitution for competition? What does full substitution mean here?
  - tomc1985 6y ago
    Meaning that they're both roughly equal in terms of latency and bandwidth, so much that one could swap one out with the other and not know the difference Because I do not see them as strongly competing technologies. Cable has sheer speed and latency on its side and 5G has mobility. Switching my cable connection today for a 5G connection tomorrow would make my life worse. They both fill niches the other can't.
    - eru 6y ago
      I think it's all a sliding scale, not a binary either/or. Of course, the better they substitute, the more competition there is. But in the grand scheme of things, even eg email and telephone and driving and sending a letter compete with each other to a certain extent. So eg for watching a movie, latency ain't that important. I live in Singapore, and my options right now are 4G and fibre. In practice, 4G is regularly faster and lower latency for me around the flat, but that's just because I usually cripple my fibre connection by using it via wifi. And our 4G is usually more than competitive with wifi.
      - Reason077 6y ago
        This sounds like an issue with your WiFi. Properly configured, a modern 802.11ac (or better, 802.11ax) WiFi router should be much faster than the fastest 4G or even 5G speeds.

Its more a way for the same companies to not have to actually physically install wires / fiber to a residence. It just means people will end up with a single carrier of 5G instead of a single fixed broadband provider. With no additional competition.

Spooky23 6y ago

It won’t remain competitive. Wireless is exempt from the restrictions that wired services are forced to accept. Wireless carriers can terminate apps that they consider disruptive and have fewer neutrality and limit restrictions. You’re not going to have meaningful competition, and the national security nonsense attributed to 5G allows for things like siting infrastructure dramatically cheaper than incumbents. The regulation is much easier for carriers to control at the federal level, especially with the courts in the state they are in.

eru 6y ago
> Wireless is exempt from the restrictions that wired services are forced to accept. The comment you replying to talked about market competition bringing prices down. Not about regulation bringing prices down.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Regulation is a key part of the cost of goods sold. Regulation makes markets. For example, 5G antennas have been declared critical defense infrastructure, cable TV has not. That means that your cable company needs to follow local ordinances, get permits, rent existing pole space, etc. The 5G people can drop an antenna wherever they want with 30 days notice — on my block, a 5G millimeter wave pole was dropped three feet away from an existing telephone pole, in the middle of a sidewalk. Wireless also operates under rules that allow it to do more revenue generation for things like prioritization, etc.
  - eru 6y ago
    Well, I'm glad I live in a saner jurisdiction.

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago

Except that data caps and data throttling means they don't actually directly compete. Just look at the amount of memes bemoaning that you've been at home for 3h but forgot to turn wifi on.

Reason077 6y ago
> "data caps and data throttling means they don't actually directly compete" That depends on where you're located. In the UK, unlimited data plans are common on 4G/5G, and mobile carriers compete directly for home broadband customers. For example: http://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband http://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband https://www.vodafone.co.uk/gigacube/ https://www.vodafone.co.uk/gigacube/ In my case, since there's no fibre installed into my building, 5G wireless with unlimited data (no caps, no throttling) works out both slightly cheaper and much faster than any available wired option.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  In the US, the FCC rules that govern telecommunications treat wired differently than wireless. Congress doesn’t allow states to regulate wireless services in the manner that other utilities are regulated. Regulatory teeth really only exists at the state level.
  - eru 6y ago
    So what? There's no (binding) regulation on the price of bread and yet, people can usually afford the stuff.
    - X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
      The government interacting with the price of food starts well before it's baked into bread.
      - eru 6y ago
        Hence my qualification with 'binding'. In most of the world, most of the time retail prices for bread are allowed to vary, and a bakery can offer a loaf of bread for 50 dollars or for 10 cents without issue. You are right that there's lots of regulations and subsidies and taxes in the whole production chain of bread. So if you want a more sophisticated version of my toy argument, then let's argue based on sliding scales, not binary distinctions: There's lots of different products in different industries in different countries, and larger amounts of regulation don't seem to correlate with lower prices or better quality. If anything, it's just the opposite. See especially black markets that are by definition at most lightly regulated and spring up every time the regulations on the formal markets go awry. (I don't want to so 'every time regulations become too much' because it's not about quantity so much as it is about sensible rules.)

donmcronald 6y ago

They’ll just quit maintaining the wireline infrastructure until it’s so bad no one wants to use it. Where I’m from they cut out the copper infrastructure when they install FTTH. They need to share infrastructure where it exists, but I’m guessing there’s nothing that bans the “owner” from tearing out the shared infrastructure.

zbrozek 6y ago
Bingo. Already happened on the street behind my house. AT&T has copper where most of the pairs have been damaged over the decades and they just shrug about it.

kristopolous 6y ago

or cartels, or price fixing, or vertical monopolies, or industry consolidation, or effective monopolies ... when you let a thousand flowers bloom, unless you're careful usually all you get are weeds.

eru 6y ago
What's your evidence for that?
- kristopolous 6y ago
  The history of fair competition comes to mind. That's needed for things to work. Competition breaking and being unfair goes back to at least ancient Roman law, here's a Wikipedia article on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_competition_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_competition_law If the 2,000 years of examples there isn't enough I can provide lots more. The competition zealots only have "thought experiments" and pretend like there is no history to this stuff.
  - eru 6y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by only thought experiments. There's lots of history of cartels falling apart, monopolies being broken; or very often also: monopolies being upheld by the government, and sometimes supposed anti-trust law being used to keep out the competition. Lots of the laws mentioned in the Wikipedia article you linked to are pretty anticompetitive. Eg > Under Diocletian, in 301 AD an Edict on maximum prices established a death penalty for anyone violating a tariff system, for example by buying up, concealing or contriving the scarcity of everyday goods. Or just next: > It provided for property confiscation and banishment for any trade combinations or joint action of monopolies private or granted by the Emperor. Zeno rescinded all previously granted exclusive rights.[4] Justinian I also introduced legislation not long after to pay officials to manage state monopolies. It's all about government enforced monopolies. On the more positive side: have a look at eg Herbert Dow and the breaking of the German Bromine Cartel. (Eg via https://fee.org/articles/herbert-dow-and-predatory-pricing/ https://fee.org/articles/herbert-dow-and-predatory-pricing/ or look at any other article you can find on that.) Or George Selgin's Good Money (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3392302-good-money https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3392302-good-money) about an episode in the English Industrial Revolution when the private sector minted coins because the government monopoly was inept.

tomc1985 6y ago

One would think, but that does not seem to be the reality thus far. Once one of those markets can be fully substituted with the other, then we can see if they truly compete, or if it somehow forms yet another abusive oligopoly

eru 6y ago
Why do you need 'full' substitution for competition? What does full substitution mean here?
- tomc1985 6y ago
  Meaning that they're both roughly equal in terms of latency and bandwidth, so much that one could swap one out with the other and not know the difference Because I do not see them as strongly competing technologies. Cable has sheer speed and latency on its side and 5G has mobility. Switching my cable connection today for a 5G connection tomorrow would make my life worse. They both fill niches the other can't.
  - eru 6y ago
    I think it's all a sliding scale, not a binary either/or. Of course, the better they substitute, the more competition there is. But in the grand scheme of things, even eg email and telephone and driving and sending a letter compete with each other to a certain extent. So eg for watching a movie, latency ain't that important. I live in Singapore, and my options right now are 4G and fibre. In practice, 4G is regularly faster and lower latency for me around the flat, but that's just because I usually cripple my fibre connection by using it via wifi. And our 4G is usually more than competitive with wifi.
    - Reason077 6y ago
      This sounds like an issue with your WiFi. Properly configured, a modern 802.11ac (or better, 802.11ax) WiFi router should be much faster than the fastest 4G or even 5G speeds.