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>physical networks are a natural monopoly in the same way as most public utilities But ISPs are not, generally speaking, a monopoly. There's usually at least

• lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Low latency, low packet loss, high upload and download bandwidth, unmetered internet service is certainly a monopoly. None of this is possible with wireless. You're lucky if you live in a place with symmetric gigabit fiber service. There's only one provider. And quite frankly, there's no need to string multiple fibers to every house. Everyone else has a subpar coaxial connection from Comcast/Cox/Spectrum.
  • treis 6y ago
    If you segment any market enough eventually you end up with a monopoly. And your segment is unreasonable. Very very few people need symmetric gigabit fiber. Using that as the criteria is like saying Lamborghini has a monopoly on cars because they're the only one that makes one that goes 200 mph.
    • lotsofpulp 6y ago
      If you're laying fiber, it costs next to nothing to make it gigabit versus 10Mbit. The issue is that fiber internet itself is a much better product than non fiber internet. And tell the people who have kids and are also working from home that they can't stream video because an HD video stream is 3Mbps+ and 4 people in a house streaming at the same time at high quality is basically impossible. Some people also have security cameras streaming upload too. The applications for increased bandwidth are numerous. Remote doctor visits can use high quality video, you can stream things from your home NAS, backups are quicker.
• gnopgnip 6y ago
  >There's usually at least two wired options Per https://www.fcc.gov/internet-access-services-reports https://www.fcc.gov/internet-access-services-reports approximately only about 25% of census blocks have two or more providers for wired internet. Often within a census block most households will only have one option.
  • treis 6y ago
    Census blocks aren't equivalent to households. Most of those census blocks are going to be rural with few people living there.
    • gnopgnip 6y ago
      That is true, and you can look at the data in different ways. But still most households don't have at least two different high speed internet providers.
      • treis 6y ago
        That's just not true. Depending on what you count as broadband 60-90% of households have two or more fixed options: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-million-us-homes-have-only-one-25mbps-internet-provider-or-none-at-all/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/50-mi...
        • FireBeyond 6y ago
          Yeah, if 1 household has an option greater than what, 5mbps, that whole census block is considered as having options... For my home, 2.5mi from the Capital Building in Washington State, I'm offered four wired broadband providers: 1. Comcast, "advertised 100mbps to 1gbps" (true enough, although you can only get 150mbps, so I'm not sure if that's bracketing) 2. CenturyLink, "25-50mbps" (CenturyLink's own website says "Our systems indicate that our High Speed Internet is not currently available at your service address." I tried several other streets in the area that indicated that none of them had availability either.) 3. Platinum Equity LLC, "10-25mbps" (err, Platinum Equity is an investment firm - oh, one of their portfolio offers "T1 and Bonded T1" lines to businesses and after further investigation would offer me 192K SDSL as a residential offering) 4. Integra Telecom Holdings, "3-6mbps" (a Vancouver telco that does business fiber). So there's one - Olympia, WA.