13 ms·

For those who think this is going to be an anti-government regulation, libertarian orthodoxy type article, here's the tl;dr: "government regulators who have fo

by ojbyrne 15y ago

For those who think this is going to be an anti-government regulation, libertarian orthodoxy type article, here's the tl;dr: "government regulators who have forced more competition"

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
VMG 15y ago
... after creating monopolies in the first place
- bgentry 15y ago
  The government doesn't have to create these monopolies. Utility (i.e. telecom) companies naturally tend towards a monopoly because of the absurdly high cost of rolling out duplicate infrastructure. Usually the first mover is able to fend off any real competition by lowering its prices below that which its competitors can afford, given that they still have an infrastructure to build.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    And even if the first mover does not end up alone on the market, after some time the market tends to undergo significant consolidation (once most of the organic growth has been achieved). And you end up with a natural monopoly anyway. You can even see that in very recent history: the US government broke up Bell in 7 in 1984, it's already merged back into 2 companies (AT&T and Verizon are composed of 3 baby bells each, the 7th is part of Qwest/CenturyLink)
    - ori_b 15y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but the baby bell split was a vertical split. In other words, it left 7 regional monopolies, rather than 7 companies covering the same regions, competing for the same customers. That means that customers were still stuck with one choice for phone and internet access, but the choice merely varied based on where you went. The Baby Bells weren't competing with each other.
- krschultz 15y ago
  The logic there is astounding. The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies. These companies then merged their way back into a handful of large corporations and are still trying to merge even more. Did the government force them to join up together? Of course not. The government is actively discouraging a lot of these mergers, i.e. the government is forcing there to be a more competitive marketplace.
  - Semiapies 15y ago
    The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking British Telecom.) Similarly, there are a lot of municipal agreements in the US where one company gets the exclusive right to handle local phone or cable service within a city or region. More companies or smaller companies doesn't mean any benefit for consumers when they still just end up choosing between "the phone company" and "the cable company" as designated by law.
    - masklinn 15y ago
      > After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking even worse entities.) In order to regulate it (putting it under jurisdiction of the FCC) as Bell was already a natural monopoly by this point, even after the Kingsbury Commitment.
      - Perceval 15y ago
        At the top of this thread, ojbyrne says we need to have government regulation in order to create competition. Here you say that we needed regulation to make AT&T a de jure national monopoly so that we could further regulate AT&T. So, regulation grants monopolies, then regulates those monopolies, then also regulates more competition into the monopoly market it had previously granted? This is good governance?
        masklinn 15y ago
        Regulation did not create AT&T's monopoly. AT&T did that, the government later sanctioned it in order to try and better regulate the monopolistic company (it failed).
- logjam 15y ago
  >... after creating monopolies in the first place If you are really trying to advance the theory that "the market", left to itself, won't generate monopoly after monopoly, perhaps you could point us to actual examples of those golden times when the absence of regulation served consumers more than they served business oligarchy.
  - russell 15y ago
    Are you trying to say that unregulated monopolies like US Steel, Standard Oil, the railroads, AT&T, American Tobacco didnt have the best interests of the public in mind? After all Carnegie gave us lots of libraries and without Rockefeller we would not have had the Rockettes.
    - seabee 15y ago
      If American Tobacco had the best interests of the public in mind, do you think they'd still exist in any form? Being philanthropic is not mutually exclusive with owning an amoral or even unethical business.
      - masklinn 15y ago
        I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
    - chopsueyar 15y ago
      One man's robber baron is another man's philanthropist. Did you ever use Windows Millennium Edition?
    - lionhearted 15y ago
      I can't comment on the other three, but Standard Oil was fantastically good for the United States and the world. I'd really recommend the biography "Titan" by Ron Chernow about John Rockefeller's life. Tons of advances in efficiency, chemistry, operations, logistics. Oil prices fell dramatically, consistency and quality went up, supply went up through all of Standard's monopoly years. Breaking it up was far more about political factional conflict than it was about problems for consumers. (Preemptively: Before anyone decides to jump on it, Rockefeller's rebate deal with the railroad wasn't above board. But Standard Oil was a huge net gain for the world. Absurdly so, actually.)
bobo888 15y ago
Well this is how it happend in Romania: ----------------- 2000 - 2002 There was NO regulation. We just threw UTP cables from building to building, and bought external connectivity from bulk sellers. We didn't pay any taxes. We didn't have any signed agreements with "customers". We didn't have any permits from the city council either. There were no employees... heck, we weren't even registered as a business. We just threw UTP cables through the city like it was in our own backyard. The only problem was after thunderstorms, when there was a shortage of switches to replace the burned ones :) Oh, and from time to time I had to call some customer's mom to ask her to reset the stuck switch hosted by her kid, because half the network couldn't connect to the internet. Users paid about $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with other users (multiplayer games and movie/mp3 sharing) and 64 kbps internet access. Basically we were just some highscool/college kids building a LAN, and every user paid a share of the costs. My network had about 200 subscribers and covered a 2x2 km area. Several networks like this one were scattered throughout the city. Every month a couple of new networks appeared, while others bit the dust (including my own). ----------------- 2003 - 2004 (By this time me and my friends lost interest in being a "pseudo-ISP", so I can only speak from the POV of a customer) Networks with 100-300 users began joining together forming networks of 1000+ subscribers. Companies were formed, real sys-admins were hired. Some backbones were now built with fiber optics. Big companies noticed this and started to complain in the mass-media, calling such networks "illegal". Well, they were partly right (nobody gave a f#ck about building permits and taxes). Now users paid $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with hundreds and even thousands of other people, and 256 kbps internet access. Big telcos were barely able to offer 128 kbps with a monthly traffic limit. ----------------- 2005 - 2008 Big telcos stopped complaining and began building their networks. Then increased their networks speeds, removed the FUP, offered subscriber packages (phoneline + cable + internet access). For $10 you could get a landline and 5 mbps internet. A lot of city "LANs" couldn't keep up with the big guys and crumbled. Others joined forces and became real ISPs (with tech support, tax payments, ...) and some even managed to obtain money from investment funds. They could still compete with the main ISPs because they offered much better tech support, and the 100 mbps LAN speed was still of huge interest, even if the internet access was limited to 1-10 mbps. ----------------- 2009 - 2010 Small ISPs begin implementing Fiber to the Building. Hello Gigabit (well, 1000 mbps with others subscribers only... the internet connection is limited to 20-30 mbps). Big telcos buy more and more small ISPs, but also continue to improve their infrastructure. Some drop the old cable (with its DOCSIS modems) and begin implementing Fiber to the Building too. ----------------- Today For $10 per month you can get 100 mbps internet access + 5GB of mobile 3G connection. My ISP started installing Fiber Optics to the home (GPON technology) for houses and continues installing Fiber to the Builing (and UTP from there to your apartment) for high buildings. They also began installing WiFi access points through the cities (free access for all subscribers). ----------------- IN THE END, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE ROMANIAN GOVERMENT FOR NOT INTERFERING. And if the large companies will try to form monopolies, I'm sure new ISPs will appear. I don't care about regulations. Thank you.

by ojbyrne 15y ago

For those who think this is going to be an anti-government regulation, libertarian orthodoxy type article, here's the tl;dr: "government regulators who have forced more competition"

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

VMG 15y ago

... after creating monopolies in the first place

bgentry 15y ago
The government doesn't have to create these monopolies. Utility (i.e. telecom) companies naturally tend towards a monopoly because of the absurdly high cost of rolling out duplicate infrastructure. Usually the first mover is able to fend off any real competition by lowering its prices below that which its competitors can afford, given that they still have an infrastructure to build.
- masklinn 15y ago
  And even if the first mover does not end up alone on the market, after some time the market tends to undergo significant consolidation (once most of the organic growth has been achieved). And you end up with a natural monopoly anyway. You can even see that in very recent history: the US government broke up Bell in 7 in 1984, it's already merged back into 2 companies (AT&T and Verizon are composed of 3 baby bells each, the 7th is part of Qwest/CenturyLink)
  - ori_b 15y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but the baby bell split was a vertical split. In other words, it left 7 regional monopolies, rather than 7 companies covering the same regions, competing for the same customers. That means that customers were still stuck with one choice for phone and internet access, but the choice merely varied based on where you went. The Baby Bells weren't competing with each other.
krschultz 15y ago
The logic there is astounding. The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies. These companies then merged their way back into a handful of large corporations and are still trying to merge even more. Did the government force them to join up together? Of course not. The government is actively discouraging a lot of these mergers, i.e. the government is forcing there to be a more competitive marketplace.
- Semiapies 15y ago
  The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking British Telecom.) Similarly, there are a lot of municipal agreements in the US where one company gets the exclusive right to handle local phone or cable service within a city or region. More companies or smaller companies doesn't mean any benefit for consumers when they still just end up choosing between "the phone company" and "the cable company" as designated by law.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    > After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking even worse entities.) In order to regulate it (putting it under jurisdiction of the FCC) as Bell was already a natural monopoly by this point, even after the Kingsbury Commitment.
    - Perceval 15y ago
      At the top of this thread, ojbyrne says we need to have government regulation in order to create competition. Here you say that we needed regulation to make AT&T a de jure national monopoly so that we could further regulate AT&T. So, regulation grants monopolies, then regulates those monopolies, then also regulates more competition into the monopoly market it had previously granted? This is good governance?
      - masklinn 15y ago
        Regulation did not create AT&T's monopoly. AT&T did that, the government later sanctioned it in order to try and better regulate the monopolistic company (it failed).
logjam 15y ago
>... after creating monopolies in the first place If you are really trying to advance the theory that "the market", left to itself, won't generate monopoly after monopoly, perhaps you could point us to actual examples of those golden times when the absence of regulation served consumers more than they served business oligarchy.
- russell 15y ago
  Are you trying to say that unregulated monopolies like US Steel, Standard Oil, the railroads, AT&T, American Tobacco didnt have the best interests of the public in mind? After all Carnegie gave us lots of libraries and without Rockefeller we would not have had the Rockettes.
  - seabee 15y ago
    If American Tobacco had the best interests of the public in mind, do you think they'd still exist in any form? Being philanthropic is not mutually exclusive with owning an amoral or even unethical business.
    - masklinn 15y ago
      I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
  - chopsueyar 15y ago
    One man's robber baron is another man's philanthropist. Did you ever use Windows Millennium Edition?
  - lionhearted 15y ago
    I can't comment on the other three, but Standard Oil was fantastically good for the United States and the world. I'd really recommend the biography "Titan" by Ron Chernow about John Rockefeller's life. Tons of advances in efficiency, chemistry, operations, logistics. Oil prices fell dramatically, consistency and quality went up, supply went up through all of Standard's monopoly years. Breaking it up was far more about political factional conflict than it was about problems for consumers. (Preemptively: Before anyone decides to jump on it, Rockefeller's rebate deal with the railroad wasn't above board. But Standard Oil was a huge net gain for the world. Absurdly so, actually.)

bobo888 15y ago

Well this is how it happend in Romania: ----------------- 2000 - 2002 There was NO regulation. We just threw UTP cables from building to building, and bought external connectivity from bulk sellers. We didn't pay any taxes. We didn't have any signed agreements with "customers". We didn't have any permits from the city council either. There were no employees... heck, we weren't even registered as a business. We just threw UTP cables through the city like it was in our own backyard. The only problem was after thunderstorms, when there was a shortage of switches to replace the burned ones :) Oh, and from time to time I had to call some customer's mom to ask her to reset the stuck switch hosted by her kid, because half the network couldn't connect to the internet. Users paid about $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with other users (multiplayer games and movie/mp3 sharing) and 64 kbps internet access. Basically we were just some highscool/college kids building a LAN, and every user paid a share of the costs. My network had about 200 subscribers and covered a 2x2 km area. Several networks like this one were scattered throughout the city. Every month a couple of new networks appeared, while others bit the dust (including my own). ----------------- 2003 - 2004 (By this time me and my friends lost interest in being a "pseudo-ISP", so I can only speak from the POV of a customer) Networks with 100-300 users began joining together forming networks of 1000+ subscribers. Companies were formed, real sys-admins were hired. Some backbones were now built with fiber optics. Big companies noticed this and started to complain in the mass-media, calling such networks "illegal". Well, they were partly right (nobody gave a f#ck about building permits and taxes). Now users paid $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with hundreds and even thousands of other people, and 256 kbps internet access. Big telcos were barely able to offer 128 kbps with a monthly traffic limit. ----------------- 2005 - 2008 Big telcos stopped complaining and began building their networks. Then increased their networks speeds, removed the FUP, offered subscriber packages (phoneline + cable + internet access). For $10 you could get a landline and 5 mbps internet. A lot of city "LANs" couldn't keep up with the big guys and crumbled. Others joined forces and became real ISPs (with tech support, tax payments, ...) and some even managed to obtain money from investment funds. They could still compete with the main ISPs because they offered much better tech support, and the 100 mbps LAN speed was still of huge interest, even if the internet access was limited to 1-10 mbps. ----------------- 2009 - 2010 Small ISPs begin implementing Fiber to the Building. Hello Gigabit (well, 1000 mbps with others subscribers only... the internet connection is limited to 20-30 mbps). Big telcos buy more and more small ISPs, but also continue to improve their infrastructure. Some drop the old cable (with its DOCSIS modems) and begin implementing Fiber to the Building too. ----------------- Today For $10 per month you can get 100 mbps internet access + 5GB of mobile 3G connection. My ISP started installing Fiber Optics to the home (GPON technology) for houses and continues installing Fiber to the Builing (and UTP from there to your apartment) for high buildings. They also began installing WiFi access points through the cities (free access for all subscribers). ----------------- IN THE END, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE ROMANIAN GOVERMENT FOR NOT INTERFERING. And if the large companies will try to form monopolies, I'm sure new ISPs will appear. I don't care about regulations. Thank you.