4 ms·

Your second and third paragraph are contradictory. Common carriers become the barrier to network upgrades. Always. Without fail. Monopolies are a bad idea, whe

Your second and third paragraph are contradictory. Common carriers become the barrier to network upgrades. Always. Without fail. Monopolies are a bad idea, whether state or privately owned. Let me give you 2 examples. In australia we had Telstra (Formerly Telecom, Formerly Auspost). Testra would resell carriers ADSL services, and they stank. The carriers couldn't justify price increases to upgrade their networks and the whole thing stagnated. We had a market review, and Telstra was legislatively forced to sell ULL instead. So the non monopolist is now placing their own hardware in Telstra exchanges, which they can upgrade. Which they did. Once they could sell an upgrade (ADSL2+) they could also price in the cost of upgrading peering and transit. We had a huge increase in network speeds. We later forgot this lesson and created the NBN. NBNCo does not sell ULL, and the pennies that ISPs can charge on top of it are causing stagnation again. ULL works way better than common carrier. In singapore the government just runs glass. They have competition between carriers to provide faster GPON. 2gig 10gig 100gig whatever. Its just a hardware upgrade away. 10 years from now Australia will realise it screwed up with NBNCo. Again. But they wont as easily be able to go to ULL as they did in the past. NBN's fibre isn't built for it. We will have to tear out splitters and install glass. The actual result is worse than you suggest. A carrier had to take the government/NBNCo to court to get permission to build residential fibre in apartment buildings over the monopoly. We have NBNCo strategically overbuilding other fibre providers and shutting them down (Its an offence to compete with the NBN on the order of importing a couple million bucks of cocaine). Its an absolute handbrake on competition and network upgrades. Innovation is only happening in the gaps left behind by the common carrier.

rstuart4133 2y ago
Yeah, I've noticed the same things with roads. They are common carriers owned mostly by the government, so they never get upgraded. That freeway near my house is always clogged. Oh wait ... the reason that freeway is always clogged is they are ripping it up, doubling it's width. And now I think about it, hasn't the NBN recently upgraded their max speeds from 100 Mb/s, to 250Mb/s, and now to 1Gb/s. And isn't the NBN currently ripping out the FttN, replacing it woth FttP, at no cost to the cusytomer? Sounds like a major upgrade to me. And wasn't the reason we got the NBN that Telstra point blank refused to replace the monopoly copper infrastructure with fibre? If I didn't know better, I'd be think the major policy mistake Australia made in Telecom was the liberals to selling off Telstra. In a competitive market when a new technology came along a telecom is forced to upgrade because their a competitors would use the new technology to steal their customers. That works fabulously for 5G, where there is competition. But when the Libs sold Telstra it was a monopoly. Telstra just refused to upgrade the copper. The Libs thought they could fix that though legislation, but what happened instead is Telstra fought the legalisation tooth and nail and we ended up in the absurd situation of having buildings full of federal court judges and lawyers fighting to get reasonable ULL access. In the end Tesltra did give permission to change the equipment at the ends of the wires. But replacing the wires themselves - never. That was their golden goose. No one was permitted to replace them with a new technology. Desperate to make the obvious move to fibre, the Libs then offered Telstra, the Optus, then anybody money to build a new fibre network - but they all refused to do so unless the government effectively guaranteed monopoly ownership over the new network. Sorry, what was your point again? Oh, that's right, public ownership shared natural monopolies like wires, roads, water mains is bad. The thing I missed is why a private rent extracting monopoly beholden to no one except the profit seeking share holders owning those things is better.
- highcountess 2y ago
  [dead]
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  Things don’t improve without competition. Roads have to be a monopoly because they take up so much space but we should endeavor to have as few monopolies as possible because they breed complacency every single time. At least here in Chicago the roads are horribly mismanaged but we just have to put up with it.
  - rstuart4133 2y ago
    Last I looked the NASA's capabilities of NASA's space telescopes have been improving rapidly. I'm not aware of any competition. Roads where I live have improved immensely during my lifetime. I'd lay long odds yours have too over the decades, despite your claims. All without competition. I recently heard all the lead water pipes are being replaced in the USA. The water supply people have no competition. Open source projects improve all the time. They aren't driven by competition. "Things don't improve without competition" sounds like a fairy tale somebody tells themselves to justify a position. People like nice things. They don't need competition to motive them to work towards those things. Granted competition usually speeds things up, but it "nothing improves without competition" clearly wrong. There are too many counter examples. Which is just as well, because the things we are discussing here are prone to forming natural monopolies. Roads, water, the telephone service, electricity supply - the thing they have in common is you will have one supplier, and you can't change to a different one. There is no competition. So the discussion wasn't about "should there be competition or not", because there is no choice. The discussion was about "who should own a monopoly - people you elect, or people whose only primary interest is extracting money out of their assets (which happen to be you)". You seem arguing for private ownership, and then using competition as the justification - when there is no competition. By the by, other places do this competition thing far better than the USA. The NBN the parent was complaining about is indeed a government owned monopoly. Their asset is "the last mile". The arrangement in Australia is they are a common carrier in the strictest meaning of the term. But they are not allowed to sell to the public, that's the ISP's job. The NBN's prices are thrashed out in some back room somewhere between the ISP's and the government, in front of a set of open books. The ISP's are allowed to use other technologies like 5G and Starlink without penality, by law. As an consequence every Australian household gets to chose between 100's of ISP's, literally. Those ISP's are require by law to advertise "minimum expected speeds", and none of this "unlimited (meaning we get to define the limit)" bullshit is allowed. In other words, it's nearly a perfect competitive market. One effect of that is there is no "net neutrality" argument here. The NBN is barred from such distinctions because it's a common carrier. The ISP's are free to do whatever they damned well please, and as a consequence you get all sorts of deals that violate net neutrality. 5G with limited downloads, but unlimited streaming from some platform is free for example. If you don't like that, say because your ISP blocks ports move to one that doesn't. You might be thinking "ahh, but moving between ISP's would be hard". But no, the law mandates churning between ISP's is free, fast, involving no more than a few minutes downtime, and requires no interaction at all with the ISP you're moving from. Creating near a perfect competitive market in an area that is prone to forming natural monopolies does require some heavy handed government intervention. The NBN was one of the most heavy handed interventions I've seen in a while. The private operators where given every chance to build a new network on the condition it be open to all retailers (including them) at a price the government had some control over. They declined. Partially because government price control on a monopoly was too much to bear, but I think also because they thought their ownership of the copper network was too big a hurdle for even the government to overcome. The government overbuilt it with fibre. In a country that's even more spread out than USA, that was a huge undertaking. I suspect it would be impossible in the USA, where 1/2 the population allows themselves to be brainwashed by large corporates into thinking "government always bad, government always inefficient". Yes, the government is inefficient compared to private operators in a competitive market. But the corporates who want you to think the government always runs things badly are the ones who want to take control of government owned monopolies. If you want to know what inefficiency looks like, join one as an employee. You won't get to see what's happening otherwise. The sausage is ugly, but they unlike the government are allowed to hide it from prying eyes. So they do, and tell you they are doing a wonderful job. Apparently you swallow it up.

rstuart4133 2y ago

Yeah, I've noticed the same things with roads. They are common carriers owned mostly by the government, so they never get upgraded. That freeway near my house is always clogged. Oh wait ... the reason that freeway is always clogged is they are ripping it up, doubling it's width. And now I think about it, hasn't the NBN recently upgraded their max speeds from 100 Mb/s, to 250Mb/s, and now to 1Gb/s. And isn't the NBN currently ripping out the FttN, replacing it woth FttP, at no cost to the cusytomer? Sounds like a major upgrade to me. And wasn't the reason we got the NBN that Telstra point blank refused to replace the monopoly copper infrastructure with fibre? If I didn't know better, I'd be think the major policy mistake Australia made in Telecom was the liberals to selling off Telstra. In a competitive market when a new technology came along a telecom is forced to upgrade because their a competitors would use the new technology to steal their customers. That works fabulously for 5G, where there is competition. But when the Libs sold Telstra it was a monopoly. Telstra just refused to upgrade the copper. The Libs thought they could fix that though legislation, but what happened instead is Telstra fought the legalisation tooth and nail and we ended up in the absurd situation of having buildings full of federal court judges and lawyers fighting to get reasonable ULL access. In the end Tesltra did give permission to change the equipment at the ends of the wires. But replacing the wires themselves - never. That was their golden goose. No one was permitted to replace them with a new technology. Desperate to make the obvious move to fibre, the Libs then offered Telstra, the Optus, then anybody money to build a new fibre network - but they all refused to do so unless the government effectively guaranteed monopoly ownership over the new network. Sorry, what was your point again? Oh, that's right, public ownership shared natural monopolies like wires, roads, water mains is bad. The thing I missed is why a private rent extracting monopoly beholden to no one except the profit seeking share holders owning those things is better.

highcountess 2y ago
[dead]
HDThoreaun 2y ago
Things don’t improve without competition. Roads have to be a monopoly because they take up so much space but we should endeavor to have as few monopolies as possible because they breed complacency every single time. At least here in Chicago the roads are horribly mismanaged but we just have to put up with it.
- rstuart4133 2y ago
  Last I looked the NASA's capabilities of NASA's space telescopes have been improving rapidly. I'm not aware of any competition. Roads where I live have improved immensely during my lifetime. I'd lay long odds yours have too over the decades, despite your claims. All without competition. I recently heard all the lead water pipes are being replaced in the USA. The water supply people have no competition. Open source projects improve all the time. They aren't driven by competition. "Things don't improve without competition" sounds like a fairy tale somebody tells themselves to justify a position. People like nice things. They don't need competition to motive them to work towards those things. Granted competition usually speeds things up, but it "nothing improves without competition" clearly wrong. There are too many counter examples. Which is just as well, because the things we are discussing here are prone to forming natural monopolies. Roads, water, the telephone service, electricity supply - the thing they have in common is you will have one supplier, and you can't change to a different one. There is no competition. So the discussion wasn't about "should there be competition or not", because there is no choice. The discussion was about "who should own a monopoly - people you elect, or people whose only primary interest is extracting money out of their assets (which happen to be you)". You seem arguing for private ownership, and then using competition as the justification - when there is no competition. By the by, other places do this competition thing far better than the USA. The NBN the parent was complaining about is indeed a government owned monopoly. Their asset is "the last mile". The arrangement in Australia is they are a common carrier in the strictest meaning of the term. But they are not allowed to sell to the public, that's the ISP's job. The NBN's prices are thrashed out in some back room somewhere between the ISP's and the government, in front of a set of open books. The ISP's are allowed to use other technologies like 5G and Starlink without penality, by law. As an consequence every Australian household gets to chose between 100's of ISP's, literally. Those ISP's are require by law to advertise "minimum expected speeds", and none of this "unlimited (meaning we get to define the limit)" bullshit is allowed. In other words, it's nearly a perfect competitive market. One effect of that is there is no "net neutrality" argument here. The NBN is barred from such distinctions because it's a common carrier. The ISP's are free to do whatever they damned well please, and as a consequence you get all sorts of deals that violate net neutrality. 5G with limited downloads, but unlimited streaming from some platform is free for example. If you don't like that, say because your ISP blocks ports move to one that doesn't. You might be thinking "ahh, but moving between ISP's would be hard". But no, the law mandates churning between ISP's is free, fast, involving no more than a few minutes downtime, and requires no interaction at all with the ISP you're moving from. Creating near a perfect competitive market in an area that is prone to forming natural monopolies does require some heavy handed government intervention. The NBN was one of the most heavy handed interventions I've seen in a while. The private operators where given every chance to build a new network on the condition it be open to all retailers (including them) at a price the government had some control over. They declined. Partially because government price control on a monopoly was too much to bear, but I think also because they thought their ownership of the copper network was too big a hurdle for even the government to overcome. The government overbuilt it with fibre. In a country that's even more spread out than USA, that was a huge undertaking. I suspect it would be impossible in the USA, where 1/2 the population allows themselves to be brainwashed by large corporates into thinking "government always bad, government always inefficient". Yes, the government is inefficient compared to private operators in a competitive market. But the corporates who want you to think the government always runs things badly are the ones who want to take control of government owned monopolies. If you want to know what inefficiency looks like, join one as an employee. You won't get to see what's happening otherwise. The sausage is ugly, but they unlike the government are allowed to hide it from prying eyes. So they do, and tell you they are doing a wonderful job. Apparently you swallow it up.