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So, if which ISP I happen to be a customer of completely dictates which streaming service I wind up using, then the actual merits of the product have become div

by jbooth 13y ago

So, if which ISP I happen to be a customer of completely dictates which streaming service I wind up using, then the actual merits of the product have become divorced from which product I buy. That's textbook market failure, right? Dollars aren't flowing to the best product or the cheapest, they're flowing to the product approved by someone in a completely different industry. The invisible hand isn't doing shit for me in that scenario. Is the next phase of this discussion "the free market will create incentives to start new telephony companies that don't throttle your favorite website"? For an analogy, should the electric company have a say in which brand CPU I use? Or should they just sell me watt/hours?

rayiner 13y ago
Is it a market failure that I can't use Nokia Maps on iOS, or Apple Maps on Android or Google Maps on Windows Phone? I'm no proponent of invoking the "magic market fairy" but to me situations like that fall far short of "market failure."
- jbooth 13y ago
  I guess it all comes down to you not seeing internet conectivity as a utility. Personally, I think it has a lot more in common with sewer/electricity, from the near impossibility of market entrance right down to the sewer/electric/phone lines being physically next to each other, than to putting a phone in a box and selling it to someone. Heck, I'd even put mobile service as being closer to a normal consumer good than wired internet. Wireless they just need one tower every few miles.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    There are some similarities, and a lot of differences. Most households have a fixed demand for power and water. Meanwhile, bandwidth demands have exploded in just 10 years. That's a blink of an eye in utility timescales. 100 year old water pipes are still usable. 10 year old network infrastructure can be obsolete. Public institutions simply aren't able to bring to bear the kind of capital investment necessary to keep up with changing internet technologies and growing demand. People complain about telecoms not investing enough in infrastructure upgrades, but our public infrastructure is has accumulated trillions of dollars in maintenance debt. Even as demand is stable, its a challenge to just maintain existing levels of service in our water, sewer, and power systems.

by jbooth 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

Is it a market failure that I can't use Nokia Maps on iOS, or Apple Maps on Android or Google Maps on Windows Phone? I'm no proponent of invoking the "magic market fairy" but to me situations like that fall far short of "market failure."

jbooth 13y ago
I guess it all comes down to you not seeing internet conectivity as a utility. Personally, I think it has a lot more in common with sewer/electricity, from the near impossibility of market entrance right down to the sewer/electric/phone lines being physically next to each other, than to putting a phone in a box and selling it to someone. Heck, I'd even put mobile service as being closer to a normal consumer good than wired internet. Wireless they just need one tower every few miles.
- rayiner 13y ago
  There are some similarities, and a lot of differences. Most households have a fixed demand for power and water. Meanwhile, bandwidth demands have exploded in just 10 years. That's a blink of an eye in utility timescales. 100 year old water pipes are still usable. 10 year old network infrastructure can be obsolete. Public institutions simply aren't able to bring to bear the kind of capital investment necessary to keep up with changing internet technologies and growing demand. People complain about telecoms not investing enough in infrastructure upgrades, but our public infrastructure is has accumulated trillions of dollars in maintenance debt. Even as demand is stable, its a challenge to just maintain existing levels of service in our water, sewer, and power systems.