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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
by 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 agoThere 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.