3 ms·

thats a borderline moronic article. starts by saying incumbents deny access even to city cabling and explaining the duopoly on most cities and ends by saying

by gcb0 13y ago

thats a borderline moronic article. starts by saying incumbents deny access even to city cabling and explaining the duopoly on most cities and ends by saying that allowing netflix to pass the fee to comcast subscribers is good because people will move companies and a free market is the answer. is this april 1st or something? also extra moronic points for not understanding the first thing about isp to isp agreements and peer pricing.

quokka 13y ago
The writer is suggesting that the "FCC can mandate right-of-way rules similar to those granted Google Fiber to all credible competitors". He isn't saying that the "free market" will fix things by itself. He observes that there isn't a free market in providing internet access because the incumbents control things like telephone poles (to hang optical cable on) and municipalities are so addicted to the kickbacks they get from cable franchisees that they won't let anyone else in. The magic of the invisible hand only works if there is actual competition. Those supply and demand curve charts only describe reality if there aren't monopolists. His claim is that if the FCC mandated right of way to anyone wanting to hook homes up then a company like Google would already be serving many more homes as incumbents wouldn't be able to block them as AT&T is doing in Austin. This is true, but I'm not convinced that it is the right way to get proper competition here. Is the solution really to have 5 companies each run optical fiber down a street? Better would be for one company to run super-fast tubes, and then sell the bandwidth in bulk to ISPs. Maybe that is the business model that would emerge, but maybe not.
mlangdon 13y ago
Leave it to the WSJ to blame a problem that needs old school trust-busting on excess regulation. They've got libertarian rabies.

by gcb0 13y ago

quokka 13y ago

The writer is suggesting that the "FCC can mandate right-of-way rules similar to those granted Google Fiber to all credible competitors". He isn't saying that the "free market" will fix things by itself. He observes that there isn't a free market in providing internet access because the incumbents control things like telephone poles (to hang optical cable on) and municipalities are so addicted to the kickbacks they get from cable franchisees that they won't let anyone else in. The magic of the invisible hand only works if there is actual competition. Those supply and demand curve charts only describe reality if there aren't monopolists. His claim is that if the FCC mandated right of way to anyone wanting to hook homes up then a company like Google would already be serving many more homes as incumbents wouldn't be able to block them as AT&T is doing in Austin. This is true, but I'm not convinced that it is the right way to get proper competition here. Is the solution really to have 5 companies each run optical fiber down a street? Better would be for one company to run super-fast tubes, and then sell the bandwidth in bulk to ISPs. Maybe that is the business model that would emerge, but maybe not.

mlangdon 13y ago

Leave it to the WSJ to blame a problem that needs old school trust-busting on excess regulation. They've got libertarian rabies.