3 ms·

It struck me as weird, too. I dunno. I've lived in or spent time pretty much all over the US in the last 10 years, and as far as I could tell, I've never had a

• blueskin_ 13y ago
  A situation like that would probably induce legislation or regulation to prevent price gouging. There are a few areas where it happens, e.g. in Hull there is only one ISP, who are by all accounts terrible, but can afford to be as there is no competition.
  • jonnathanson 13y ago
    With water, yes, it's heavily regulated as a public utility. Gas and electrical is a more interesting story. Here in California, we've had some adventures with deregulation of electricity (while still maintaining natural monopolies over provision). It was a complete clusterfuck.
    • rayiner 13y ago
      Decoupling the lines from the power-generation works okay as long as you have excess power generation capacity. E.g. California-style deregulation worked fine in Illinois.
      • AnthonyMouse 13y ago
        Power generation also has the problem that building new generation capacity is extremely expensive and takes years or decades. The generating companies in California used that to their advantage by shutting down quite a lot of existing generating capacity so that there would be a supply shortage that the market couldn't respond to quickly and that predictably caused prices to skyrocket. It isn't likely that would be repeated in the market for interconnection because it's a lot faster and cheaper for a competitor to run a strand of fiber to a central office than to build a multi-GW power generating station.