2 ms·

You can't have real competition with networks, be they road, rail, telephone, internet

• hengheng 12y ago
  Where do you draw the line? Air travel/airports? Mobile data networks?
  • darkmighty 12y ago
    Competition fails where the cost of redundancy is prohibitive, which leads to either large scale partitioning (local monopolies) or monopoly (global monopoly). It doesn't really make sense to build several rail lines connecting city A to B. The same goes for telephone lines -- in all but the most dense centers, the infrastructure cost is so dominant that redundancy doesn't make sense. Now for mobile data for example, you can, for a more modest investment, cover large areas with cell towers, so direct competition occurs.
    • ChrisLTD 12y ago
      The United States is still limited to only four competing firms when it comes to mobile networking, thanks to the limited amount of available wireless spectrum and high costs for the access to that spectrum.
• DennisP 12y ago
  Internet? Then why is Google driving down prices wherever it rolls out fiber?
  • hackerboos 12y ago
    Because they cherry pick densely populated areas. They're not providing a universal service.