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A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

arstechnica.com

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Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#221

Post by nostromo »

ceejayoz wrote: post #179
nostromo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority Americans have a choice in ISPs, so do you think they should be able to block any websites they like - just like Twitter? Hey, it’s their platform... don’t like it, go somewhere else. And every American has a choice in cellphone service providers - so they can block journalist they don’t favor too. What could possibly go wrong?

> The majority Americans have a choice in ISPs... Not really, no. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/new-fcc-data-indicates... > The major takeaway of this report, which provides policymakers in D.C. and the states a wide-ranging view of available data to see trends in the Internet, is that competition for broadband only looks good at slow speeds while a vast majority of Americans (EFF estimates at least 68 millio…

It's only a monopoly when you're narrowly focused not on internet access, but on fiber specifically.

My goodness you folks will bend over backwards to defend the world's largest corporations censoring journalists. It shows just how illiberal the Democratic Party has become. It's very lonely right now for those of us that believe in freedom of speech as an ideal worth standing up for.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#222

Post by ceejayoz »

nostromo wrote: post #221
ceejayoz wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority Americans have a choice in ISPs... Not really, no. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/new-fcc-data-indicates... > The major takeaway of this report, which provides policymakers in D.C. and the states a wide-ranging view of available data to see trends in the Internet, is that competition for broadband only looks good at slow speeds while a vast majority of Americans (EFF estimates at least 68 millio…

It's only a monopoly when you're narrowly focused not on internet access, but on fiber specifically. My goodness you folks will bend over backwards to defend the world's largest corporations censoring journalists. It shows just how illiberal the Democratic Party has become. It's very lonely right now for those of us that believe in freedom of speech as an ideal worth standing up for.

> It's only a monopoly when you're narrowly focused not on internet access, but on fiber specifically.

That's not actually what the highlighted quotes say.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#223

Post by ip26 »

p1necone wrote: post #216
dragonwriter wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Natural monopolies need counterbalancing regulation. This isn't even remotely a controversial statement in economics. Unless your argument is that the Austrian and Chicago schools of economics doesn't actually exist, this is quite wrong, since the Austrian school denies the existence of natural monopoly and argues that harmful monopoly can only exist as a product of government regulation, and the Chicago school lik…

"the Austrian school denies the existence of natural monopoly and argues that harmful monopoly can only exist as a product of government regulation" This sounds prima facie absurd to me. Are they just throwing phrases out of Ayn Rand novels on paper and calling it science?

I say this only half-sarcastically, the Austrian school seems to start at their desired solution & worked backwards from there.

They similarly deny the existence of externalities- although depending on who you read the justification varies widely.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#224

Post by hardtke »

exabrial wrote: post #189
bosswipe wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _You_ _cannot_ _legislate_ _good_ _behavior_ _into_ _monopolies_ Why not? Yes, breaking up monopolies is good but that doesn't mean we can't regulate industries before the point where things get so bad that there is enough political will to break them up.

I mean, feel free to provide an example where we successfully regulated a monopoly to encourage competition and consumer choice...

Before the 1980s long distance calls from AT&T landlines were very expensive. The FCC forced AT&T to allow competitors to use their infrastructure at a reasonable price. MCI and Sprint entered and the cost of long distance calls fell pretty quickly. Sadly, this may partially explain our terrible and expensive cell phone service. In many countries, the first competition to the national phone carrier were mobile services so the early mobile entrants were competing against massively inflated prices for long distance calling and quickly built high quality alternatives.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#225

Post by chokeartist »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #77
dantheman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't want the UN touching anything I ever might want to use/rely on.

Well, who then? IEEE? W3C? someone like that?

You haven't established the need.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#226

Post by sneak »

jandrese wrote: post #198
exabrial wrote: post #177

The problem is the proposed solutions really just entrench existing providers, specifically net neutrality policies: They legalize monopolies as long as they're "following the rules!" _You_ _cannot_ _legislate_ _good_ _behavior_ _into_ _monopolies_. So while I appreciate the spirit of Net Neutrality rules, the solution is fundamentally flawed. Let's say you want to open an ISP in your neighborhood. Based on their his…

My water company is pretty well behaved. Sewer too. Trash pickup is without headaches although I don't know the cost. Even my power company is ok now. They had a bad part in the early 2000s when they were trying to semi-privatize and Enron was trying to horn in on the management, but once they went back to being an ordinary utility the bad behavior stopped.

I extremely do not want the situation where the state owns and operates the communications infrastructure of the general population.

That's turnkey tyranny, censorship both ways (what you can send, what you can read). Right now it's just expensive, but you can still use a few different (overpriced and anti-competitive) providers.

If the state decides you're a threat and unplugs you, it could be months or years before you can invoke your legal rights to get reinstated.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#227

Post by SkyMarshal »

p1necone wrote: post #217
nine_k wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that a monopoly may naturally be disrupted in decades, while people want an improvement during their precious only lifetimes. A temporary regulation could possibly help, but making it temporary is the hard part. And if it lingers, the inefficiencies it creates let some companies become incumbents, and, with some luck, even monopolies.

I'm more inclined to think that under a completely unregulated free market a monopoly today would instead be more likely to turn into a de-facto nation state over the course of decades. But this is purely speculation (not entirely unprompted by reading speculative fiction). Is there any evidence that unregulated free markets actually tend towards competition, rather than consolidation?

>I'm more inclined to think that under a completely unregulated free market a monopoly today would instead be more likely to turn into a de-facto nation state over the course of decades

Based on recent experience this does appear possible, that some monopolies have gotten savvy enough to become long-running nation-state-like entities if left unregulated.

We know from the science of complex systems that one characteristic non-linear dynamic systems, like markets or national economies, is that the critical resources of the system tend to concentrate and consolidate over time.

We’ve witnessed this over the past several decades with the deregulation of the US banking industry, its subsequent concentration and consolidation.

Libertarians like to believe that such economic problems are self-correcting, that eventually such concentrations of wealth and economic power will either asymptotically collapse, or become ossified and be supplanted by something newer and innovative. Either way there’s a reset.

But I don’t think either is inevitable, in all domains. What we’ve actually observed with the banking system is that:

1) powerful monopolies/oligopolies use their resources to capture the actual government and regulators, and use those entities to shape favorable laws, and to bail out the monopolies when they collapse, preventing the reset, and

2) even if the collapse and reset occurs, it causes far more damage and misery to the rest of the economy and society than to the people responsible for causing it.

All else equal I’d rather live in a society that simply prevents those extreme cycles by making natural monopolies into well-regulated public utilities. Public utilities in the US have worked very well for a century, they’re a far more desirable economic arrangement for 99% of society.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#228

Post by Shared404 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #77
dantheman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't want the UN touching anything I ever might want to use/rely on.

Well, who then? IEEE? W3C? someone like that?

I would think IETF would be the ideal choice.

If I were to pick a second place it would be IEEE. I don't think it would be a good idea to hand it to W3C, as this is at a layer+ lower than they would typically operate.

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#229

Post by wtallis »

exabrial wrote: post #189
bosswipe wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> _You_ _cannot_ _legislate_ _good_ _behavior_ _into_ _monopolies_ Why not? Yes, breaking up monopolies is good but that doesn't mean we can't regulate industries before the point where things get so bad that there is enough political will to break them up.

I mean, feel free to provide an example where we successfully regulated a monopoly to encourage competition and consumer choice...

It seems odd that you assume the goal of regulating a monopoly must be to encourage competition and consumer choice, ie. breaking up the monopoly, directly or indirectly. Why is enforcing reasonable prices and business practices not an allowable goal?

Re: A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers

#230

Post by sib »

dekhn wrote: post #193
sib wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great for you (no sarcasm!) Where I live - in the city of Los Angeles, hardly distant, rural America - AT&T is happy to provide me "broadband" internet at speeds of up to 10mbps for the low, low price of $45 / month (with a 12-month contract!) Ironically, I get faster speeds on my AT&T-powered iPhone.

Are you sure? It looks like many cities in LA have AT&T Gigabit fiber. My guess is they deployed in San Mateo pretty early, and are filling out the major cities now. It's also possible that they don't put the service in cities where the expected subscription rate is too low.

Yup, positive. I went and checked immediately before posting, to confirm that the situation had not changed since I last checked about 3 months ago.

And I'm not in an outlying city in LA county; I'm right in the west side of the City of LA, less than 2 miles from UCLA, very close to Century City.

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