11–20 of 145 posts
It blows my mind that anyone in a startup community, which is all about creating value and making good investments, would suggest that the government tax him (!) and invest in broadband infrastructure instead of that person investing in it himself.
In order to create value, monopolies need to be checked.
I'm mentioning this from a point of complete ignorance but why can't this sort of proposal be used for cable operators as well (both for broadband and television)? Getting to choose from several competitors on who gets my tv and broadband service would I expect create better plans than the current "pay for 100 channels but only use 3" that most if not all US consumers currently get.
Digital is changing this, very quickly.
On one hand, more government regulation brings things like Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, you get faster, cheaper Internet access, and arguably more jobs from that. This is why I cannot bring myself to identify with a political party.
It blows my mind that anyone in a startup community, which is all about creating value and making good investments, would suggest that the government tax him (!) and invest in broadband infrastructure instead of that person investing in it himself.
Monopolies and duopolies are not free markets. In order to create value, monopolies need to be checked.
"Fiber and fiber-LAN networks have a slightly bigger share of the market
than cable, holding 14% and 13%, respectively. Sweden trails only
South Korea and Japan in household fiber penetration rates.”
"Municipal networks alone control 20 to 25% of the coverage.
Among the more than 150 local fiber/LAN networks in 2008, a majority
are owned by municipal authorities or municipally run companies.”
My local government owns the fiber, and I paid to connect to it from my house, so I own the last 40 meters. :) And now I can chose from seven companies offering IP services (four which offer services for homes, the others are company offerings only) and four which offer digital-TV services.
92% of apartments in our local community are connected to the fiber network and 37% of the individual houses are. The other houses are likely to use DSL.
The challenge here is that the larger telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon) are required by law to sell their loops to other carriers, but there is a lot of CAPEX needed even with the fiber/copper look. It costs around $1000 per subscriber to bring a broadband TV service home even from the neighborhood (connecting from neighborhood to home and all the equipment in the home). This high CAPEX is a barrier for new entrants in this market.
Another reason why US is behind is that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is not allowing the telecom companies in US to charge users based on their tiered internet usage. Therefore, price per mbps is flat no matter how much bandwidth you use. On the other hand, European telecom companies are allowed to charge extra for higher bandwidth usage.
Once these two barriers fall (cloud based home TV management and tiered pricing) there will be more competition in US.
It blows my mind that anyone in a startup community, which is all about creating value and making good investments, would suggest that the government tax him (!) and invest in broadband infrastructure instead of that person investing in it himself.
The most interesting part in that is that in the UK, both Verizon and AT&T were strong and public proponents of local loop unbundling. When asked about it for the US, they say it is terrible and will hurt consumers.
That's because everyone justifiably hates BT, rather than it made sense.
The most interesting part in that is that in the UK, both Verizon and AT&T were strong and public proponents of local loop unbundling. When asked about it for the US, they say it is terrible and will hurt consumers.
I think a factor in making this easier in Europe is that all phone lines were put in by entirely government owned and operated enterprises, and it can't be argued that the public doesn't own them. In the US, if I'm not mistaken, most of the phone companies were and are at least somewhat private entities that invested private money in putting in the lines. Although often protected by exclusivity etc. this makes the "public owns it" argument much more murky.
On one hand, more government regulation brings things like Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, you get faster, cheaper Internet access, and arguably more jobs from that. This is why I cannot bring myself to identify with a political party.
As a little-l libertarian, I observe that when markets have real competition, consumers and society benefit and even the providers globally benefit. When the free market is allowed to be monopolized, consumers and society loses. I believe that it is a valid use of regulation to force markets to remain non-monopolized, even if it is a "natural monopoly". Regulations to encourage this are good; regulations that enhance the monopoly rather than busting it are bad, and there's no way in which I am being a hypocrite about the goodness of regulation.
(The general metric of good regulation is "benefits exceed costs", and the general metric of bad regulation is of course the opposite. However, there is legitimate room to argue about some of the details, in particular costs and benefits to exactly whom. But even within those constraints, it's hard to crash your economy with regulations whose benefits routinely exist costs, and easy to crash with the other way around, so you really have to have a pretty freakin' sweet system before these arguments are really the biggest problems you are facing. We do not have a such a system.)