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Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

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Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#41

Post by Semiapies »

krschultz wrote: post #33
VMG wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... after creating monopolies in the first place

The logic there is astounding. The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies. These companies then merged their way back into a handful of large corporations and are still trying to merge even more. Did the government force them to join up together? Of course not. The government is actively discouraging a lot of these mergers, i.e. the government is forcing there to be a more competitive marketplace.

The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies

After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking British Telecom.)

Similarly, there are a lot of municipal agreements in the US where one company gets the exclusive right to handle local phone or cable service within a city or region. More companies or smaller companies doesn't mean any benefit for consumers when they still just end up choosing between "the phone company" and "the cable company" as designated by law.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#42

Post by masklinn »

Semiapies wrote: post #41
krschultz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic there is astounding. The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies. These companies then merged their way back into a handful of large corporations and are still trying to merge even more. Did the government force them to join up together? Of course not. The government is actively discouraging a lot of these mergers, i.e. the government is forcing there to be a more competitive marketplace.

The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking British Telecom .) Similarly, there are a lot of municipal agreements in the US where one company gets the exclusive right to handle local phone or cable service within a city or region. More companies or smaller companies doesn't mean any benefit for consumers when they still…

> After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking even worse entities.)

In order to regulate it (putting it under jurisdiction of the FCC) as Bell was already a natural monopoly by this point, even after the Kingsbury Commitment.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#43

Post by tzs »

In the "Need to Know" version of this story they talked with a BT representative about how things had worked out for BT after they were forced into local loop unbundling.

It worked out great for BT. They make more money leasing out the lines and leasing out space in their switching centers for the third party ISP's equipment than they were making providing monopoly ISP services directly.

It truly is a case of everyone wins. BT makes more money. Third party companies can start ISPs and make money. Consumers get plans that fit their needs better and cost less.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#44

Post by w1ntermute »

masklinn wrote: post #40
mseebach wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in the US, they own the loops, in the UK they'd get access to them. 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 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 Most of the phone companies were Ma Bell, which had a government-sanctioned natural monopoly from 1936 to its breakup in 1984.

> Most of the phone companies were Ma Bell, which had a government-sanctioned natural monopoly from 1936 to its breakup in 1984.

If it was natural, why was a government sanction necessary?

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#45

Post by jbooth »

jerf wrote: post #23
EliRivers wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those sound like good things.

Sarbanes-Oxley seems to be a pretty solid example of a regulation whose costs exceed its benefits by quite a bit.

Want to put a dollar figure on the Enron/Worldcom implosions?

How about if we threw a couple of those into the 2008 disaster, same time as Lehman collapsed? What's the cost there?

People are really, really bad at pricing catastrophic events.

Not to say that the bill couldn't be cleaned up, probably. But the conservative half of the aisle seems to be more interested in talkshow ideological invective than sucker's games like "fixing stuff".

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#46

Post by Perceval »

krschultz wrote: post #33
VMG wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... after creating monopolies in the first place

The logic there is astounding. The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies. These companies then merged their way back into a handful of large corporations and are still trying to merge even more. Did the government force them to join up together? Of course not. The government is actively discouraging a lot of these mergers, i.e. the government is forcing there to be a more competitive marketplace.

The original AT&T was made into a national monopoly by U.S. government regulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Telephone_%26_Telegrap...

Likewise, in many European countries, telecoms were originally national monopolies. Both in Europe and in the United States those national monopolies were either broken up or subjected to more competition.

VMG is quite correct to point out that telecoms gained monopoly status due to government action.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#47

Post by Apocryphon »

afterburner wrote: post #32

Free markets need government regulation in order to create competitive environments where the customer is served best. (The "blame the government" in the title refers to blaming the US government for not creating those conditions, and crediting the European governments for doing so.)

I think it's a clever, ironic use of blaming the government- in the U.S., big government is always seen as an impediment and to be dreaded, but the problem is not for meddling bureaucrats, but hands-off ones who allow corporations free rein.

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#49

Post by Perceval »

masklinn wrote: post #42
Semiapies wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking British Telecom .) Similarly, there are a lot of municipal agreements in the US where one company gets the exclusive right to handle local phone or cable service within a city or region. More companies or smaller companies doesn't mean any benefit for consumers when they still…

> After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking even worse entities.) In order to regulate it (putting it under jurisdiction of the FCC) as Bell was already a natural monopoly by this point, even after the Kingsbury Commitment.

At the top of this thread, ojbyrne says we need to have government regulation in order to create competition.

Here you say that we needed regulation to make AT&T a de jure national monopoly so that we could further regulate AT&T.

So, regulation grants monopolies, then regulates those monopolies, then also regulates more competition into the monopoly market it had previously granted? This is good governance?

Re: Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

#50

Post by theBobMcCormick »

hammock wrote: post #8

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.

It blows my mind that anyone in the startup community would automatically assume taxes = bad. Startups benefit immensely from tax funded services.

As an example, you can complain all you want about specific laws and their enforcement,but nothing remotely resembling Silicon Valley could exist without the stable legal environment provided by the tax payer funded court system and law enforcement system. Not to mention the role tax payer funding played in the initial development of the Internet, the benefit US startups get from the interstate highway system, local fire departments, etc.

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