A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by jasonwatkinspdx » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #208

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically anything that historically falls under common carrier regs. None of this debate is new. We saw it with railroads. Natural monopolies need counterbalancing regulation. This isn't even remotely a controversial statement in economics.

> 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…

Yes. I am entirely comfortable in saying that the economic consensus is strongly against the Austrian and Chicago perspectives. Both of these schools value prior ideology over empirical data. It's a "debate" on forums like this, but not even remotely so amongst the economists I talk to.

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

#212

Post by willcipriano » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #201

jandrese wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have had horrendous experienced with Waste Management on three occasions. Moving out of the neighborhood they had a city-enforced monopoly on was the only solution (granted, i moved for other reasons, but getting someone else was a delight all its own).

Similarly my previous trash company raised rates several times the year before last nearly doubling the cost, then a competitor came in at the original price and virtually everyone switched. They offered to lower us back down when we canceled the service but they were a day late and a dollar short. They still send us letters begging us to come back.

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

#213

Post by mushbino » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC

andromeduck wrote: post #154

InitialLastName wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strategy we see from both sides. From the other perspective: Step 1: Create conditions that prevent the government from solving a problem. Step 2: Declare that the public sector has failed and call for privatization.

The problem with having an expansive public sector is that it never stops expanding and has an extremely strong tendency of becoming unequal, disconnected or or one-size-fits-all as the scope/complexity of the programs expand. This is particularly the case when our electoral choices at many a level boil down to binary options that may not project well for individuals with values/views that are largely orthogonal to t…

Competition is great for consumers. The government should be allowed to compete along with the private sector. The winners of this scenario are the citizens and the people who work for these companies.

I've seen exactly this scenario play out in Santa Cruz. Comcast had a virtual monopoly. Even as recently as about 5 years ago one of the best internet packages was up to 20mbps (4mbps in reality) for $40/month.

The city announced a partnership with Cruzio for municipal broadband and virtually overnight Comcast started offering 200mbps for $50/month. Today you can get around 400mbps for $55/month.

We should do the exact same thing with healthcare (public option).

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

#214

Post by zepearl » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #4

I'm always surprised this isn't discussed more. Big tech is accused of being monopolistic, but there is a constant flow of new players in the field, all gaining market shares and building the Next Big Thing, while telecom providers are pretty stagnant. I'm curious why cities don't directly lay down the infrastructure work for broadband access. In some cases that might raise property value enough that the town could m…

> I'm curious why cities don't directly lay down the infrastructure work for broadband access.

Wondering the same thing here (Switzerland), but I might not understand the context: decoupling the "cable" from the "provider" is not common in the US, or there are some other complexities that I don't understand?

In my case the company "Swisscom" opened half of the sidewalk, connected my apartment building to their FTTH infrastructure, then sent me a ton of flyers etc.. to advertise their Internet, but I still decided to use a tiny provider located 100km away (being small, high customer focus etc...) => works since 7 months perfectly, latency is good (e.g. 2-8ms to ping 8.8.8.8), etc... .

My parents had basically nothing (half-broken copper wire), then on a random day the city's electricity&water&gas company team suddenly turned up, installed the FTTH cable (old house => turned out to be super-complicated to push that tiny cable through the house's structure => took them 4hrs), then they left, that's it => me and my parents then had multiple discussions about providers and they finally chose "Sunrise" (one of the major ones in Switzerland) and everything so far has been perfect.

As far as I understand how things work here, the company that provides the cable earns money paid by the providers that use that cable, which in turn earn money paid by their customers => everybody earns money, everybody is happy.

For very small communities (e.g. the one where my parents live - ~800 inhabitants), the town/village might have to directly finance a part of the costs needed to lay down the cables (which in turn are covered by common taxes), but that in turn makes the small community more desirable by whoever takes it into consideration when moving.

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

#215

Post by nine_k » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #208

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically anything that historically falls under common carrier regs. None of this debate is new. We saw it with railroads. Natural monopolies need counterbalancing regulation. This isn't even remotely a controversial statement in economics.

> 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 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.

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

#216

Post by p1necone » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #208

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically anything that historically falls under common carrier regs. None of this debate is new. We saw it with railroads. Natural monopolies need counterbalancing regulation. This isn't even remotely a controversial statement in economics.

> 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?

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

#217

Post by p1necone » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:38 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #215

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 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?

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

#218

Post by ineedasername » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:38 PM UTC

TuringNYC wrote: post #108

ineedasername wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be a constant flow of new players, but much of the time when they start to show a certain amount of success then one of the big players simply buys them up.

You phrase it as if these are hostile takeovers. Having been a founder, I can state that most of my peers wanted acquisitions. It was a way to finance the vision and growth. Would YouTube, Instagram, or dozens of other companies have been able to get where they are w/o the support of their acquirers? Just think of the burn alone and the required investment is a scary figure.

No, I simply said they get bought up. Any negative inference is your own. Feel free to suggest what you believe to be a more neutral term for being purchased by another company.

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

#219

Post by m0zg » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

Solving this problem is not worth the effort at this point. They will all have competition by the end of 2021 in the form of Starlink, which itself will have competition within a couple of years from whatever Bezos is launching. Then there will be still more competition from 5G everywhere. We will be drowning in bandwidth within a couple of years, planet-wide. Capitalism is pretty great like that.

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

#220

Post by IggleSniggle » Tue, Nov 03, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #132

biggermike wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big tech has big profit margins. Big telecom services doesn't. Competitors don't enter the industry because there's little money to be made. The only way you make money by starting an independent ISP right now is by serving some niche clientele e.g. serving wireless internet to events at locations without enough broadband access.

Sounds like a perfect situation for coops. As long as they break-even then it's a success.

I’ve heard of communities doing this very thing, or creating city-owned ISPs, and then getting shut down as illegal due to “unfair competition” (the argument being that the government has unfair advantages vs a private company)