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The Coming Internet Monopolies
scrm writes "'The Federal Communications Commission is quietly handing over control of the broadband Internet to a handful of massive corporations according to this Salon article." Very important stuff; Slashdot has covered this before, but this is a great article which sums up everything that has gone on over the past few years.
Isn't long distance telephony infrastructure also controlled by a few massive corporations? Equal access carrier laws and preventing a single company from owning the whole thing has fostered enough competition to really hammer AT&T, for instance.
When TimeWarnerAOL (or Disney or whoever else ends up as the big players) decides you shouldn't be seeing this or that website, or sending this or that data down the wire, you'll care.
Remember, these are the same companies who bought the DMCA - they do not have your interests in mind.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Who controls access to the airwaves in the US? The FCC. And who controls the FCC ...?
So you either pay up, or go without. How many here would actually give up the internet in protest? Round about none I'd wager.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Separate platforms exist for separate purposes, and have separate capabilities. While I am as enamored of Bluetooth as anyone it is not the same as a fat cable pipe.
The FCC rulings do not (as I understand them) prohibit one company from owning multiple "platforms" If the local wireless net, and cable, and DSL all come from the same source then nothing has been gained.
In any location where one company has a monopoly on most services such as broadband, etc. Where is the incentive to develop a new "platform"? If a town has cable and DSL controlled by AOL then I have little or no incentive to develop a wireless alternative there. The startup costs will be (as they are for anything) huge. In order to break even (until I get a lot of subscribers) I will have to charge more than AOL can charge. So, while I am depleting my cash reserves trying to undersell them they are a) selling at a fraction lower than me, and b) blocking my ads from running and my web page from working on "their" lines and c)running news on their service saying that I torture kittens in my spare time. Then once I'm gone they can jack up the prices again.
Where is the incentive to invest in infrastructure going to come from? Once you have a service that "works" and are facing no competition, why upgrade? Why waste your cash reserves on making life better for your captive audience when you could be working on expanding your audience.
Monopolies are only good for themselves, and the economists that they pay.
You are very mistaken. Capitalism works precisely because it does _not_ assume that people are good and honest. Capitalism assumes that people will act out of self-interest, which is usually true.
If a broadband provider in your area is charging too much or blocking access to things people want, then it's only a matter of time before another alternative is developed to take its place. Someone else will see that there's an opportunity to make some money or spread some goodwill. Intelligent regulations don't make these corrections happen (they happen anyway) they just keep things moving a bit more smoothly.
The subject under discussion is specifically an example of what happens when capitalism is not allowed to correct the problem. The cable companies and other broadband providers got where they are because they were granted an artificial monopoly where competition was prohibited by the government. Some would claim that those were necessary incentives to encourage the huge investment needed to create the infrastructure needed, and that may have been true. But removing those antiquated regulations would change everything. Adding more won't change anything, at least not for the better.
This is good in theory, but if the local provider has a lock on the market, and is blocking content, there is not going to be much you can do. You are dealing with a high infrastructure cost medium. There is a high barrier to entry into the market.
If (and this is a big if) some other provider wants to get in on the action, the first provider (for all intents and purposes a monopoly) can easly squeeze the new provider by dropping thier price and or loosening up the control over the content to passify their current clients.
Even if a second provider wanted to get into the local market they would have to be highly capitalized and would probably resort to the same tactics (almost collusion) that the first provider resorted to.
Just look at all the CLECs carcases near the baby bells. Do you think that Verizon, and all their evil bretheron, just passivly sat by while new competition was gaining a foot hold. Hell no, they fought them every step of the way, in the courts, with predditive pricing, and sloppy/incopentent service.
I hate to say it, but there needs to be strong regulation of at least the last mile or there will never be any competition.