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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.
I prefer the Internet be controlled by a couple greedy corporations that by a single greedy government with armed forces to back it up.
Call me paranoid, but I'm sticking with Linux, where I know I'm secure.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
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.
" They warn that if the FCC goes through with its plans, cable companies and the Baby Bells will quickly establish a monopoly on broadband service over their own networks."
The quote in the article states that this could give the Cable companies a monopoly on broadband.. This I see as bad because there is no compeition (locally) for cable companies. you get what is there, I see it bad for pricing/monitoring
you get 1 choice of cablemodem (cable company) or 1 choice of DSL (local phone company) or satelite (not great for gaming) and no real competition. Who wants to bet that Innovation in this field is the next to die?
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
The decision in March to let cable companies exclude competitors does seem to violate common carriage and will probably disappear after either a short or long series of appeals.
Likewise with the cable companies deciding what content is allowed on their pipes. I can't see that holding up under scrutiny either.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Despite those dire warnings, the FCC's policy on broadband enjoys strong support. Companies with a stake in the matter are gung-ho for it, at least for their own networks
In other news, several CEOs were recently admitted to the Mayo clinic with an unusual condition that caused their eyeballs to actually turn into small dollar signs. When asked about his condition, once CEO could not stop laughing manically long enough to answer.
A spokesman for AOL/Time Warner said he was quite willing to accept customers from price gouging DSL monopolies into his price gouging Cable networks. Comcast could not be reached as their network was apparently down yet again.
I read the internet for the articles.
This is why it is imperative that with like 802.11[a|b] start becoming more prevalent. Net access may be a privilege not a right (for now), but it is becoming more and more necessary to have it in order to function in a technological society. Having a few uber-greedy corps control the access we have to this increasingly-critical medium, is becoming less and less acceptable.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
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.
The article describes oligarchy, not monopoly. "Monopoly" has more emotional impact, and it is used just for this effect. Either that, or those with limited vocabulary do not even know what an oligarchy is.
This might be nitpicking, but for this item, the error is right there in the title (the word "monopolies")
Yes, but read the article.
In order to be a more interesting read , Salon takes a "sky is falling" approach to points 2 and 3.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
"'The Federal Communications Commission is quietly handing over control of the broadband Internet to a handful of massive corporations "
SHHHH!!! They are doing it quietly dammit! Pass it only in notes with codes or you'll blow the whole thing!
I know in my area (that being Atlanta), one cannot get DSL without having a landline or a Cable Modem without getting cable
I was wondering if anybody sees this as the same type of monopolistic behavior MS was convicted of when they bundled IE with the OS?
For example: I have no need for a landline as I have a cell phone plan that gives me more than enough minutes, yet I have to shell out an extra 45 (lets face it, one can barely get a bare bones phone line for less than 45 bucks when all the extra taxes, fees, etc are tacked on) for a phone line so I can have a DSL line. A phone I really never use. Thus my DSL cost is really 85 bucks instead of just 40
isn't this the one of the issues this article might allude too? shouldn't the government bring a lawsuit against the cable/telcos accusing them of bundling? or forcing their un-related product on us just as MS was accused of?
Just wondering.....
When clicking the link in the story, I was sent to a page with a huge animated image. It went like this:
(blurred animated shot in skin tones)
Some text floating over the picture:
"Oh... Yes! Oh yes!"
"Oh... Lower!"
"Lower!"
Then the text "Need new glasses? Buy progressive glasses blah blah"
It was just funny to see how it linked to the story about broadband internet, when the ad content was so similar to what it's mainly used for.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Okay, first stop misusing the word "momopoly", it is defined as ONE entity controlling a market.
Second, figure out what market you are talking about. If it is high-speed data access then one company owning the local/regional/national cable infrastructure is not a monopoly IF (as is the case) there are DLS and other providers within that territory. Lookup the famous monopoly case against Celophane, the Celophane manufacturer won because the market was wrapping material, not the fact that one manufacturer makes one wildly popular product.
Look folks, the more we keep bastardizing the language the more confusing it will be to communicate.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
More and more internet access is a nececary thing to people and companies alike. I think govenment's should treat the backbone connections like a road system, public funding and public access. Think about the economic effects of all highways having unregulated tolls, do we want this for our data?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
Who controls access to the airwaves in the US? The FCC. And who controls the FCC ...?
The majority of consumers can take their pick from 2,3 & 4 broadband providers right now (not resellers). WiFi and 3G will add additional choices. Seems like competition to me - how would a few shoddy DSL resellers improve the situation? I know I *loved* my DSL through Flashcom & Northpoint.
Another good reason to use the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol (yeah, correct link, it's *also* on Salon.com - how convenient). The details here.
Transmitting IP Datagrams over Avian Carriers simply has to be a way to avoid these mega corporations getting control over these common, often fiber based transmission techniques.
But I'm sure there will soon be a Pigeonsoft breeding huge amounts of pigeons for the sole purpose of pissing of others. And of course, the technique of training them to carry datagrams will be patented. And if you try to understand how it works, you'll be sued by the PPAA (Pigeon Protocol Association) for "infringing on intellectual property". They will use the PMCA (Pigeon Master Copyright Act) to support this claim in court.
That's the world we're living in.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This has been goiong on for a while now, and in all but a few big cities, a single company has the monopoly on broadband... If it's even availible.
Something we need to realize is how the companies veiw this situation (which the salon article does a wonderful job of NOT exploring). Most comapanies who provide broadband service are not making any money off of it yet. The demand is high, but the cost of bandwidth is currently higher. Many of these companies see the only way that they can turn a profit is to be the sole provider in a service area; which, to an extent, is viable.
I saw another comment which touched on the long-distance carriers. This is a perfect example of what may or may not go wrong. On one hand long-distance service is cheaper and more versitile than ever, but on the other hand these companies have had a similar situation to their current on for some time now, and it has only been recently that the large carriers are providing the 'low, low rates' that one sees today.
It's hard to say whether or not deregulation like this could bolster the industry. On one hand the demand exists everywhere, while at the same time the per capita demand is often not great enough to warrant a company to provide service in an area (as with ruby ranch). On the other hand, deregulation could spawn an explosion of service in areas which the cable companies and 'baby bells' (which aren't small in any sense) in areas they once thought to risky to warrant the investment of time and materials.
I'm all for it, because I know that a big part of what's holding back many telco's and cable companies in rural areas is the fact that they have to share their lines (which means they make the investment, but get no return). These companies could make an investment and have a guaranteed return, (provided their business analysts have studied an area well enough).
Hopefully, regardless, cable internet service will be availible in my area by the end of september, after 6 years of 'cable for christmas'.
Linux is dead.
LU
Well, I know what it'll eventally happen.
We'll have a few large mega-corps do ISP jobs and backboning strcture. Well, eventaually be slapped down by a shitload of consumers, finding out they can't even have "servers". Lots of people run P2P, well that's half server/half client.
I see bandwidth being charged in the same wasy as electricity is today. However, in the 'packet' system, you pay only for packets sent out, not in (EG: the Snail Mail system). Since somebody's paying to send those packets to you, they're paying. That also eliminates hackable heuristics on wether packets are a flood/DDoS/whatever.
I'm sure the FCC -- especially Powell, et al -- know exactly what they're doing. That's the problem. The "free market" babble is a smokescreen.
Whenever corporations (and/or the lackeys they manage to get into government) talk about "free market", keep a tight hold on your wallet and watch carefully for the slight-of-hand. A truly free market would be the last thing they'd want.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurling down the highway"
-- Andrew (linux is obsolete) Tanenbaum
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
There will be several "competing" giants, but in your neighborhood, you'll only be able to subscribe to one of them. They'll tell you the price, take it or leave it. All ports will be blocked on your end, so you won't be able to put up your own "content". It will only exist so that you can connect to commercial sites.
Also, as in the first century of the phone system (and most current cable TV systems), it will be illegal to connect anything not on the approved list. This list will include the latest releases from Microsoft, and nothing else.
If you don't like it, well, you don't have to use it. Connectivity is a privilege, not a right.
Then, after maybe a century, we'll have some new laws making it legal to connect your own equipment that runs unapproved software. At that time, we'll see a huge expansion of the Internet, as the first innovations in many decades hit the market and the companies upgrade the lines to more than 100KB.
Remind yourself that if the old Bell monopoly were still in place, we'd still be using the old black rotary phones, one per customer unless you pay a surcharge for an extension line. Also, note that right now most of the cable companies are blocking port 80, preventing customers from being "producers" and limiting them to a "consumer" status. And we've read the reports that MSN has been buying up ISPs and blocking email access to everyone but Windows users.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Where in the constitution can you assume that or justify that the above is inaliable or even a civil/moral right
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
"All the better to monitor you with, my dear."
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
...for unfiltered IP access. As the article so insightfully points out, the issue isn't cost or even availability, it's that pretty soon the companies that rent you a cable modem or DSL connection will be the same companies that own (or have an interest in) a whole stack of content. These are the people who bought the DMCA, the people who want to buy DRM legislation like the SSSCA in its various incarnations. Now they will control the creation, the ownership, the distribution and the delivery of content. So much for the original intent of copyright law.
Ask yourself this: when your choice of access is a subsidiary or partner of either Disney or AOL-Time Warner, why would they even need to buy legislation? For your safety and convenience, they can just block everything except port 80, map that to their caching proxies, and firewall off any part of the 'net that challenges their profit models.
You think they won't or can't do it? Why not?. The FCC's position is that competition should be across technologies, not within technologies, and they seem to be lumping cable and DSL in as one technology. The cable/DSL providers could offer (e.g.) filtered 2048/64 cable modem or DSL for a giveaway price of $10 a month; if the competition is $100 a month 512/128 satellite service, or a range limited and contended 2.4Ghz wireless service, then that will just about kill off the idea of unrestricted residential (not consumer, dammit) broadband. That's quite apart from rate/bandwidth capping and billing depending on whether you're downloading content that you've bought from your provider, or if you're daring to go out onto the big wide internet.
Yes, I know that we've no right to demand cheap unrestricted content, and that we should vote with our wallets and so on. But here's something to think about. If you truly believe that an unregulated free market will take care of this, then you wouldn't object to a shell corporation representing the Chinese government buying AOL-Time Warner or AT&T-Comcast and owning 40% or more of the cable networks in the USA, right?
I use that example because the free market, in its purest sense, means that anyone who can afford to buy or do something should be able to do it. The assumption is that purchasing power is obtained through persuading people to give you money of their own free will, and that your actions will continue to be along those popular lines. There are holes big enough to sail an oil tanker through in that theory, the biggest being that once you get in a position to demand money, or you sell a service that has no effective competition, or (my example) you are spending the taxes you collectd from taxing a billion people, then you can continue to leverage that hold indefinitely, especially if there's a large capital investment cost to entering the market.
Capitalism suffers from exactly the same problem as communism: it works great in theory, because it assumes that people are basically good and honest and will cooperate with the spirit as well as the letter of the system. In practice, any system of human governance or interaction requires constant vigilance to prevent tyranny, even if that tyranny comes wearing a pair of big friendly round Mouse ears. I think we need to be asking our government if they understand that the whole point of the Constitution and of the American State is to prevent situations where We, the People can be oppressed and (de facto) taxed without representation. I'd say we're well past that point already; the only question is how far we'll push it before we either see mass civil disobedience, or we tear up the Constitution and start over with a political version of an End User License Agreement, complete with all the usual disclaimers of warranty.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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
Why CAN'T I have my own Pipe, and control access to it Myself? Why do I need an ISP, when all I want is a big fat connection with plenty of speed?
You can, in three easy steps.
1. Start a small business, it's very easy, you don't need to be a corporation or anything, you don't even have to sell anything, just get a bank account with a business name and an EIN.
2. Call up a bandwidth broker like bandwidth.com. They are pretty good as far as following through on your order, and getting the local exchange carrier and the tier 1 ISP coordinated, and off their asses. They backload the fees, you don't pay them anything upfront.
3. Set it up on your end. I recommend a Wanrouter PCI card in a Linux box, it's a little cheaper than cisco hardware, and you get the benefit of being able to firewall directly at the T1, with all the advantages of Linux.
Of course, this will take a couple months, so plan ahead. You might have to fudge it with the credit references for the Tier 1 provider, but if you are persistant enough, or pay a deposit possibly, then they will go through with it. This will cost $500-$1000 a month.
There you go. Your own pipe, all the access you want, and you can resell the bandwidth however you see fit.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Seemingly unbeknownst to many in the USA we actually have access to the Internet here in Europe. I believe it is available in Australia and Japan too.
Certainly in the UK we have similar sorts of difficulties with broadband access, with an effective monopoly supplier in the shape of British Telecom. However, I wouldn't glorify this with an article containing a line like "BT is taking over control of the Internet". Hyperbole anyone?
That the Internet and the networks that happen to make up the Internet themselves are fundamentally two different animals.
Remember the roots of the word. An internet is a network made up of a bunch of networks.
The reason the internetworking in general, and the Internet in particular, work, is because we all agreed on some standards, and a global addressing scheme that ensured unique, routable address space.
Far more important in the long run is making sure that address allocation is impartial and open to everyone. Even now this is erorded.. for reasons that seem unavoidable at present.. but it's still eroding.
You see, before, you could get a block of address space assigned to you, whether or not your network was hooked to anyone elses. Why would you do this? On the mere POSSIBILITY that one day you would hook it up.
Everyone could get unique address space, and network together at will.
Now.. you ahve to prove your precise need for those addresses, and you must get them from your isp. This makes sense if you consider the increasing scarcity of addresses.. but there is a quality that is being lost.
My point is.. we have to make sure that, regardless of who is offering what, that global IP routability is still there, and that Joe Farmer, if he invents a new transmission method, can get routable address space.
One problem with the American system is that when Republican rulers make laws they basically give away all government-administered property and services to huge companies, and it's much harder to take them back. I wonder how long it will be before the US Postal Service is sold off to UPS and FedEx, PBS to FOX, and the Grand Canyon will become a Disney theme park. When that happens, I hope Canada has the heart to issue lots work visas to pissed-off US Americans. I'm thinking about getting in line right now.
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.
What is needed is one company controlling the local infrastructure, and charging for access to it. The access cost would have to cover the cost of installation, maintenance, and upgrades.
Best Slashdot Co
from the article Now, eight cable companies will decide what the public will be offered
Thats 7 too many companies for a monopoly! People say monopoly way too much.
You get to vote for your government every 4 years. Once they're in, 4 years is long term. Corporations, on the other hand, have to keep you happy every day, forever. Corporations, especially these days when brands are so important, are massively concerned with what people think of them, and if they're unpopular, they'll change.
Oh really? If what you say is true, then please explain to me how microsoft's behaviour is consistent with your argument. If you have time, I would also like to hear how the MPAA and RIAA are concerned with what people think of them, and I am anxiously awaiting them to change for the better...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Yep, and back in the day it was all controlled by ONE company, unntil that one company ASKED to no longer be the monopoly utility for LD service.
It was the government that made ATT a regulated monopoly and it was business that introduced competition.
Boy, isn't this some spin!
ATT agreed to divest of their LOCAL phone monopoly as part of a settlement to an anti-trust action brought against them by the DOJ. Seems a little upstart named MCI complained that ATT did anti-competitive things to prevent their entry in the long distance business.
They never ASKED to no longer be a LD monopoly. That was forced upon them by the anti-trust suit. In their defense, their settlement offer was unexpected and they could have dragged it out for years and years. But, it seems they thought that they could compete well in certain technology areas that had been denied them before.
In return for this settlement, ATT got the right to compete in other technology areas, like computers, that they had been denied due to Telecommunications and Anti-Trust law up to that time.
Their computers and software flopped completely. How you could fail at making money selling UNIX during it's growth haydays of mid-80s to early 90s is beyond me. Their computers were actually interesting, but somehow they couldn't market them.
Their telecom/networking products, now mostly Lucent Corp., did have some success awhile back, but now Lucent is doing pretty poorly.
Or just act like one.
Nationwide fiber-optic networks going for pennies on the dollar! Worldcom's price/book ratio is only 0.08 right now. That means you can buy the company Bernie Ebbers so lovingly assembled for only eight cents per dollar of net assets.
So, if anybody has $4.4 billion to spare, email me and we can be oligopolists too!
Milo
The idea with platform competition - that is to say, that cable broadband competes with DSL - is that it's only partially true. There are high costs to get equipment, so that once you have cable, for example, you are unlikely to switch to DSL (with the attendent $200 installation if you can't find a deal). Also, since all of the broadband services look at their competition only within their platform when it comes to services and prices, the services tend to be poor and the prices high, since most broadband providers have no competition within their platform and service area.
On the other hand, I suspect that this will drive the community network connections forward, which is a good thing. Many developers in my region (DFW) are now building their developments with the homeowners' association controlling a preinstalled network with usually at least a T3 out (for about 100 houses), and sometimes more. All the houses are pre-wired, and you pay for the service monthly, at generally very low rates.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Economists often describe monopolies as entities that have more than a 70% or so market share. This is where the inefficiencies of monopoly rents seem to start kicking in.
So, although 'monopoly' technically means a single seller, it has been used in a broader sense for the last 100 or so years.
Milo
Under current conditions, anyone who can get a good SDSL connection (for instance, Covad/Speakeasy, available in all the major population centers) can, for a bit over $100 a month, run a medium traffic Web server, ftp, a listserv, dns.... You can't do that over cable, and you can't do that over telco ADSL.
Now, you can do that by renting space at a server farm somewhere, but then you'll also need broadband to administer that at all efficiently. On the low end you can match that $100 a month, but in the middle range - say you want to have lots of content available, multiple URLs, custom configurations of Apache and whatever, you're talking about something over $200 a month for a dedicated server, plus your own broadband - tripling the price. So you significantly raise the bar for citizen participation in Internet publication. Where's the public interest in this? It's like giving the dominant newspaper control of the price of paper and ink.
As a small note: cable isn't even in the picture if you don't have cable - and some of us out here have no interest in $35 a month for basic cable - the effective cost of cable broadband is that much higher if you don't want that crap.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
The large ISPs also promote spam. Consider Qwest, Verio, and UUNET just to name a few. These companies are so large they know they cannot be blacklisted, so they just keep on selling the pink contracts and to hell with the rest of us.
Unforunately, at this point it look like only a national law will even begin to bring those companies to heel (and a law will only affect companies with a significant business presense in the country that has the law...). I hate saying that - I dislike the "There outta be a law...." types, and any anti-spam law will have severe negative consiquences, but this is the direction we are being driven in.
www.eFax.com are spammers
We have phone companies with 500 customers in a rate area, claiming a big fat block of 10,000 numbers for them. That's 9,500 wasted numbers. THAT's why we have the explosion in area codes.
First, Let's refer to...
Marriam-Webster
1. exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2. exclusive possession or control
3. a commodity controlled by one party
Notice the word exclusive as in exclusive ownership, exclusive control, exclusive possession
Litmus Test
Q. Do the Baby Bell's have exclusive control over the publicly owned telephone telecommunications infrastructure?
A. No, They currently have Primary Control now as they are required to share thier control with other providers.
Q. If the current FCC proposal allowing Baby Bells to deny access to the network access, will the Baby Bells return to thier Monopoly status?
A. Yes, The current FCC proposal will give EXCLUSIVE rights to the public infrastructure, making the Baby Bells Regional Monopolies. IE, No more Covad or Flashcom.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Like I want THAT popping up, even momentarily, when I'm at work! I want to *keep* my job after all... Do Salon ads now need a NSFW warning?
Freedom: "I won't!"
When I was a kid and we would call my grandparents in Florida, they would always say "this must be costing you a fortune!" Well, no, not since they broke up Ma Bell and gave us some competition. A few more minutes on the phone with my grandparents, to me, is worth having a few extra area codes.
Milo
Apropos AT+T in the computer world, they innovated too much and too soon. Things from the plan9 OS to the rc shell to the sam text editor to the Acme whatsamabobit were arguably major improvements upon the mainstream, and were unarguably innovative. Not Microsoft style innovative but Edison style innovative. Main stream OS', to the extent they have changed since plan9, have approached plan9's design (distributed computing, network transparency, replacing monolithic mainframes with peer special purpose machines - one to do networking between LAN and WAN, one to serve up home directories and authenticate logins, one to store runable binaries, one or more to do long cpu and ram intensive tasks etc. that act to the user like one coherent computer). The ideas are maybe just too wierd, not what people are used to in computing, too new for them to make money on them, but we may just talk about them someday re networking and program design the way people now talk about Xerox PARC regarding UI (try out the unix port of sam, rc or wily, the unix port of acme, to see what I am talking about- you will have to RTFM, they all take a while to figure out, but they are all definitely innovative. If they were just released yesterday, they would still be innovative).
...and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
I think you will find that corporations are far more answerable to customers and even small shareholders than governments are to voters.
You're clearly too young to remember AT&T before deregulation. You couldn't plug anything into a phone socket that they didn't own. The popular variant of their marketing slogans was "AT&T: we don't care, we don't have to."
<stonecutter>We do! We do!</stonecutter>
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I'm leary of monopolies. On the other, some of these companies put loooooooads of money into making this work.
I wouldn't mind AT&T BI having a temporary monopoly to recoup their investment (like they do with drug companies...). However, forever is a really long time.
What I'm concerned about is this: Without temporary monopolies to recoup R&D and Deployment, what incentive is there for a company to invest butt-loads of money into something like a broadband network?
"Derp de derp."
Who controls access to the airwaves in the US? The FCC. And who controls the FCC ...?
The FCC can't even stop Joe Blow from setting himself up with a 100 watt CB radio and it has a hard time keeping up with pirate AM, FM and shortwave broadcasts. Wireless broadband would be even more of a nightmare to enforce than these would be.
The FCC is a corrupt PoS. Not only do they "control" who gets to broadcast what/how/when and where, they want to limit the wire bandwidth to only companies that pay them the most money and sit on the FCC's "advisory" boards. What a self-serving crock of crap!
Shit, why the hell don't municipalities start non-profit NGOs to install/maintain another set of wires (or fiber)? Maybe with another type of utility, we can get the Bells off our collective backs. Btw, who needs local telephone service anyhow? It seems that alot of cell phones are cheaper than long-distance in most cases, and with a high-speed conxn, VoIP would be essentially free.
I vote that we scrap the FCC and start over, because they are NOT serving the people, only themselves and the big oglopolies.
P.S.: "Deregulation" means fewer rights for consumers, and more market power for "Baby" Bells (SBC == 4 Baby Bells).
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
You're clearly too young to remember AT&T before deregulation. You couldn't plug anything into a phone socket that they didn't own. The popular variant of their marketing slogans was "AT&T: we don't care, we don't have to."
AT&T before deregulation was a government-sanctioned monopoly. You're just proving my point that governments don't need to care what people think about them. After deregulation, AT&T improved drastically, because the market forced them to.
By definition, a private corporation in competition with other private corporations couldn't have survived behaving that way. Witness the intense competition between and well-staffed call centers of the various mobile telcos.
But the far more urgent concern is that media conglomerates will use their control over broadband pipes to restrict access to content, information, or technologies that compete with their own content or otherwise threaten their interests.
In a democracy, those who control the flow of information control the country. Grassroots movements can't get started without free communication, and as the Internet is becoming an increasingly used political sounding board, this deregulation will give the media companies more power than we realize. Unlike the government, which is required by the Constitution to allow free speech, the media companies have no such requirement - they can deny access to anyone without any justification whatsoever. Those with views unpopular (say Jews, Christians, or Muslims...) or critical of the ISP, may find themselves silenced without any legal recourse.The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
If AOLTW were to block its competitors from sending content to its users that would be a gross violation of anti-trust laws. I for one am becoming less libertarian and more conservative the more I contemplate posts like yours (which is a good thing, most conservatives do support anti-trust law).
AT&T before deregulation was a government-sanctioned monopoly.
AT&T had acheived monopoly status by the 1930's. It chose to submit to a set of business restrictions (primarily other markets, e.g. computers) in order to be allowed to remain a monopoly in 1956. It was hardly a passive entity, before or after.
By definition, a private corporation in competition with other private corporations couldn't have survived behaving that way.
By definition, a monopoly isn't in competition, leaving very few mechanisms for "forcing them" to do anything.
Consolidation is OK so long as individual users mostly have choices on an individual basis. Despite media consolidations, there is more real
media choice today than ever.
Not long ago, I saw a talk on broadband connectivity here in Texas, especially with reference to rural communities; there are alot
of mighty small and isolated communities here in this state. Surprisingly many had access to broadband. Communities of any size at all had access to actual choices - two of cable, DSL, or wireless. Communities which only had one of those did so only because of widespread satisfaction with the 'monopoly' provider. It seems reasonable to believe that competition will spring up if satisfaction thins with that provider.
And, of course, everybody has access to satellite, but it doesn't seem to be needed in surprisingly many places.
Here in Austin, we have monopoly cable companies, and we have DSL mostly provided by a single cable company. Two near-monopolies in terms of individual technologies, but they do compete. Their prices are competitive; they don't dare let their service departments go too far south; they are always running TV ads blasting each other.
And if it doesn't work out, we can always reregulate. No matter what people say about money and politics, democracy will not be suspended
as a result of this decision.
You're argument for allowing Cable companies a monopoly is contigent on the following series of events happening.
1. Cable begins selling Voice-over-IP to all customers.
2. A significant market is going to switch to an inferior voice service. (CLEC's had hard enough time selling the same service as Bell's let alone an inferior one)
3. FCC will reconsider it's decision despite an earlier decision exempting VoIP services from paying into the Universal Service Fund, which funds telephone access in remote areas.
4. The Telco's won't figure out a way to circumvent this despite they figured out how to circumvent the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which bargained deregulation in exchange for providing access the public infrastructure they are entrusted with.
How can you even begin to assure that any of these events will take place, let alone all of them? How can you ensure a community will have all three services, Cable, DSL, and wireless? How can you ensure prices will be reasonable for the areas that lack competition (All Cable, no DSL, no Wireless)? What would keep any of these services from all agreeing to ban certain uses (Kazaa, FTP server, etc.)?
To recap, your plan puts all it's eggs in the VoIP basket, and is naive for thinking the Baby Bells and Cable companies will play by the rules.
At a minimum, we should ATLEAST keep making the Bells provide access to the infrastructure as they've been doing for the last 4-5 years. That's AT A MINIMUM, because you just can't trust them.
While we're at it, here's a list of people you can't trust.
* Politicans
* Monopolies
* Corporations
* The Media
* Musicians
* Comedians
* Religious Icons
* Advocacy Groups
* Anyone who just wants you to trust them
* Anyone who identifies with a political party
AND
* Anyone over 30
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I just didn't touch on it.
IPV6 will give us address space, yes..
but will it be too late? Who will allocate that space? Will it simply be handed out by the current heirarchy of control, or will we once again be able to freely get routable space assigned to us without hassle, regardless of who our ISP is?
J*sus H Chr*st is that first f*cking full-screen ad annoying.
Would I ever patronize any company that ever used such an advertisement?
Never.
Will I ever go back to Salon, after that?
Never.
To hell with 'em...
All you folks who are so in love with pop-ups and pop-unders and all that cr*p need to wise up.
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Everytime I hear someone try to invoke that smokescreen, I want to puke.
I live in a medium-to-large market (metropolitan Tacoma-Seattle-Everett, Washington) and I have the choice of:
You get the idea.
There is, for the vast majority of computer users, one and only one operating system company.
What fucking "free market"?
There is no true market for a whole lot of stuff, these days.
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I don't understand this argument, but I see it a lot. Opening the network to competition should not mean that AT&T fails to make a profit on the infrastructure they've built. Look at it this way: AT&T builds a railroad to carry minerals from a mine they own. They have two different investments: the mine and the railroad. Now other mine operators want to use the railroad. Naturally, they expect to pay. But AT&T refuses to carry their cargo at all. Under the DSL rules, AT&T would be compelled to provide transport for the other mine operators - not at a loss, but at a reasonable profit. This should not harm their ability to recoup on any investment in the railroad. If it harms their ability to recoup on the mine, then the mine was badly planned.
In any event, the last-mile wiring infrastructure remains a monopoly. The issue is whether that facility should be rented (not given away) to all parties on a non-discriminatory basis, or whether the owner of the infrastructure can leverage its monopoly in last-mile transport to create a monopoly in a totally different market, ISP services and upstream transport.
To me the answer is clear; in fact I believe that any company granted monopoly privileges to provide last-mile transit should be banned from providing upstream internet access - they should merely rent capacity to ISPs who would sell the complete package to customers. That would eliminate the current blatant conflict of interest. I don't see how it would prevent investors in such last-mile infrastructure from recouping investment.
Your arguement is essentially
1) Companies want money
2) The consumer gives them money
3) They must appease consumers for money
1 is correct.
2 They can get money from other companies. For example Disney could pay the ISP to allow more bandwidth for downloading their stuff.
3 In the real world not even close. If their are only 8 companies (sometimes called an olgapoly) controling everything, they will probably tacitly agree to not out do each other since this would lead to "destructive competion."
They will all benfit if they all agree to not lower their prices. (This can often be an unspoken thing. They say let's not lower our prices because our few competitors will do the same and we will gain more market.)
It is different if there are more companies because if company X controls 0.01% of the market and it lowers its prices then it would increase its market share because its competitors would not respond to this because company X has an insignificant affect on the market.
I have been talking about pricing but everything I said also applies to quality of service.
Companies also don't need to improve products if they use fraud and high quality marketing but thats not as relevent to what we're talking about and this post is already to long.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
So are you suggesting that I just "vote with my wallet" on PG&E's brownouts? Obviously, I have no choice as there is not another electricity company serving the greater SF area.
...and THAT's the point of the article. Capitalism also implies that substitutes are available. What if they aren't - and can't be? Then what?
Is that the flipside or a flipside? I'm not convinced that there's only two choices.
(Actually, I'm less and less convinced that it makes any sense to talk about big corporations and big government as if they were opposites, at least in the current US system. That's the way it's usually presented to us, but they seem more like two outgrowths of the same cancer to me.)
The same phone company that owned the copper in the ground in my neighborhood and held a monopoly on being able to bury telephone lines in our front yards and run them to our houses before the breakup still owned the copper in the ground and held a monopoly on being able to bury telephone lines in our neighborhood after the breakup and still do to this day. That's where the monopoly is, the last mile--the service drop to the house. That's where we need both local and federal government to protect us and to be our watchdog, not to auction us off to the highest bidder (or briber).
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Actually, it's pretty reasonable. You think it's expensive because you're comparing it to "equivalent" consumer bandwidth. However when you pay for the T1 you are paying for N bits per second - when you pay for consumer bandwidth you're paying for the right to use up to N bits per second if they're available. Naturally, anyone selling consumer bandwidth oversells relative to the real bandwidth he bought. At an oversell ratio of 10:1, which I think is common for consumer bandwidth, you could sell 40 384k connections out of this T1.
From the article: [Economists] argue that the current regulations, particularly the open-access requirements for DSL, actually discourage private investment... Who wants to build a new network if you then have to share it with competitors?
So the only way we can have broadband is if monopolies build it. Righto, and gambling casinos will never work either, because if people don't win they won't come back.
Relying on "platform competition" would be like relying on horses (dialup), cars (wireless) and airplanes (satellite) to unseat railroad monopolies (telcos) about a century ago -- sure, they all provide transportation, but only one of them has infrastructure built and suitable for low-cost service while others have to deal with basically a lot of empty space and technology that makes sense only where infrastructure is built, ot for some limited uses.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.