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More on Media Consolidation/Deregulation
I'll try to accumulate some links not previously posted. William Safire comments. The Register has an editorial; see also The Guardian for more on the British perspective. Associated Press story. The Washington Post has a good and lengthy (and rare) piece. The phone companies are making a cynical political announcement that they've agreed on a standard for fiber-to-the-home; that doesn't mean they'll ever use the standard, and indeed they've already promised *not* to roll it out anytime soon. Note that the FCC is removing any requirement for the Bells to share their fiber, so if Verizon runs fiber to your house, you'll be able to get Verizon service or none at all.
They spent the money to run it. I work for a CLEC and we have our own phone switches. If VZ jacks up the prices on their circuits, it will only hurt us for a little while since we flip customers to our own network. I doubt the telecom act of 1996 was meant to create an industry that relied on cheap prices by the bells and only on reselling. If you want to be a player in telecom then you need to invest in some infrastructure.
...so if Verizon runs fiber to your house, you'll be able to get Verizon service or none at all.
Isn't that how it should be? If Verizon foots the cost of rolling out thouands and thousands of miles of fiber, shouldn't they be the only ones who can use it?
That's a bit different from phone lines which were subsidised through tax money and therefore should be open to all. If Verizon is the one paying for the fiber, then it should be theirs to use alone if they please.
The FCC is set to vote on their secret-none-more-secret changes to the media ownership regulations on Monday. If you like the direction commercial radio has taken in the last few years, don't worry about it. If not, moveon.org has some good resources for who to call.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
NPR ran an interview with FCC Chairman Michael Powell this morning, it is available here.
Compared to the UK situation, where 2 of the 5 analogue broadcast channels are part of the tax-funded BBC? (Along with 5 or more national radio stations, a couple of magazines, a serious web presence, and a newspaper with a very similar agenda).
I really don't think having "only" four or five different TV companies available (to non-cable/satellite subscribers) is a problem - especially when so many people have cable or satellite, giving them literally hundreds of different channels to choose from. Not to mention a huge number of newspapers and magazines, and of course the Internet!
Keep this in mind: For years, the UK had just three different TV companies - the largest one state-owned, and the smallest subsidised. No cable (that came in the 80s), no satellite (same). With or without these changes, US viewers without cable/satellite will have more choice than UK viewers. I'm not holding the UK up as some sort of media Utopia, but it's hardly the disaster area these guys seem to predict!
It's not the cable companies preventing you from ordering these channels a la carte, it's the channel owners. The packages are sold to cable companies as packages, and they're required to be sold to consumers as a package.
Competition is good unless the network effect is extremely strong.
Basically that means competition is good at bringing down prices but sometimes the benefit of having a single solution that everyone uses is more than the reduction of price that would come with competition.
In this case however I think we have something thats more anti-competative. Phone company A runs fiber to a house (either because they got to the area first or the person in the house requested company A) then when the person with that line decides that company B might have a better service the cost to change companies is prohibitive because company A won't sell its fiber line, or more to the point company B won't use the line from company A that the person already purchased and instead wants them to purchase another line.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
"so if Verizon runs fiber to your house, you'll be able to get Verizon service or none at all."
I would have thought a telco could make lots of money by rolling out fiber connections and then leasing them wholesale at above their costs. They won't have to support end users and the costly call centres, services, network infrastructure and bandwidth that that involves. They'll just have to provide the same infrastructure services that they need to provide anyway.
Where I live, I can get DSL from the my local telco for CAD$45 (1.2mbs), or from a small ISP for $50 (3.5mbs). Apparently the local telco charges ~CAD$20 for DSLAM port leases. I'm glad I'm not paying for useless tech support or a heavily subsidised ISP portal that I would never use. It's easy money: I think they only support the CO, and line from there to the outside of my house.
Usually, I'm a big free market proponent, but even I can see how media consolidation is a bad thing for the average American consumer.
Right now, we have four major television networks: ABC, NBC, FOX, and CBS. Watch each network's nightly news broadcasts; they're not all that different. And although news organizations like to say that they're unbiased and "just reporting the facts, ma'am", the way in which you present "the facts" gives a strong indication as to your opinion of it.
"Republicans Hand Wealthy Americans Large Tax Break" vs. "American Citizens Will Pay Less in Taxes" gives a pretty good impression of what the writer thinks of the tax breaks.
Does anyone still remember when the FCC was supposed to HELP the consumer, by regulating the communications industry on our behalf?
now, the FCC serves to help monopolies, by regulating the consumer on the industries' behalf. Why is it that mechanisms to prevent consumers getting screwed always wind up being used against us?
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.