Canadian ISP Co-Op Shows Upside of Line Sharing

Golden Gael writes "The FCC got rid of mandatory line sharing in the US a few years ago, but it's alive and kicking in Canada, and an interesting article at Ars Technica looks at what can happen when there's vibrant broadband competition. 'Wireless Nomad does things a little differently. The company is subscriber-owned, volunteer-run, and open-source friendly. It offers a neutral Internet connection with no bandwidth caps or throttling, and it makes a point of creating wireless access points at the end of each DSL connection that can be used, for free, by the public. Bell Canada this is not.' The ISP has some ambitious plans for the future, including getting involved in WiMAX."

Comments

Frustrated with options in the US

[timeOday]

I live in a city of over half a million people. Last night I spent about 40 minutes trying to find out what my broadband options are. Nobody is upfront; it was incredibly difficult to determine even how much each service will cost after the teaser rates expire, especially if you don't want bundled local telephone or cable TV. Next, try to determine what DSL speed you'll get at your house, or what the upstream bandwidth for cable is. You can't. Just lots of stupid marketing fluff and "congratulations! Satellite Internet is available in your area!" type garbage. In the end I gave up, it didn't look like I have any real option besides what I have now - Comcast (which is good but too expensive, especially since I don't really want cable TV any more). I am sick of everybody pretending the free market is at work so everything is great. It isn't.

Re:Frustrated with options in the US

[Jarjarthejedi]

^ Not a big free market believer

"sick of everybody pretending the free market is at work so everything is great. It isn't."

The problem in this case is not the free market itself, but rather that the average person has no idea what most of the stuff means. It's getting better, and we're seeing the beginning of the end for the market-speak in the internet area (the recent unlimited capped internet being the big thing now), but for the most part the average consumer has no idea what the applicable difference is between a 100 mb/s and 300 mb/s line is (they do know that one is 3x faster, but not how that will affect them and whether it's worth it). Because of that ignorance the providers are able to keep all the important information secret, because the majority cares more about whether they'll have the internet and be able to send e-mails rather than what they can expect their upload and download rates to be and what the caps are on their internet use. Once those are seen as important by the majority (read: once the majority is at least technologically sufficient, if not proficient) they'll start being advertised.

Just thought I'd point that out. Internet here is quite pathetic, but it's not strictly a free market problem. It's more a general population problem which is amplified by having a free market environment.

Re:Frustrated with options in the US

[localman]

Amen to that. I love the market. I believe in the market. But the maket does not solve all problems. So let's elevate the conversation away from finger pointings of "socialist" and "fascist" and start discussing when it is appropriate to regulate and when it isn't. And we can even revisit it from time to time. Right now, my sense is that the broadband market is a mess, there is no real competition, and regulation is needed to push things in a better direction. If you disagree, fine, but you should have a better argument than "the market is teh best!".

Cheers.

Re:Frustrated with options in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sick of everybody pretending the free market is at work so everything is great. It isn't.

I am sick of everyone pretending there is a free market. There isn't

that *is* a free market problem

[m2943]

Just thought I'd point that out. Internet here is quite pathetic, but it's not strictly a free market problem. It's more a general population problem which is amplified by having a free market environment.

No, it's not a "general population problem"; ignorance is economically rational because obtaining information has costs associated with it. Furthermore, it's part of a free market that sellers take advantage of this to charge more than they would if people had complete information.

When you balance out all these effects, it means that a regulated market can sometimes operate more efficiently than a free market. That's why regulating cell phone and cable markets may make sense.

The only "problem" with any of this is that laissez-faire free market proponents don't know their economics and propose bad economic policies.

Re:You are more than welcome to run your own cable

[tjstork]

Only to be crushed by being undersold until you go bankrupt, then watch in horror as the prices go back up.

I think these problems are more in your head than they are anything else. Your whole argument is so much fear mongering to mask a political agenda... "we can't compete, so therefor, let's get the government to do everything for us." That's as silly as it is not true, because, people have competed, and, if you do have the government steal the lines that a company laid down, you'll only be creating a single entity with no competition at all.

After all, how did Comcast do it then? At one point, the only communications cable that ran to homes in the USA was, in fact, AT&T, a gigantic monopoly. Yet Comcast and other cable companies got through the red type, got their cable laid, and did it. And, to compete with Comcast, now, Verizon is running fiber everywhere.