Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
First the dollar and now this?! Is Canada the new America?
Seagoon: Shut up Eccles!
Eccles: Shut up Eccles!
Before anyone comes in screaming that this isn't how the "free" market is supposed to work, how bad governement intervention is, etc. etc., let me point out the following:
In Canada, the biggest telco, by far, Bell Canada, was for a very long time a state sanctioned monopoly and thus recieved tons of public funds to help build its infrastructure (not unlike the situation in the US). Due to this fact, the CRTC (the Canadian equivalent of the FCC, but usually with a clue), forces Bell to allow access to its lines to competitors, as mentionned in the article.
Results? While the particular company Ars focused on isn't a resounding success (even if it has cool ideas), there's tons of others that are. Example: unlimited, uncapped DSL, which would cost me 45$ with Bell, cost me 28$ with one of its competitors because Bell has to lease them the line for 22$/month (a price point at which they still make a profit, I feel it must be pointed out).
And it's not just competition on prices and service level, it's customer service too. Anyone that had to deal with a telco before, at one point or another, pretty certainly wanted to go on a shooting spree. The company I deal with? Pick up the phone and someone (in Canada!) will answer, straight away, 24h a day... none of that "please press 1-3-2-6... please wait... we're receiving an unusual volume of call... waiting time is 17 minutes... your call is important to us" bullshit.
So, basically, go mandatory line-sharing! Anyone wanna bet that it's never going to happen in the States? ;P
I am sick of everybody pretending the free market is at work so everything is great. It isn't.
The whole point of the free market is, if you do not like the way companies provide a good or a service, you are more than welcome to secure your own investors, get your own right of way, run your own cable, and sell your own broadband.
This is my sig.
Look at any map. We've been on top of the US since day one!
Be relentless!
Privatization in and of itself does not provide an efficient market. Competition, not private ownership, is what provides the benefits found in modern economies. More often than not, private ownership enables competition. Sometimes it does not, sometimes it stifles competition, and results in an inefficient market.
Utilities are classic examples of natural monopolies. To be pedantic, this sometimes takes the form of oligarchies rather than pure monopolies, but the drawbacks are the same: the suppression of competition leads to high prices, poor service, and stagnation (lack of innovation). The oligarchs may divide the business by geography, like the railroads, or by type of service. Cable and telcos do both. Cable companies divide the country into exclusive territories, sometimes trade territories, but never battle over the same region. Telcos do the same. You local telco and cable may appear to compete with each other, but it is a very limited competition. They unite against any third party entering the market. They unite to lobby against any requirement to lease lines to real competitors. They unite to throw obstacles in the path of anyone foolish enough to try to run new lines.
If you look at true free markets, there are usually at least three strong players and several smaller ones. For example, US auto market share 2007 YTD: GM 22%, Toyota 16%, DaimlerChrysler 16%, Ford 15%, Honda 9%, and so forth. Real competition. The same picture emerges for fast food, supermarkets, gasoline, clothing, you name it.
Where I live, the phone company and the cable company combined have more than 90% of the Internet access market. Third place is down in the statistical noise. People ask whether I use cable or DSL, as if there were only two choices. They can't comprehend that there could be a third choice.
If there isn't a third choice, there isn't true competition. If the third largest market share isn't at least half the size of the largest, there isn't true competition. We don't have true competition for Internet access in the US. We have an oligarchy which restricts competition.
Privatization often increases competition. Privatization sometimes replaces one monopoly with another. Privatization is neither good nor bad. Competition is good, and when private enterprise is suppressing competition, then *anything* which increases competition is better. Including regulation, or even government ownership. As bad as government can be, sometimes private business is worse. Government lacks the feedback that competition provides, but provides feedback from voters that businesses lack. Even the DMV is easier to deal with than AT&T.