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Who Pays for Rebuilding the Internet?
pcause writes "The Internet (physical as opposed to technical) was really not designed for applications that want to use maximum bandwidth all of the time, such as P2P and streaming video. Here in the US we've seen Comcast try to balance the demands of P2P traffic with other traffic and its backbone capacity. In the UK, a flame war has broken out between the BBC and ISPs about the same issue. So the question is who pays? Should the content owners who make the profits pay for the extra infrastructure, or should the consumer pay?"
The interesting question is not who pays, but how can we all collectively pay less for better performance? The problem is that the billing model for the internet is broken. ISPs need to start billing for usage, that much is obvious. But in addition, I think it would be really interesting if they billed based on a function of their actual cost for delivering every individual packet. I.e. if it stays in their network it's really cheap, if it goes through a peer then it's still pretty cheap, and if it goes to a transit provider then it gets expensive. the upstream ISP could in turn bill based on their cost to deliver it. Routers could pass along this metadata about the cost, accumulating it along each hop.
Obviously this has tremendous implications in terms of the additional work that routers would need to do to account for traffic, and how the costs are communicated to the customer. However, I think the end result would be something quite incredible, because what would happen is it would drive the development of smarter P2P protocols that keep traffic nearby, and widespread deployment of caches for static content and such. Right now there is very little incentive to do these things.
The end result, once everything has had a chance to adapt, would be a phenomenally efficient internet, with reduced costs and better performance all around. ISPs wouldn't give a hoot about this new class of "smart" P2P because the bulk of the traffic would stay among their local subscribers, the bandwidth to whom is free. Massive loads would be disappear from peering centers and long distance links. The cost of bandwidth would plummet.
I think all of this is feasible, and it's worth doing.
A better question would be, "why is the market broken?"
This is in many ways, the same question we ask about factories/industries that pollute heavily. The environment belongs to all of us, so people ask "shouldn't they pay?"
"Taboo, like anything else, goes in and out of style."
Well, here is the catch. Who ever spends the money should gain control of the resulting infrastructure. If the BBC/British government pays to upgrade the lines you can expect a great big (politely worded) fuck you to the telecoms if they try to set any demands.
If the telecoms pay for the infrastructure, they get to say what happens to it. Within whatever terms they negotiate for the use of public land to build on. And if they continue the false advertising of their services, they can expect that at some point a class action lawsuit will be made and will break them.
This is essentially the same argument raised by those who are truly anti net neutrality -- not just "don't let the government interfere", but "why, yes, I do think Google should pay Comcast's bills."
Look, it's simple: Google pays Google's bandwidth bill. I pay mine. Both of them go towards building the infrastructure. If it's not enough, raise taxes to pay for it, I don't care.
What you do not get to do is raise the bar for the next Google, and continue to let ISPs deceptively advertise "unlimited" Internet access. Yes, technically, the advertising is truthful, but it is intentionally misleading, and we are all paying the price for it.
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..adjust the rates based on time of day (or generally, demand at a given instant). There's a ton of spare bandwidth at night.
they both pay (consumer and content owner). They even pay according to the bandwidth they're provided, in most cases. Exactly who does the writer think is getting free service?
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Should the content owners, who make the profits pay for the extra infrastructure or should the consumer pay?
The consumer will pay. PERIOD. Even if the content owners pay, the costs STILL get passed down to the consumer.
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FTP has been around since the 70's and http since the 90's and they want to take MAXIMUM BANDWIDTH.
The question presumes that if the content owners pay, the consumers won't have to pay.
This is wrong. If the content owners are forced to pay, then the consumers will have to pay for the bandwidth when they pay for the content.
Here is the correct question: Should consumers pay for bandwidth when they pay for bandwidth? Or should consumers pay for bandwidth when they pay for content?
When phrased correctly, the answer becomes obvious. Consumers should pay for bandwidth when they pay for bandwidth. Any other answer has negative consequences, both to the economy and to the current nature of the Internet.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
The consumer will ultimately pay.
He may pay directly.
He may pay indirectly, getting subsidized delivery in exchange for advertising.
Guess who pays for advertising: The people who consume the product being advertised.
TANSTAAFL.
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I thought we paid already, and the ISPs just didn't reinvest into rebuilding their network.
The last I checked most of these ISPs either had monopolies granted to them, and/or had existing infrastructure handed to them by Governments.
Some even had billions of _public_ money handed to them by Governments to build their _future_ networks.
So now they want us to pay again?
This is like the power and water companies asking us to pay extra just because they went "Oops, oh yeah forgot about this reinvesting into infrastructure for the future thing".
Compare how much ISPs charge and how much power and water companies charge, and what you get for it. While small ISPs have to pay per bit (like water and power companies which have to pay per unit of gas/coal/water), AFAIK large ISPs have cushier arrangements with each other, since the incremental costs of sending bits isn't high once the network capacity is paid for - if nobody uses the bandwidth, the ISP still has to pay about the same for the network.
Why don't the ISPs pay for their own hardware? I am not getting how it is the content creator or customer that pays for buying new hardware that an ISP owns. If an ISP is not able to pass on the cost of new hardware and stay competitive with service and price, then I guess that ISP goes obsolete. I think that is how the market is supposed to work, right? After all, it is the ISPs and bandwidth wholesalers that screwed the pooch by building networks and a pricing model that was asymmetrical because they thought the Internet was all web based.
The old breed of ISPs should go out of business if they can't compete and a new generation of ISPs will emerge with a better business model. There is demand and it is not going away so there is money to be made. If they cannot adapt, then too bad. By the way, nice fallacy that P2P apps are designed to use maximum bandwidth. What evidence do you have to back this up? It sounds more anecdotal than anything. Not all P2P apps are created equal and are designed to file share.
If the content providers pay, but cannot (or do not) pass those costs along to the consumers, then their business model will not be viable. They will be paying more than they are making, and eventually will starve to death.
Obviously, this isn't going to happen.
If the content providers pay, and can still squeeze a profit out of the deal, they will *still* pass the cost along to consumers, for two obvious reasons: 1) they want to maximize their own profit margins, 2) they will get sued by their own shareholders if they don't try.
The cost will be passed on to consumers one way or another...perhaps in the form of a direct infrastructure tax, perhaps in the form of tax incentives/subsidies specifically for ISPs, perhaps in the form of higher cost service to the consumers, most likely as a combination of all three (and maybe other common means of paying that I haven't thought of).
Remember...the workers generate wealth while the organizers skim off the top. There is no more universal principle.
You're in business selling a service that's so popular you cannot meet all the demand that exists for it.
And you're asking how you're going to pay for building out to be able to provide more?
(1) Raise your prices. Use the extra revenue to pay for buildout. Sell more service. Profit.
(2) Get investment. Use it for buildout. Sell more service. Return profit to investors.
I understand that the peering agreements make things more complicated, but the basic issue is that people on the ends of the network have demands for the services, and it really seems like there's fairly transparent economic solutions to that problem without trying to do anything particularly complicated like having ISPs shake down content providers who don't have points of origin on their networks.
In short: bill the people you provide service to. Don't try billing the people you don't provide service to.
Tweet, tweet.
Consider all those folk choking up the internet with video downloads, P2P etc "because it's free" and they've got nothing better to do with their time. They're all choking up the pipes for everyone.
Pay-per-use is one way to get a free market into this and allow people to buy the QoS they want and the market decides the price points. It would also motivate some of the spam botters to clean up their act.
The only way to modify behaviour is to provide some sort of feedback/dis-incentive for excessive use.
Under pay-for-QoS you'd have the choice to wait til 2am and download a video for free or download it immediately for $2.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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Here, I'll pay for it. Whom do I make the check out to?
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Okay, I live in a somewhat crazy country (New Zealand) in which we have this deal where both parties pay an ISP for Internet services. The consumer of the product (e.g. people who view videos) pays their ISP for internet traffic (something like $b + $x per hour + $y per gigabyte, billed or prepaid at some interval, where b, x, y may be zero). The providers of the product (e.g. people who host videos on their server) are themselves consumers of Internet services, so also pay their ISP for internet traffic. It seems to generally be the case that each party pays for both upstream and downstream traffic.
The idea of this approach seems to be that the money given to the ISP goes towards paying other higher-level providers for traffic, and upgrading the network where/when necessary. If the ISP doesn't think they have enough money to support traffic, they should either bump up consumer prices, or alter their accounting system. Both consumers and providers of products are already paying the ISP for the traffic and infrastructure maintenance.
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For too long, the ISPs knew that their infrastructure would eventually get burdened down with data. It's not what kind of data, per se, but how many users are going to start requesting and sending data. The amount of users accessing the internet has reached a large enough point that the development of social networks seemed obvious. Every ISP knew about the potential to deliver video, but they must have underestimated the adoption of it by .....about ten years. How come we don't all have fiber to our houses? Better question, how come I don't have DSL and I live in a city of over 200K people? I had a cable modem since 1997 and all I can get is Comcast. When asking Qwest when I could get DSL, they insisted it would be in my neighborhood in two years. Two years go by and I actually called them. They said the same thing! Two years, sir. Eleven years have passed and I still have to be within a two mile radius of their main line or it's a no-go. If demand for faster speeds is so high, why, I ask is there no competition in my poor city?
Only now is Verizon taking charge, seemingly, to lead fiber directly into a single residence. I do remember a story in the late 90s about the former owner of Qwest saying he acquired the rights to 'improve' the length of most railroad lanes. Supposedly, he laid fiber in one tube and left the other empty so when the next, best-quality fiber became available, he could fill that tube. I don't know why I mentioned that, other than to illustrate the fact that people have been 'thinking' of upgrading the infrastructure, but it appears that they haven't.
If I had just made major investments in laying the major infrastructure for anything, I'd try to max-out my investment, too (aka, milk it for as long as you can before people get sour over quality.) Comcast has a maximum amount of bandwidth they can reasonably supply to a shared pool of users. When they try to balance users' internet demands while trying to sell more users on high-bandwidth HDTV and VOIP, they are just setting themselves up for having to do what they've been, rightfully, criticized for --throttle the most-demanding applications. While I strongly disagree with their actions, I guess I could understand it it I were a CEO wanting to impress shareholders, or if I were an IT manager wanting to get a raise.
In the end, I think we will see standard market forces doing what they do best --compete. I don't like the fact that I may have to give my money to Verizon, but I'd sure rather give it to them in the future (whenever that may be) than give it to Comcast.
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...because they're the ones telling consumers they can download as much as they want with their 'unlimited' plans.
We did all this in Australia years ago; the most common form of Internet we get is on tiered monthly plans (3gb/month, 12gb/month, etc). Our international bandwidth is still (apparently) really expensive, so the volume of data ISPs feel comfortable giving us is relatively small to what I'd expect US ISPs to offer.
All yall other countries need to just play catchup on this issue and stop those douchebags from selling unlimited plans and then acting all surprised when people actually expect them to have no limits. People that use 200gb a month shouldn't be paying the same as people that use 5gb a month, and that should be reflected by ISP pricing.
What we're looking at here is the Quality of Service question.
Different services require different service characteristics. For instance:
- File transfers can take "best effort" service. They don't care if the transit time of packets varies (jitter) or is long (large latency). They don't care if occasional packets get lost or corrupted because they can have them resent. They don't care if the rate is fast or slow - and can self-adjust to go as fast as possible to use the available bandwidth.
- Streaming protocols care about all of the above: If they're 2-way interactive they care about latency. They always care about jitter. They don't want packets to drop - but if occasional packets DO drop it's better for them to NOT try to get them resent, which would create massive jitter and latency. They have a bandwidth requirement that is either constant or related to what they are carrying - and has no relation to the actual speed available to the connection under varying amounts of congestion.
To serve both of these types of traffic on the same packet-switching network you have to treat them differently. Otherwise the file transfers will speed up to try to hog all the available bandwidth, dividing it evenly among themselves, and stomping on the streaming protocols. Things will only work for the streams on a best-effort net when all the file transfers are limited by some OTHER bottleneck and there is enough bandwidth ON EVERY HOP for essentially all the stream packets to go right through.
But because the streams have some other inherent bandwidth limit you CAN treat them differently. You can give them Quality of Service rules that puts them at the head of the line, limiting jitter, minimizing latency, and causing other types of packets to drop while they go through. And you can reserve bandwidth for them, refusing to set up the flow (connection) if there isn't enough to service them and have some left over for other services. Then you can guarantee they get delivered, while the file transfers etc. expand to hog and divide only the UNreserved bandwidth. Also: If they're going to multiple destinations you can use multicast and reserve bandwidth for only one copy while serving many endpoints.
And IPv4 was designed to do much of that: It has a "type of service" field that lets you declare what kind of service would be good for each packet. It didn't do bandwidth reservation (by itself). But you could declare preferences about latency, jitter, and drop probability.
Unfortunately, this means that packets could ask to be treated better than their competition. And it was completely on an honor system. And before streaming was widely deployed Microsoft deployed an IP stack that "improved" their product's performance by lying about the type of service the packets really needed, demanding stream-type service for everything, including file transfers. This got widely deployed. So ISPs generally don't honor the Type of Service bits, and QoS isn't widely deployed on the backbone.
Nowdays, in addition to the fast-as-mercury, dumb-as-rocks backbone routers, there are reliable-as-telecom, smart-as-firewalls edge routers, full of arrays of processors so they have a bunch of instruction executions available to think about every packet. These boxes can do things like act as a reverse-firewall to protect the network against cheaters, certifying that, if a given customer has bought - or temporarily reserved - a certain amount of high-QoS bandwidth he doesn't exceed it, and if necessary rewriting the QoS/Type of Service tagging so the backbone can trust the packets again.
So with the brains available to watch over the packets and apply rules, so that streams can get the bandwidth they need and file transfers can use all the rest on a common network, the question is what rules to apply.
Streams put a higher demand for service on the net - but have limited bandwidth. File transfers want bandwidth but are happy to take what's left after the strea
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So the question is who pays? Should the content owners, who make the profits pay for the extra infrastructure or should the consumer pay?
What are you talking about? The content owners/providers ALREADY PAY THEIR FULL COST. Those who buy wholesale bandwidth and those who colocate equipment in datacenters already pay for the bandwidth they use, the real cost of that bandwidth. Datacenters would go out of business if they didn't charge the real cost.
The failure of an ISP's business model, oversubscribing of backbone bandwidth and then selling "unlimited bandwidth" at far less than the actual cost, assuming no customers might ever use it fully, has absolutely nothing to do with the providers of content.
To use interweb tube analogy... The content providers have already paid their datacenters $1000s of dollars per month to provide a 10" tube to ship 1000s of barrels of data per second to the interweb. If an ISP advertises 10" tubes to your doorstep for $30/month, but their backbone is a garden hose, and they never actually expected you to use it... that is a contract dispute between the ISP and the consumer. The content providers have NOTHING to do with it.
Put a tax on spam emails, and popup advertising? Then use that tax to pay for the new Internet.
Also charge the spyware and adware companies fees for infecting a majority of the Internet and affecting bandwidth, and use those fees to pay for the new Internet.
My plan is to get the money from companies and people that abuse the Internet via taxes or fees and use that to build the new faster Internet.
Maybe it will cut down on spam, adware, spyware, and popup ads? Just a thought.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
You can only use my tax money if I get to own it. Let one company own the last mile, and sell it to providers. No provider can own last mile, and no last mile company can provide access. It works for electricity in Houston...
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Sorry, but I think "pay per use" solves all sorts of problems. Use more gas, oil, water, or electricity, and you pay more. Use less and you pay less. Simple. (And before someone starts the tangibleintangible argument, we're still faced with the fact that there's only so much electricity/water/bandwidth available at a certain place and point in time. They're all finite resources.)
And personally, I think that for most accounts the system should be biased towards paying more for "upstream" usage than downstream. In fact, most ISPs already state two bandwidth rates, with, say, 600Kbps up and 1.5Mbps down. I say charge accordingly. (Helps the ISPs with the P2P problem too. If upstream traffic costs more then you turn more people into leachers, which in turn drives more providers off the web.)
Secondly, if you have a home account you're ALREADY paying a monthly fee to get Ubuntu. It's not "free". And if you don't think you're going to get $3 worth of value from it, then you're probably better off not wasting the bandwidth in the first place.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Who gets the contract to do the fiber? How much should be paid to do this contract? Should everyone get it or only dense populations? How dense do the populations have to be? How do we pay for it, do we inflate the currency through debt or do we increase tax?
Who gets the maintenance contracts? How much do we pay for the maintenance contracts? How much maintenance should be spent on all fiber or should only dense populations get it? How dense do the populations have to be? How do we pay for it, do we inflate the currency through debt or do we increase tax?
Who gets to use the fiber? How much do we charge companies to use this fiber? How do we ensure its being used for the right purposes and companies aren't bidding for contacts and locking in those customers? Who is responsible for faults in the network? How are costs allocated?
The market is fine, the solution is to deregulate so companies are forced to compete, as opposed to the more segregated systems that we are used to now a days.
I don't recall anyone ever saying "To have a free market, it must be provided by public Government services", a free market can never have any Government regulation or intervention, else it is not a free market.
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For the obligatory car analogy... If you bought a car using a 48 month loan (I've never financed a car, but I assume that may be a typical duration nowadays), by the time the loan is paid off, the value of the car is substantially reduced (perhaps down to your down payment depending on how many miles it was driven) and you paid both the principle and the interest over the primary useful life of the car.
Of course, ongoing maintenance (labor of repair and administration as well as cost of replacement parts) and operational costs such as power, cooling, insurance, also must be recovered. For example, it really does cost more to run 2N routers than to run N routers.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
It has been obvious since dialup-to-BBS days that bandwidth demands were only going to go up, and go up fast. Every new, faster modem was snapped up immediately, until the bandwidth of voice lines was saturated. And those of you with longer memories may recall the RBOCs/ILECs bitching along the lines of, "Oh noes! Our trunks and switches, they are overloaded! We can haz data tax?" Proposals to surcharge data traffic were floated, which were all greeted with hearty, derisive laughter.
Fast-forward not-at-all-many-years to the broadband age, and the RBOCs/ILECs are saying, "Oh noes! Our switches and routers, they are overloaded. We can haz content tax?" The only real difference between then and now is that now the cable television providers are joining in the chorus. This, however, does not make the argument any more valid.
Now, whether or not heavy users of the network should be surcharged, and how much they should be surcharged -- while a subject worthy of some discussion -- is nevertheless completely swamped by the Actual Point. Here is the Actual Point:
YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUILDING OUT YOUR NETWORK IN THE FIRST DAMNED PLACE!
Really, after watching dialup explode in popularity, after watching broadband explode in popularity, after watching other nations build out their digital infrastructure to some amazing levels... There is no fscking excuse for any RBOC/ILEC to be whining about overloaded networks!
You had plenty of warning, you had more than plenty of money, you even got $200 billion in handouts from the Fed... I mean, what the fsck have you been up to the last fifteen years?
The floor of your monthly fee structure should be covering not only maintenance, but also aggressive buildout. If they aren't, then you've deliberately kept your head in the sand this whole time (and you suck at math).
Tweak everyone's base rates, build out the network to the required capacities like you should have been doing, and stop trying to propogate this self-serving pathetic meme that some network users are more equal than others.
Schwab
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I'm surprised that no-one has picked up on this yet... as far as I know, this is the first time that a major TV channel has actually made its content available online for free. Although it is a good example of how whiny the ISPs are, there is another point - HD, full-length videos of a TV series are now freely and legally available to the public. This by itself demonstrates that the infrastructure is going to need a major overhaul over the next few years.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
As a consumer and not a content provider, I believe the consumer should pay. I should purchase a certain level of service. The ISP should tell me what level of service they offer, I should make my decision, then they should provide that level of service. And the penalties for anti-trust violations and monopoly violations should be astronomical.
Why? Because I want to be the person that controls the purse strings. I want to be the person deciding what level of service is appropriate. The last thing I want is for a few dozen major players to make that decision without my direct input.
The person closest to the purse strings makes the decisions. That means that if you want to make the decisions, you have to be the person closest to the purse strings. You want to be the person who is getting charged for QoS. That gives you the power to decide what QoS should be. The last thing I want (and the last thing I think any of us want) is for Internet service to work the way cell phones do.
Please, charge me. Give me the power of the purse. In an amoral capitalist economy, the power of the purse is the only power that matters. Unless we're figuring on going socialist, I want to be the decider.
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I really don't see what the fuss is about with all this infrastructure "debate". It's damn obvious who should pay for it: the ISPs. There isn't even a case to answer. The customers have paid for their connections, the BBC have paid for their connections. End of story. It has nothing to do with last mile or neutrality or anything else. ISPs who have planned their businesses badly and mis-sold connectivity are trying to blame it on other people.
Content providers should pay for the infrastructure? Seriously? The BBC has nothing to do with the infrastructure, it's a cost of doing business just like electricity and water. They don't care who provides it or what the difference between the first and last mile is. The ISP *is* in the business of internet infrastructure... funnily enough, they are going to have to pay. At least, here's hoping.
sam brightman
If you are located in the UK, why not try out the UK Free Software Network ISP? All their profits go to open source software funding, they set well defined badnwidth limits and good speeds, and don't interfere with your network traffic like some ISPs do. I haven't used them before, but it looks awesome and I will definately be switching in the near future.
This is how the loudness war is killing music.
It is indeed ridiculous.
Not only do they charge users for their bandwidth, they also charge the providers for the bandwidth they use to send their content.
It's not like all the BBC gets to put all of their streaming videos on the net for free for fricks sake. If their (BBCs) isp is not happy with their cut for all the video uploads the beeb is doing then they need to negotiate better terms.
It's as simple as that.
They can all go suck goats balls as far as I'm concerned. Most telcos make more margin off the internet than they do off voice traffic.
Grow up you big babies
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Wait till you see how high Comcast and friends jack up the prices once all desktop publishing and more is done online, and everyone's files are no longer stored locally. Not to mention net TV and phone continuing to expand. Did anyone NOT see this coming?
The thing is, the ISPs are in the same situation that the North American auto companies are in. They twiddled their thumbs and failed to innovate and keep ahead of the trends, and now they're crying for handouts.
Boo hoo, Toyota got the jump on us, and we're losing market share. Boo hoo, we didn't pay attention when web content providers got creative and started offering heavier media.
When did North America lose it's drive to innovate? Push the boundries? The ISPs should have been upgrading the networks a decade ago.
Time to deregulate and let some foreign company with vision jump in and start laying fiber like it's... actually... in demand!
The problem is, companies like Time Warner/Road Runner, Charter, Comcast, and the DSL providers make so much profit off their networks that massive upgrades get paid off in an extremely short period of time.
...
Knowing the costs involved the local Road Runner division, coupled with the number of accounts they hold, the proper analogy would be something like this:
Tell the customer it will take 48 months to recoupe the cost of this upgrade, regardless of the fact that it'll be paid off by half our subscribers next month, leaving the other half for pure profit.
2N routers does cost more than N routers, this is true. The problem is that they could manage 100N routers and fill them up with bandwidth and STILL make a fair profit.
You're completely ignorant if you think the cable/dsl providers aren't making a fortune. Even putting new fibre in the ground gets paid off when the first year in most cases, and once its there its just a matter of lighting it with the right bandwidth, think about the half million dollar router that gets implemented. If its only spread across 50k customers, thats $10/customer to pay it off. Thats less than 25% of a monthly bill in most areas. The UBR routers don't serve that many people of course, but they also don't cost half a million.
We ARE (the cable/dsl customers) already paying for the upgrades! We've been paying far more for service than we should have been for years. We've paid for the upgrades. The BBC pays for the bandwidth that is required to keep from filling up their own pipes. Our ISPs are not paying for the bandwidth required to serve their network, hence their pipes are full.
This is the way the Internet works. I pay for my pipe to the cloud. BBC, Yahoo, Google/YouTube, Microsoft, Apple, all of them, pay for their pipe to the cloud. I get my fair share of their pipe. If they want me to have more speed, they pay to make their pipe bigger, and assuming mine isn't overloaded, I get more. The Internet has always been a 'pay for your own pipe' type of network, the service providers would rather it be 'the other guy pays for the privledge of using the pipes I'm already charging my customers for' which is ridiculous to say the least. If the various countries of the world don't step up and enact network neutrality laws, I fear the Internet we know and love will not exist in the long term.
The problem is the cable and DSL providers have over sold their crappy bandwidth and don't want to pay for more. It has nothing to do with not having the money to pay for more, they are making an absolute fortune every month. If someone else wants to start another broadband provider in the area other than the massive initial investment that someone has to lay out, which wouldn't be a problem if the new provider could charge the same price as the monopilistic provider already in the area, the local monopoly can just drop their price. Go from $40 to $10, still turn a profit, although much smaller, and you've just made it a lot more difficult for the new guy to get funding. To the point that the funding won't want to risk it. Monopoly upheld, customers still get screwed.
The worst part is that my tax dollars funded half this crappy network which doesn't meet any of the things they said the funding would get me when begged congress gave them the money in the first place. Very frustrating
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