Why Is Broadband More Expensive In the US Than Elsewhere?

mrspoonsi writes "The BBC reports "Home broadband in the US costs far more than elsewhere. At high speeds, it costs nearly three times as much as in the UK and France, and more than five times as much as in South Korea. Why?...'Americans pay so much because they don't have a choice,' says Susan Crawford, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama on science, technology and innovation policy. We deregulated high-speed internet access 10 years ago and since then we've seen enormous consolidation and monopolies, so left to their own devices, companies that supply internet access will charge high prices, because they face neither competition nor oversight."

Comments

Re:Probably Obama. Or the Tea Party.

[AK Marc]

Why is there no competition for them? Is there something stopping another chain from opening a store and charging slightly less and taking all their customer?

Yes, the cost of setting up a new store. That's a significant cost, and if you did do that, they'd drop their prices. I've seen where stores have waited until a competitor bought land near them, then they dropped their prices significantly. The land was sold by the competitor because it was no longer profitable. Then the prices went back up. The monopoly bought the land, making money from their competitor, then developed into something that could never compete with them (offices, rather than retail), then sold it to a property management company, ensuring nobody could get an equivelent piece of land at a reasonable price for miles around them

There are many ways for monopolies to abuse the marketplace without directly manipulating it.

Re:Telco oligopoly

[Archangel Michael]

Girlintraining almost has it right. While we are not socialistic and have a government being a good big brother to us, we are pseudo-Capitalistic with the worst part of both Socialism and Capitalism in force. If we had a REALLY free economy, the problem would be solved quite quickly. The problem is, we don't have a friggin clue how to solve the problem infrastructure.

My solution would be to build out via a BOND measure, Fiber to the house/apt/business. Back haul it to a central facility or neighborhood closet, I don't care. Pay a guy to manage connecting Address A to Service Provider B in the closet, where Service Provider B is the company that Address A contracts service through. Allow for a certain number of Service Providers, via auction, to be able to install their CO-LO equipment in said facility, use that auction pricing to pay for the person in the closet connecting Addresses to Service Providers (or other means).

The Municipality would build out the FIOS infrastructure plant, not giving "franchise" rights to any single player. This would provide EACH Address the opportunity to buy whatever services they actually need from whomever they actually like. Bad Players would leave the marketplace, new players come in with compelling products that shake up the marketplace.

The Infrastructure would have to have a service fee for maintenance, based on usage of the FIOS plant. More expensive plans (tax on Service Provider plans) would pay a higher "service fee" and no fee would be charged for people who opt out.

If this were setup this way, the build out would be contracted, to bring FIOS plant to each Address/dwelling/Apt/Business, a bond measure would be the easiest means to achieving this build out.

This would give Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and any other company access to every Address in the municipality via what is essentially "dark fiber". And the is no known downside, except for those companies.