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20 More Cities Want To Join the Fight Against Big Telecom's Broadband Monopolies
Jason Koebler writes At least 20 additional American cities have expressed a formal interest in joining a coalition that's dedicated to bringing gigabit internet speeds to their residents by any means necessary—even if it means building the infrastructure themselves. The Next Centuries Cities coalition launched last week with an impressive list of 32 cities in 19 states who recognize that fast internet speeds unencumbered by fast lanes or other tiered systems are necessary to keep residents and businesses happy. That launch was so successful that 20 other cities have expressed formal interest in joining, according to the group's executive director.
this would be one of those times id actually go and vote if moving forward required consensus of the locals.
Meaningful Competition Drives Progress: a vibrant, diverse marketplace, with transparency in offerings, pricings, and policies will spur innovation, increase investment, and lower prices. Communities, residents, and businesses should have a meaningful choice in providers.
I don't see how a government takeover will enhance competition. Mostly it will increase the cost of cable TV, at least until some other group decides that watching prime time TV is a fundamental human right.
I have a TV antenna in the attic, let them raise the cable TV rates.
Expect to see the gloves come off for this fight.
:D
The Telecoms absolutely will throw a Godzilla sized tantrum since the high density metropolitan areas are their biggest cash cows they have. They would give two shits about losing some barely on the map town in the middle of nowhere, but you're talking about where the big $$$$ live now.
There will be lobbying, crying, arguments, pleading, secret back-room deals, and just mass hysteria for all the Telecoms. Hell, they might even get off their ass and start doing something now that they see a very frightening possibility of real competition to their profits starting to rear its head.
It will be glorious
I don't see how a government takeover will enhance competition.
By dissecting the natural monopoly (the last mile) from the unnatural monopoly (the service provider)
Currently, I can buy electricity from three dozen loosely regulated companies that compete for my dollar. No matter who I buy from, that electricity will get delivered over the same physical copper connection to my house. That piece of copper is maintained by a single, strictly regulated utility.
Under this system, everybody's priorities are in the right place. The last mile utility can only make more money by connecting more customers, since the rates are regulated. The providers can only make more money by providing better service, since they can't stop their customers from using a competitor.
The rent-seeking behavior we currently have with Comcast gets eliminated.
OK, let's say for sake of argument you bring gigabit to every doorstep. Or heck, even 1% of doorsteps. All of your uplinks are going to be so massively oversubscribed that it's essentially meaningless, except for content that's hosted on local caching servers. This is great for things like Netflix, but even ultra-high quality 4K video with uncompressed multichannel audio isn't going to consume that much bandwidth. 40Gbit connections are standard on the largest backbones, with 100 Gbit coming on-line, but that's some awfully expensive hardware right now.
So my question would be: what added benefit you expect to get with a gigabit local loop when it's still going into the same sort of congestion limits? i don't mean to sound like a curmudgeonly old bastard, but this sounds more like a marketing gimmick. Even governments aren't immune from spreading marketing bullshit; in fact it's sometimes easier when you know you won't be held accountable (advertising fraud vs political promises) and it's all other people's money anyway.
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Telecoms is a fairly clear-cut case of a natural monopoly and will always tend to favour monopolization.
I generally hold that it's in the public's interest if natural monopolies are tax-funded rather than provided by companies. Companies without competition have no reason to care about consumers, no market to control costs or improve value - so a government that is accountable to voters is actually MORE free market in a natural monopoly than a private company (since the voters and the consumers are the same people).
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