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A Domain Registrar Is Starting a Fiber ISP To Compete With Comcast
Jason Koebler writes: Tucows Inc., an internet company that's been around since the early 90s — it's generally known for being in the shareware business and for registering and selling premium domain names — announced that it's becoming an internet service provider. Tucows will offer fiber internet to customers in Charlottesville, Virginia — which is served by Comcast and CenturyLink — in early 2015 and eventually wants to expand to other markets all over the country. "Everyone who has built a well-run gigabit network has had demand exceeding their expectations," Elliot Noss, Tucows' CEO said. "We think there's space in the market for businesses like us and smaller."
They are not taking on Comcast. They are taking on Charlottesville, Virginia. And Comcast has to be careful how it fights them or it can lad itself in trouble in ALL of it's other markets. (Or worse, regulated more than it is now.)
Filthy shameless spammer. Still a better love story that Twilight... ^H I mean still a better choice than Comcast.
Ah...Tucows...
Download anything from them and it will be loaded with extra adware with a very tricky sequence of clicks to not install any of it. Yes, this even means not agreeing what looks like a license agreement, but is actually an offer to install crap.
I'd probably take even Comcast over them.
And Comcast has to be careful how it fights them or it can lad itself in trouble in ALL of it's other markets.
There is one simple way Comcast can fight them.... deliver a better service with better support at lower cost to the consumer, and do it in a way that makes the customers happier and more excited about their service than Tucows.
It does mean Comcast has to probably offer the 1 Gigabit or better service at a lower price than what Tucows is rolling out.
If Comcast uses any other method to fight them, then Comcast deserves to be more tightly regulated.
Of course if Comcast actually gets competitive and causes Tucows to fail fair and square, then once there is no effective competition once again, Comcast could raise their prices or take other new actions as a result of becoming a monopoly ---- in that case, I would expect the regulators to tighten their reigns heavily and create a cap on Comcasts' revenue and requirements similar to the Telco regulations requiring the phone companies to build-out and service all customers (no cherrypicking high-revenue customers; no excluding the "Top or Bottom 2% of users" who have been deemed unprofitable customers).
I.e. if Comcast uses excess profits from everywhere else to provide ridiculously low priced service (aka walmart breaking into a new market until the competition goes out of business).. then Tucows can't win.
I think the lines need to be built by and maintained by one company or by the municipality and the service provided by competition.
There are good and bad points to excluding customers. It's ridiculous to run a 20 mile fiber to one person's house or even a group of five or six houses and charge them the same as everyone else. If they want cable- they should live with the rest of civilization.
OTH, left to their own devices providers will cut "less" profitable customers over "highly profitable" customers. Which doesn't work with something that is basically a public utility.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
If comcast provides better quality for lower price in Charlottesville, they're basically admitting that they sell overpriced, low-quality in the rest of the nation, which provides legal ammo to those opposed to them.
Ofcourse, all of this would be good for consumers, competitors and pretty much everybody... except Comcast themselves.
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