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US Broadband: Still No ISP Choice For Many, Especially at Higher Speeds (arstechnica.com)
Despite things getting better with adoption -- however slow -- of Google Fiber in several regions of the United States, the broadband market has gotten slightly less competitive since 2013, says a new report from the FCC. The report adds that, as a result, Americans still have little choice of high-speed broadband providers (PDF). From an ArsTechnica report: At the FCC's 25Mbps download/3Mbps upload broadband standard, there are no ISPs at all in 30 percent of developed census blocks and only one offering service that fast in 48 percent of the blocks. About 55 percent of census blocks have no 100Mbps/10Mbps providers, and only about 10 percent have multiple options at that speed. At the 10Mbps/1Mbps threshold -- which captures slower DSL technology in addition to cable and fiber -- about 90 percent of census blocks have at least two providers. These numbers exclude satellite, which is available nearly everywhere but has high latency and often low data caps. Even these numbers overstate the amount of competition, because an ISP might offer service to only part of a census block. The percentage of households with choice is thus even lower.
Most of North Georgia has one provider - Windstream. Between regular days-long (yes, days-long) outages, slow crappy DSLAMs and high prices, it's like a third-world here for internet.
Competing for two million customers in Queens (where there is one existing provider) would be much more profitable than expanding to underserved areas of New York state, such as parts of Hamilton County. Most underserved areas are underserved precisely BECAUSE they are unprofitable.
However, it's ILLEGAL to compete by bringing faster service to Queens. The franchise board assigns each neighborhood to a single provider. The map of assigned providers is gerrymandered in weird ways, too. A company might be allowed to serve 110th street and 112th street, but not 111rh.
Gotta love the Randians and their inability to grasp the concept of natural monopoly.
The ISP stuff is less capital intensive, you just need permission to run cables out to a location
You're forgetting the "minor" step of actually running those cables. That "minor" step is why the incumbent has a natural monopoly and zero competition in most places.
Exactly this.
I get tired of hearing that $municipality has given a particular vendor a monopoly on cable TV/Internet. It simply isn't true. This has been illegal for 20 years, but still the myth persists.
Franchise agreements - look it up sometime. And yes established ISPs work against new ISPs from entering. Again look up Google and AT&T and Verizon. Moron.