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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.
There's a good reason for this - broadband infrastructure is crazy expensive to build. Some of the incumbents received big government subsidies to build their systems, but those days are gone and new companies can't compete. If they stole customers from the incumbents everyone would go bankrupt because nobody can afford to build these systems and only pick up a fraction of the homes passed as customers. We need to have the government build the infrastructure once, and then lease space on it to any ISP who wants to compete. It's the only way that makes any sense and the only way that will ever allow any form of competition in this space.
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.
It's not illegal at all - how do you think Verizon is rolling out FiOS? If you wanted to launch the Raymorris Cable Company, and deploy service in NYC, you could certainly do so, provided you (a) could show you had sufficient financial backing to be a viable concern, and (b) agreed to cover at least a large portion of the city, if not all, and weren't just going to cherry-pick affluent neighborhoods.
Oh, you mean like Google, who is being fought at every turn, by incumbent carriers as it seeks to expand into those underserved markets. I'll say it, Internet service is a utility. It should be treated as such and regulated as such. There a many ways to do this, some better than others. If we look at electricity, for example, the public utility model is demonstrably the best. The operators of the utility are beholden to the ratepayers/electorate, not stockholders, and that makes all the difference in the world.