Bill to give FTC power to veto broadband capsFollow

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/congressman-has-a-bill-ready-to-combat-usage-caps.ars

Seems like a good idea to me, but I'm not very imaginative in thinking of any repercussions this could have.

Except when it's the only restaurant in town.

So who should I go to for my broadband? We have exactly one cable company in town. DSL is NOT a replacement.

Actually, the argument is that it IS an essential service.

No, it shouldn't be. Very few things should be regulated.

There's no question that the average Joe would save some money, but it's morally wrong to take away an entities choice. I'm pro-choice, you have the right to choose to use their service or not, they have the right to choose how to price it. If you have a choice they should have a choice.

Electricity should be regulated, you must have electricity to survive these days (a lot of people would freeze/starve to death otherwise). You have to have it to survive so you have no choice, it needs to be regulated because you have no choice in whether you pay for it or not.

You won't die without electricity, but it sure as hell is an essential service.

And please, before you say that not having electricity puts you in mortal peril, please, think for a moment.

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My bad, you already demonstrated a total lack of thought in that regard.

Edited, Jun 18th 2009 5:04pm by Pensive

You are totally free and able to generate heat in a fireplace and open the @#%^ing window. This isn't something out of the 18th century; my grandparents did it. My parents didn't even grow up with modern centralized air and heating; that's why shotgun houses still exist in the middle of the damn city.

Food preservation? You're totally free to invest in an icebox. Again, grandparents did it. My grandmother even still has one in a house that she rents out. You don't have to eat perishables; my late aunt's house still has two walk in pantries completely stuffed to the brim with canned goods and dry food.

Light? Go to bed when it's dark or get some candles. That's not even a hard one.

I can't think of anything else powered by electricity that is not an obvious and total luxury.

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We need more regulation of the market, especially when the internet is no more a luxury than the freaking electrical company. Hell I can't even turn in papers sometimes without email. It would be impossible to go to university without it.

As long as they don't regulate content, and stick purely to regulating price, I think it's wonderful.

Edited, Jun 18th 2009 5:14pm by Pensive

It's classic behavior in a limited market.

You have Company A and Company B both selling essentially the same product. Let's say both sell it for $30. If Company B lowers their price to $25, the result will simply be that Company A lowers their price to $25 and both companies are out $5 a unit. Both companies are losers. As a result, what happens is neither company actually acts competitively against the other when it comes to prices. They instead "compete" via advertising to try to gain customers without adjusting their price.

Maybe we should regulate the firewood industry too then.

While there's certainly limited competition to consider, I think putting a government agency "in charge" is the wrong approach. I'm not to thrilled with bandwidth caps, but I don't see how they violate any sort of "emergency service" requirement. Certainly not to the extent to which we need the government to step in. How many people rush to their computer to report a break-in, or a fire, or that they're having a heart attack? An internet connection is still a luxury, and I think we should leave the market up to coming up with the prices and rules.

Having only two major competitors does limit competition in terms of getting a "great" price, but it's sufficient to prevent "unfair" prices IMO. What I'm getting at is that while having more competitors will benefit consumers by lowering prices, you're not going to see ridiculous prices and service as long as you have two competitors.

Most areas do have at least two competitors in the market. And if a company attempts to take ridiculous advantage of being the only one, it will drive someone else to compete with them. At a minimum, every home is wired for telephone and usually cable. Certainly in any area where we'd even be worried about bandwidth restrictions, there's going to be both available. If the cable company offers broadband, but the phone company doesn't, it's a good bet that if the cable company is bad enough, the phone company will step up to take the unhappy customers away from them. Barring some wacky local regulations preventing this (or even just inhibiting it), there's no reason why both can't compete and customers can use this to prevent problems.


If such regulation is in place, the proper approach is for the folks in that locality to change their laws to remove whatever is preventing competition, not "solve" that problem with another layer of government control.


I just don't see that the need is sufficient to justify this sort of action.

What's prohibiting competition is infrastructure and start-up costs. The cable companies have hundreds of thousands of miles of cable running through easements or strung from lines with the government's blessing since the 1970's. The only way a new competing cable service could break into the market is to either be allowed use of that infrastructure or to tear up easements and bore under roads, sidewalks, driveways, etc throughout their entire operating area.

For prices to be realistically controlled, either the government should treat the service as a utility (which is fair in my opinion as they use the same real estate the other utilities do in order to operate) or to allow open usage of their infrastructure without any leasing fees that would prevent the other company from financially competing. It's not as simple as just changing some laws.

As an amusing side note on this issue, back when Flea moved in I didn't have either cable nor satellite. Flea wanted to get satellite TV and cable internet. The satellite guy came first and, a few days later, the cable guy came. When the cable left, we noticed the satellite no longer worked. So we called the satellite guy again, he came back out and found out that the cable guy had disconnected all of the satellite coaxial and tosses it aside in hooking up the cable. We called the cable company to tell them to come out and install it the right way and they insisted that all the coaxial on the property was their property. We told them to either come out and install it without disconnecting the satellite or to cancel the service and that finally got them out, ******** the whole time about how someone else was using their hookups.