Bill to give FTC power to veto broadband capsFollow

Maybe I shouldn't be ********* I'm reading everyone's download speeds here are around 7-10mbs and I'm getting 16-17mbs

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.

The start-up costs to install in the existing areas would be magnitudes greater than it was to install originally.

Every road in the area would need to be bored under to install the sleeves and cable which everyone else got in before the pavement was laid. Every house would have their front roadside easements torn up, trenched (try not to hit the other wires & pipes!), laid with cable, regraded and reseeded/sodded.

The cable company got it all in when the lot was nothing but a sheet of rough graded dirt.

A real solution would be to force the cable companies to share their infrastructure, like the government did when they broke up the phone company monopolies. This is why you can get DSL through multiple parties but only one guy in an area offers cable. If the cable companies aren't up for that, then treat them like every other company running lines through the town.

Most cable is aerial, (there is a pole attachment charge if you go aerial) underground cabling in the city is usually done using directional boring with direct bury cable. In unpopulated areas trenching is preferable but it's not much cheaper.

Most companies don't bother to pull cable prior to construction, they just burrow under or cut thru existing right of ways.

So your saying that we spent the time and money to install 200 miles of fiber optic cable, construct a self healing redundant path all fiber network, to create a faster more reliable system then the competition. And you think we should then be forced to let the competition use it for free?

I think the larger point though is that this is a federal solution to what is ultimately a local problem. In some areas, there isn't sufficient competition. But that's not because the federal government prevents competition, but because the local municipality has created legislation/regulation making it more difficult to compete. The solution if you live in such an area is to go to your city council and demand changes. It is *not* to go to the federal government and grant them broad and sweeping powers to prevent companies from taking advantage of said competitive advantages.

If you live in such an area, why not go to your city council instead of going to the federal government?

It does bother me, and presumably most conservatives as well. So. If you don't care, and we do, that means we win! Yay!!!

Or are you actually arguing we should do something just because it doesn't bother you if we do? Cause that's kinda silly...