| reply to RJ44
Re: Excellent..... What you're overlooking is the fact that comparisons to utilities like electric, water and gas are inappropriate. Data is not a limited natural resource.
A better comparison would be to roads or copper telephone service. The cost is in building and maintaining the road, or installing and maintaining a telephone line to your home. Whether you drive on the road or not, or use the phone or not, the cost is still there. Now business models such as toll roads or per-call charges are ways of recouping the fixed costs (as would be a flat-rate monthly bill or tax), but are not in anyway related to the actual cost structure. The same is true for Internet service. Your ISP pays to provide and maintain the connection to your house, and that cost for the most part is fixed. If we were to incorrectly apply the utility analogy, then if I turn my computer off for a month, I should get a bill for $0, but I don't. They can't do this because the connection cost them whether heavily used, partially used, or not used at all.
The only fair comparison you can make to a utility is when discussing the infrastructure. Because the hurdles and obstacles in providing a wire to your house for a broadband connection are very similar to those faced when providing any other utility service to your house.
How many of those utilities over came these hurdles is by establishing a common carrier status to the physical infrastructure. That's how different phone companies can offer competing service over the same copper lines, or how different electric companies can do the same of one set of power lines into your house. Ultimately the best solution is to have a municipally or privately owned broadband infrastructure that allows for ISPs to compete over that common infrastructure. But that change will not be quick or easy. In the meantime we need legislation that will prevent those monopolizing the infrastructure from abusing their position for money grab schemes. |
