iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Comcast
| reply to sonicmerlin
Re: Only for bundles? Again, capitalism. Publicly held companies are the worst about it. If they can keep an old system without tearing up roads to make a new one, guess what sticks around? They provide services at prices the market will bear.
Also, about DOCSIS 3, you've got Comcast, Cox, Cablevision, Sunflower Broadband, Suddenlink, Charter, Service Electric Broadband/PenTeleData, MidContinent Communications and maybe a few others that have deployed the tech, though all but Comcast and Cablevision stop at the 5 Mbps mark for uploads.
Realistically though, it would cost just as much for the big cable companies to deploy fiber as it would for a new provider to come in and do it. Economies of scale would be offset by transition costs.
One thing to note: Cablevision is privately owned. They also have the highest broadband speeds in the nation over a cable network. Coincidence? I think not.
All that said, I'd rather have free enterprise (without lobbying and a government that can mar the market on a national level) than a government-owned or government-subsidized/tax-subsidized/taxpayer-subsidized network. Municipal projects are great, because they're fine-grained enough to address market realities in those cities.
In a system with little competition, the value proposition of network upgrades is merely to offer higher tiers of service, assuming people will pay for those tiers. In areas with decent competition, prices will stay the same for better speeds, or they might even drop. See the Southwest Effect with airlines.o
Again, if you think the value proposition for a for-profit business is great enough to create your own fiber network, come to my area. I'll be the first one to sign up. That's the great thing about a free country; you can do stuff like that. It's my opinion that government in this area is too large; if it has enough power to effectively give an entity or goup of entities preferential treatment over other similarentities, government is too big. |
