| Ridiculous Redundancy What's ironic about this company's proposed fiber builds is that fiber exists along every one of the rights of way where it is building. However, the owners won't sell the dark fiber; they either insist upon selling services only (which drives up the price of bandwidth) or they're intentionally keeping it off the market to try to make it more valuable.
The danger is that if they release just a bit of their existing capacity, they can put any newcomer out of business by preventing it from realizing a return on its investment. They can then buy the newcomer's fiber up for pennies on the dollar, take IT off the market, and drive prices back up. Lather, rinse, repeat. |
|
|
|
| In theory we have antitrust laws that outlaw exactly this sort of thing.
In practice those laws have been moribund almost since Reagan took office; the AT&T breakup occurred only because most of the litigation had occurred throughout the 1970s. Reagan demurred on stopping the suit himself, and a conflict of interest in the justice dept kept the attorney general from doing the same.
In my opinion, a carefully measured application of the antitrust laws could do telecommunications in the US a great deal of good, and without the need for complex network neutrality rules. |
|
 El Quintron... a faint odor of kerosenePremium
join:2008-04-28
Etobicoke, ON
kudos:2
 ·TekSavvy DSL
 ·voip.ms
 ·WIND Mobile
 ·TekSavvy Cable
| said by Phil Karn2:In my opinion, a carefully measured application of the antitrust laws could do telecommunications in the US a great deal of good, and without the need for complex network neutrality rules. I agree with you that most of the laws that we need have already been written but in order for those laws to work they have to be applied and that would require substantial political will... considering the amount of lobbyists in both our national capitals.
--
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
|
|
| reply to SuperWISP
That's a good point and I think you are largely correct.
It poses a social problem though. If true and there is such pent up demand and it plays out that way then it is a pretty good indication that the market isn't efficiently allocating and that control of this fiber infrastructure is too heavily concentrated for market competition to act as an effective control. |
|
