Canadian Caps Aren't Economically Justified > Covering cost vs profit

reply to fifty nine

Re: Covering cost vs profit

In many major metropolitan areas you have a choice.

In fact, I live in a rural area and I have three choices:

Cable
DSL
fixed wireless

I have additional choices:
Cellular
Satellite
commercial broadband options (T1 etc)

In a city you may have several choices:
Cable (more than one provider in some cases)
DSL
wireless
telco fiber

The idea that there is no competition really has no basis in reality whatsoever.

reply to fifty nine

reply to fifty nine

reply to fifty nine
Are you kidding me? I live in the capitol of California with millions of people and there's only two real choices here, ATT and Comcast.

Unless if you are rich, or are a business (a medium sized one at the very least), strike commercial broadband options out. Cellular and satellite have terrible latency, pricing, and even more restrictive bandwidth caps.

Telco fiber for the most part are run by companies that are the same ones supplying either your cable or DSL.

reply to WernerSchutz

reply to fifty nine
I did not say there was NO competition, I said that it was at best an oligopoly, which allow several alternatives for service. Obviously it also depends on how you define competition. Can you claim Radio is competition to Television and going to a Movie theater is also competition, sure, but the characteristics are so different that really they are not effective competition. Heck you can even claim playing Volleyball is competition to Internet since they are both entertainment mediums.

The characteristics of many of those Internet services are very different and to provide high speed, always on, high bandwidth broadband in most areas, there really are only 2 good alternative technologies at this point, telecom/cable, at some point cellular may be able to compete. A T1 while it does provide high speed internet really is not designed for in home users, it is a business service.

Edit: In many ways what the ISPs are trying to do with caps could be considered price gouging except it is not short term in nature.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging

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Warning, If you post nonsense and use misinformation and are here to argue based on those methods, you will be put on ignore.

reply to fifty nine

Broadband is not a "utility" nor should it be considered as such.

reply to WernerSchutz

reply to TechieZero
You don't need water either. Go buy bottled! Lots of it!

Then, stick a heater in your tub if you need some hot

reply to trainwreck6

reply to fifty nine
I live in a rather large urban region, technically savvy population and I have the following choices.
1. Piss-poor DSL at about 65.00 a month if you bundle it with phone service
2. single Cable company which raises rate 2 -4 times a year while dropping services/offerings continually. All due to a govt imposed monopoly
3.NO FTTH-we just got fiber to the node but the last mile copper is in such sad shape that unless you are within 800 ft of the node its a crapshoot. Luckily I do have good performance for the most part but it does have its moments....

4. non-terrestrial broadband a la Hughes- another expensive and poor offering.
What I'm trying to say is that the lack of real competition has kept the delivery of Internet services poor and the cost high especially after one uses up the teaser rate offerings.
Lets not go with the argument that Internet service is a luxury. Today it may be considered a questionable luxury to the private citizen but to most legitimate business, no internet means a slow but death sentence
They said that the telephone, indoor plumbing, electricity as well as other new-fangled inventions were luxuries but time and progress has changed their status and time and progress will also change Internet access as well. I just hope I cam afford the service until then.

reply to TechieZero