| reply to battleop
Re: Something has to give. As far as B is concerned, most areas in the US have only one or two broadband ISPs to choose from. You have the phone company or the cable company. These two "compete" but just enough to maintain their duopoly. Less lucky areas only have one ISP and people have a choice of going with the only broadband ISP or not having broadband Internet. (Still less lucky areas have no broadband ISPs, but I think that's a different discussion.) Very few areas in the US have 3 or more ISP choices.
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-Jason Levine |
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| and if somebody is dumb enough to challenge them and open a third service, they promptly upgrade the area and lower prices to kill the new guys margins. |
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 swintecPremium,VIP
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME
kudos:4
 ·RapidVPS
 ·Sprint Mobile Br..
 ·VoicePulse
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| said by backness:and if somebody is dumb enough to challenge them and open a third service, they promptly upgrade the area and lower prices to kill the new guys margins.
Well gee whiz...that sounds an awful lot like...how business works?
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Reviews:
 ·Windstream
| If you have a monopoly, it does. You can afford to lower prices for awhile in a small area to kill off new competitors. Then you and raise the prices back again once the blood dries.
I really don't understand some of the people on here who reflexively root against municipal broadband offerings as "unfair government interference in the free market" when the local monopoly or duopoly got established by government franchises with guaranteed rates of return. The removal of those franchises doesn't remove the enormous advantage the original entrenched players have.
When there are only two "competitors", there really is no free market for a local government to meddle in. |
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| And, in some cases, those municipal broadband offerings are in areas the duopoly isn't servicing, but the duopoly opposes it because they might one day decide to enter that market and, if/when they do, they don't want to "compete with the government." So the people continue to get no access and the duopoly ISPs get to keep promising access... sometime... maybe... we'll see.
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-Jason Levine |
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