Bigger companies have the means to create some awesome infrastructure. Smaller companies don’t. The free market would mean that bigger companies can become even more competitive, leaving smaller companies to either die or merge. Hence, duopolies and why AT&T; is now pretty much composed of its baby bells again.

When a company that provides such services gets large enough, the barrier to entry gets too high, I think. How does a new competitor enter a market in which they must first build up their own infrastructure to compete with an existing infrastructure? When selling regular products, you simply need a store front and the customers come to you, or you use some kind of a mailing system like USPS or UPS or Fedex. Those services don’t need to lease the roads to send their delivery trucks. On the other hand, electric, phone, and cable companies get pretty much a guaranteed monopoly because once you put the infrastructure in place, it is like putting up your own private road and barring other companies from using it.

I once again admit ignorance of the details. Perhaps competition between telephone companies can exist without legally requiring one company to lease its lines to the other company at cost, but if it was possible, I imagine we would have seen it by now. The only other alternative would be government control of the lines, leasing them to any company, but then that goes back to larger government and regulations.

Government enforced net neutrality is probably not a good thing, but so far the market hasn’t shown me that I can go to Google and MSN without worrying about Yahoo having somehow paid to degrade my experience with its competitors. Or that I could go to a website supporting a political view without another view somehow getting the ISPs to degrade its opposing viewpoint to the point of restricting free speech.

And competition only works if an ISP can spring up on the basis that it supports all manner of speech and allow me to see the Green or communist or anarchist or libertarian or whatever party that the other ISP for some reason has troubles with due to sufficient GOP/DNC money. I doubt such a competitor will be able to exist since I don’t see how the infrastructure can be built. I don’t see cities being happy having multiple sets of cable wires, especially if one set is only marginally better.

Bigger companies have the means to create some awesome infrastructure. Smaller companies don’t. The free market would mean that bigger companies can become even more competitive, leaving smaller companies to either die or merge. Hence, duopolies and why AT&T is now pretty much composed of its baby bells again.

When a company that provides such services gets large enough, the barrier to entry gets too high, I think. How does a new competitor enter a market in which they must first build up their own infrastructure to compete with an existing infrastructure? When selling regular products, you simply need a store front and the customers come to you, or you use some kind of a mailing system like USPS or UPS or Fedex. Those services don’t need to lease the roads to send their delivery trucks. On the other hand, electric, phone, and cable companies get pretty much a guaranteed monopoly because once you put the infrastructure in place, it is like putting up your own private road and barring other companies from using it.

I once again admit ignorance of the details. Perhaps competition between telephone companies can exist without legally requiring one company to lease its lines to the other company at cost, but if it was possible, I imagine we would have seen it by now. The only other alternative would be government control of the lines, leasing them to any company, but then that goes back to larger government and regulations.

Government enforced net neutrality is probably not a good thing, but so far the market hasn’t shown me that I can go to Google and MSN without worrying about Yahoo having somehow paid to degrade my experience with its competitors. Or that I could go to a website supporting a political view without another view somehow getting the ISPs to degrade its opposing viewpoint to the point of restricting free speech.

And competition only works if an ISP can spring up on the basis that it supports all manner of speech and allow me to see the Green or communist or anarchist or libertarian or whatever party that the other ISP for some reason has troubles with due to sufficient GOP/DNC money. I doubt such a competitor will be able to exist since I don’t see how the infrastructure can be built. I don’t see cities being happy having multiple sets of cable wires, especially if one set is only marginally better.

That above statement may be one of the most “ill-informed” and “factually devoid” arguments I have read recently, and I’ve seen a bunch. Whoever authored this little ball of wit should recuse himself from further discussions until such time as logic, reason and sanity begin creeping into the frontal lobe.

That above statement may be one of the most “ill-informed” and “factually devoid” arguments I have read recently, and I’ve seen a bunch. Whoever authored this little ball of wit should recuse himself from further discussions until such time as logic, reason and sanity begin creeping into the frontal lobe.

This pretty much the understanding that I got from reading material sent to me by one of the ISP trade groups.

If the FCC has sided again and again with the big telcos, why do you think giving them more power by enacting NN regulations would improve matters?

This pretty much the understanding that I got from reading material sent to me by one of the ISP trade groups.

Net Neutrality? Give me a break. If the Congress does not protect it the Internet will be lifeless enity in a couple of years. Remember the phone system before the break up of Ma Bell? In many parts of the country you used the phone that the phone company provided. (and charged you for)Phones were hard wired to the wall, cordless phones didn’t exist and the only answering machines you could use were what you bought from the phone company and paid out the wazoo for. Long distance was so expensive if you wanted to call your cousin 4 states away everyone gathered together to make the call on Sunday when rates were cheaper.

You say that’s ancient history and those day’s are over? I work with these companies everyday and the only thing they have learned is that they screwed up when they had a chance to make the internet an unregulated monopoly because they were short sited monopolists. Now they are trying to fix that mistake by getting rid of the real innovators (ISPs)and putting their monopoly back together. The consumer will suffer but so will tons of other people if net neutrality isn’t protected by congress. Neutrality and innovation are what has made the net what it is today. If it’s not protected look for lot’s of layoffs in the technology fields.

If the FCC has sided again and again with the big telcos, why do you think giving them more power by enacting NN regulations would improve matters?

Net Neutrality? Give me a break. If the Congress does not protect it the Internet will be lifeless enity in a couple of years. Remember the phone system before the break up of Ma Bell? In many parts of the country you used the phone that the phone company provided. (and charged you for)Phones were hard wired to the wall, cordless phones didn’t exist and the only answering machines you could use were what you bought from the phone company and paid out the wazoo for. Long distance was so expensive if you wanted to call your cousin 4 states away everyone gathered together to make the call on Sunday when rates were cheaper.

You say that’s ancient history and those day’s are over? I work with these companies everyday and the only thing they have learned is that they screwed up when they had a chance to make the internet an unregulated monopoly because they were short sited monopolists. Now they are trying to fix that mistake by getting rid of the real innovators (ISPs)and putting their monopoly back together. The consumer will suffer but so will tons of other people if net neutrality isn’t protected by congress. Neutrality and innovation are what has made the net what it is today. If it’s not protected look for lot’s of layoffs in the technology fields.

Are there other pro-competitive measures that you think free-market types should be paying more attention to?

So if the ISP I pick starts to degrade the service for a particular website, such as Google and Yahoo vs MSN, my choice would be to go to a different crappy ISP that will probably do the same with whatever other sites it chooses. That’s not really a choice at all, is it?

If one business pays for better service, what guarantee do I have that the service of another business won’t arbitrarily be degraded by the ISP? Market pressures would be a better argument if there was some choice involved.

I’m convinced that regulation is bad, but I don’t believe anyone here has addressed the concerns of the net neutrality proponents. Each article I read argues a completely different point entirely.

Are there other pro-competitive measures that you think free-market types should be paying more attention to?

So if the ISP I pick starts to degrade the service for a particular website, such as Google and Yahoo vs MSN, my choice would be to go to a different crappy ISP that will probably do the same with whatever other sites it chooses. That’s not really a choice at all, is it?

If one business pays for better service, what guarantee do I have that the service of another business won’t arbitrarily be degraded by the ISP? Market pressures would be a better argument if there was some choice involved.

I’m convinced that regulation is bad, but I don’t believe anyone here has addressed the concerns of the net neutrality proponents. Each article I read argues a completely different point entirely.