Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

[Seth Mattinen <sethm () rollernet us>]

On 12/19/10 6:12 PM, JC Dill wrote:
>  On 19/12/10 5:48 PM, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
> > On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:20:49PM -0500, Bryan Fields wrote:
> > > The government granting a monopoly is the problem, and more lame
> > > government regulation is not the solution.  Let everyone compete on a
> > > level playing field, not by allowing one company to buy a monopoly
> > > enforced by men with guns.
> > Running a wire to everyone's house is a natural monopoly. It just
> > doesn't make sense, financially or technically, to try and manage 50
> > different companies all trying to install 50 different wires into every
> > house just to have competition at the IP layer. It also wouldn't make
> > sense to have 5 different competing water companies trying to service
> > your house, etc.
>
> This is the argument the government uses to keep first class mail
> service as an exclusive monopoly service for the USPS, claiming you
> wouldn't want 50 different mail carriers marching up and down your walk
> every day.  Yet we aren't seeing a big problem with package delivery. 
> Currently you have 3 choices, USPS, UPS, and FedEx.  The market can't
> support more than 3 or 4 package delivery services (e.g. we had 4 with
> DHL, which didn't survive the financial melt down).  Why not open up the
> market for telco wiring and just see what happens?  There might be 5 or
> perhaps even 10 players who try to enter the market, but there won't be
> 50 - it simply won't make financial sense for additional players to try
> to enter the market after a certain number of players are already in. 
> And there certainly won't be 50 all trying to service the same
> neighborhood.
>
> And if a competing water service thought they could do better than the
> incumbent, why not let them put in a competing water project?  If they
> think they can make money after the cost of the infrastructure, then
> they may be onto something.  We don't have to worry that too many would
> join in, the laws of diminishing returns would make it unprofitable for
> the nth company to build out the infrastructure to enter the market.

Contrary to popular belief the average person tend to severely dislike
all forms of road construction or having their yard repeatedly torn up.

I know it's all happy fun times to say "let's have 10 water/electrical
providers and you can select which molecules/electrons you want!", but
there's a practical limit as to how much stuff one can pack under a
street's limited right of way. If you look at what's under there right
now it's actually quite crowded. We just don't see it because it's buried.

~Seth