arstechnica.com — Jupiter analyst Joseph Laszlo uses broadband subscription numbers to make the point that broadband growth has been steady but never explosive in the US. Laszlo's graph shows only linear growth in broadband over the last six years, not the "hockey-stick" model some have suggested.
Dec 12, 2006 View in Crawl 4
generalantillesDec 13, 2006
The problem is that the monopolies are enforced by huge taxes and the bigger companies receiving government subsidies. A smaller competitor can not enter the market because they A. Can't afford the taxes and B. Don't have the massive government subsidies that the telcos get. It's not a failure of the market, it's a failure of bad regulation that prevents competition but doesn't prevent monopolization. If it were truly a market scenario we would have decent choices, much lower prices, and much higher speeds. But the lukewarm regulation has stopped the market competition.
mouskyDec 13, 2006
Why do people insist on confusing net neutrality with broadband competition? Net neutrality has nothing to do with broadband competition.
macnerdDec 13, 2006
You local government can put in fiber. Can out this special on PBS where a town voted for the bonds to lay fiber. <a class="user" href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html">http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html</a>
msx2Dec 13, 2006
Prices suck, I went from $42.99 to $54.99. Verizon needs to get their ass in gear and get FIOS rolling. The whole USA is supposed to all have fiber hooked up already. Thanks to phone companies for screwing it up. The US should have all have fiber already, thanks to the telephone company for f**king up.RICK KARR: Kushnick and his colleague, Tom Allibone, are telecommunications muckrakers who call themselves "Teletruth." They're in the process of filing lawsuits against several regional phone companies. They allege that the baby bells promised fiber-optic connections nationwide but didn't deliver.BRUCE KUSHNICK: By the year 2006, our research shows that 86 million households should have been wired with fiber, i.e. the majority of the United States. Had they just kept the, the eye on the ball and done this work, America would not be in the situation we are in today which is inferior services for high costs.RICK KARR: Why didn't the network get built? I mean, they made all these promises, it sounded like it really was the information superhighway that we heard about in the 90s, why didn't it get built?BRUCE KUSHNICK: The reason why it didn't get built is because none of the regulators stepped up to the plate and held the phone companies accountable.RICK KARR: Phone companies are regulated in part by the states. Kushnick and Allibone say that back in the nineties the phone companies offered to invest billions to build fiber optic networks if the states let them take large tax deductions and raise the price of basic services. Source: <a class="user" href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html">http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/index.html</a>Basically the phone companies f**ked up. The program PBS provides contain good information. If you didn't get a chance to see the program on TV you can buy it on DVD here <a class="user" href="http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=2511329">http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=2511329</a> I think everyone should watch it.
billytwoiwllyDec 13, 2006
A price fixing investigation likely won't find any wrong doing here because the problem isn't price fixing, it's that there are huge economies of scale in the market that make having more than maybe 3 competitors unprofitable. Basically, the cost of running a physical wire to each house is so high that it doesn't make business sense to do it more than a couple times so we get an oligopoly situation. The solution is for the government to step in and either run the portion that creates the oligopoly situation (the lines to people houses) and let everyone lease off them or heavily regulate the current owners forcing them to do the same. Then we would have a whole bunch of companies competing for our business and we would see the price war and easy switching and increasing bandwidth availability that we see in places like Japan where the government has done just that. We would also get a more efficient outcome because we would have eliminated the market power of the cable/telephone oligopolists.
ascusDec 13, 2006
Recently arround here there as been quite a ittle spat with Brighthouse and Verizon, They are increasing speeds, and offereing lowend broadband for as low as 14.95 a month. There is competition, its not as hot as I would hope, but its now better that the 1.5Mbs for $69.99/mo it was, I have 15Mbs for $49.99/Mo.
Closed AccountDec 13, 2006
You just work for a telecom or own stock and are full of sh*t.
twangoDec 14, 2006
So *this* is what "free trade" means. Now I get it.