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Originally Posted by Dr McGriddle
Competition is great but this is in no way a free market so barring radical changes to the entire structure of telecom industry in the US, just screaming competition and free market isnt going to change anything. Google fiber seems to be going just fine under the current regulatory capture laden FCC, not sure why this would change with a modest adjustment to the regs.
No on is screaming anything. I agree we are in a tough situation. But we are in this situation because of the government. Google fiber is not doing just fine. It is having to move very slowly mostly because of local government getting in their way. I live in STL, and Google wanted to build fiber here. But the local government made is too difficult, like they do with most businesses.
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Frankly, anyone who wants to start an ISP to compete with Comcast and the like is free to do so but the cost of building out a national network is somewhere north of $100 billion so the chance of anyone other than maybe Google doing so seems pretty slim.
The barrier of entry is high. But it is worse because of government. Get the government out of the way and you would see more competition. Not hundreds of companies, but enough to keep the balance of power.
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My only interest in this topic is to prevent ATT and the like from throttling down my Netflix or Prime or whatever in order to steer my business to them. I am fairly libertarian ideologically but it is difficult for me to see a situation where the solution comes from anyone other than the government.
I agree that I do not like the idea of ATT throttling my services. But government involvement is a band-aid that will only let the underlying cut fester and get worse. I am more concerned with what the internet could look like in 15 years if we open the flood gates.
If you want the government to get involved, have them get involved in promoting competition.