And yet the government is the biggest barrier to true competition here. They're the ones limiting what kinds of alternative competitive services can be offered. They're the ones deciding who can profit and who can't, and what services can be sold and what services can't. They say nobody is allowed to sell anything but unrestricted traffic, based on misapplied common carrier doctrine, when there is clearly an interest in alternatives that customers might find valuable.
The free market is still the best option, here. Government's roll is to ensure fair and open competition within the markets, not to pick winners and losers. Government is stifling competition, distorting the markets with arbitrary and needless distinctions between what is OK and what is Not OK.
I say let providers decide what they want to try to sell, and let customers decide which they want to buy. We'd find out very quickly whether traffic filtering/throttling is a good practice. Government meddling causes problems; people propose more government meddling to solve the problems. Rinse, lather repeat. Pretty son you end up with precisely the kind of tangled mess we see here.
It's amazing how often this pattern plays out, in all sorts of wide and varied fields. It's also amazing how the various participants always seem to find ways to rationalize it away. (Not singling out anyone here on APS, just making a general observation)
Partway there. I agree in principle, but physics & business reality are still beating on this principle like a red-headed step child.
1. ISPs are not calling for a free market or abolition of the common carrier designation, but to change the deal they made with gov't so that they have fewer responsibilities for the bennies they get. Ensuring they fill their end of a
voluntary bargain is hardly a sign of gov't gone wild.
2. Also, there are going to be messy gov't/business/market entanglements when
the business model and/or technological reality requires gov't involvement. Stringing cable is the obvious one here. Gov't has stepped in to allow
common carriers the ability to lay cable on common areas and on private property, as well as to maintain it. Several companies can lay cable (power, phone, cable tv/data), but there is a physical & practical limit to how many cables can be laid & maintained in a system.
Should gov't & the taxpayers require no reciprocity for allowing companies to use common areas and private property (that is not the companies property) to make money? Also, it is a practical monopoly, or at least competition is near impossible due to physical & technological reality (since two cables cannot occupy the same space).
If'n Comcast & Co. don't want to keep up their end of the bargain, then maybe we ought to boot their signal & cabling from property they don't own?
Now, if wireless broadband eventually develops to the point it can equal or exceed copper & fiber optic cabling performance, I can see
less need for gov't involvement, though limited RF spectrum will still impose limits on how many competitors can enter the market.
