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Comment by jamroom | Hacker News Reader

Wow - if true I really hope Comcast gets taken to the cleaners over this. We REALLY need more ISP competition in the US- this is just ridiculous.

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Competition will not exist due to natural monopolies for the last-mile wiring issues.

What is required is effective regulation. Which the new FCC head just gutted.

"Which the new FCC head just gutted."

This implies the previous FCC head was effectively regulating the telco and cable companies before, which is not accurate. It's gotten worse, but it's never been good. The telco/cable industry is basically a crime syndicate that operates in their own world of murky legality. Somehow, they keep getting away with atrocious behavior that hurts consumers and keeps competitors out.

So many things they do as standard practice ought to be illegal, but they're really good at lobbying. They may not be good at providing customer service or competent at providing internet but they're very good at manipulating the law to suit their interests. And, even given the incredibly favorable legal climate they exist in, they push past the law and do shit like this.

And, that's why the US is so far down the list in terms of internet speed and quality. The operators aren't in the business of providing good service, they're in the business of making it impossible for anyone to effectively compete with them via any means available (regardless of legality or ethicality).

Or you need the last mile wires to be owned by some entity that isn't an ISP.

If we want laws to fix this, penalizing large companies that damage others wires due to gross negligence sounds like a good start.

>Citation needed. Eastern Europe has demonstrated that absent restrictions it's possible for the market to develop last-mile wiring superior to that in the US:

https://medium.com/juice-romanian-vitamins/10-years-later-di...

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5aa3/why-romani...

Those monopolies have been explicitly granted by municipalities for decades.

I guess we should all go home and get off the internet.

Behavior like this should end in a multi year ban of the corporation existing. Only with such extreme penalties that far out weigh any possible profit will corporate behavior change.

Buildings could allow competition several operators and impose a no-access ban to operators who mangle cables. The game is for a set of buildings to associate together, so one Comcast error in one results in a ban in the chain of buildings. This is actually very easy to organize.

...in the relatively rare case where a credible competitor exists. If you're renting, you also need the leasing office onside, and it's not rare that they'll have an arrangement with Comcast such that new tenants obtaining first-time service get a short initial discount period, the better to acquire them as customers.

Yes! Law enforcement used to freak out when someone was taking photos of public infrastructure like bridges etc. Meanwhile we have companies go around and destroy infrastructure like this. I actually would prefer any nearby bridge be closed for a while over not having internet for that time.

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