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Comment by martin1975 | Hacker News Reader

martin1975

Well, Ajit Pai says it stifles investments. Apparently investments fell by 5% or so over a period of time since the Title II classification. While I love NN, I also hate no viable competition to cable/ISP monopolies. I don't think NN would be an issue if everyone had at least 3 viable choices of broadband providers. That's the right (tm) way to address it, or should I say market-based, by fostering competition via policy.

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I think the free market proponents are harming US infrastructure and in the future competitiveness. Like roads and bridges etc are built with taxes. The internet infrastructure needs to be built or at least controled by the government federal, state or city. I like what Singapore did got bids and fixed prices for fiber deployment. Now all the isp's have to compete for providing services and the fiber deployer is paid the same by all of them. That is probably the best and cheapest way to build infrastructure. Currently in the US you have 2-3 companies doing their own fiber deployment in the same areas at 2-3 times the cost.

Precisely. Communications infrastructure is a natural monopoly that should be regulated like roads, electricity, water, sewer, etc. The fact that it was privatized early on the U.S. means we've open pandora's box of lobbying, so it would be difficult to close it again.

The federal government could foreseeably take back some of that infrastructure by building it itself. The last mile is the most expensive part, so why not build a fiber backbone to every public school, and then let the municipal government's decide if/when/how they cover the last mile implementation?

> Apparently investments fell by 5% or so over a period of time since the Title II classification.

That is a correlation expressed as a causation.

Lack of competition is because:

1) ISPs agree not to compete; and

2) It is expensive for new entrants to build infrastructure.

It would be ideal to solve NN with free market.

But the ISPs have monopolies that prevent competition.

Making net neutrality necessary today.

This problem sounds familiar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent_local_exchange_carri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling

1) ISPs agree not to compete; and --> probably not. Cartels don't work in practice, because there's always an incentive to cheat. Look how often OPEC nations pump more oil than they agreed to pump.

2) It is expensive for new entrants to build infrastructure. --> Yes, but if the ROI is sufficient, it can still get done.

3) Local / state government "franchise" agreements which grant incumbents monopoly (or near monopoly) status. --> the real killer. If the local government regulates you out of the market, it's game over.

> 1) ISPs agree not to compete; and --> probably not.

Except they currently do this, so... yes.

> 2) It is expensive for new entrants to build infrastructure. --> Yes, but if the ROI is sufficient, it can still get done.

> 3) Local / state government "franchise" agreements which grant incumbents monopoly (or near monopoly) status. --> the real killer. If the local government regulates you out of the market, it's game over.

It's not in the public's interest to allow a bunch of random companies to dig up our roadsides to lay a ton of fiber, over and over and over. So I don't see this changing.

Removing net neutrality regulation will absolutely not increase competition in the ISP space. Why would it? Because then there'd be potentially more money in it, based on all the new ways ISPs could screw with customers?

First off, no: we don't allow any random company to dig up our roadsides to lay cable, and that's a good thing.

But let's say we did. So you want to attract competition by showing the newcomers that they can make more money than in the net-neutrality era by engaging in anti-customer behavior? How is _that_ good? Or are you expecting more competitors to come in out of the goodness of their hearts and "settle" for building a current-style (quite lucrative) ISP business without that behavior, making less money?

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