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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

50% of folks in Comcast’s footprint don’t subscribe. Those folks aren’t going without Internet access. For a significant portion of the market, those other alternatives are viable. That creates competition, though obviously less competition than an equivalent competitor. (I’ve been lucky to mostly live in FiOS territory, and now I’ve got two fiber lines to my house. But back when I lived in Wilmington, I had just Comcast. Instead of subscribing, we used a T-Mobile hotspot the whole time. It was fine. With 5G, that phenomenon is only going to increase.)

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Pew reported in Jan 2018 that only 65% of adults are home broadband users. That's down from a peak of 73% in 2016. Segmenting by age, fully 50% of people 65 or older do not use broadband internet at home.

So what are they using? Mobile phones--Pew says 20% of adults do not have broadband at home, but own a smartphone. Or nothing--Pew reported that 11% of U.S. adults do not use the Internet at all.

https://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/internet-broadband/

And what % of people that actually have alternatives like FiOS (unlike me) don't subscribe to comcast? Saying 50% of subscribers in Comcast's footprint is prevaricating about the bush AF. Why, you ask? If 50% of potential Comcast subscribers have an alternative to Comcast, that would mean 100% of people with an alternative are taking advantage of the free market. Which would mean that 100% of the people remaining are likely forced to subscribe through a lack of access to alternatives.

I don't even have working voice cell coverage at my house, much less data. Again, almost certainly due to a an entrenched monopoly limiting the market outreach of competition, and thereby obviating the requirement that they themselves perform adequately enough to retain customers.

Q.E.D.

For your hypothetical to hold, you’d expect to see some providers with near 100% market share. (You’d also have to assume Comcast builds and maintains infrastructure to millions of households in areas where it has no market share.) Who are they? FiOS’s market share is 40% in its footprint. AT&T’s fiber is around 25% now, hoping to reach 50% by 2023.

The only other way to get your math to work out is to assume that only a very small portion of Comcast’s footprint has no other cable/fiber competitor.

As to your cell situation—what mechanism do you think creates this competition-limiting monopoly? And why doesn’t that same mechanism apply to say my house (in the DC exurbs), where all of the big 4 have a decent signal? (Or the majority of the country, where at least three providers have coverage?)

So you’re saying the upper bound on the number of municipalities where Comcast has no competition is half of them?

Not saying much at all there.

What percentage of people in Comcast's footprint have broadband internet? 50%/55% is a rather different market share than 50%/95%.

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