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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

Don't let the fact that it's incorporated as a private business fool you, Comcast is a government monopoly.

A deregulated ISP market would be a huge improvement for this country!

A system where large corporations handle the backbone and local ISPs and/or municipalities handle the last few miles sounds ideal for the US, but I am pretty skeptical as to whether we would get that if regulations simply ceased to exist.

("regulations simply cease to exist" seems like the casual definition for "deregulation," though the actual process of deregulation is for a bunch of people to pass a new set of regulations and if they're pandering to a certain constituency, they will call it "deregulation," regardless of the effect of the regulations they just passed. See: telecom, the airlines, banking, etc.)

ISPs are a natural monopoly [1]. Deregulation is unlikely to fix the issue. Creating (or regulating) a common infrastructure, e.g. poles and/or cable tunnels looks like a better way to induce competition.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Not to fight over terminology, but in most of the US, cable companies are given an explicit monopoly "franchise" from the local municipality.

There are some areas that might be a natural monopoly anyway due to low density population, but only way you could know is open things up. That's a tough pill to swallow since the franchise "fees" (taxes) are guaranteed so long as the cable company has a guaranteed monopoly. Yes they could pass a generic tax on cable service, but that would be a new tax.

I focus on cable companies because that seems to be the most common way to get broadband to many parts of the US.

You can make a decent natural monopoly argument for cabled ISPs. Still debatable, but it has some merit.

But in 2020, wireless ISP work great wherever they're not regulated away.

One big problem with regulations is that even if they're beneficial when enacted, they will remain in force for many decades after the underlying reality has changed.

> But in 2020, wireless ISP work great wherever they're not regulated away.

Because in CURRENT_YEAR we don't have to worry about rain fade or quirks of local terrain or unintended interference?

That's quite a big statement to make, generalized over the whole world like that.

> One big problem with regulations is that even if they're beneficial when enacted, they will remain in force for many decades after the underlying reality has changed.

We tend to avoid principles-based regulation in the US, but it's not destiny that regulations remain the same forever, even with our system. We certainly don't have to choose between that and not having any regulations at all (which isn't even an option when you're talking about radio spectrum, or use of wires at the last mile, or whatever).

My impression is that regulations turn to legacy status more often than not. Not that I've conducted any scientific study to back that up.

For radio spectrum you don't need any regulations or regulators. Just establish that radio frequencies in a certain area can be owned, and use general property right rules.

It's not really my area, but I feel like the distinction you're making between "regulations" and "general property right rules" is a bit like the distinction that is made at times between "fees" and "taxes."

To me, "regulations" either means there is a regulator directly issuing rules and orders to the regulated industry, or a legislature manages the rule set through occasional legislation.

This is quite different from laws protecting property, where all the state does is settle property disputes.

In slogan form, one is "rule of man" vs "rule of law".

I think I mentioned it upthread but principles-based regulation can at times be a nice middle ground.

The only thing to break the duopoly is some third option that requires no additional last mile infrastructure investment - either a common infrastructure that decouples provider from physical wiring or wireless Internet that isn't horrible.

Just because we want a technology to exist doesn't mean it's ever going to.

Regulation deals with the here-and-now.

Fixed wireless internet and satellite internet do exist now - there have been barriers to deployment, some of which have been put up by traditional terrestrial ISPs.

There have recently been well funded pushes into satellite internet such as Starlink and Project Kuiper.

Exactly what regulations are preventing new broadband providers from entering the market?

I think it's mostly that cities hand out monopolies to Comcast or regional equivalents.

I'll admit I don't know the details well.

Ask Google. They couldn't put fiber in my city because AT&T told the government to tell them not to.

But how would the gov't handle installing all the back-doors?

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