Classifying ISPs as the utility companies they are is the only way to end the gouging and systematic fraud.
My experience is that even this minimal amount of competition absolutely cuts through the bullshit that you get from a monopoly provider.
Classifying as utility companies may be one path to the end state we both desire, but lived experience proves it is not singularly so.
Do note that in the US, the largest influence on the monopoly position of ISPs is not to do with any inherent property of the industry, but due to exclusive contracts/rights of way that local governments grant to ISPs. Obviously, the ISPs seek this sort of arrangement and lobby for it. The regulation that can help the ISP situation in the US may just as well be restrictions on municipalities as restrictions on ISPs.
Last year I had to deal with Comcast with regards to an identity theft.
When I refused to jump through their extra hoops (I had provided them more than enough information to prove my claim, they wanted everything just short of a DNA Swab,) they told me that I would never be able to get service through them unless I kissed the ring.
When I told them that I base my residency choices on being able to -not- have Comcast as a cable provider, their script rather obviously did not have a response to that based on where the conversation went after.
They -expect- to be a a monopoly, and their internal policies already reflect that.
In SF, I have multiple ISP options. I get gigabit fiber for $40/month and no nonsense. But my girlfriend lives in an area with Comcast only, where the price is much higher, the service is much worse, and they had loaded her bill down with absurd equipment rental charges.
When sufficient competition doesn't exist, we shouldn't just abandon people to predatory companies.
That said, if the quality were to drop, if they were to engage in anticompetitive behavior, if they were to provide tools to subvert an election, if they were to repeatedly buy out competitors, or any combination of the above, I would drop them in a heartbeat.
No.
The presumption should be making it easy to enable competition, which the current rules don't do. Make it easy for Google to come in and lay fiber on their own dime.
Why do you assume "market failure", and not "regulatory capture"?
> the presumption should be regulation
Can we first get rid of the extant anti-competitive regulations that create and maintain monopolies?
> But my girlfriend lives in an area with Comcast only
Have you looked into what's stopping a would-be competing ISP?
Separate the running of OSI Layer 1/2 from Layer 3:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-access_network
Some examples:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23734319
* https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-...
Which is unnecessary: only the 'retail' ISP should really need to talk to the 'wholesale' fibre provider.
In fact, in the Ars example, on initial connection, if the fibre has no existing contract, you are sent to a landing page which lists all the available ISPs.
Clicking on one (AFAICT) sends you to their order page where you enter your personal/billing information to sign up, and henceforth they are your Layer 3 ISP.
In Japan, there are some ISP that bundle the contract (they deal with NTT (the fiber provider) themselves). In that case, if you are moving ISP, you need to re-do the entire contract, including another set-up fee for the fiber line.
Ammon Fibre from the Ars story:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHGhNwzpXLw
The fibre line is pre-existing just like your electrical or natural gas probably is now: there's no re-setting-up that component. You are in a default VLAN that gives you options, and when you sign up the VLAN is changed.
IIRC, the price difference was enough that only people who really wanted a public IP block out of their home would have done it.
There's no need to lease the fiber infrastructure, just provide interconnect nodes for ISPs.
Municipal broadband maintenance can be paid for by charging interconnect fees to the ISPs who wish to service that area.
Once the infrastructure is in place, barriers to entry for ISPs is very low. All you need is bandwidth and connection to the municipal network.
Maintenance can be provided on a cost plus basis by an independent (i.e., not the ISPs) company that manages and maintains the infrastructure.
And surpluses from interconnect fees can be used for both network enhancements and other municipal programs.
So the government should pay for a thing to be created but private enterprise should maintain it? I believe if anything, you flipped this. Because when I think private enterprise, I think maintenance and long term strategy of only profit. They will do nothing and then dump the hot mess back on the people when it breaks down.
Last mile infra should be owned, operated and maintained by the people. ISPs should connect to the network and offer services. I should be able to have multiple ISPs and free local network access.
Which is paid for by a levy charged to (Layer 3) ISPs, which is passed onto customers at the end of the fibre.
Do you feel the same way about sewer lines? Water pipes? How about roads?
Where I live, the company that delivers the power is responsible for maintaining the delivery infrastructure, while those who provide the power are (or can be) completely separate entities.
As such, it seems to me that even your example would argue for municipal broadband.
This would further entrench them as government-chartered monopolies. Heck, most of the current anti-competitive forces extend from either explicit government monopoly grants or regulatory capture.
Or continue to beg the political process to solve the problems they created when they interfered with the market process.
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
They are going to be entrenched as government-chartered monopolies any way you look at it. ISPs either need a right of way to lay cable or a license to use RF spectrum. Even if you could magically overcome those problems, or are willing to deal with the chaos of removing the applicable regulations, the Internet would become fragmented since the dominant players would freeze competition out of the market. (Recall the olden days of online service providers when everyone's network was independent of everyone else's, and even then it was only regulation of the telephone companies that allowed those service providers to exist.)
As I understand it, both of those can (and do) support multiple competing services. Further, regulation dealing with scarce (ostensibly government-owned) resources is significantly less anti-competitive than, say, regulation requiring all would-be ISPs to also serve cost-prohibitive rural areas.
Look, I can appreciate the position that a government-granted public monopoly might be better for consumers than a government-granted private monopoly, but consumers might still be better served by removing those government-created barriers to competition.
> the dominant players would freeze competition out of the market
How do you imagine they would achieve that using only market forces?
> it was only regulation of the telephone companies that allowed those service providers to exist
I'm not grasping your argument. Perhaps unrelated to your point, but telephone service was (and largely still is) a government-granted monopoly. And there too, rather than removing those regulatory barriers to competition, the illusion of competition was created by adding more regulations.
As far as justification, it goes the other way around. If you want to interfere in the free market, you need to provide good justification that this problem is not being created by the regulatory environment already. 99.9% of the time, it is.
To extend his point, "red tape" isn't the only regulation-related problem. Don't forget that in many local governments gave monopoly grants to select ISPs. Then there's the "bootleggers and baptists" [1] effect, where well-meaning regulation has a larger anti-competitive effect benefiting extant firms, e.g., requiring would-be ISPs to also serve cost-prohibitive rural areas.
Pretending that extant government regulation is the never the problem is just as bad as pretending it's the only problem.