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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

I think is is overstepping what I need the FCC with my life. But you know what I want them to do? Increase the number choices I have. Breakup local monopolies on cable/fiber and make tax deals with local municipalities illegal or fair to competitors so we can avoid "I get one choice in internet provider".

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If you own an ISP would you invest in an area where another ISP monopoly exists and all users in an area will have to pay sum to pay contract to move to your service. This also about competition just not customer service though yeah I agree internet infrastructure should be financed and run by the local governments just like roads etc are and let ISP compete on services

That's not the issue. There is lots of money to be made competing with ISPs in dense urban areas, but such competition is actively illegal in many of them.

This is something the FCC definitely has power to do and if you think this is overstepping then they certainly would not be able to do anything about anti-competitive behavior in your idealized version of them.

We really need Congress to act, to try to restore the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to it's written purpose. The courts gutted access to Unbundled Network Elements, meaning that anyone trying to provide high speed internet basically has to DIY the infrastructure themselves.

Congress should pass another law. The courts basically sided with arguments that high speed internet would only be deployed if a monopoly was provided. And that hasn't been true in many other places, which do have competitive Internet by way of unbundled local loops.

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