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Comment by Jgrubb | Hacker News Reader

That'd be great, but I only have one choice where I live.

Even then, I think there would be some benefit. Customers of monopolistic ISPs will be able to quantify the monopoly tax they have to pay.

Do you not have cable, DSL, satellite, and LTE?

Cable is generally the primary option of high-speed internet ( > 10 Mbit).

DSL (when not of the ATT U-verse variety) barely gets over 10-Mbit in practice, with speeds closer to 3-Mbit being fairly common.

Satellite can't really be considered high-speed due to latency.

LTE coverage is still poor, and I've yet to see hardware suitable for a home connection for it. (Tethering via a cellphone doesn't count.)

So, no. There's really generally one, maybe two choices for home high-speed internet so it's not like customers can vote with their dollars and move to a Netflix-friendly ISP.

It still surprises me that US government hasn't gone the same way as Canada and the UK and opened the lines up to competition. By forcing ISPs to offer up their "last mile" lines to competitors at reasonable prices, I've seen prices and plans get a lot better where I live over the last few years.

Regulatory capture. Interests concerned with protecting ISPs' monopolistic profits have more government influence than interests concerned with the good of the consumer.

It's not like they don't have regulatory agencies in the UK or Canada. It's a pretty weak, handwaving argument to just assert that their agencies are less prone to capture.

I don't know about Canada, but the UK could do it because those lines were originally owned by a government corporation. The U.S. did do something similar for DSL, but that was a disaster because it removed any incentive phone companies had to invest in their DSL infrastructure.

Is this why grandparent comment of yours was complaining about poor DSL speed?

It's my theory of why, anyway. In the U.K., BT (Openreach) has been pretty effective in leveraging the existing DSL infrastructure, pushing fiber closer to the home incrementally. While BT is required to let competitors use their wires, there is a framework in place for guaranteeing that BT gets a good return on these investments. There was never any such framework in place in the U.S. Without that, the basic market problem exists: why spend a bunch of money building infrastructure you have to lease to your competitors at cost?

> Without that, the basic market problem exists: why spend a bunch of money building infrastructure you have to lease to your competitors at cost?

Well, they don't get free access to the lines, they still pay rates, typically, from what I understand around 15-35% lower than the usual consumer prices per customer to the "main" provider on that line. If that's really not enough for them to continue maintaining and improving their infrastructure perhaps it would be an issue - but it certainly appears to have been sufficient here at least.

By your reasoning there are only two mobile platforms: iOS and Android, because the other options aren't as good. Cable, Satellite, and most DSL is plenty fast enough for Netflix.

In theory yes, in practise no.

Satellite has caps and active throttling which prevent video streaming, so no Netflix for you.

On DSL, if your sync rate is 3Mbps, you won't be watching anything in HD and unless you dedicate the line for only Netflix and ban everybody else in the house from using the internet, you'll get poor quality SD only.

So, no, DSL and satellite are not plenty fast enough for Netflix.

The number of choices tends to drop off to one or two (at most) outside of metro areas. I live in a semi-rural area and TWC is the only broadband option. DSL is available but only at speeds barely surpassing dialup. LTE coverage is patchy and (where my house sits) not strong enough to send MMS, much less maintain broadband-level bandwidth.

Somebody else already answered you, but no, I only have DSL as a high-speed option where I live (very rural). And only available from one carrier (CenturyLink).

There is exactly one provider in my area which is capable of supplying my family's bandwidth requirements.

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