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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

>market forces that encourage those improvements.

Like a Comcast monopoly? You mean those market forces?

Most municipalities grant monopolies to cable providers based on the theory that it's the only way to get someone to build and maintain the cable infrastructure.

Granted monopolies do not allow for market forces...

Yet public infrastructure requires granted monopolies (i.e. government power). It would be impossible to acquire the necessary land rights and right-of-ways needed - having to contract with every land-owner to build anything would fail due to expense.

The ideal case would be the government owns the infrastructure, taxes (and use fees from bidding out access rights) pay for construction and/or maintenance, private companies to bid for the right to run services for the public.

Granting a monopoly to telecoms have been illegal for over 20 years, nationwide.

It's just not profitable to lay a second or third network. It's a natural monopoly.

In fact, it's a coincidence that we have two networks in teh US. The telecom and the cable company.

> Granting a monopoly to telecoms have been illegal for over 20 years, nationwide.

Unfortunately, granting monopolies to information services is not illegal.....

>Most municipalities grant monopolies to cable providers based on the theory that it's the only way to get someone to build and maintain the cable infrastructure.

The theory is crap. It's a way to give away public infrastructure to campaign contributors. It's corruption: pure and simple, and it worked really, really well for Comcast.

When some municipalities tried to build their own cable system, Comcast sued.

Comcast is not a monopoly. This is the sort of misunderstanding that I'm talking about. AT&T was a monopoly and the USPO is still a first class mail monopoly.

I suspect Comcast is just the best option in your location and you're dissatisfied with it. Bummer for you, and I sincerely mean that.

When industries get regulated by the government they get "protected". Protected from upstarts with new and better technology, protected from cheaper alternatives, protected from dissatisfied customers, and generally protected from all market forces.

USPO is a first class mail monopoly because other players choose not to get in that game. Instead, even when you do ship via another carrier if that carrier deems your route to be too unprofitable they will give it to the post office because they cannot refuse. In fact, FedEx and UPS are the post office's biggest customers for this very reason.

Not true. It's impossible to truly compete at First Class Mail. The USPO(USPS) is a de-facto First Class mail monopoly because of the Private Express Statutes.

That's playing semantic games though.

If someone wants broadband at their house and the only possible provider is Comcast, then to them it may as well be called a monopoly.

It is also playing with semantics to exclude DSL from the definition of broadband. 99% of people served by Comcast are also going to have a telco that can provide an admittedly slower, but still broadband, connection via DSL.

> It is also playing with semantics to exclude DSL from the definition of broadband.

No need to play here. DSL is not broadband. Luckily you didn't try proposing to call telegraph broadband as well. Pigeon mail anyone?

>I suspect Comcast is just the [only broadband] option in your location [due to their non-compete agreement with Time Warner and the city council not letting other service providers lay cables] and you're dissatisfied with it.

That's a bit more accurate. If somethings the only provider of a service, that's a monopoly. Plain and simple. There's no exceptions, there's no misunderstanding. The definition of broadband is 25/3, and Comcast is the only company offering that. There's no chance for upstarts with newer and better technology. There's no chance for cheaper alternatives. There's no chance of market forces. If you want to be an ISP in this city, you have to go through the city council who says no one but Comcast can lay cable and only utilies companies can use their utility poles. Guess what, if Comcast is Title II and everyone has access to their poles and conduits, well here comes the competition.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/01/google-letter-fcc-title-i...

> Comcast is not a monopoly.

It's close to it. Ask those who have nothing else to choose from in their area, and they'll tell you whether it's a monopoly or not.

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