From owner-freebsd-hardware Sun Jul 7 16:26:17 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id QAA21343 for hardware-outgoing; Sun, 7 Jul 1996 16:26:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zoo.toronto.edu (zoo.toronto.edu [128.100.72.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA21338 for ; Sun, 7 Jul 1996 16:26:15 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 19:25:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Henry Spencer Subject: Re: cable vs. ISDN To: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" cc: hardware@freebsd.org, bsdi-users@bsdi.com In-Reply-To: <199607070539.WAA01617@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hardware@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >...As I said above: they own the wires, so there's not a lot of > >room to maneuver. If you don't like monopolies, start lobbying now for > >competitive cable and phone services. > > Uh, the economics of that are rather unworkable. These are > "controlled monopolies"... This is comonly done where public > access is limited in some way (such as redundant infrastructure wiring > costs), and granting a controlled monopoly is actually in the public > interest. That is the standard party line, but it's worth noting that this idea was invented by one of its major beneficiaries -- Bell -- and not by some disinterested third party. I'm told that in the few places where there are multiple cable companies (and where they serve the same neighborhoods, rather than cosily dividing the city into regional monopolies), prices actually often are lower *despite* the redundant infrastructure, because competition controls costs better than government regulators do. The original problem with multiple phone companies was not redundant infrastructure, but their unwillingness to interoperate so that customers would see a seamless network. That problem can be solved quite easily without monopolies. Henry Spencer henry@zoo.toronto.edu