A large portion of the costs of building last-mile infrastructure come from regulations imposed by local governments.
http://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-jus...
which may serve more big investors building yet more sprawling suburbs than regular people
Unregulated free market theory works. When you say it's instantly distorted by reality, I think that's true if you take a small picture view of the world. But if you look at it from a 5 year, 10 year, or even 100 year perspective, the free market is what brought us Dialup, DSL, Cable, FiOS, WiFi and whatever's after WiFi. I think the free market has done a great job.
> the free market is what brought us Dialup, DSL, Cable, FiOS, WiFi and whatever's after WiFi
Government research and subsidies brought us these. The market only sold them.
> Government research and subsidies brought us these. The market only sold them.
You do realize that the government pays (with private company tax dollars) other private companies to do things for them, don't you?
Either that or it hires private individuals and pays them to do it. What is your point? In either case, the govt is making the resource-allocation choice.
Your point is well taken, but if memory serves, the specific technologies listed were developed by private corporations and industry consortiums. Would be interested to see a fact checked history on this, however.
For most potential players, it simply costs too much to even think about entering the market. Truly unregulated free markets are great in theory, but are instantly distorted when you take things like reality into account.
Part of what the recent net neutrality rules did is ensure that power utilities must lease pole/conduit access to internet utilities at the same rates they lease to cable tv and telephone utilities. This helps reduce cost to enter the market.