One counter here is that the reason they have a monopoly is the last mile lines and easements, but arguably there is enough spectral bandwidth in the wireless realm that perhaps whats really missing is competition for home internet from wireless operators. I'm not sure where I stand here but I do think its interesting to consider whether it would be better to help bring competition somehow from that side into the home broadband realm or whether the landline route should be made more public. I'm sure there are some capacity limitations on the wireless side also that may make this a pipedream.
There needs to be more consumer education to allow them to differentiate between high-performance things like fixed-wireless compared to running their home internet off their phone's LTE connection.
Funnily, my iPhone's LTE connection (according to SpeedTest) has very good latency and throughput: I get ~10ms to my nearest major city and ~30mbps downstream, sometimes my LTE upstream speed is faster than my home DOCSIS connection. Alas I can't use it as my home connection because I need a static IP address and more than a few gigabytes of data-transfer per month (more like a few terabytes...)
We have ~50 users on our unlicensed fixed wireless service and we've been running into numerous signal issues. Wireless isn't the answer.
I've read a bit about WISPs, because they seem like a happy solution to the whole monopoly problem but they haven't caught hold in the way that I've hoped. Latency seems to be a pretty significant issue. Consistency in signal strength is also a problem.
I also sort of think that this is kind of the way we get out of problems without ever getting at the root cause. We look to technology that may exist at a later point to fix problems caused by underlying political, organizational and infrastructure issues. Always looking for the next band aid for the bullet hole I suppose.
Clearwire ran into many of these same issues, but they were able to operate at two orders of magnitude more power than most WISPs can (1 watt vs 150 watts) and had way more bandwidth around 2Ghz to work with, all of which was pristine.
What that would solve is high speed low latency access for rural areas.
Now all we need to do is actually make it work...
1) You don't operate wireless in a vacuum. There's all kinds of potential obstructions to the signal, including any physical objects 2) Even if wireless as a medium itself has less latency, it requires far more relay points to travel comparable distances to fiber, which introduces far more latency than the medium itself
As an example we can see what happened when New Orleans did that after Hurricane Katrina. Not only did Bell South take back donated resources to the rescue efforts, but they and several large telephone companies stepped up an aggressive lobby actions against the city during a time where focus should have been to save human lives and restore the infrastructure.
Same for GSM - if you are too high, too low, too far or in shadow from tower it just doesn't work properly. Holiday overload on the cell - goodbye internet.
Wireless is barely functioning as it is and more customers will just make it worse.
PS: also when something in the last mile is not working it is insane to debug it. Phone disconnects for some reason and that's it. Router is working but devices can't connect or auth. Some APs work and some aren't. My devices from same vendor and same model lineup can't even properly restart by themselves after power outage. I need to go and reboot them in order one by one each time. I hate wireless... :)
Hasn't Trump banned this?
It is speculated that much of the lobbying that occurs is by the influential people in an unregistered capacity and it's known as "shadow lobbying".
"1. I will not, within 5 years after the termination of my employment as an appointee in any executive agency in which I am appointed to serve, engage in lobbying activities with respect to that agency."
... and there is the "out". Just engage in lobbying activities with respect to another agency, where you now have a lot of contacts. Or consult with an agency that does engage in lobbying activities with respect to that agency.
You get the idea.
I am happy that the "Revolving Door", made famous by Larry Lessig (whose writing and classes, if you are lucky, can't be recommended enough) is getting more than lip service from some branch of government. However, this is just barely more than lip service.
Is this not beginning to change though? Setting up a local solar farm for a neighborhood and selling on that electricity seems like a valid business model to me. Same with setting up automated water desalinization and treatment plants. But because of regulations, the cost to do either is extreme.
I think the very regulations that add so much cost may be the one's that have us thinking all about 'natural monopolies' today. The more people you can service, the easier it is is to spread the cost of regulation. But why do you need that cost in the first place?
Still, the distribution grid is a natural monopoly, if somehow it became obsolete because everyone was producing energy at home it would become useless but still have the same characteristics that made it a monopoly.
Given the broad prevalence of this type of activity, it seems to at least suggest some fundamental breakdown within the system of representative democracy or, as you suggest, it is an indictment of governments, in general.
This is actually self-evident in the fact that these companies are actively engaging in non-market strategies. There would be no need to practice such tactics if they could simply hold a 'natural monopoly'. Others certainly disagree, but for me, this argument is the one I find most compelling.
This worked really well so now there is a health population of companies in both the telephone/mobile and isp sectors.
I can get at least 5 different wired isps and maybe 50+ mobile broadband providers in the outskirts of a town of 60k people.
In fact, ISPs thrived, and a lot of them are now installing and contracting the installation of their own Fibre to a lot of residences. Essentially, side-stepping the existing copper infrastructure that kept people tied to the telco monopoly.
In addition, it is quite possible to have competition while still regulating something as a utility. Regulation is really more what the classifacation is about. You want clean water standards, companies that don't turn you off for being a few hours late, and so forth. This stuff is doubly important since in many areas, utilities are a natural monopoly. The classifacation can also ensure that the large companies venture out into small and rural cities and areas. Some folks in the US have only had home phone service less than 20 years despite such laws, after all, and I doubt they would without regulation.
It describes how transmission has stagnated. Particularly the tactics used by large utilities and how they lead to a degraded and unreliable grid.
That's a pretty bad comparison, though, because the transmission of electricity is as commoditized as possible (given that the electricity gets somewhere, the only thing the consumer cares about is price - there's no such thing as "fast" electricity). So what does "stagnation" on energy transmission even mean? There's no innovation - at least, not that the end consumer would ever know or care about - which is the textbook characteristic of a fungible commodity.
The production is not fungible (see: clean energy production vs. dirty), but that's the part that's also somewhat competitive. For example, in New York City, Con Edison has a monopoly on the infrastructure[0], but you can purchase your electricity either though Con Edison or through an ESCO, which can include clean energy providers.
As a general trend, municipalities which decouple the generation from the transmission and allow competition between companies that generate electricity do tend to have more clean-energy options than those which monopolize both the transmission and the generation.
[0] A few parts are serviced by another provider instead of Con Edison, but basically any given household is serviced by only one power company
You're repeating the definition of a commodity, which was exactly what I addressed in my first paragraph.
> Both decreasing costs to customers and environmental impact, as well as increasing profit margins for the company.
"Decreasing cost and increasing profit margins" again is part and parcel of commoditization. The environmental impact is what I addressed in the rest of my comment.
Again, the comparison is bad because the only part of the electric industry which is not fully commoditized and which has the potential for non-commodity innovation is the part that is already competitive and much less regulated.
Broadband Internet, on the other hand, is not at all commoditized. There are at least four different things that consumers can care about besides cost per unit, so comparing it to a commodity utility is a bad comparison.
Hahahaha, 400k? The man is the Chairman of the FCC. Try well into seven figures
There are some industries that are natural monopolies, like water and electricity, because it's incredibly expensive to build both last mile connections and core infrastructure. They're also natural monopolies because you don't really have great, cost competitive alternatives to water and electricity provided on a large scale.
When you consider hard wired internet, it bares of a lot of similarity to utilities, in the cost and difficulty of accumulating infrastructure and in the absence of effective alternatives.
For that very reason, internet should be classified, like other natural monopolies, as a utility.
Moreover, last mile lines should be rentable or available through competitive bidding. There's actually enough dark cable to make some regional ISPs viable if they could actually get access to consumer level last mile lines. But Comcast won't get off them unless they're kicked off them. And if you try to build lines then Comcast will half their rates in the areas that you offer service in!
Of course, Ajit Pai will have a lobbying job earning well north of 400K the moment the Trump administration runs out the door so it's really not his concern.