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A comment on A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broadband providers. Parent comment

Re:A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broa... by mikepurvis on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @02:26PM (#24983025)
I'm not sure exactly what the legal framework is around it, but Canada's monopoly network operators (Rogers for coax, Bell for copper) are I believe required to sell bulk bandwidth to MVNO-style carriers. I've been a long-time TekSavvy customer, and certainly I get way better pricing from them than I would buying equivalent service directly from Rogers. And for what it's worth, when I tracert out of my house, the very first hop (9ms away) is a TekSavvy IP address which geolocates to a point in my neighbourhood, so it's not like I'm going through a ton of Rogers infrastructure to get to them (unless it's all transparent and extremely low latency).

There isn't much of a difference on the service side either; the trucks which come around here are all third party fulfillment firms regardless of who your ISP is (and they have super-bland, forgettable names like "Dependable HomeTech")

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Re:A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broa... by joshAg on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @03:28PM (#24983618)
There used to be something similar around telephone lines in the US, where bell had to let competitors use the lines at cost or something similar, but that way tends to lie madness because of fights over what the actual cost of maintenance of the infra is and how much of that cost should be borne by the actual owner and how much they can charge middlemen carriers (for lack of better term).

It's extra sad because it didn't have to be this way for internet, but the US chose to privatise public internet infra back under clinton and then double and tripled down under bush. Meanwhile, it still maintains at least 1 set of infra for itself (I don't know if siprnet and jwics use separate cables).

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Re:A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broa... by mikepurvis on Tuesday November 03, 2020 @04:48PM (#24984393)
I don't think it necessarily has to be madness, but you do need a competent and appropriately-separate regulating body overseeing the system and setting prices/rules that are fair to all the participants.

In Canada, that body is the CRTC. I think they largely do a good job, though some of it ends up in the courts, and TekSavvy happily engages customers by bumping monthly rates up or down in response to the rule changes, and encouraging us to write our elected representatives if we like or dislike it. Examples:

https://www.teksavvy.com/in-the-news/2019-press-releases/tek...

https://www.teksavvy.com/in-the-news/2020-press-releases/tek...

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Re:A tech antitrust problem no one is talking about: US broa... by joshAg on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @12:51PM (#24991300)
It doesn't have to be no, but having it incentivizes both sides to spend time and money on capturing the regulatory authority to tip the scales in their favor, and american companies are really great at regulatory capture.
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