Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government

Re:Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the g... by Semiapies on Wednesday June 29, 2011 @01:27PM (#2710321)

The government broke up AT&T into a bunch of little companies

After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking British Telecom.)

Similarly, there are a lot of municipal agreements in the US where one company gets the exclusive right to handle local phone or cable service within a city or region. More companies or smaller companies doesn't mean any benefit for consumers when they still just end up choosing between "the phone company" and "the cable company" as designated by law.

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Re:Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the g... by masklinn on Wednesday June 29, 2011 @01:31PM (#2710341)

> After establishing it as a federal monopoly in 1934. (And in TFA, we're talking even worse entities.)

In order to regulate it (putting it under jurisdiction of the FCC) as Bell was already a natural monopoly by this point, even after the Kingsbury Commitment.

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Re:Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the g... by Perceval on Wednesday June 29, 2011 @01:47PM (#2710417)

At the top of this thread, ojbyrne says we need to have government regulation in order to create competition.

Here you say that we needed regulation to make AT&T a de jure national monopoly so that we could further regulate AT&T.

So, regulation grants monopolies, then regulates those monopolies, then also regulates more competition into the monopoly market it had previously granted? This is good governance?

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Re:Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the g... by masklinn on Wednesday June 29, 2011 @01:50PM (#2710432)

Regulation did not create AT&T's monopoly. AT&T did that, the government later sanctioned it in order to try and better regulate the monopolistic company (it failed).

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