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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (31357)	9/16/2009 8:12:47 AM
From: Crossy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Frank, that's it ! A great metaphor. NZ is interesting, indeed - becuase it has a pro-market, pro-competition but center-right government. What many so called "Libertarians" in the US seem to forget is that COMPETITION is a merit on its own. Even a free-market has rules of engagement. And the industry structure aspired, should reflect maximized consumer welfare, not producers' rents. Actually in a fully competitive environment, there are no rents. Infrastructure sectors have always been pretty vulnerable to rent-seeking behaviour and monopolization attempts, one way or the other. The "essential facilities" doctrine attempts to rectify this in the area of competition policy, however, in iteself it is no "cure-all" forcing structural separation at least gives a level playingfield and prevents the incumbent from exploiting its vertically integrated model, while at the same time reducing the quality to the wholesale operations it is forced to conduct. Another issue for total welfare (not just consumer welfare but acknowledging that cost of bandwidth and FTTH availability is an essential facility for post-industrial knowledge enterprises), even for global competitiveness is that bandwidth is an essential input-factor for next-generation, knowledge work. ERgo, it's in the interest of public policy to "keep the pipes open" and to foster competitively neutral FTTH networks. Evne the US' will somdey arrive at the same conclusions. It doesn't make much sense to see FIOS being rolled out but bandwidth pricing on FTTH in the US are 2-5times compared to South Korea, Japan or HongKong... jmho of course best rgrds CROSSY