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

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (31385)	9/17/2009 2:22:50 PM
From: Crossy	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Maurice, I get your point. I still don't agree. Your school of thought probably is going against everything known as "competition policy". I can only say, "happy exploitation". Concepts like "market power" appear to be lost on you. Network effects do not exist in your world either. Imagine, if the US government hadn't nourished that odd, craz research network named Arpanet, then NSFNET, we wouldn't even had a way to arbitrage away the ILEC rents (VoIP etc.) and the "happy" days of the ILEC monopoly would still be there. Hey, people like you are against counterveiling power to monopolies, so I bet you are also firmly against mandated interconnection. Given that, not even the US competition, where you were able to select your long-distance company would be attainable in "your preferred world" - old Ma Bell would still exist. Allowing carriers, especially dominant carriers differential charging on simple access products (i.e. dissing net neutrality) boils down to this: Broadband is a QUASI UTility. Like a road. Think about the crazy idea of a toll road, where they would charge me more if I transport wheat, or furniture or iron ore. Just crazy and unacceptable to most of us. This is exactly the reason why net neutrality is important. It doesn't allow the toll-booth that phone-competition brought down to be re-erected in broadband sphere. At least in Europe, there are many competitive providers offering FTTH infrastructure .. and thriving. Since they are not the "dominant carrier" - they could do a closed system but prefer to do "open access models". Why ? Because the take-up rate is higher and because alternatives (Incumbent DSL) already exist. And yes, they have enviable profitability ratios: Iliad, Freenet etc.. for example Getting the cost down to gain access to public infrastructure (duct, sewers) is of prime importance. In Europe, Portugal enacted some far-reaching frameworks to facilitate just that, with the effect that FTTH is indeed deployed cheaper than in most other plaecs. Listening to many presentations, the biggest cost factor in urban FTTH is civic engineering and related work. Requiring all major construction projetcs to bury duct is just one important component along such lines to plan for future FTTH infrastructure. In the meantime, good luck with your "comparable" DSL service. rgrds CROSSY