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

To: axial who wrote (31954)	11/5/2009 12:08:08 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

NZ fibre is what I know. I have no particular information about Sweden or most other places so don't have anything much to contribute about those locations. The NZ experience might be useful for comparison with other places. By cyberspace is shovel ready, I mean governments want to "stimulate" economies and are looking for things to throw money at which will help economic activity now. Fibre and other aspects of cyberspace are shovel ready - meaning investments would make profits now and there's lots of investment that can be made. Fusion reactors are not shovel ready. Lots more physics and engineering is needed before foundations for reactors should be dug. Self-driving cars are not shovel ready and neither are vehicle control systems to manage those autocars zipping around cities using electric motors in each wheel. In cities around the world, there are areas with dense populations of high value cyberspace users who are ready now to buy fibre services if they are not priced in the stupid way that such things have been. Telecom companies and business managers either have genetic defects or are misguided in MBA school to think that high prices are a good idea. Few of them have Wal-Mart thinking = stack it high and sell it cheap and that humans and their money are mostly in the middle of normal distribution curves. The aim of pricing should be to make it as low as possible to entice hordes of people to crowd in and throw money. Where possible, "free" is good because as soon as some money is charged, people have to try to figure out whether it's worth it and avoid being ripped off and start incurring transaction costs. Google does a LOT free. Anti-trust government kleptocrats like to narrow the definition of "the market" down until they have only the big fat fish with lots of cash in the net that they are trying to catch. So, when they want to catch Microsoft, they don't define "the market" as "means of communication" because that would include pens and paper and there's obviously no monopoly there. So they narrow it to "software that runs on computers weighing less than 4 kg". But that's not narrow enough either because there's a LOT of software that runs on small computers. Okay, how about "operating systems" for little computers. Well, now they are getting somewhere. But there are still many choices. They have to narrow it down to "operating systems produced by Microsoft in the last 5 years". Yes, MSFT does have a monopoly in that. "Overcharging" is proven easily because any return on that isolated software above interest rates on deposit in banks is ipso facto evidence of over charging. Similarly, there's a "market" = fibre down a particular street operating by a particular company. It is very easy to prove overcharging and the need for price controls. Also a need for a government department to come up with a "net neutrality" control department. There is also a market = a base station in a particular place or the base stations operated by a particular company in a particular frequency. That also needs a government department allocated to managed that business. My argument is that those so-called monopolies are indeed monopolies if the right definitions are used and yes, people like it when governments force suppliers to give them free car factories and free other things and low prices if not free. But all transactions are ephemeral monopolies if sliced and diced and defined precisely enough. So it becomes a political decision whether to stifle some business or not, not a rational one. Fibre lends itself to accusations of monopoly abuse. I have already been financially penalized because Vector in which I own shares, has been attacked by the government they did a good trick - privatized it then introduced "anti-monopoly" price controls which is fraudulent but I should have seen it coming and not bothered to invest in running fibre to the home. Vector could price fibre to attract hordes of people and start shoveling it into the ground or stringing it along the power poles. But the government messed that up. Now they are having to come up with some scheme to get fibre installed and sold. <All that's needed is for governments to get out of the way. Please explain how "broadband" can be brought to nations currently burdened with antiquated telecomms economics, laws, regulation and policy without government involvement. Are you proposing those should be violated by a new broadband regime? That would certainly get government out of the way. You are proposing that the superceded "out of the way" regulator be replaced by ________ ?? > Repeal the regulations, fire the government employees. Sell street access to the highest bidders with the guarantee that any price may be charged by the fibre companies. The government could post a bond with a legal firm in another country of say $100 billion to be forfeited if anyone employed by the government mentions the word "price" in conjunction with "fibre" or otherwise suggests megabyte prices are too high and the "gummint will save the poor cyberspace users from the depredations of the evil high-priced monopolist and ensure that poor people on the wrong side of the digital divide get access too". When a highway robbers stands in the middle of the road and says "stand and deliver", they are in the way. Suggesting they get out of the way is pretty clear. It's not a matter of a free market delivering that process, it's a matter of the highway robber going away. < "out of the way". Presumably such changes will be enacted and enforced through the tender mercies of commercial interest? > Suggesting the governments get out of the way in regard to taxation means they stop forcing tax payments. I don't know what Japan and Korea did but I note in Japan they have high population density, electronic urban lifestyles, rules which allow wires to be strung around without 20 years of environmental costs and paralysis by analysis, rail lines enabling easy and secure wide distribution and perhaps pricing philosophies which make sense. Our son lived in Japan and noted Yahoo! [as I recall] people standing by train stations handing out cyberspace connections - just passing out the boxes, no charge. They have low unit costs. Mqurice