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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (2948)	2/25/1999 6:54:00 PM
From: Sam Citron	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Mike, Thanks for highlighting the congestion issue. It becomes most profitable for the MSO just as they reach saturation levels under which service quality deteriorates. It sounds like MSOs are using very short-term models of profit maximization to determine when to add capacity. This is too bad, and poses interesting questions for municipalities who have hitched their bandwidth future to a nasty monopolist. Do those contracts specify minimum required levels of service? I'd like the contract to be worded in such a way that in return for offering the MSO a monopoly and access to public right of way, if adequate service levels cannot be sustained, then the municipality is free to invite competitive bids in from other providers who will make the necessary infrastructure improvements and provide minimum specified compensation level to the original MSO. I guess this gets us back in a long winded way to the open access principle. Other than by ensuring competition, how else can the industry be made to behave itself? I hope I don't come off as a Bolshevik, because I am not one. I know that the price system alone can solve the bandwidth allocation problem quite nicely, but there are serious issues of market exclusion here. Sam