What do we mean when we say "competition?" (was: Re: [Latest draft of Internet regulation bill])

Wed Nov 16 07:43:55 UTC 2005

On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com wrote:

> This is more or less what BT has done in the UK by splitting
> off all the field engineering into a separate company called
> Openreach.

Telia in Sweden did that (Skanova), now that they're privatised (partly) 
they're merging that unit back again, and it never was a really separate 
unit.

Having a separate cable company with airtight divide to the service 
company is a must. Economy of scale says only one cable is needed to the 
consumer, but from there it seems there is enough different ways of doing 
things that it warrants a plenthora of companies to supply service, I 
would say at least three.

Price of bw in Sweden which generally has at least 3 different ISPs 
colocating with telia in the larger phone stations, is at $25 per month 
plus tax for ADSL 8/1, personally I think that if we had a separate cable 
company this would actually be slightly lower, if not, we would at least 
have equal access to the premesis (currently something like 30% of the 
phonestations are claimed to be "out of space" by Telia, but they can 
still build-out new services themselves as they prioritize their own 
equipment).

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se