[Nanog] ATT VP: Internet to hit capacity by 2010

Tue Apr 22 20:50:18 UTC 2008

On April 21, 2008 at 09:44 drc at virtualized.org (David Conrad) wrote:
 > 
 > I suspect this was referencing the difference between "public" as in  
 > governmentally owned/operated (e.g., most of the highway system in the  
 > US) vs. "private" that is non-governmentally owned/operated.  The  
 > Internet of today does indeed exist because of private efforts.

But several of the major players in the net neutrality issue are
beneficiaries of legal monopolies (e.g., just try to go into the
landline voice business in Verizon's territory) and thus regulated for
good reason.

I think once a company accepts a legally enforced monopoly, sometimes
with 100M or more customers, they're not really a private company.

If they want the freedoms of a purely private company then they should
renounce their monopolies.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

I realize others involved on the same side are not legal monopolies,
though even cable TV companies have legally enforced monopolies or
near monopolies on the catv wire plants in many of their customer
regions.

Remove the companies with the legal monopolies from the net neutrality
issue (i.e., demand net neutrality only from the monopoly
beneficiaries) and would this be much of an issue?

Not really.

That's because what you'd be left with is *competition*.

But how can anyone seriously compete with companies who can
cross-subsidize from legally enforced monopolies of 100M customers,
including every single business in their region which is often
delineated in chunks like "all of the northeastern united states" or
thereabouts?

Fair is fair: They shouldn't be able to have it both ways and be able
to cry "legal monopoly!" when someone tries to compete with them and
"private company!" when the monopoly grantors try to reasonably
regulate that monopoly-derived power.

It's an awesome market power they have been granted. We shouldn't let
them use it to control other markets.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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