Level 3 blames Internet slowdowns on Technica

Fri Mar 21 10:24:19 UTC 2014

> How do you get around the problem of natural monopolies, then?   Or should
> we be moving to a world where, say, a dozen or more separate companies are
> all running fiber or coax on the poles on my street in an effort to get to
> my house?
> 
> IMHO, the only way to get real competition on the last mile is to have the
> actual fiber/wire infrastructure being owned by a neutral party that's
> required to pass anyone's traffic.

Which closely resembles what the original goal of "the National Infrastructure
Initiative" was, back in the early 1990's.  Fiber to the homes.  86 million
of them by 2006.  The Bells volunteered to do it in exchange for incentives,
which they got, and kept, and then never delivered what was promised.

The best short summary of what happened is probably here:

http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm

This boooklet is now maybe ~5-10 years old so it doesn't reflect more 
recent developments.

We *let* the monopolies (er, duopolies in some cases) get away with the
regulatory and legislative manipulation that led to the current outcome,
and the irony that the message I'm responding to was authored by someone
who appears to work for one of those companies would write such a message
is not lost upon me.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.