>do you think you'll be happy with the resulting level of investment?
I'll be accepting of it. At least we get the end results of our own failure to persuade the public or politicians.
As it is our fate is left to 'market forces'. Market forces have been undeniably screwing us for the better part of a decade. And it's looking like they want more for less in the future.
> Market forces have been undeniably screwing us for the better part of a decade.
Excuse me? What's been screwing us in broadband is precisely that market forces are not operating, because local governments have been giving sweetheart deals to particular providers.
I suggest you read some of these agreements, they're usually online. Here's the one for my town: http://www.wilmingtonde.gov/docs/1320/3716Rev1.pdf. These aren't sweetheart deals. Generally, they extract millions of dollars for tangentially-related municipal programs, and then have build-out requirements forcing you to serve areas above a certain density even if you can't sign up enough customers to make it profitable. Basically, the terms are unattractive enough such that only the big de-facto monopolies are willing to take the deal.
> the terms are unattractive enough such that only the big de-facto monopolies are willing to take the deal.
Which means that these are effectively sweetheart deals for the big de facto monopolies, since without them there would certainly be an incentive for smaller competitors to enter the market. That may not have been the intent of the municipal governments, so "sweetheart deal" may not be the best descriptive term, but that's what ends up happening. It certainly isn't a free market with these kinds of requirements in place.
Yes, there is something of Br'er Rabbit in giant incumbent telcos' complaining about regulations. "Please mister please don't use the complicated franchise agreement my lawyer sent you that is actually written to conform exactly to my M&Ps!"
WTF? Now I have read it (well frankly I skimmed the last 25 of the 40 pages in this particular assignment), and it was clearly written by the Comcast lawyer. This isn't surprising: it's a contract between two parties, one of which executes scores of such contracts every year, and the other of which does so about once a decade. Who else would have written it? Saul Goodman?
As 'pdonis said, the "unattractive" terms are there precisely so that "only the big de-facto monopolies are willing to take the deal".
Our level of investment in all our other public infrastructure is dismal: http://www.asce.org/failuretoact. Why would investment into internet infrastructure be any different? Indeed, it'd probably be worse. Remember, the electorate skews older than the overall population, while I'd bet internet usage skews younger.
I'll be accepting of it. At least we get the end results of our own failure to persuade the public or politicians.
As it is our fate is left to 'market forces'. Market forces have been undeniably screwing us for the better part of a decade. And it's looking like they want more for less in the future.