Fergie's Tech Blog

Broadband Is Too Important to Be Left to Cable-Phone Duopoly

Rob Pegoraro writes in The Washington Post:

Competition in the market for broadband Internet access remains alive, despite what can look like a concerted campaign by big business and government to abolish it. The latest such steps were a Supreme Court ruling and a Federal Communications Commission vote that allowed cable and phone companies to block competitors from their networks.

Be glad that competitors are still around: The phone and cable incumbents still fall short of many customers' needs, and it's up to other companies to meet them.

But as long as telephone and cable TV lines are the only affordable ways to pipe data to and from a house, any challenger to Comcast, Verizon and their ilk must first go into business with them. The competitor has to rent a phone or cable company's wires -- lines installed under a government-sanctioned monopoly -- to reach any customer's home.

posted by Fergie @ 8/14/2005 10:05:00 AM