For my money, the best headline of last week was “The U.S.’s crap infrastructure threatens the cloud.” The rant goes on to explain just how crummy our access to the Internet is.
As a patriotic American, I find the current political atmosphere where telecom lobbyists set the agenda to be a nightmare. All over the world, high-end fiber is being deployed while powerful monopolies in the United States work to prevent it from coming here. Some of those monopolies are even drafting “model legislation” to protect themselves from both community broadband and commercial competition.
He nails a number of important points, including the absurdity of allowing de facto monopolies to write the legislation that governs them. However, Andew Oliver’s article is a bit muddled on the issue of “monopoly.” I have argued with several people that the term “monopoly” has historically meant firms with large market power, not the more stringent definition of “the only seller” of a good. It is not clear how Oliver is using the term.
Because of this confusion, you can come away from his piece with the firm idea that it is primarily government’s fault we have a duopoly of crap DSL and less crappy cable. He repeatedly says “state-sponsored monopolies.” However, no local or state government may offer exclusive franchises for cable or telecom services and the federal government hasn’t officially backed monopolies for decades.
This is a key point that many still fail to understand – a majority seem to believe that local governments bless monopolies when local governments actually are desperate for more choices. This is why they fall all over themselves to beg Google to invest in their community or they build they own networks (over 400 communities have wired telecom networks that offer services to some local businesses and/or residents).
Poor laws and regulations have helped the massive cable and telephone companies to maintain their status – that is why they spend so much on lobbying and political contributions at all levels of government. They want to and have successfully corrupted the process, neutralizing the power of government to protect consumer interests and prevent a few firms from dominating the market.
What is missing from the conversation is Wall Street’s role. Wall Street abhors competition, particularly for something as essential as Internet access because rigorous competition drives down profit margins. Wall Street puts a massive premium on consolidation and preventing competition. It wants a few firms to control this market so they can regularly increase fees and increase shareholder value (at the expense of the rest of our economy).
It isn’t JUST federal and state government policy that is rewarding the duopoly, there are a host of reinforcing factors. And while government did indeed establish monopoly for the phone system 100 years ago, it resulted in a fantastic universal service network – so those who might argue a government sanctioned monopoly was never a good idea have a high burden to prove it.
As to how we have moved from a monopoly service model to having choices… well, lobbyists have been paid a lot specifically to mangle that process to benefit a few corporations. Our government has been corrupted and we have to live with the effects every day. But even without government, we would almost certainly we stuck with a monopoly, perhaps even worse as we would lack the few consumer protections we still have.
I was heartened to see the Obama Administration block the AT&T – T-Mobile merger as it suggests that there is a spark of hope for antitrust rules to prevent further consolidation. Stopping consolidation is the first step to having real choices because massive corporations amass not just economy of scale advantages over rivals, but find it much easier to influence the rules in their favor and to disadvantage competitors.
Returning to a fact from Oliver’s article, he pays $1500/month for 30 Mbps symmetrical fiber. If he lived in Monticello, he would pay $100/month for that business connection. Community owned fiber is not merely about the technology, it includes numerous other benefits including radically lower prices that help local businesses to succeed.
Photo courtesy of JSquish via Wikipedia Commons
