Is Competition Great? Sure, for the Other Guy

It39s amusing sadly to watch cable39s original highspeed broadband providers lobby for state and local laws that would stop municipalities from overbuilding themamp160 Oh I fully understand there are a number of good reasons for that amp8230 among them the failure of mostly small communities to effectively competeamp160 A lot of small towns have lost a lot of money so what are the incumbents sayingamp160 Let39s avoid those taxpayerfunded losses even if the taxpayers want to take the risk and stop anyone in government from competing amp160That ain39t AmericanFCC Chairman Tom Wheeler our great champion of quotcompetitionprettymuchonlyheandGooglelikequot and his two semiroutine acolytes attempted to prohibit states from passing laws restricting any overbuilding by governmentamp160 The FCC not quite amazingly forgot about our Federal Republicamp160 States have rights that federal agencies cannot willynilly overrule A court reminded Tom et alAnd hey Chattanooga39s overbuild worked amp8230 its even driven significant economic benefits to the region amp160But Greenlight cannot expand into adjacent areas because well Tennessee said quotnoquotamp160 There39s that use of taxpayer money conundrum Why should the government challenge private enterprise That ain39t rightamp160Most of the time anyway when private enterprise canamp160There are for good reason federal state and local highways and byways Parks Water Sewage EtcSo is that it Maybe notamp160Up here where I live at about 9600 hundred feet the town of Breckenridge is talking with the rest of Summit County39s towns about a ballot proposal to override Colorado39s similar ban And some towns including Longmont have already done soamp160There39s a kicker though Telecommunications of all kinds amp160video telephony wireless the Internet and so on all only truly work with scale And scale refers to the size of user groups the more the better It is all about the cost to serve each subscriber Took awhile for Google to learn that it costs to wire citiesOverbuilding can work think WOWamp160 But the risks increase the smaller the marketIt should be interesting to watch this fall in my county as the voters akaamp160taxpayers signal their quotyaysquotamp160or quotnaysquotBut not of course heard from monopolists oligarchs or dictatorsamp160Random NotesWay short on the spectrum auctions amp160Wonder what39s next if anythingRumors abound that the FCC will back off its settop box crusade to something resembling the industry suggestions Good move Someone actually paid attention to the copyright implicationsAbout Google and incumbent broadband providers The incumbents are trying in a couple of markets to prevent Google from getting a better pole attachment deal If it hadn39t been for the remarkably heavyhanded Mountain Bell unit of ATampampT and some true cooperation between Republican and Democrats cable never would have gotten a good pole attachment regimen Mountain Bell goons followed around a Democratic US Representative for no real reason except that he and they disagreed He and I were on a panel together one day babbling about telecom issues I said he ought to get to know the cable industrySo all the way back at CableVision magazine in the early 3970s we decided to invite a number of cable guys including my friend Bill Daniels who had more Republican elephants in his house than you could count and many other very Republican cable executives to our offices for cocktails and a chance to meet Rep Tim Wirth of BoulderThey talkedamp160And they turned out to have a lot in commonamp160And a law got passed that provided rational pole attachment rulesamp160And cable grew And along the way it built an infrastructure that lent itself to high speed broadband before anyone elseWhich is great Unless the powersthatbe dictate an end to further competitionThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet management or associated bloggersamp160

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Is Competition Great? Sure, for the Other Guy

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Paul S. Maxwell

"About That with Carl Mayer:" Alaina Donnellon (Episode 6) - By Carl Mayer

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