[opendtv] Re: Why We Despise Cable Providers
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2017 14:52:41 -0400
On Aug 4, 2017, at 10:37 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
Politicians created this sad state of affairs.
No, Craig, you're just parroting the simplistic/dumb-ass words of lunatic
yahoos. Politicians did not make it expensive to lay down cabled networks.
That happened because it's a labor-intensive effort.
Those cables have been laid down multiple times.
Early systems were analog with limited bandwidth; later bandwidth increased to
400-500 MHz
Then cable went digital with 750 MHz bandwidth, then 900, now 1 GHz.
Was this expensive? Sure. But expense was not the issue.
When cable expanded beyond CATV and started providing original programming in
the '80s the politicians stepped in. Cities started requiring franchise
agreements with all kinds of requirements on the provider. THe industry still
grew.
Then the broadcasters got their pound of flesh in 1992. By the end of that
decade, with the help f the politicians, five companies controlled 90% of the b
content offered by cable. But the real problems were the provisions in the 1992
cable act that allowed rates to increase if the system added more channels. The
congloms were more than happy to fill them, increasing both the number of
channels in each congloms' bundle and the subscriber fees charged for these
channels.
SO PLEASE don't try to tell us that the politicians had nothing to do with this.
But politicians CAN entrench monopolies via regulation as we have
observed for more than a century.
Mostly lunatic fringe rhetoric.
No Bert. Just history. I've been through all of this recently with the excerpts
from The Political Spectrum.
The inclusion of four words in the 1934 Communications Act opened the door to a
century of protection of special interests, higher prices for consumers, and a
sea anchor on innovation:
"In the Public Interest"
Did you notice the way the Democrats used those words again in their submission
to the FCC in the Net Neutrality proceeding?
Let me put it this way. If imposing neutrality mandates means that certain
overly greedy bastards can't play, so be it.
But that's not what is happening. It entrenches another monopoly in what has
become the most important infrastructure in communications, and it allows one
class of overly greedy bastards to dominate Internet services (think Google,
Facebook and Amazon), while the ISPs are prevented from competing on an equal
footing. And it erects huge barriers to competition to new entrants in the ISP
business.
Without neutrality mandates, those GBs would ruin the Internet.
That is FAKE NEWS. Neutrality mandates are not preventing walled gardens,
massive private data collection, and the formation of new monopolies in the
service business.
This is just a canard that the Net Neutrality proponents throw out without any
justification - the fact is that the nobody is blocking services to promote
their own services. And the fact is that there are many prioritized fast lanes
- that is how the internet works, and consumers can choose the speed of the
lane they are willing to pay for.
There's not enough competition **today** to prevent this from happening.
It is not happening. I agree that there is not enough competition. The Title II
decision assures that new entrants will be blocked to protect the cable
companies and telcos.
It's just like they tried to do with the telephone network, 110+ years ago.
(And beyond this, I'm not even convinced you care about net neutrality,
Craig. I think you'd be fine with overly greedy bastards having their way.)
Another canard. The telephone system could not have grown without
interconnections. The decision to create a monopoly slowed innovation and cost
consumers billions in monopoly rents.
Unfortunately, Craig, because you can't connect the dots, you don't see why
this is so. You say "5G", and you ignore the backhaul (mostly cabled)
networks.
Another canard.
As I have explained, the backhaul already exists. How do you thin DSL works
Bert?
But in most markets this backhaul is also a monopoly - it was built by the
monopoly ILEC. So when 5G fixed wireless becomes available were back to a
duopoly of cable and wired telco, some of which also offer FTTH.
You say that the 5G towers are "only for the last quarter mile," and perhaps
even less, and for some reason, this doesn't instantly tell you that your
rhetoric about vast competition has just been voided.
Why is it voided? We have no idea how the industry will evolve moving forward
if competition is enabled rather than forced to play the regulatory game. A
neighborhood association could leas a fiber and build their own ISP service.
But we do know that there are now 4-6 cellular companies in every market, and
plenty of fiber interconnecting these towers. We do know that 5G will allow
point to point interconnects (ala microwave). And we don't know what
innovations are sitting out there on the horizon.
Why should we create another regulated oligopoly, when we can see the benefits
of real competition in front of our eyes, with the success of the deregulated
cellular industry.
I mention the possibility of wireless backhaul networks, and in your rush to
argue, you claim that such backhaul is impossible.
Bullshit. I mentioned wireless backhaul and you claimed I did not know what I
was talking about.
Now you do a 180.
Typical.
Regards
Craig
Other related posts:
