> The result is not competition, but a government sponsored duopoliy. > This didn't bring more players to the table, it just let those already > at the table offer a full set of overlapping services. Likely a good > step, but not the same as getting new entrants into the market. > > -- > Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 > PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
"Back in the day" people used to get their email, usenet, maybe even hosting their web page, from their ISP. When DSL came about, many of these services migrated to the portals and the ISP became less of a "services provider" and more of a "transport provider". The "problem" with operations like the cable providers is that they seem to want to fight tooth and nail not to allow the video services a person consumes becoming an a la carte service where the end user picks and chooses from what amounts to "video portal" sites. An analogy from the old days might be an ISP trying very hard to prevent users from getting Yahoo! or Google mail or outside web hosting. The cable providers apparently aren't keen on simply being an ISP and allowing end users to get their video content from wherever they choose. In other words, they see themselves as a video content provider that also provides internet service while the market is trying to move them to an internet provider that also offers video content. This is made worse when the content distributor is also the content producer. The migration toward the "siloing" of entertainment content means this problem will just get worse. What's next? AT&T buying Disney and Verizon buying National Amusements? So now you have the company that produces the product also owns the railroad that delivers the product and charges fees for competitors shipping their goods on that railroad that makes the others less competitive. So the competing railroads simply buy up their own freight producers and do the same thing. Or do we create a "highway" that allows any number of freight shippers to operate to ship goods from any number of buyers to any number of sellers. I suppose what it boils down to is making the companies decide what they are. Are they an "internet service provider" or are they an "entertainment content provider" because being both at the same time seems to be a built-in conflict of interest from the consumer's point of view.
