> Let Comcast, TW, AT&T, Verizon, etc relinquish their monopoly > protections and then perhaps we can see something resembling a free > and open business climate evolve. Even that would deny that they > already have become vast and powerful on these govt-mandated > sinecures.
The problem with this is that so long as service providers are allowed to be facilities providers, there is an economic natural tendency to monopoly or small-N oligopoly in all but the densest of population centers that will result as a simple matter of external reality. It simply costs too damn much to put facilities in for there to be large-N copies of facilities serving the same area. That is one of the reasons I'm such a huge fan of home-run SWCs[1] with large colos run by a facilities only provider, whether that FOP is a municipality, NGO, or for profit entity (or even multiples if that were to somehow be feasible). Owen [1] Serving "Wire" Center -- a hub where all of the fiber from a given distribution area (of radius N where N < maximum reasonable distance served by common transmission technologies available at the time of construction with costs in reason for household usage. Today, I believe that's about 5km, but it may be more).
