re: Ways around the cox data cap, put account in name of "home business"

I am way over the cap and I am not even a cord cutter. I'm extremely unhappy about this. We already pay nearly 300 for their service they should offer an unlimited plan for bundled.

I might try to check business. How much is it?

quote:

---

In the current market where local regulatory strategies are off the rails...I don't think what you are saying is possible. Without getting rid of the local regulations that allow municipalities to make under the table (hell above the table too) deals with particular providers that make competition impossible to create there is no way we won't see one or the other or maybe both.

ETA Until we have complete regulatory reform at all levels of government as it applies to ISP the consumer will basically have little influence over what the ISPs do...that is my point.

---

While it's obvious that competition is sorely lacking in the ISP market, I don't think the solution is as "simple" as deregulating the industry and outlawing local government-sanctioned monopolies. While this might spur competition initially, in the mid- to long-term we will be left with the same local monopoly situation and no regulatory power over them.

To understand the reason for this, we have to think about why local governments decided to create local monopolies to begin with. Yes, surely there are kickbacks galore, and that is absolutely disgusting. But there is also a valid economic reason to set up these local monopolies: it makes the services cheaper for consumers. It sounds counterintuitive and flat-out wrong, but hear me out. My logic goes as follows:

Duplication of infrastructure is costly, and those costs must be passed down to consumers. I've found that most estimates for building ISP infrastructure come out to around $1k per home, on average. So, for an ISP to hook up a small city of 10k homes, it might cost around $10million. Assuming they are the only game in town and get 10k subscribers, they would need to make $200 profit per year from each home to pay off their investment in 5 years. Now, if a competitor comes in and builds out their own $10million network and splits the subscribers, it will take them each 10 years to pay off their investments while earning $200 per subscriber per year.

But, really, we would all like more than just 2 choices, so what if a dozen companies come in and compete at this level? It just doesn't make any sense economically, neither for the ISPs nor the consumers. So, even in a completely deregulated market, the most likely outcome is the ISPs agree not to compete either per city, or per neighborhood, or at whatever level makes sense to them. We would be left with the same limited choices as we have now. Either that, or we force competition and drive prices UP as a result.


The only solution that I see is to separate the ISP company from the physical infrastructure company, and only grant monopoly status to the infrastructure entity (or make the infrastructure publicly-owned). This way, any number of ISPs can come in and compete on price and service over the common infrastructure, avoiding the unnecessary expense of duplicate build-outs. Of course, this has its own problems to be solved, like the possible transfer of ownership from private to public (that wouldn't fly with most Americans), deciding who is responsible for the initial investment and upgrades in the future, etc. But I think these problems are solvable, and IMO a solution similar to this is the only way to have a truly competitive ISP market.