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6/29/2013 1:04:00 PM
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Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly, and Unfair

Thought I'd share this since some people are upset that Microsoft reversed their Xbox One DRM policy and this video talks about a pretty big reason the original policy sucked. Here's a couple of interesting bits. [quote]What's happened is that these enormous telecommunications companies, Comcast and Time Warner on the wired side, Verizon and AT&T on the wireless side, have divided up markets, put themselves in the position where they're subject to no competition and no oversight from any regulatory authority. And they're charging us a lot for internet access and giving us second class access.[/quote] [quote]It's fair to say that the U.S. at the best is in the middle of the pack when it comes to both the speed and cost of high speed internet access connections. So in Hong Kong right now you can get a 500 megabit symmetric connection that's unimaginably fast from our standpoint for about 25 bucks a month. In Seoul, for $30 you get three choices of different providers of fiber in your apartment. And they come in and install in a day because competition's so fierce. In New York City there's only one choice, and it's 200 bucks a month for a similar service. And you can't get that kind of fiber connection outside of New York City in many parts of the country. Verizon's only serving about 10 percent of Americans. So let's talk about the wireless side for a moment, you know, the separate marketplace that people use for mobility. In Europe you can get unlimited texting and voice calls and data for about $30 a month, similar service from Verizon costs $90 a month. That's a huge difference.[/quote]

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  • Having the regional equivalent of a monopoly harms consumers and benefits the monopoly? No way. It's amazing how the dynamic of the conversation has shifted from what trying to find the right balance between socialist and free market principles to how much crony capitalism are we going to tolerate. I guess the people that actually lived through the Gilded Age that was rife with robber barons really just had no clue what they were talking about when the pushed for and enacted antitrust laws. Not to worry though, our corporate masters will surely invest in expanding infrastructure just as soon as we allow them to completely privatize profit and socialize losses.

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