On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Seth Cohn <sethc...@gnuhampshire.org> wrote: > And the only reason you don't have a choice is that cable franchises > are government controlled monopolies.
That's certainly the biggest reason, but not the only one. In many rural areas, there is little to no profit incentive to run new telecom infrastructure (be it better copper pair, coax, fiber, whatever). Quite often, the only way a town can even get a coax system (cable TV) at all is by promising the provider exclusive rights for X number of years. In some jurisdictions, the incumbent coax operator is *not* granted a monopoly by the town -- other companies are welcome to come in and run their own lines. But this effectively *never* happens, because there's no money in trying to win business away from the incumbent. Facilities costs will be about the same for all companies, so they either have to sell at a huge loss indefinitely (and thus go out of business), or the customers don't see a reason to switch. Competing coax plants are probabbly feasible in dense population areas (big cities), but we don't have many/any of those in NH. Look at FiOS. Verizon got the hell out of NH because there's no money in ut. FairPoint apparently can't afford to keep the copper maintained, let alone build out fiber. It's a hard problem to solve. One idea I've heard that seems like it might be good is "structural separation". One company runs the lines, but doesn't offer service over them. Other companies offer service over the common lines. Lines could be privately owned, or owned by the town and run by contract, like roads. I've read it's been done successfully in some smaller European countries. -- Ben _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
