If 'Big Tech' Is an Antitrust Problem, Why Are We Ignoring Telecom?

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190603/11293142321/if-big-tech-is-huge-antitrust-problem-why-are-we-ignoring-telecom.shtml

by fyoving • 7 years ago

573 168 7 years ago

techdirt.com

yeahitslikethat2• 7 years ago

Because telecom companies' monopolies are easy to understand. Google doesn't have to run wires to everyone's house. In fact, they tried and failed. It's a lot harder than building a website.

wvenable2• 7 years ago

They are easy to understand and the harm that they do to consumers is very real and easy to measure.

yeahitslikethat2• 7 years ago

Internet should be classed as a utility and regulated as such. Infrastructure and bits should be separate.

thrower123• 7 years ago

I don't think anybody ignores that telecoms is a big monopoly problem; people know intimately that they have one or if they are lucky, two real options in any given market.

We busted up Ma Bell once long ago, and it has just coalesced back together. The capital costs and infrastructure tend towards it being a natural monopoly, so I don't think that we'll reasonably see a million telecom flowers bloom without putting the finger on the scale heavily.

Software is so much more ephemeral, and we have a much healthier oligopoly of big players. Even the sick old man of computing, IBM, is doing better than Time Warner did trying to compete in cable.

C1sc0cat• 7 years ago

No the local monopoly was never busted - just use LLU

pjc50• 7 years ago

What happened to local loop unbundling? Is the problem that it didn't also apply to "cable"?

jessaustin• 7 years ago

The "problem" was that ILECs never followed the rules and regulators never punished them for that. If a CLEC wanted to add a customer, they got a schedule for 3 weeks, even though the ILEC would do it in less than a week if the customer were signing up with them. Anyway, the schedule was also a fiction, because the ILEC would come up with half a dozen reasons to delay it to 5 weeks. We're not talking about a technician visiting a customer's house. We're talking about a couple of switches thrown in a central office, an operation that would take less than a minute. How could anyone attract new customers in such a situation? That is why all CLECs went bust or were acquired for pennies on the dollar.

In other nations, with functioning regulation, unbundling was considered unworkable so they required that a separate entity would own the local loop.

ixtli• 7 years ago

Spoilers: it's because our regulatory, legislative, and judicial infrastructure exists to defend monied interests. We're incapable of taking collective action that reduces private property accumulation, so no monopoly busting.

ocdtrekkie2• 7 years ago

Google has been the largest spender in DC for a couple years now, I believe.

Goronmon• 7 years ago

Only the last couple of years? Sounds like they have a lot of catching up to do then.

jonas21• 7 years ago

I don't think that's true.

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2019&inde...

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2018&inde...

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=2017&inde...

microdrum2• 7 years ago

Because even Comcast, the most evil of the telecom companies, doesn't put out a web browser that seeks to permanently entrench its ad business. In fact, it lets me use any browser I want.

wvenable2• 7 years ago

But Comcast doesn't provide browsers, they provide telecom services and if you're lucky you might be able to choose another provider in your area.

Rooster61• 7 years ago

In fact, it lets me use any browser I want

...to connect to the gateway they specify, and pull reams of data from with nary a bat of an eye from Washington.

microdrum2• 7 years ago

But, again, they don't seem to use Comcast Business Layer A to entrench Comcast Business Layer B. They could put a tax on every call to Stripe API if they wanted. They don't. The worst thing they've done is throttle Netflix (very bad) and the market spoke and they were shamed publicly.

rayiner9• 7 years ago

By any measure, telecom is a fairy concentrated market that creates antitrust concerns, relative to many other industries. But the comparison to telecom only highlights the market concentration in tech. There are four major wireless carriers, none with more than about a third of the market. Google has 90% of the search market. There are just two viable mobile OS competitors, and Android has 75% market share (50% in the US). Even within a given market, there is more competition in telecom. The big four cellular companies are nationwide. Verizon is just the sixth largest wireline carrier, has less than 40% market share across its FiOS footprint. That does not mean that telecom (or day health insurance) is a highly competitive market. It’s not. But at least search and mobile is even less competitive.

It also matters what is happening going forward. Even in areas with no wired competition, wireless (cellular and satellite) exerts competitive pressure. 15% of high income households have abandoned wired internet for cellular only, and that number is growing. (There are more cellular-only households by a large margin than ones that use something other than Google search.) Meanwhile, there is no viable competition in sight for Google Search or Android.

lg• 7 years ago

aren't you conflating market share with the existence of competition? anyone has the choice to switch to bing today, but many people have no choice of telecom provider (cellular internet doesn't work for all the people in areas with bad cellular reception to begin with).

luckylion4• 7 years ago

anyone has the choice to switch to bing today, but many people have no choice of telecom provider

Do they though? I mean, bing exists, sure, but it's inferior and more expensive (by lacking quality). Hey, you can switch to satellite telephony/internet or connect two tin cans with a string if you really want to get off of your mobile provider.

cellular internet doesn't work for all the people in areas with bad cellular reception to begin with

But the majority of US citizens have a choice, right, the population centers do have multiple carriers?

orthecreedence• 7 years ago

There are four major wireless carriers, none with more than about a third of the market.

Can that be said for wired internet carriers? And can that be said at the municipal level and not just the national level? My point is that in many areas, people generally don't have a choice in who their internet provider is. So if you look nationally, yes, the coverage is split between several companies, but at the local levels the areas serviced are often carved up such that there are local monopolies.

rayiner9• 7 years ago

Obviously there is more market concentration in telecom than say in frozen yogurt. But telecoms face competition (from DSL, cellular, and satellite) in almost every market. Comcast, for example, has 47% broadband market share even in its own footprint: https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2019/04/24/wha.... They also face competition across local markets. Verizon followed Google Fiber to the $70-80 for gigabit price point, even though it competed in no markets with Google.

PaulHoule• 7 years ago

Big Tech is global, however, so it faces regulatory pressure from Europeans and other people who are more keen to regulate than the U.S.

Thus the U.S. feels pressured to keep up.

paulddraper4• 7 years ago

The FCC tracks this (well, they track availability, not market share). [1]

98% of census blocks have multiple ISPs offering 10Mbps+

82% of census blocks have multiple ISPs offering 25Mbps+

(This doesn't count wireless offerings.)

[1] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-355166A1.pdf

partiallypro2• 7 years ago

Wired internet carriers having monopolies are almost all because of local laws and agreements. The only way to bust it is to say those "rights of way" restrictions are illegal...which isn't going to happen.

mjevans3• 7 years ago

Where I live, in a suburb well within the metro area around the city of Seattle (WA), I am LUCKY to have even one provider that offers at least 25Mbit (per second, down). They thankfully offer 1 Gigabit down packages (very recently, YEARS behind when Seattle got this 'city wide').

HOWEVER, there is ZERO competition so:

    * data-caps
    * horrendous over-charges
    * UPLOAD (on a 1000Mbit line) ~= 30 Mbit

Yes, that's right, the upload is about ONE THIRTIETH, a very small fraction, of the download. Even the BUSINESS plans don't go much higher (while costing tons more, and really only having a support that will say sorry and give a small credit with no actual rush on support; in past experience).

So very much no. The wired-line sector is a natural monopoly that should be like roads to the airport. I should pay a very small bit in taxes for good connections to the global hub, and at said global hub I should have my choice of services from many providers.

ashelmire• 7 years ago

So if you look nationally, yes, the coverage is split between several companies, but at the local levels the areas serviced are often carved up such that there are local monopolies.

It's not just that they are monopolies, but that they are anticompetitive monopolies. In some cases, they are even granted by local governments.

javiramos• 7 years ago

Yes - in my building I only have one provider option. And I pay $60/month for crappy internet.

taurath2• 7 years ago

Google + FB has 85% of the mobile ad market, with margins upwards of 25% of their ENTIRE business, not just the mobile ad market. I'd estimate that their effective margin on just search + ads to be somewhere in the 200-300% range so they can afford to do everything else. The fact that no competitors can get in on margins like THAT, at ANY price, tells you something.

I absolutely believe investors would collectively drop a cool $50 billion if they could become a direct competitor to Google. Why can't they? Not because Google will go after them in a direct way, but network effects are de-facto monopolies, and you'd probably have to spend a $500b dollars and never make money to start making a real dent. Its an impassable moat - the only chance any company has is to have a massive share of whichever platform comes next.

orky56• 7 years ago

The question becomes, are companies that are successful due to network effects worthy of anti-trust probes? Network effects will always lead to monopolies since the incentive for someone to switch to a new service must have an increasingly larger value proposition over the incumbent.

ng122• 7 years ago

Google has 90% of the search market.

I can use Bing. I can use DuckDuckGo. I just don't want to.

However, I've been a Verizon customer for almost a decade against my will.

daj40• 7 years ago

Agreed.

If Google began to charge for their services, at least there would be a way out. If a single market telecom raised prices or change policies, there isn't any real recourse.

mgreg2• 7 years ago

And if you wanted to place an ad online to say, reach everyone in the US of driving age (car ad), or in Toronto during an NBA game (Pizza ad) what are all your options?

autoexec2• 7 years ago

Bing was caught getting their search results in part from google and their response was "who cares". Last I checked Duckduckgo got their results from other places like bing and yahoo (who also uses google's results). One way or another, google's results are what you're getting no matter who you're using it seems.

the_watcher4• 7 years ago

There is plenty of competition for the search market, Google wins based on their superior product. That's wildly different than the situation in telecoms. The mobile OS example is more compelling.

dajohnson893• 7 years ago

How competitive is the healthcare market? Would breaking up the big players or lowering the barrier to entry help with the outrageous cost of healthcare?

thorwasdfasdf3• 7 years ago

No. The problem with healthcare is they can't compete against each other: Imagine you just got into a car accident. There's no way you can shop around for the best deal on a hospital while your head is bleeding out. Due to the fact that competition is impossible, we need to strictly regulate the healthcare market to prevent the predatory healthcare that's given. Right now, they can make up any number they want and charge you for it.

I don't like it because it's not how market economies are supposed to work, but we absolutely need strict controls on pricing. For example: instead of allowing them to charge 4000$ for an ambulance ride, set the limit to something more reasonable, say 100-300$ depending on the COL in that area.

Also, expanding the labor supply of doctors and nurses would also help. Right now, there are strict limits on the # of doctors that can be made.

la_barba• 7 years ago

In what way do you plan to "break up" the big players? I'm not super familiar with prior ideas, can someone link to a few that have more specifics?

autoexec2• 7 years ago

I'd give Google more than 90% of the search market. It's hard to find a search engine that doesn't use google results in some form or another. Bing does, Yahoo does, and sites like duckduckgo which use those other search engine end up using google by extension

esoterae4• 7 years ago

Again with comparing apples and basketballs.

There are alternatives to Google search. I used them before Google existed. I still use them today, when I want to. I have the choice, which is exactly the difference between the telco monopolies and this tempest in a teapot about Google.

bsder3• 7 years ago

Google has 90% of the search market.

To me this is not the biggest issue. The biggest problem is YouTube.

YouTube is a ravenous black hole that you can't keep content out of--and that is ALL Google's fault. If I put a video online and I don't want it on YouTube and it winds up there, YouTube should have to pay a sufficient fine in a timely enough fashion such that it won't happen again.

Instead, Google banks on the fact that the small guys would have to expend so much money to fight Google that it isn't worth it. That's behavior that the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age would be quite familiar with.

joshuamorton3• 7 years ago

If you are the copyright holder, you can have them take it down.

But also what you're asking for is ridiculous. It's not reasonable to expect content aggregators/platforms to be able to conduct provenance investigations on all content.

Why should YouTube be liable when someone with a vendetta misuses their platform?

coryrc• 7 years ago

Even worse: what about when it ends up on Facebook Video and you never even know about it because you aren't in the right group?

disclaimer: my opinion, as always

SkyMarshal• 7 years ago

Meanwhile, there is no viable competition in sight for Google Search

I don't see how this can be true, Search is one of the most vulnerable, least defensible, no-moat services Google offers, and also its most important. DDG and others suffice for mainstream searches, even if techies and others notice Google is still better for niche specialist topics.

It's very easy to switch, only habit and "it just works" keep mainstream searchers on Google. As a monopoly it seems so tenuous, a far cry from owning a natural monopoly on physical infrastructure.

moosey2• 7 years ago

The regulatory systems in the US since Reagan have been anemic, and if we believe in effective business competition there are probably very few industries that would have a good time if a new regulatory environment were put in place that is more... effective? I can't find the right word because I'm biased - I strongly believe in collectivism and strong regulatory environments.

When I look at major industries: social media (sadly, IMO), telecom, health care, transportation, military, and more; what I see are industries that need regulation in order to meet the needs of society, but that is based on my point of view of the world. My guess is that the folks with capital and data, and thus power, view the situation very differently, and are more focused on their own needs than those of a more nebulous society that has needs. I believe that this can be seen in the practices of businesses throughout the United States.

So, are "we" ignoring telecom? No, that headline is aggravating. Why isn't it "Antitrust issues in Telecom"? Because society has been trained to be enraged. Why? Because it serves those who already have power, and they disagree with me about how regulation should work.

Loughla• 7 years ago

It's the same across all government. You hollow out the function of actual, substantive work through 'necessary' budget cuts - like actual funding for IRS audits, any form of environmental regulation, or just education in general.

Then when the low-hanging fruit is all those agencies can pick, which happen to have the largest impact on middle- to low-income families, it gives more fodder to cut and gut the agencies.

moosey2• 7 years ago

Under the current regime (post-Reagan is what I mean), there are government bodies that still receive lots of money, and those, as you say, that are getting hollowed. The main thing that I can point to that says that it is corrupt is the fact that white collar crime is largely ignored in the interest of much smaller fish.

There are government agencies that I'd like to see gutted, though, like the prison system, the support of the weapons manufacturing industry by our military which I calculate as grotesquely unecessary, etc. There are others that disagree with me strongly on this issue. I'm not right, just opinionated.

untog• 7 years ago

Who is "we", exactly? No-one is ignoring telecom monopolies, it's something people complain about all the damn time. Spoiler alert: it's because the telecom industry has spent decades embedding itself at the top levels of organizations like the FCC, and it's gotten worse since the arrival of the Trump administration. Is that good? No. Should we change it? Yes. Does any of this have anything to do with regulating big tech? No.

This stuff just feels like whataboutism to me. There's no reason we can't tackle both big tech and telecom. If wait turns then the telecom industry will just say "what about other utilities!". Those utilities will say "what about the defense industry!" or whatever the hell.

"What about these bad guys!!" just feels like an attempt to deflect attention away from tech.

adrianmonk• 7 years ago

The allegation here isn't that the average person is ignoring it, it's that the administration is giving preferential treatment. The government is supposed to be representative of the people, so I think that's why they're calling it "we".

stvswn2• 7 years ago

It's not really, because the two (telecom and big tech) are in a fight for dominance and focusing on one will benefit the other. It's natural to wonder about the influence of telecom when the Attorney General, under whom the DOJ's investigation is being conducted, was the general counsel of GTE/Verizon for 14 years and then served on Time Warner's board until last year, helping them to merge with AT&T. If you assume the antitrust division of the DOJ has limited resources, and that they were until recently focused on telecom, it's not "whataboutism" to wonder what's driving the abrupt shift to tech.

stvswn2• 7 years ago

and to be explicit, the "we" is the FTC and the antitrust division of the DOJ.

jjn2009• 7 years ago

I was forced this morning to have Comcast charge me $40 to install a cable to set up internet at my new place by an authorized technician. I hate Comcast SO much, and from what I can tell I don't seem to have another option, supposedly AT&T but the speeds are slow and their website says my apartment is not in service area.

criddell• 7 years ago

The quality of AT&T's service is going to vary depending on where you are.

I have a gigabit connection from them that I pay $60 / month for (they lowered the price when I tried to leave). It's the fastest internet connection I've ever had.

pixelbath• 7 years ago

It's a moot point if where you live does not allow anybody but a single exclusive provider for internet, which is nearly every apartment in the US.

_bxg12• 7 years ago

I would say the strongest example is wired telecom, which may not be a national monopoly but is certainly a local monopoly across nearly the whole country. The way the companies divvy up territory to avoid competition is probably what keeps U.S. prices so much higher than, say, Europe. I wonder if a case could be made for it being a cartel.

But yes, cellular and satellite providers have started to provide a saving grace of disruption in that market. We'll see if it ends up being enough.

treis7• 7 years ago

Look at profit margins though. Apple and Facebook are consistently 30%+ and Google is 20%+. Verizon, Comcast, and the rest of the telecoms are in the low to mid teens or worse. That's pretty close to the S&P 500 average margin.

So while it appears that wired telecom is a monopoly they don't make money like monopolies. Compare Google Fiber with Google Plus. Google had people literally begging them to put Fiber in but backed off because they couldn't make (enough) money. Plus was a hugely important project for them but they canceled it because they couldn't beat Facebook.

We've seen major tech companies take aim at the monopoly/duopoly product of a rival and they've all failed:

Microsoft poured billions into Bing, Maps and mobile for little market share

Google couldn't dent Facebook with Plus

Amazon and Facebook's phones fell flat

notsureigetit• 7 years ago

Google had people literally begging them to put Fiber in but backed off because they couldn't make (enough) money.

Was that the reason, or was it because the other telecom companies were lobbying to keep Google from accessing rights of way and expanding to other cities. (One failed example:[0])

In many jurisdictions, the cable and telecom companies are attempting to make it illegal for municipalities to install their own government-run internet because they really don't want to compete. It's ridiculous. [1]

Had Google been allowed to compete like in other industries, they probably would have crushed the telecom companies. But they weren't allowed to.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber#Reactions [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/another-state-la...

creato3• 7 years ago

Verizon, Comcast, and the rest of the telecoms are in the low to mid teens or worse. That's pretty close to the S&P 500 average margin.

I would want to see the margins for just operating high speed internet service. I suspect their overall margins are lower because their financial picture is clouded by things like cable TV and content costs. A big reason why telecoms suck is precisely because if you just want high speed internet, they force you to buy all their bullshit content as well (for me, it's cheaper to buy internet + cable TV than just internet!), and they make it hard to buy that content any other way. The main action I'd like to see taken against telecoms is to force them to spin off their content businesses (and they never should have been allowed to buy them in the first place).

buddylw2• 7 years ago

Why do profit margins matter at all here? It's only a signal that there is a problem if margins are very high because there is no guarantee that an entrenched monopolistic company will be efficient or make a strong profit.

If you want to do a comparison compare consumer internet cost vs performance to places with a healthy and regulated market for internet service.

Also, by this logic Amazon could never be regulated. It doesn't make sense.

Mountain_Skies• 7 years ago

I've yet to see a telecom company tell anyone who they are allowed to communicate with or deny anyone service because they don't approve of their ideological views. That might only be tangential to antitrust issues but engaging in overreach is a good way to get the public against you which in turn makes it much easier for the government to come after you.

fzeroracer2• 7 years ago

And yet I've had to deal with telecom companies placing incredibly low data caps, overcharging for bullshit reasons, throttling consumer bandwidth when visiting certain sites or using certain protocols and more.

If Facebook decided to ban me tomorrow for whatever reason, I still have access to the rest of the internet. If my ISP decided to charge another $100 a month to access the internet, there would be nothing I could do to fight it.

You'd have to make an argument that site access is a right, which throws out moderating a platform for abuse or spam entirely.

barbecue_sauce• 7 years ago

Telecom is probably one of the industry groups lobbying for antitrust legislation/investigation against Google and its ilk.

lokimedes• 7 years ago

Economics 101 states that wasteful duplication of infrastructure is one of the few acceptable exceptions from the free market thesis. Natural monopolies should nevertheless be regulated to avoid suboptimal services.

What’s more interesting is the recent suggestions of seeing industries with a monopolistic business model such as social media as natural monopolies. Perhaps we should regulate Facebook rather than argue for breaking up telecoms?

Can_Not• 7 years ago

My street literally has a minimum of 6 companies that provide garbage collection services to me and my neighbors.

w8rbt• 7 years ago

You should have seen it when it was just AT&T.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

bryanrasmussen2• 7 years ago

Well to most people the internet is Big Tech. And the big tech internet is arguably corrosive. The only thing Telecom does is hinder people from getting more internet cheaper, faster.

Conclusion: Big Telecom is a net good.

bryanrasmussen2• 7 years ago

actually though, if you break up Big Tech who will have the money to pay Telecom for preferential broadband access?

tzs• 7 years ago

Telecom is a different kind of problem, and it is not clear that antitrust can effectively address it. From a comment of mine a couple days ago when someone here raised a similar question:

Wouldn't it make more sense to break up broadband ISP monopolies first?

Probably not for the Department of Justice. Some problems with that approach:

1. If you are trying to address the issue of limited choice in ISPs, I don't see how breaking them up addresses that. If you split an ISP that has a monopoly in a state, say, into separate ISPs for, say, each county...you've just gone from having one monopoly to having several monopolies. The limited choice is because there is only one cable coming into my house, and splitting up the company that owns that cable doesn't change that.

Addressing that probably requires something like making the last mile data transport a regulated utility that ISPs operate on top of. That would probably require Congressional action and a new President to do nationwide or to allow states to do individually.

2. Competition among ISPs in a region can vary dramatically city to city, and even neighborhood to neighborhood. I've not extensively researched this so maybe this is wrong, but the impression I've gotten is that an ISP's prices in a region tend to be pretty similar between those places within the region where they are the only choice, and those places within the region where there are alternatives with similar performing alternatives. That could make it hard to show that the ISP is abusing its monopoly in those parts of its territory where it does not have competition.

3. Aside from rural areas that only have DSL via the phone company, in most places there are multiple ISPs available. It's pretty common to have both cable and DSL, and in many cities there is also a fiber option. There's also wireless options, ranging from the regular consumer service of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and the various MVNOs that are built on those networks, and many places also have wireless available that is not based on the cellular networks.

You might argue that, say, cellular wireless is not really a viable option to Comcast or Charter or whoever the cable company is in a given area, due to the vast difference in speed. But you will have to actually make the argument. You won't be able to just say that they speed difference makes them different markets. You'll have to actually look at how people are using these various services and show that they really are not comparable.

I think that the factors in #2 and #3 make it almost impossible to win an antitrust case against a major ISP as a whole. The DoJ would have to bring smaller cases alleging monopolization in specific regions, tailored to the specific way the factors in #2 and #3 play out in that region.

Having to do this region by region, or even city by city in some regions, would make this a very long, expensive pursuit. (And where they win, there is still the question of whether or not there is an effective remedy they can apply).

Thus, it is probably better for the DoJ to leave this issue to Congress to deal with via legislation.

pessimizer• 7 years ago

Getting individual Congressmen on your side is no cheaper than lawsuits by region. I fear there's no hope with the weakness of our current institutions - "reform" has been synonymous with cutting the scope and budget of regulatory agencies since Carter.

drawkbox• 7 years ago

Telcos and ISPs are the bigger threat by far in a fixed local monopoly physical market that is hard to enter.

Telecom/ISPs are afraid of antitrust, being labeled a utility and competition, they work overtime to throw the blame onto Big Tech starting way back with net neutrality and Netflix share of the market. It wasn't Netflix using the data it was the users. Since then ISPs have been funding mud slinging against Big Tech so they can compete with them on ads by removing privacy protections and content so they removed net neutrality against the will of everyone [1].

Maybe 5G will shake up the telcos and ISPs controls they have bribed to put in place using regulatory capture. The attack on Big Tech is partially funded by them just like oil companies pushed anti-nuclear energy along with opposition to green tech. Big Oil funded many of the anti-nuclear campaigns, probably even had some sabotage involved [2].

ISPs aren't even using the market to get ahead with good products like Big Tech, they are using bribes and regulations that keep them in their false monopolies and fixed markets.

ISPs share fixed local monopoly markets by putting one good ISP and a bunch of smaller ones that don't compete like a Game of Thrones.

FCC reports find almost no broadband competition at 100Mbps speeds, even at 25Mbps, 43 percent of the US had zero ISPs or just one [3]. For a modern broadband innovative market this is unacceptable, there are industries of the future that rely on fast network we can't even get going due to the feet dragging and rent-seeking local monopolies of the ISPs/telcos.

The one time innovators, the ISPs/telcos, have become local monopolies directly harming innovation and network growth, they now have data caps, net neutrality add-ons (like Cox Elite Gamer), content options and privacy protections removed to discourage and reward broadband providers for NOT growing but nickel and diming people [1].

I remember in the 90s when broadband, cable, ISPs, telcos were innovative and the leaps from landline to other sources was amazing. They were innovative then, run by engineers and product people. Now they are rent seekers, holding back innovation, run by HBS style MBAs where everything is a resource and every dime extracted with minimal reasons to innovate or expand without rent-seeking controls in place.

Imagine if water, electricity or other utilities were this toll road like, we'd live in less quality of life.

The network is a utility and platform to innovate and build on, not extract the value and slow innovation

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/fcc-announces-plan-aba...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...

[3] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/02/fcc-r...

Reedx• 7 years ago

In one sentence: It's not as much of a threat to traditional media, therefore we don't hear about it as much.

schnable2• 7 years ago

Not a full defense, but telecom is already heavily regulated while tech companies are not regulated at all.

fatjokes2• 7 years ago

That's a pretty strong argument against regulation then, given what a terrible consumer experience it is.

ripdog• 7 years ago

It's just bad regulation, performed by incompetent or corrupt governments. Down here in NZ we have excellent telecoms regulation performed by competent government.

Specifically, copper/fibre last mile lines are owned by companies which are prevented by law from acting as ISPs, and similarly required to wholesale lease access to their lines to any ISP which wants to use them, at a regulated price (or lower).

The result is a hyper-competitive ISP market where I can choose from dozens of ISPs (almost) anywhere in the country. Combined with a few hundred million in government investment, and I can get gigabit fibre almost everywhere in the country from a world-class ISP.

I have basically no complaints about my ISP, and it's all thanks to government regulation.

schnable2• 7 years ago

Mostly it's outdated.

chantelles• 7 years ago

Because there is not antitrust investigation there is only making the 4 pillars come to heal and become part of the NSA.

40acres• 7 years ago

I think this is a poor take. Since Bork, anti-trust regulation has been an afterthought in Washington. The fact that DOJ, the same agency that bloodied Microsoft, is looking in another big tech company is very big news. DOJ lawyers aren't dumb, digging into BigTech will bring a lot of bodies to the surface and the culture of anti-trust regulation will change, eventually BigTeleco and BigAg will be next.

kakkksaknmdm• 7 years ago

I can invest some money right now and become a local ISP. Unless I'm ready to sink $500 billion, I cannot be Google.

This is how big of a problem it is. I would recommend any founder to delay startups and let anti trust probes and hopefully splits happen. Otherwise what happened to Snap, will happen to you.

zadkey• 7 years ago

Because "Regulatory Capture" (google it) and because they have better lobbyists and have been greasing politicians for a much longer time.

airstrike• 7 years ago

Comparing software businesses with traditionally asset-heavy business such as wired telecom is disingenuous.

I hate Telecom monopolies as much as the next guy, but the comparison is so inaccurate to the point of being useless. What's next? Comparing 'Big Tech' to Utilities?

rolltiide• 7 years ago

In the book "The Chickenshit Club"

There is some psychology amongst the regulators that results in them not fining or sanctioning large players because they don't want to make them go bankrupt and further consolidate the market.

You can have a monopoly in America, as long as you don't do anticompetitive things to get there, and don't do anticompetitive things while you are there from within your company. (protip: the trick is to change the laws and regulations to favor advantages you have and make it impossible for new entrants)

fatjokes2• 7 years ago

Because Big Tech siphons ad dollars from traditional media? I'm being glib, of course, but I can't help but wonder if that isn't one big reason.

gerdesj• 7 years ago

ENUM anyone? https://www.nominet.uk/search/enum - ha! (There used to be a page on the Nominet site about ENUM but now the ITU doc: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/inr/enum/Documents/ENUM/ENUM%20... can't even spell Nominet correctly)

I should explain: In simple terms, ENUM allows you to turn a phone number into a SRV record that points at a PBX via a DNS lookup. The ITU allocates the zones to registrars, the zones neatly map to country codes - its a great idea.

However, as you can imagine this is not very popular with big telecoms who are used to charging by the second/minute and location by distance which is obviously bollocks when you turn a circuit switched network into a packet switched one that no longer routes calls via satellites to cross the Atlantic (eg). OK pricing and tech for "POTS" has come a long way since I were a lad but it is still a nice little earner over letting us lot do our own thing.

You can also imagine that Google, Facebook int al would also suffer a collective coronary should us lot be able to do our own comms without them.

I'm fairly sure that you (for a given value of you) can't remember the last time you used a "landline" but if ENUM was available it might have been a few minutes ago and not logged externally and charged as though it was 1970 sigh

grellas• 7 years ago

'Big Tech', unlike Telecom, has made itself friendless, having alienated pretty much everybody along the political spectrum, and that is a dangerous place to me with a field subject to such legal vagaries as antitrust law is. I am not talking here about lobbyists or about legal technicalities but rather about the visceral reaction we all can have as human beings to the basic question: do I sympathize or even relate to these people? At inception, Google, FB, et al. were seen as innovative, dynamic, helpful to average people and the like. Sadly, those days are long past and all too many people are instead inclined to reach for the nearest garlic clove in hopes of warding them off.

pnw_hazor• 7 years ago

Telecoms are not ignored, compared to Big Tech they are highly regulated.

jtmb• 7 years ago

If I were more cynical, I would say that the antitrust concerns are being focused on in big tech in part due to the perception of anti-conservative bias or de-platforming, and the telecoms, other than in the case of owning CNN, have no such perception associated with them.

diveanon• 7 years ago

I don't think whataboutism is a valid argument against antitrust regulations for big tech.

fiatjaf• 7 years ago

Checkout https://althea.org/ if you're interested in decentralized internet structure.

This is NOT vaporware. The theory behind it is simple and solid. It works and is happening right now. The fact that is uses shitcoins doesn't make it a scandal or get-rich-quick scheme.

If 'Big Tech' Is an Antitrust Problem, Why Are We Ignoring Telecom?

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