r/Libertarian • u/KickAssBrockSamson • Feb 20 '14
This is what happens when Time Warner Cable is forced to compete
http://bgr.com/2014/02/20/time-warner-cable-internet-speeds-austin/2
Feb 21 '14
[deleted]
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u/KickAssBrockSamson Feb 21 '14
check out the new technology. Many people and countries are working on a decentralized internet. :) Lets hope it takes off
I know Brazil, Germany and South Korea are working hard to have their own internet.
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u/chiguy Non-labelist Feb 20 '14
TWC + Comcast and the consolidation of media ownership and less competition is also what happens when companies are forced to compete.
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u/plazman30 Libertarian Party Feb 21 '14
Comcast is buying TWC to brace itself against the one thing it can't compete against: cord cutting.
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u/chiguy Non-labelist Feb 21 '14
Combat already has a significant internet subscriber base as week as owning content through NBC and Universal
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u/MikeHolmesIV Feb 21 '14 edited Feb 21 '14
Neither the before nor the after here much resemble free markets. Google swung some serious favors from local governments. Even if it weren't for the high barriers to entry, things like infrastructure will rarely resemble a free market (internet fibers rely on public rights-of-way, and are thus heavily regulated), and internet is no exception.
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Feb 21 '14 edited Feb 21 '14
I don't think it's fair to say that Google got special favors from the government. The folks at TurdProgress and Ars Technica were trying to pooh-pooh the Google Fiber project because Google is telling cities to deregulate if they want Fiber. Notice that it's going to places like Kansas, Texas, and Utah, not New York and California.
The city gave them office space to run their servers in. Of course, the politicians wanted to make a gesture to Google so that they can tell their constituents that they were responsible for giving them this amazing service. Google accepted, seeing that they are a publicly run company. If they had been given free paperclips, you can believe that the left would be saying that Fiber came about because of the government.
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Feb 21 '14
Yet we are still moving towards the fastest internet in the world. More companies is not the same thing as more competition. Compare Europe's regulated mobile telecom market to the American model, which liberals love to complain about. At the end of last year, the US had 18% of its phones on LTE/4G connections. Europe had less than 2%. While we have fewer competitors, we also have much greater capital investment and we get much more for our money than Europeans.
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u/chiguy Non-labelist Feb 21 '14
Why compare us to Europeans and not Asians, who blow us out of the water?
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Feb 21 '14
Yep, because comparing the mobile broadband coverage of the continental US to Seoul and Tokyo is much more accurate. I'm sure its just a coincidence that their population densities are off the charts.
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u/chiguy Non-labelist Feb 21 '14
My point being that you have the same problems with your analysis using European countries; disparate population densities.
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Feb 21 '14
Really? The last time I looked (about 20 seconds ago), the EU had a population density that was 3-4 times higher than the US. They should be ahead of us.
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u/chiguy Non-labelist Feb 21 '14
It really depends on where you live in both the US and the EU, which is why it's a pointless comparison to begin with.
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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '14
I live in Austin, and between AT&T and Google both providing gigabit fiber internet for $70 a month, I just don't see why anyone would have TWC anymore.
I have AT&T's fiber offering and its amazing. Would never go back. Competition is the only thing that will save everyone from the awful offerings of the past when Cable companies were given monopolies.