Mike Godwin says:

It's not that simple, unfortunately. Once monopolies have been created with government support, removing government intervention doesn't automatically make competition happen.

Compare it to strip-mining: once a strip mine has dug up the landscape, the mere decision to stop mining doesn't automatically restore the land to the status quo ante, or even to an environment in which any kind of ecosystem can flourish.

However, its not like strip mining. So long as regulations are in place, the market is not functioning in a maximally efficient manner, and further distortions are occuring. Many modern economists, from Public Choice school to Austrian school, would hold that any attempt by the government to "fix" what it has done axiomatically are further distortions of the market, and that the market will settle most rapidly into a properly functioning state if government control is removed as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Theory in fact matches practice. Observe, for example, the difference between places like Hungary (we will be kind and not use Russia as an example) in which gradualist government guided conversions to the market are practiced, versus Poland, where a radical "shock therapy" liberalization occured. Poland was the only nation in Eastern Europe to experience economic growth following the inception of its program, its inflation rate is down to acceptable levels, and over half the country's workers are now in the private sector. I understand the impulse to use metaphors like strip-mining, but metaphors are a way of explaining theory, not a way to reason. I could, for example, analogise the infrastructure to a car, which is zooming along fine now but might run out of gas without fueling. However, this metaphor is inapplicable -- it has nothing to do with the situation. Concretely observed, there is no obstacle to the sort of national network we want other than the government. In spite of the belief that "monopolists" will take over, there is no evidence that competition is slowing down (in fact, it is speeding up as fast as the government will allow it to) and in spite of the belief that the network will "control programming and work only one way" the truth seems to be that the cable companies and everyone else want to get into digital two-way services as soon as possible and that the government is all that is standing in the way. Perry

Mike Godwin says:

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Concretely observed, there is no obstacle to the sort of national network we want other than the government.

Untrue. The cable providers often are putting up obstacles of their own, as are telco providers. The impossibility of Tim May's X-rated cable channel illustrates this point. The market can't function--Tim and those like him who want a certain type and variety of programming--unless there is access to the information infrastructure. Telling every would-be X-rated cable viewer to build his own cable system is not a solution.

X-Rated movies are a huge business. I suspect cable companies would love to broadcast them. However, there are government impediments to transmitting them -- fears of lawsuits, FCC intervention, and criminal charges being among them. Of course, this is comparing apples and oranges -- when TV channels per se cease to exist, which is inevitable, it will be difficult if not impossible for bluenoses to detect when such services are in use.

According to standard free-market theory, the existence of demand (Tim and friends) for an affordable product ought to stimulate a supplier for that product.

Of course it would, BARRING LEGAL OBSTACLES. Again, as before, the market is not currently free -- the obstacles are government created. Perry

It's not that simple, unfortunately. Once monopolies have been created with government support, removing government intervention doesn't automatically make competition happen.

True... AT&T (and the RBOC's) have paied of most if not all of their infrastructure. This means that when upstarts like Wiltel or MCI come around and think about laying their own fiber, they have to be prepaired for the ex-monopoly to start price gauging. brad

[re: EFF NII proposal, ftp.eff.org, /pub/Eff/papers/op2.0]

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As I understand it, for both telephones and cable TV, it is still common for local governments to "grant" "franchises" to single companies for phone and cable wires. If there were one thing to change, that would be it.

Why should that be the main focus? I for one consider modelling the coming "data highway" on an Internet-like model to be of more concern). I have precisely zero use for cable tv (or broadcast tv for that matter), and very little use for the phone system except as a convenience and a way to transport FidoNet mail. Since FidoNet-via-Internet is soon to be a reality in all likelihood, even that begins to fade. Over 90% of my communicating is done on Internet or in person. This is not to say full privatization of the phone system would not vastly improve Internet, but at least the net is fairly stable and works. It's a good place to start.

I, like Tim May, also cancelled my cable-TV subscription a few months ago, and would have long before that if my kids didn't like the Disney channel so much. None the less, the data highway _is_ being built, right now, by the phone and cable companies, and digital video-on-demand and videophone capabilities seem to be basic assumptions. I can reference articles in EE Times and elsewhere, and people who watch TV already know this from things like AT&T's "you will" commercials.

The creation of a new "infrastructure" (rapidly becoming my least favourite buzzword) that is modelled on TV rather than many-to-many networking, would appear to me to be a much more grave danger than the temporary perpetuation of the current telecom and cable system, which can be the next thing to work on, once we are ensured the coming BigNet will be worth the lines it's carried on.

Seems to be that a general videophone capability is the only building block that's needed. Seems to me the only possible roadblock is regulatory, that is, the phone companies being prohibited from doing video and the cable companies prevented from doing phone service. Robert