But... what if the result of these actions and increased profitability of Comcast and FIOS results in five new ISPs extending their network to my home. Competition would be increased and I would likely wind up with a service that is superior to what I have today perhaps at an even more competitive rate.
The biggest fly in this story is the contracts that local towns have made with individual ISPs to give exclusive rights to poles and infrastructure. If wired services continue for future years as the main technology, it will be difficult for a new ISP to offer me their service. There is however much happening in the way of wireless however (see Verizon's new 5G home service) that could replace wired services.
cable tv has been around for over 60 yrs. (we had it in the mid 1960s at the house i grew up in).
in the history of cable, no big cable company has ever, i repeat EVER, AS IN NEVER EVER EVEN ONCE, ANYWHERE, gone in competition with another big cable company in an area already served by a cable provider.
you've probably had internet available at your house for over 20 yrs. how many other internet companies have come in and gone into competition in that 20 plus yrs?
the only reason you have 2 options now, is because cable tv and the phone company already had lines strung all over the city.
the only reason you have 2 options now with lines all over the city, is because the phone company wasn't allowed to do cable when cable first came out.
that's because the phone company could have forced all their phone subscribers to subsidize their cable subscribers. (no cell phones back then. you had to have phone. you didn't have to have cable).
had the phone company been able to do cable in the beginning, you would only have 1 wired internet option today, (and only 1 cable option), as there would be no separate cable company.
as for the telephone poles. lines have to be so many feet apart, so there isn't room on the pole for lots more lines, so it would be logistically impossible to have 5 more companies wire the city without replacing virtually every telephone pole.
that said, much of the cost of delivering wired internet is the infrastructure itself, and even if it were logistically possible to string many more lines on the poles, it still would be financially not feasible, as for every additional line, you would have less and less customers financing every incremental new line.
it's why you don't have many electric companies or water companies or gas companies building infrastructures all over the city, all going after the same finite number of homes and businesses.
more competition laying lines all over the city, even if logistically feasible, which it's not, would increase your cost for internet, not decrease it.
that said, what would work is having one company build and maintain the infrastructure, and require said infrastructure provider to allow any ISP to lease space on their lines.
that's how things should be set up. that's how you get competition without multiple infrastructure expenses, each with less and less subscribers supporting each incremental infrastructure, making competition both logistically and economically unfeasible.
5G isn't an alternative yet. nor is there any guarantee for that option anytime soon.
if and when 5G happens and it becomes a viable alternative, to have 5G competition you would either have to allow many competitors to use the same 5G network. or you would have to have many 5G networks built and maintained, each with less and less subscribers per network to support them.
point being. you'll never have fiscally or logistically feasible effective market competition, unless you divorce the infrastructure provider from the internet service provider, (ISP), and allow many ISPs to all lease space on and utilize the same infrastructure.
it's otherwise just not doable. logistically or fiscally.
