--- Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
True competition requires the ability for multiple providers to enter into the market, including the creation of new providers to seize opportunities being ignored by the existing ones.
Technically, lots of other providers CAN enter the market - it's just very expensive to do so. If there are customers who are not receiving service from one of the incumbent providers, a third party is certainly welcome to {dig a trench | build wireless towers | buy lots of well-trained pigeons for RFC 1419 access} and offer the services to the ignored customers. The problem is that the capital expenditures required in doing so are very, very high, and most companies don't see the profit in doing so.
If two companies can act as gatekeeper for the entire market in a given area, that is not an environment where market forces carry much meaning.
Actually, here's where I'd disagree: market forces are exactly the thing which is keeping other providers OUT. It's too expensive for them to buy their way into these areas, and during all of the time when access was mandated to be (relatively) cheap by law, very few third parties actually built their own infrastructure all the way to homes. There are some competitive cable plants in some cities (I remember Starpower/RCN doing this in DC), but I'm not aware of any residential phone providers who built all the way out to houses exclusively on their own infrastructure. This IS the market at work. If you want it to be different, what you want is more, not less regulation. That may or may not be a good thing, but let's just be very clear about it. David Barak Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise: http://www.listentothefranchise.com __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com