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Old 06-28-2008, 11:37 PM   #5
jammies
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Originally Posted by Calgaryborn View Post
If you feel the government shouldn't interfere with how these monopolies "fleece" perhaps an alternative would be to let anyone in who wanted to compete against them; including the big American companies. Barring that I think the government has responsibility to control them just like utilities.
I'm pretty sure you understood I was being sarcastic; however the the gov't is currently in middle of auctioning off bandwidth to allow just that, more competition. However you can't just "let" any company come in and compete; there is a limited amount of bandwidth available and this mandates physical limitations on how many carriers can exist in an area (without using common infrastructure, anyway).

Still, this seems to be a clear-cut case of the government attempting to interfere with market forces by fiat; I am amazed that no one is stepping up to say this bill is wrong because it does so. I am actually interested (and no, I am not being sarcastic) in how an extreme capitalist thinks the market should operate in this particular industry. I cannot imagine how unregulated wireless would work - other than how it works in my apartment building for 802.11 wireless, which is essentially an escalating war of more and more powerful antennae to overwhelm your neighbour's signal - but perhaps that is just a failure on my part.
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