Every day I try to do a couple of interviews about the Comcast/NBCU merger. Today’s crop included a talk with a guy who said that in America “there’s a reluctant acknowledgement that big companies are going to do whatever the hell they want to do and there’s really not much we can do about it.” He suggested that in the communications realm this reluctant surrender has become very apparent over the last couple of years; there are no competitors to go to, so Americans may be unhappy about how they’re treated but believe there’s not much to be done about it.
So this is just a brief note to mark the end of a long day. Up in Canada, the communication regulator has called (again) for line-sharing. I love the directness of this line from the Ottowa Citizen:
“Putting new lines into homes and neighbourhoods is too costly and would make too much of a mess.”
In other words, the regulator there, the CRTC, has come to the obvious conclusion that wired high-speed Internet connection is a natural monopoly.
“The CRTC said not only must those lines be opened to newcomers, but Bell cannot dictate how fast the Internet connection coming through those pipes can be. Newcomers should be able to provide customers with speeds that rival those supplied by Bell.”
Bell is appealing. The OECD suggests that the CRTC go even farther and require unbundling – a step that has been very helpful in France.
I clicked on the Michael Douglas article in the Ottowa Citizen while getting ready to write this post, and I noticed that all the comments were friendly. It seems like a civilized place.
After yesterday’s Economist piece http://onewebday2010.org/FM5RJ7 one can begin to sense a growing global snicker about the lack of USA ISP competition.