Political talking points can't trump the microeconomics of residential telecom market

Tennessee Study Shows State Remains A Broadband Backwater Thanks To AT&T Lobbyists, Clueless Politicians, And Protectionist State Law | Techdirt: "Norris, who said he remains wary about municipal broadband based on the failure of Networx in his district near Memphis, said he hopes the push for more broadband is not an excuse for bigger government. Sen. Mark Green, R-Clarksville, vice chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, also expressed concern about allowing government-owned utilities like EPB to compete with private firms such as AT&T or Comcast. "We want to look closely at this study, but in general, I am not for government and business competing in the marketplace," he said.

Carrying the water of the legacy telephone companies, Green is painting a false dichotomy that went by the wayside in 2015. That's when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission adopted its Open Internet rulemaking classifying Internet as a common carrier utility under Title II of the Communications Act.

Those rules implicitly recognize residential premise telecommunications service due to the high cost of building and maintaining infrastructure tends towards a monopoly market. By definition, competitive market forces are absent in such a market. It's another example of a politician trying in vain to trump microeconomic fundamentals with political talking points.

Broadband black hole preservation act introduced in Pennsylvania

In Pennsylvania, the state government controls alcoholic beverage sales via a state run monopoly. Apparently the telco/cable duopoly wants similar protection in the form of proposed legislation that would bar local governments from being involved with or helping finance the construction of local broadband telecommunications infrastructure, MuniWireless reports.

Talk about a state with mixed up crackpot regulatory policies. It treats one industry that's a naturally competitive private market (alcoholic beverage distribution) while proposing telecommunications infrastructure -- a natural monopoly -- be treated as a competitive private market and protected from government "competition."

Monopoly power of U.S. telcos harms national interest, Internet protocol developer Vint Cerf says

Internet protocol developer and Google Internet evangelist Vint Cerf warns the existing structure of U.S. telecommunications providers impedes Internet access and harms the national interest. Cerf criticizes the monopolistic market power of the telcos, which allows them to hold out for regulatory concessions before investing in their infrastructure -- infrastructure he says is as vital as roads and highways.

While not calling on the government to bust up the monopoly, Cerf says providers need to be restructured, according to a Canadian account of a recent interview Cerf gave to a Silicon Valley blog:

Cerf said large internet service providers (ISPs) need to be split into two entities — one wholesale arm that sells access to the company's network to other firms, and one retail arm that sells internet access to customers. The wholesale arm would have to sell access to other service providers at the same rate that it charges itself.

The model has been adopted in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, where Cerf said it is working.