Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Network2020 3336 days ago
#1 and #2: True

#3: The government would only own the poles and towers. ISPs are free to pay a fee to use said poles and towers to hang their cables/wires/antennaes. Since these items would no longer be owned by ISPs, they would not be unable to block smaller startups from trying to get into the neighborhood.

Imagine, for a moment, a landscape in which the roads in our country were owned by FedEx and UPS (or even Amazon) rather than the government. Then, imagine that they'd struck deals to stay out of each others way; moreover, imagine that they decided to divide up the cities amongst themselves (LA roads are owned by FedEx, SF roads are owned by UPS, etc). They would be able to block smaller delivery companies from delivering around the country. The copy shop in the next town over would be unable to deliver copy paper to your office directly. They would have to either go through one of the larger delivery companies or not deliver at all due to being blocked. Well, this is what's happening with current ISPs.

I currently have only Comcast/Xfinity in my neighborhood because Comcast owns all of the telephone poles (which are using public land for free), and in my last neighborhood, my only choice was AT&T/DirectTV. There is no chance for anyone new to come into the market where I live be cause the ISPs own the basics. It's sad really.