[sandworm101]

>>> With lack of regulation new players came in with higher bandwidth and made it available to me increasing competition.

Funny. In the UK, with it's massively regulated marketplaces, one has far greater choice in home broadband providers. The concept that all regulation by government hampers innovation and investment is a highschool-level understanding of economics, an Ayn Rand approach. In cases of monopolies, which includes ownership of private infrastructures (railroads, fiber etc), regulation can keep markets open and alive that would otherwise stagnate. In a great many circumstances government regulation can foster competition. But such wider understandings don't fit well with modern identity politics.

[indigochill]

The practical difficulty of government regulation as a means of maintaining competition is that when your government representatives are directly sponsored by the incumbents through campaign donations and lobbying, they're motivated to protect their sponsors.

However, when incumbents over-invest in the status quo, if a newcomer can change the game then they can disrupt the incumbent and take over the industry. For example, Blockbuster was once the dominant name in video rentals in the US. Then along came a little rent-by-mail service called Netflix. I suspect something similar will happen to ISPs once we figure out how to remove the current reliance on their physical infrastructure. I have no faith that American politicians will regulate for competition in that field at least while the current incumbents remain the top dogs.

For anyone curious about the actual spending on lobbying and donations, here are the numbers:

AT&T (#9 in lobbying spending in 2016): https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000076

Verizon: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000079

Comcast: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?cycle=2016&id=D...

Charter: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?cycle=2016&id=D...

[Osiris]

I was told that in Japan there is a strict separation between infrastructure and ISP services, which has allowed for a lot of competition between ISPs despite the fact that they all share the same infrastructure.

In capitalism, any market with a sufficiently high barrier to entry will always end in a monopoly in the absence of regulation.

[fmihaila]

> despite

Because.