DISQUS

deadzone · 1 year ago

So are the phone companies going to do away with all of the phony "Regulatory Fees" that they charge us once they get this regulatory relief? Somehow I think not. Give us what we want because we need it, but don't pay any attention to what we do. Perfect.

sanjay mehra · 1 year ago

The real problem is always that there are only two main players because the Governments of most nations somehow make sure that only two mainly monopolistic communications carriers are main players in the market. It used to be the same in India, till wireless became the mainstay of communications and broadband. Suddenly, we have options which we did not have a couple of years back. The same will happen to the broadband and convergence industry. At this moment, the carriers can ask for the moon without giving anything in return, but trend of technology is going to be more and more wireless in the future. We may even see a future in which converged devices are beamed directly from a satellite along with broadband, thus ending all these ridiculous arguements about quality of service and monopoly.

Ryan Radia · 1 year ago

sanjay, you make a good point about the importance of wireless services. Although duopolies still function relatively well, as Hance has explained in many posts, I still think competition is distorted by the lack of new entrants. But this will change as spectrum is liberalized and more broadband-grade wireless connectivity is available. In the meanwhile, though, we should let telcos and cable companies compete on a fair footing.