4 comments

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  Tim Lee

  11 months ago

  Bret, I'm wondering if we read the same op-ed. The only time "regulation" appears in the piece is in the sentence "The solution is to relax the overregulation of the airwaves." Exactly which new regulations does this op-ed advocate?
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  Jim Harper

  11 months ago

  I like the care you've taken in this piece, Bret, though I somewhat agree with Tim that your interpretation of what Wu is getting at is overwrought.
  
  The one thing I really question is whether the broadband marketplace is "intensely competitive." I would say that it's "pretty competitive" or "kinda competitive." There are so many ways for it to be more competitive, I don't think, by comparison, the state of competition today could be called "intense."
  
  All in all very good piece, and very well written.
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  wirelessman

  11 months ago

  I find your concern about "scarcity-rationing bandwidth bureaucrats" amusing in light of this post:
  
  http://gigaom.com/2008/07/30/frontier-sets-tiny...
  
  Frontier, a DSL provider, quietly imposed a 5 GByte/month BW cap on their users. They are just one example of many ISPs doing this. We should indeed be worried about "scarcity-rationing bandwidth bureaucrats". However, they all appear to work for the ISPs. The US appears to one of the few countries in the world where broadband services available to consumers are regressing in both capability and price. A triumph of the free market if I ever saw one.
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  czhakis

  4 months ago

  I totally agree with you, Bret. I dont like Wu at all.
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