A lot of people look at ISPs and call them a natural monopoly because if they weren't, we would have redundant last mile infrastructure.
Who cares if last mile infrastructure is redundant? Redundancy is good most other places, and having more than one fiber line running past my house doesn't sound like a bad thing at all. Even if it was definitively inefficient, it would still be better for consumers than any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not.
People need to just let ISPs run whatever cables they want wherever they want, whether that be attaching them to overhead power lines or under ground.
We should have competition at every stage of the internet, from backbone to search engines to last mile connectivity.
Much like the debate around affordable housing, the answer is to "let them build!" There are companies like Google/Alphabet willing to build out infrastructure if only they were allowed.
I like the way it is done where I live. The municipality provides fibre to the curb. I pay for getting it into the house. On the fibre I have a dozen different ISPs offering services. From 10 mbps to 1000 mbps. TV and phone bundles, if you want them. No extra digging.
Anyways it doesn't matter because it really is a natural monopoly. http://www.dtc.umn.edu/publications/reports/2003_11.pdf is old, but the economic principles that it cites for why broadband is a natural monopoly remain true today.
> The problem is that when ISPs are running their cables, they also have a distressing tendency to cut other people's cables
You think malice, I think incompetence. Cuts happen. ATT cut the Comcast cable in my neighborhood while laying fiber. They got it fixed and that was that.
I believe that both malice and incompetence are involved. With malice excused by the possibility of incompetence.
But regardless, there is a very legitimate reason for the people who already have cables installed to object to the next company to try. This naturally leads to increased regulatory costs in a dense urban environment.
> it would still be better for consumers than any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not.
This is the case to be made, and I don't see where you're making it here. You're just assuming it to be true, then repeating it. The question is: why would the waste caused by the inefficiency be less costly than regulation? Or: why would regulation be necessarily less effective for customers than arbitrary redundancy at every level? Or come up with another question, and answer it. "Unregulated competition is better than regulated monopoly" is just a religion.
That is unlikely to happen. People in america value their property, and I doubt people would be happy if everyone was allowed to dig under your house or back yard or property.
Access rules could be tweaked but any way you look at it connecting every residence in the US with wires is very slow and expensive process and it basically fits the definition of natural monopoly.
> There are companies like Google/Alphabet willing to build out infrastructure if only they were allowed.
This is true, and I agree that enabling infrastructure development is an important aspect.
> any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not.
I would never propose that the state monopolizes any aspect of the infrastructure, but rather that it offers an alternative while also enabling private infrastructure development (which as I mentioned, would likely have the most advanced infrastructure). I think there is a case to be made that the externalities of multi-layered private cabling in densely populated areas are sufficiently prohibitive to warrant a public alternative.
Who cares if last mile infrastructure is redundant? Redundancy is good most other places, and having more than one fiber line running past my house doesn't sound like a bad thing at all. Even if it was definitively inefficient, it would still be better for consumers than any monopoly on such infrastructure, regulated or not.
People need to just let ISPs run whatever cables they want wherever they want, whether that be attaching them to overhead power lines or under ground.
We should have competition at every stage of the internet, from backbone to search engines to last mile connectivity.
Much like the debate around affordable housing, the answer is to "let them build!" There are companies like Google/Alphabet willing to build out infrastructure if only they were allowed.