[pachydermic]

>Wake up, People! The government is not here to fix your problems.

And private firms with monopoly power aren't either.

[jeremyt]

Private firms with monopoly power never last, unless that monopoly power is augmented by the government.

The Comcast "monopoly" is in the process of falling apart, on one side from Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu and on the other side from Google fiber, 5G wireless, mesh networking, and perhaps even the Elon musk LEO satellite Internet plan.

[masklinn]

> Private firms with monopoly power never last, unless that monopoly power is augmented by the government.

Ma Bell was a monopoly long before the government tried to reign it in.

[st3v3r]

"The Comcast "monopoly" is in the process of falling apart, on one side from Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu"

And what happens to that threat when Comcast "accidentally" blocks them for an extended period of time?

"and on the other side from Google fiber, 5G wireless, mesh networking, and perhaps even the Elon musk LEO satellite Internet plan."

Which are taking their sweet ass time to find their way to consumers.

[anon987]

Oh, so your suggestion is to just wait it out and good things will come?

[jMyles]

Well, to use the current example, the monopoly can be broken with buildouts of wireless mesh networking.

By contrast, government intervention might well make wireless mesh networking, as a methodology for reconstructing the internet, far less plausible.

[rrmm]

Either can exert good and bad influences. Neither business nor government is your friend. Both can be large and unwieldy, and large entities often step on smaller ones even if inadvertently.

Unfortunately, we just have to be vigilant and exert our own influence to push things in a favorable direction. No one else will.

[guelo]

No, wireless mesh networking is never going to displace fiber providers.