Competition, Pro's and Con's

[Epidemic]

I write this post in response to my fellow techimo's quote below.

Sometimes, Big business gets a bad rap and sometimes competition is overrated.

[Shaw said] "hmmmmm.....well if they had competition, that would drive down prices....instead of comcast continually raising the bill every 2 months by 5 bucks and adding some stupid latino channel. But since they oppress RCN from having any chance of getting into their market, prices stay high. and i drop their services. "

Ahhh glorious competition. Speaking from my industry "Mobile Communications" competition was great for bringing prices down and even improving quality butttttt. Now we as an industry have lowered our prices to the point where we are sacrificing quality jobs and services.

Bankruptsy is all around even as our customer bases grow. In fact several companies I know of have decreased advertising because it simply costs too much to bring somone on to the service. (typically 300 dollars per customer.) @ 30 bucks a month for service you are in the hole for 10 months.

Ahhh glorious competition (dont get me wrong it has it's place and it has it's downfalls. )

Limited scope and scale of a company does not allow for efficiency in many cases.


The computer industry without a champion was a piece meal industry which had no uniformity. Bill gates may have robbed cheated or stolen many of his ideas. But in combining them in a fairly user friendly lock up riddled package he brought the world together.

Oh you could have 50 OS's out there and 90 spreadsheet packages. As you went to look for a job they would say to you know Os 300 warp 12 4202-b. However you being a loser now having invested in MicroWares new os 900-3-b2-f-1.

Uniformity has its benefits.

Unix may be best and if it is I hope it will take the market share 90 % But there can be only one as it were

[RedFury]

Stirring the pot with a new ladle I see

Competition is what drives the markets. Markets with a monopoly suffer from indiscretionate price hikes, Markets with competition however, first get overwhelmed with competitors which hurts some companies trying to get into the market ( market saturation ).

But when all is said and done, the companies that can find a way to compete stay, those that can't, leave.

In the end, the consumer gets a select few choices that still keep the market competitive.

If consumers feel complain that there is a void that needs to be filled, either the current group of companies will adapt and market new services Etc to their customers, or a New Company will come along and fill the void.

[Epidemic]

AT&T produced a fairly priced product. It produced an extremely high quality product. (20 years later I still have pre breakup AT&T phones around).

My new phones last about 2 to 3 years in many cases.

In a properly regulated AT&T DSL would be in rural communities because the profits of new york would allow for it.

I am also partial to uniformity in some software products, word processor software, spreadsheets... The great level of group proficiency in uniform products allows for greater productivity.

[Prexaspes]

We don't need monopolies or communism. We need standards and companies whos products are compliant.

It would be nice if we had set standards and all word processors could read and manage eachother's documents. Don't like the front end for Word? Use Lotus. They save the file the same way (in an ideal world). Then it comes down to who's product can do more with less work and end up with the same result. That's where the real competition should be (ideal world, et al).

I'm using word processors as an example here. Obviously it would work for any sort of product where standards would actually benefit the user.

[Theophylact]

In a properly regulated AT&T DSL would be in rural communities because the profits of new york would allow for it

As I understand it, Epidemic, DSL doesn't work if the user is too far from the central office: about three miles for ADSL, six for IDSL.

[U-96]

...and an end to protectionism and tariffs. You can't call it free trade when you subsidise your own industries and penalise foreign imports - a common habit amongst the developed economies.

[Epidemic]

Originally posted by Theophylact
As I understand it, Epidemic, DSL doesn't work if the user is too far from the central office: about three miles for ADSL, six for IDSL.

Actually that is a true statement about the distance thing. However it is partly a regulation thing. The local phone company could provide dsl at the concentrators located throughout the community rather than the Central Office. However the Local phone company is not allowed to provide dsl at that level for competitive reasons. So the regulation simply keeps the availability from the end user rather than fostering competition.

It really peeves me because I leased the property to the phone company for the concentrator. it is within 500' of my house. Arrrrrrgggg.

[shahani]

Why don't you get your internet thru that new Dish Antenna you put in?

[Epidemic]

I would but there are some path delays which are undesirable.

First off I am not sure but I believe it is one way. You must maintain at least a 56k dialup for uplink.

Secondly I am of the understanding that the ping runs in the 500's which is unacceptable for FPS games.

It is cable modem or nothing(56k) at the moment.