Stephen001 wrote:
It's called market forces. It's called bein MEANIES! :( But no really, it seems like a very poor marketing decision to me because as soon as someone finds a new alternative they will leave. | |
Right, but there is no viable alternative for customers there. Once one becomes viable, sure, but guess who'll jump on the bandwagon? The same ISPs.
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Stephen001 wrote:
Right, but there is no viable alternative for customers there. Once one becomes viable, sure, but guess who'll jump on the bandwagon? The same ISPs. :( So get rich and start an ISP <_< FIGHT THE OPPRESSION! | |
Stephen001 wrote:
There's a reason they don't upgrade their fibre. Few people, lots of distance. Yea it makes sense, and from a business standpoint I completely understand. But from a user standpoint, I hate them. As I should. | |
The problem is that ISPs are inherently a natural monopoly - you can't be an effective ISP unless you have a network, and no ISP is going to play ball with you if you threaten to upset their market.
Also, in Australia, most of our internet traffic has to go overseas to America through lengths of undersea cable that I imagine were quite expensive to put down, and the companies that put it down thus would like to recoup their costs (and then some) from our ISPs when they send stuff through. | |
Jp wrote:
The problem is that ISPs are inherently a natural monopoly - you can't be an effective ISP unless you have a network, and no ISP is going to play ball with you if you threaten to upset their market. ^^ Makes sense. Hadn't really thought about it that way. However I am 95% positive there are laws in place (in America) that require large ISPs to provide bandwidth selling to people wanting to start an ISP at a 'reasonable' rate. Gogo anti-trust laws. As far as Australia is concerned... I have no clue there. Also, in Australia, most of our internet traffic has to go overseas to America through lengths of undersea cable that I imagine were quite expensive to put down, and the companies that put it down thus would like to recoup their costs (and then some) from our ISPs when they send stuff through. I wonder how the logistics behind that works.. I.E: Wot if I haz a big boat and I 'run over' the lines? Or I suppose they could just be absurdly deep. Hmmmmmm. | |
Makes sense. Hadn't really thought about it that way. However I am 95% positive there are laws in place (in America) that require large ISPs to provide bandwidth selling to people wanting to start an ISP at a 'reasonable' rate. Gogo anti-trust laws. As far as Australia is concerned... I have no clue there. Oh, I'm sure there are laws about it. Whether or not companies follow them or not is an entirely different matter. The monopoly here is Telstra. They used to be a public ISP - government owned, etc. etc.. The last government privatised them and botched the job - they didn't seperate the network aspects of Telstra from the ISP/phone aspects. So we suddenly had the owner of most of the networking in Australia (which was built with public money) becoming a private company, with all that entails. The current government is looking at splitting it up right now, I believe. I wonder how the logistics behind that works.. I.E: Wot if I haz a big boat and I 'run over' the lines? Or I suppose they could just be absurdly deep. Hmmmmmm. They're deep enough that your average boat won't cause any problems, but they are actually severed on a semi-regular basis. Wikipedia lists a few of the more notable events, but just one cable being cut by an earthquake or trawler doesn't make that list. Note that because there's generally a whole bunch of cables connecting continents to each other - and they're not all in the same place - a single cable being cut doesn't kill the internet. In most cases it doesn't even slow it down. IP routes around the damage. You have to cut a fair few to disrupt internet communications - an earthquake can do the trick, if it's in the right place. | |
Jp wrote:
The problem is that ISPs are inherently a natural monopoly - you can't be an effective ISP unless you have a network, and no ISP is going to play ball with you if you threaten to upset their market. It's not much better in the US either, except most places are a duopoly rather than a monopoly (yay for crappy cable AND crappy DSL). Starting a new ISP is also pretty much impossible since the existing ISP will fight tooth and nail from letting you even lay your own network. | |
WTF is this a cell phone? Actually, my cell phone's data overage charges are less than that I think. What ISP companies are trying to do is complete absurdity.