Tired Of Being Ripped Off By Monopolies, Cleveland Launches Ambitious Plan To Provide Citywide Dirt Cheap Broadband

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 875 points –
Tired Of Being Ripped Off By Monopolies, Cleveland Launches Ambitious Plan To Provide Citywide Dirt Cheap Broadband
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Tired Of Being Ripped Off By Monopolies, Cleveland Launches Ambitious Plan To Provide Citywide Dirt Cheap Broadband::Cleveland has spent years being dubbed the "worst connected city in the U.S." thanks to expensive, patchy, and slow broadband. Why Cleveland broadband sucks so badly isn't really a mystery: consolidated monopoly/duopoly power has resulted in a broken market where local giants like AT&T and Charter don't have to compete on price, speeds, availability, customer…

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Oh no, they will lose out on all that efficiency from the free market

There's nothing free market about how cable companies operate.

Sure there is. They are natural monopolies that form in the free market. The free market isn’t a good thing. It’s what gives us things like child labor and corporate owned towns.

Lol, so all the regulation protecting them is "natural"?

No, those come after they gain a monopoly. Those regulations weren’t there when the “free market” turned them into a monopoly.

There are certain products and services that form a monopoly naturally when they operate in a free (or even relatively free) market. Those are referred to as natural monopolies, ISPs are among them.

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