Worked in Telco too.
I always wondered if it wasn’t enough to have 1 infrastructure provider like with streets or anything else. Why build the infrastructure twice or three times?
I always wondered if it wasn’t enough to have 1 infrastructure provider like with streets or anything else. Why build the infrastructure twice or three times?
[ed] Government broke them up in the early 80’s; overnight we saw innovation like slimline touch tone phones and non-acoustic modems.
You do NOT want to return to that. And the only reason that you like monopolies on utilities is because it’s been like that for generations; we honestly don’t know what innovations would happen if utilities and roads were privatized and not enforced by government monopolies.
I'm not sure your assessment is reasonable. You're putting up a strawman by claiming that the only way to have shared infrastructure is to have an abusive monopoly that stifles innovation and screws consumers over. This is false. It's quite possible to have a single infrastructure provider that does it's job, such as a consortium of telcos shipping in to deploy and run shared infrastructure. There are plenty of examples of those types of initiatives in other areas, such as shared ATM networks, which provide a far better service than "everyone for themselves" deployments.
Some scrappy company comes in saying they can offer 10gb fiber for the same price or less, but it takes an infrastructure upgrade. The consortium of incumbents shoot down the idea because it will “cause problems” or whatever. So they’re never forced to spend money to upgrade the shared tech, and your service never improves.
I don’t doubt it. But do you have any examples of this having ever happened? Every case I’m aware of has gone much like the person your replying to describes.
For example, I moved to England and spent the better part of ten years trying to get British Telecom to install a working telephone and internet connection at a house in the center of a large town. They’d send a truck out a few times a year to fix the same line fault, which consisted of having a guy climb a pole, unplug somebody else’s house from the “good” connection, and plug them into one of the bad ones. Presumably that neighbor would get the truck to come back at some point, starting the cycle again.
There are no other providers. Or rather, the other providers all subcontract from BT, so you eventually get the same truck to come out. But now you’ve added another layer of pain to the equation.
If there were a second option, they would get all the business. But there is not, so you’re stuck with what you’re given.
Yes, there are whole Wikipedia lists of this having ever happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbank_network
This is no rocket science. I mean, even utilities grids in open markets work like this, for stuff like power and even gas. Nowadays even railway networks in Europe are decoupled from operators. Why do people still cling to old monopoly tales?
Sounds hauntingly familiar.. "How can we guarantee the security of the phone if owners can just side load anything onto it."
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/23/22546771/apple-side-loadi...
They don't have to be at the cutting edge of future innovation. If customers in the USA or somewhere else, who are paying much more for their broadband, start benefiting from some new technology that requires changes to the shared infrastructure, then Singapore can implement it at that time.
I hope/imagine that a lot of fiber backhaul is shared between operators that share towers.