So we should take completely unsupported allegations as fact, and not grant any more weight to statements that carry some backing? The indeterminate nature of “truth” means all statements are equal? (All statements except those of telecommunications representatives, of course, because they are obviously lying.)[quote=“Dave_Baxter, post:32, topic:17112”]
Also, another NYT op ed claims that our European counterparts, while more profitable, are also cheaper for the consumer than in the US. Why might that be? Lack of competition, the op ed claims. So we’re more expensive but have worse profit margins? Why is that? We don’t know, but we do know they plainly lied about why they throttled consumers while charging us more.
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Well, the very op-ed you reference gives you a pretty good idea of why we’re more expensive but with worse profit margins: each major provider has to build its own network, instead of being allowed to share someone else’s network by government regulation. Instead of the US market having artificially high pricing, perhaps other markets have artificially low pricing.
Also,network congestion and profitability are not mutually exclusive. Congested networks reduce profitability to the extent they require additional infrastructure investments. Maybe in the EU model, where all networks operate off of the same infrastructure, congestion wouldn’t be a problem since all service providers would be affected, but under the US model where different providers have different networks & different congestion, congestion can lead to loss of customers and lost profit in the absence of costly network upgrades.
