Okay, maybe I’m missing something here, but my salary (as is most people’s) is based on what the market will bear. I’ve carefully selected the employer who I think values my skills the most. There’s lots to complain about with respect to ISPs, but complaining that they are engaged in differential pricing is pretty close to a complaint about them being involved in business.
What we can hope for someday is enough competition that the price is driven down to something equivalent to cost of goods. But even there I’m not certain that we’re that much above it right now. Most smaller ISPs end up charging something a comparable price to the larger players, and yet they still manage to go bankrupt fairly regularly. And I’m not certain there’s a big player in the ISP market who isn’t up to their eyeballs in debt.
I don’t think being an ISP is the license to print money that this article suggests. It can certainly be profitable, but not more so than many other lines of business.
Still, what we really need is a few thousand more local ISPs like Chattanooga’s efforts to bring decent competition.
