The Tech Antitrust Problem No One is Talking About
NotSanguine writes:
Wired has a piece by Tom Simonite that discusses an area of monopoly/monopsony which mostly gets ignored amid the discussions of FAANG's (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) anti-competitive activities.
From the article:
After years of building political pressure for antitrust scrutiny of major tech companies, this month Congress and the US government delivered. The House Antitrust Subcommittee released a report accusing Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook of monopolistic behavior. The Department of Justice filed a complaint against Google alleging the company prevents consumers from sampling other search engines.
The new fervor for tech antitrust has so far overlooked an equally obvious target: US broadband providers. "If you want to talk about a history of using gatekeeper power to harm competitors, there are few better examples," says Gigi Sohn, a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy.
Sohn and other critics of the four companies that dominate US broadband-Verizon, Comcast, Charter Communications, and AT&T-argue that antitrust intervention has been needed for years to lower prices and widen Internet access. Analysis by Microsoft last year concluded that as many as 162.8 million Americans do not use the Internet at broadband speeds (as many as 42.8 million lack meaningful broadband), and New America's Open Technology Institute recently found that US consumers pay, on average, more than those in Europe, Asia, or elsewhere in North America.
Is there enough focus on the consolidation of Internet access providers?
Is it time for a broad-based effort to implement municipal brodband?
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