Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: 6 May 91 15:34:09 PST From: roeber@cithe1.cithep.caltech.edu Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Decreasing Costs of Transmission Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 339, Message 6 of 14 Lines: 39 In article , dpletche@jarthur.claremont. edu (Nuclear Warrior) writes: > I have been harboring an amusing idea for some time. Wouldn't it be > great if one of those rare individuals who wasn't motivated solely by > personal and corporate greed was to create a full-service telephone > company, hopefully providing long distance (and in some areas, where > the LEC was especially lame, local service) at the lowest possible > prices? You do not need a rich philanthropist for this. All you need is a free market, with any entry barriers low enough to be surmounted by startup capital. Public utility monopolies were created in response to high entry barriers (e.g., all that copper), with the theory that one regulated company was better than no companies, or one surviving unregulated one.[1] Now, if technology has improved to the point that the barriers are not so formidable as to preclude easy entry to the market, theoretically we need merely point this out to the populace and the government, and the market will be deregulated. Then, the motivations of "personal and corporate greed" will be the very agents that bring us this great service. Unfortunately, this is where economics is replaced by politics. And until the market is deregulated, even a rich philanthropist can't bring you a competing service. [1] Caveat: This applies to the American system. Here, in France and Switzerland, the PTT is just another government-run "service," and you could no more compete with it than you could form your own police force. But then again, Adam Smith wasn't French. Frederick G. M. Roeber | CERN -- European Center for Nuclear Research e-mail: roeber@caltech.edu or roeber@cern.ch | work: +41 22 767 31 80 r-mail: CERN/PPE, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland | home: +33 50 42 19 44