Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
For all practical purposes, it's impossible to maintain a monopoly unless it's enforced or otherwise aided by the government. In the case of Comcast, it's monopoly was maintained by the various local governments. The biggest hurdle for companies who wish to compete with Comcast is the local governments which use their regulatory powers and control of utility right of way to keep other companies out.
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Obama has weighed in against Aereo in advance of Supreme Court hearings. A number of state courts and politicians have done the same. Comcast and the cable consortium spend a lot greasing palms.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
I'm afraid that your analogy is a bit off. Comcast doesn't restrict traffic or charge a toll. Even with all the hysteria over Comcast throttling netflix traffic, it turned out that the issue wasn't Comcast throttling traffic, but rather the basic architecture of the internet, which doesn't give priority to any specific traffic and which sometimes routes traffic through congested nodes rather than uncongested nodes. The solution that Comcast and Netflix worked out was Comcast establishing a direct connection to Netflix for their customers rather than depending on the normal internet routing.
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The Netflix agreement provides a speedier onramp for a fee and Apple is interested in having a protected 'flow' for its traffic. Do you doubt that Comcast uses QoS to ensure high quality television and voice calls? The unprioritized traffic is everything else.
I think the analogy stands up.