Re: [gaia] [hrpc] Fibre Feudalism

[Adam Burns <[e-mail]>]

Last Friday I joined (with other concerned individuals) a delegation
that accompanied Ramon Roca from guifi.net to present a list of
complaints of anti-competitive and protectionist behaviours regarding
access to publicly funded fibre infrastructure to the European
Commission office in Barcelona.

A short video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynxN69YIWZQ (in
Catalan with some English)

Best,

Adam.

On 21/10/2018 15:53, Steve Song wrote:

> Hi Amelia, Sonia,
>
> I agree this is a very interesting and timely debate and I would be
> happy to participate in a discussion on this.  
>
> Universal service funds that involve (or in many cases are legally
> restricted to) giving money back to the incumbents to build out
> infrastructure has proven (over and over and over again) to be a
> terrible idea.  I hope we can agree that we should stop doing that. 
> For me the issue is about power and control and the way it is used to
> impede competition.  The cost of technology has plummeted in both
> fibre and wireless technologies.  In theory that should have been a
> boon for competition but high spectrum auction fees and licenses along
> with exclusive control of fibre backbones has created an almost
> impenetrable barrier to market entry.  Any government intervention in
> universal service should obliged to address the issue of market
> permeability as well as ownership of and access to core networks.
>
> Cheers... Steve
>