"Broadband duopoly" charge: "code" for not believing in competition

Neutrality-ites continue to misleadingly rail against the problem of a “Broadband Duopoly” and that consumers have no real choice. Saying it is a duopoly and then saying there is no real choice in the same sentence -- is oxymoronic. With all due respect, please see my friend Art’s Brodsky’s Public Knowledge’s commentary http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/518http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/518 as an example of this type of thinking -- that the current successful transition from monopoly markets to duopoly to competition is somehow not happening or is inherently bad. Competition is a process and a dynamic and every indication is that competition is increasing over any time period -- not decreasing -- or not happening as neutrality-ites imply with their somber duopoly rhetoric. (The fatal flaw in their superficial broadband duopoly analysis is that it is static and not dynamic or directional over time.)

The operative prefix here is “duo” not “mono.” By definition two alternatives is choice. (Factually, there is a lot more choice than two in the marketplace -- for the vast majority of Americans – I’ll get to that point in more depth in a future blog.)

What Public Knowledge and neutrality-ites should be more straightforward in saying is that they want more than two competitive choices. That would be a fairer representation of their position and one around which most everyone could agree. Then we could get to the real issue: what is the best system to get us more choice? A free market competition policy? Or a government regulation policy that essentially bans most effective forms of competitive differentiation?

I increasingly am coming to believe the real motive behind many neutrality-ites in their focus on the problem of “duopoly” is that it is just convenient cover for the fact that they truly don’t believe that a policy of de-regulation, competition and free markets can work -- or that competition is superior to government regulation. It almost appears as if they don’t want competition to succeed, because the net neutrality regulation that they champion would be so effective in neutering competition’s potential.