Firefox Founders: "We want to make money..." 10160

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Not all labour is send, but the point wassignificantconstraints, ie., such that they outweigh eg., arpu.

I'm not aware of any location, anywhere, where two railway companies laid side-by-side lines to the same destinations. Perhaps they exist, but as far as I know, they have always been infrastructure monopolies.

The regional telcos were *already* regional monopolies. I'm not sure you've really understood the infrastructure intensive aspect of this.

I did.

We've had compebreastion in the UK for 25 years, and in all of that time, the mobile market, and VoIP, have been insignifcant for all but the last 5 years or less. The VoIP bit only for the last 9 months or so. You rather prove my point, however, in that there is no value in building land-line networks, because the arpu is so small. By consequence, the ADSL market is seen as a monopoly of the land-line telcos, but as nobody wants to buy a landline (including you), there is not any point in building competing lines, particularly as if you did, you'd merely divide a tiny arpu into two.

I don't think you've got the point there at all. I'm talking about the regular forcing access into a network, not the other way around.

The situation has been in place for 25 years. The UK has the oldest deregulated telecoms market, with over 400 operators, and yet, not a single operator has built significant infrastructure. The reason is as I said above, the pay-back time is too long when businesses are infrastructure intensive.

The monopoly is the limit case, the one just before the duopoly, and so on. When you've gone from several thousand to a handful, then you're most of the way there. Usually, only government intervention prevents the final consolidation.

Satellite launches are a cracking example of infrastructure intensive businesses, where natural monopolies will form, but there has never been only one launcher. Same with submarine manufacture. Valves (you call them vacuum tubes) were invented in the UK by Alexander Fleming, who is the father of electronics, the UK has always had many manufacturers of same. I can't recall all the names of valve manufacturers offhand, but here're a few: Mazda, Mullard, GEC, Philips, Thorn... The US might've suffered differently, I don't know.

I'd be interested to see any examples of a monopoly degenerating into a vibrant, free market with hundreds or thousands of suppliers. There are none that I know of. Arguing from an 'invention' is not valid, as there would not have been time to build up any kind of market from the moment of invention, but perhaps that's what you were driving at.

Still, my point remains. There will *NEVER* be any valid economic reason for compebreastion in infrastructure intensive businesses, especially where networks are concerned. Why would anyone build a second water pipe to your house? Or a second gas pipe? Or a second electricity supply? It just doesn't make economic sense, because the best you can hope for is that you will divide the revenue between yourself and the other supplier, but your costs will remain the same, so you dilute profit by 50%, thus raising cost to the customer by that amount (the customer always pays in the end).

My point remains, that we now have far less choice for banking than we had 20 years ago, just like for food, beer, clothes, goods etc. etc., as consolidation towards monopolies continues to happen.

... yes, Driven by economies of scale.

-- end Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk The horror... the horror!