Government Sponsored Monoplolies (GSMs)

GSMs, what are they? Exactly what it sounds like. The government contracts out to a private company, a service or utility, in an area, locally the lad line and cable system. This makes sense in a way, instead of ten different phone companies running lines to the same places, like each and everyone home, only one company does. This makes it so that a requirement to run a line to every house isn't a rule to fight but one to endorse. Where they come to be a problem is when they are mostly unregulated such as with the cable industry.
Mostly unregulated as far as the cable industry isn't exactly true, there are many shared regulations like that among phone providers, but with the growing use of broadband, cable is faster than DSL, the use of VOIP (voice of ip, or the internet), more regulation is called for.
A key piece of regulation would be something similar to what is required of telephone operators, that being where one phone company provides local service, and that company only, but outside companies can compete to provide long distane service, those commercials from the past with 10 cents a minute calleing with MCI, before that became MCI World Com and went belly up. If cable companies were required to allow outside companies to provide broadband services in much the same way, a reduction in cost would occur, as competition demands lowering of cost, and an increase in quality, quality of the service itself but also of the customer service.
As of now this won't ever happen. The idea of net neutrality is getting thrown out the window as the refusal to release documents on ACTA, an internation traty about the internet, against court orders, and the fact that the ones informing congress about issues relating to net neutrality harken from the companies wishing to get rid of it.
What would a cable company do with the removal of net neutrality, well one thing that is already taking place is charging by the gigabyte of data transferred. This may seem like it makes sense, but the refusal to show data relating to how they are unable to make money on broadband, when corporate profits are rising, with all the upgrades they need to do to keep up with demand.
This will end up stifling development in one of the few area the US is a leader and that is information technology, take Netflix for example. They offer a service where you can stream Hi-Def films over your computer so that you don't have to wait, or if you want the environmentally conscious view point, so that you don't have to have a disc sent to your house, wasting gas and paper and everything else. That is 5 gigs for a single movie, this company has a 2 gig a month trial run now, after those 2 gigs you pay a dollar a gig. Did they feel competition to their On-demand service?
Government Sponsored Monopolies can be a good thing, think telephone service or utility service, but don't forget those are heavily regulated, and sometimes regulations my hurt one businesses bottom line, but it can help you, and help far more people, creating for more job opportunities.

Michael Desilets
CPO 2001
T/R 8:35