There has never been a good reason to suspect collusion leading to
anti-competive activity, if I follow your logic. Never mind the fact that
the "spectrum" in question, despite who bribed the government to
"own" it, is a public resource?
BTW, the expense comes deeper into the network, not the cost of chips
alone, but likely the effects on billing & who is allowed to support the iPhone,
for example, and other features requiring engineering that are, in all
likelihood, considered "proprietary" (or very close to being alike) to the
larger actors' architectures. And when have we seen this before - despite
it being far more egregious, arguably, and going for the most part unnoticed?
How about with the more explicit DSL Joint RFP, and a half-decade later
in the form of a Joint RFP for FTTP gear in the residential wireline space?
In both of those initiatives only the four, and then three RBOCs defined the
specifications, thus dictating where economies of scale would exist, despite
suboptimal designs for the purposes of the majority of competitors needs.
Agreed, there's nothing new here, but allow me to ask you bluntly:
If the two top players in a space were in fact acting in collusion to exclude
all other competitors, would that be okay in your view?
--
Anyway, on the lighter-yet-deeper side of commentary, our friend Bob Frankston
only moments ago sent the following message to the Open Infrastructure Alliance
board:
I find this concept of backhaul strange. What's the BFD about getting an IP
connection to a tower? The real problem is in the completely weird idea of
licensing colors.
I'm thinking of starting a NGH (Next Gen Haberdasher) by getting the
government to grant me an exclusive right to blue. Imagine what I could do
if I owned that color. OK, perhaps I can be more precise with the exact
shade of blue. The FCC (Federal Color Commission) would be charged with
policing 100% of the distribution channels for anything cloth-based and
certifying all dyes used in the process to assure that the color usage
confirms to standards and doesn't interfere with other uses of colors.
Perhaps we should call it Ultra Royal Blue.
Of course this is expensive but a $1/Shirt surcharge would cover this and
with a regulated price $100/shirt (worth it because they would last 100
years) who would notice.
We could have structural separation by keeping the cloth business separate
from the shirt business. It would make it easier to use the colors for other
purposes as long as they did not cause interference.
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