Telcos exert monopoly power

Rick Falkvinge, in some recents posts on his site, points to a very important issue that is practically unknown to many of us.

 We can thank the telcos, the ones that power our phones, for the fact that internet connectivity generally sucks. They have every interest to prevent and retard improvements in connectivity of the internet. It would end an era of fantastic profit margins for them …

“A little-noticed report by the OECD sheds light on why the telco industry so forcefully prevents more and better internet connectivity to Europe’s entrepreneurs and households: the telcos are currently overcharging by five orders of magnitude by forcing people to use the telco network rather than the Internet.”

But the report also highlighted something else: the Internet provides a large superset of the services of the telco industry, at a cost five order of magnitudes less for the same service. In other words, the telco industry is currently overcharging for voice service by five orders of magnitude – that is, overcharging by a factor of 100,000 compared to market price for net connectivity. [emphasis added]

P2P
Telcos actively prevent Internet development
Sepp Hasslberger