(Editor’s Note: As part of our new IP debate series, we asked Tom Hazlett and Jonathan Taplin (see bios) to tackle a key question: Do we need regulations that require broadband access providers to allow independent service or program providers to reach end users via their broadband networks? In the spirit of those debates, the following is a response by Jonathan Taplin to Tom Hazlett’s reply to Jonathan’s original post on this topic. For the full flow of the debate, please go to the debates section).
Tom, I’m enjoying the debate and I hope I’m not being accused rewriting the laws of economics. I never would suggest that cable broadband access is free. On the most recent Comcast analyst call, their CFO John Alchin mentioned that the cable modem service had the highest margin of any product they offer. To get a consumer to pay $45 per month for 6 Mhz of bandwidth with no programming costs was indeed a goldmine for the cable industry. The best per channel revenue they ever had before was $14 for HBO and they had to give 50% of that revenue to HBO.
On some level, we are talking about different aspects of “regulation.” I simply want to make sure that Michael Powell’s Four Freedoms of Broadband (see my original post) are real and not just some PR campaign. When the FCC slapped a fine on Wind River Telecom for blocking Vonage’s Voice over IP system, they were regulating on the side of the innovators and preserving a space for entrants with new products that consumers want. Certainly the current Republican notion of deregulation in the telecom space has caused us to fall farther behind much of the rest of the world in both wired and wireless Broadband.
Jonathan Taplin at 10:29 PM|Comments(0)
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