Re: Never going to work without competition
Competition is generally a good thing, but it isn't the great equalizing force it is often credited as being. Before everybody fires off downvotes, let me explain.
Competition is very similar to participants in a duel of honor. It is extraordinarily refined behavior in the first place and the only reason for two (or more) companies to compete instead of conspire to manipulate pricing is because the competitors see greater benefit in divvying up a given market, to suit their individual strengths, than work out extremely complex market manipulation schemes.
But the equation doesn't always work out like that. It isn't exactly hard to fix pricing and get away with it you know. Hell, it goes on every single day, and those not directly involved actually pay to read about it in market analysis reports, but they don't know what they're really looking at. That's not crucial to my point though.
In a formal duel (competition) the participants (market leaders) must agree on the rules of the engagement and adhere to them, without trickery or deceit or weasel word justifications for 'cheating', or the entire purpose of the engagement, honorable behavior to settle differences in a civilized way, is rendered impotent.
Just having 'competition' is less than useless if both parties aren't following the same rules, in the same way. Which, in the case of telecoms in British held European territories, is further away than solar panels being an economically viable form of power generation.
Those weasel words I mentioned earlier? Yeah, if those are in play before the engagement ever begins the engagement cannot, and will not, meet the requirements for an honorable competition. If BT, one of the most lopsided assaults on capitalism in the world, gets to pick its opponents, its competition, then there's really no point in even pretending that competition is a thing within their realm. This kind of thing is the same bullshit, bizzaro world thinking that led to the conclusion that democracy worldwide would be strengthened by destroying democracy in Iran and installing a dictator. It's just fucking stupid.
Before competition can be of use to you folks, something has to be done about BT. As long as they control your Parliament it's just a waste of money to go scribbling something in the field marked 'Competition'. Paying lip service to an idea never helps anything, and it almost always does more harm than doing nothing.
It's not a big place you know, and the fact that it takes national level action to even discuss the idea is a really good indicator something(s) royally (Ha! cause you guys have royalty, get it?) fucked up. The service area is small, there's little, even moderately rough terrain, you guys sorted out the whole 'crossing international borders' thing quite some time ago and you all speak the same language (mostly). Everything about this should be an easy win for some company. Jesus, BT isn't even rigging the system correctly. Everybody knows the big money is in rolling out the infrastructure and just cranking up rates on a perpetual basis. That way politicians have to support you or they'll be remembered by their constituents as 'the MP that lost the Internet'. God I hate BT.
At the end of the day, it would probably be cheaper, and certainly more entertaining, if instead of giving tax monies to BT, if you spent the money on beer, booze and beef and just strung the cables yourselves.