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Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age

by Susan P. Crawford

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Ten years ago, the United States stood at the forefront of the Internet revolution. With some of the fastest speeds and lowest prices in the world for high-speed Internet access, the nation was poised to be the global leader in the new knowledge-based economy. Today that global competitive advantage has all but vanished because of a series of government decisions and resulting monopolies that have allowed dozens of countries, including Japan and South Korea, to pass us in both speed and price of broadband. This steady slide backward not only deprives consumers of vital services needed in a competitive employment and business market-it also threatens the economic future of the nation.This important book by leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford explores why Americans are now paying much more but getting much less when it comes to high-speed Internet access. Using the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBC Universal as a lens, Crawford examines how we have created the biggest monopoly since the breakup of Standard Oil a century ago. In the clearest terms, this book explores how telecommunications monopolies have affected the daily lives of consumers and America's global economic standing.… (more)
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A fascinating read. Crawford certainly has a vision that she's pushing, but I think it's a great one. Internet connectivity has become essential for American citizens and businesses. It's too important to be left to a few conglomerates that refuse to expand to new areas, invest in infrastructure, and lower their prices. Instead, these companies are trying to prevent competition and artificially drive up the value of their service by monopolizing content and spectrum.

The book can be a bit dense at times if you're not used to reading about business and politics, but it's accessible enough for people outside of those fields and all of the political dealings and business tactics build nicely into a clear vision of network connectivity as a utility which we, as a country, have a duty to make accessible and affordable to as many people as possible if we want to sustain growth and innovation.

(Also, don't worry, about 40% of the book is notes. It's a much quicker read than you'd think.) ( )
  typo180 | Jan 2, 2017 |
Greedmeister, price-gouging, mega-bandit US cable-TV and telephone companies: a highly detailed and documented account of how a small number of them have been allowed to gain a largely competition-free stranglehold on very-high-speed Internet access and other electronic communications, to the overall detriment of the country and many of its people. The central villain is Comcast. (Of which I freed myself of patronage long ago, and have never regretted it. More recently, it was Verizon that did everything it could to earn my undying hatred and non-customership.) Quite a devastating book, and that's without it even trying to cover the vital related issue of the trashing of people's privacy by these companies and others.
  fpagan | Sep 2, 2014 |
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In Captive Audience, she [Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard and a former assistant to President Barack Obama for technology policy] argues that the market for broadband in America is insufficiently competitive. Consumers are harmed, she says, because service is too expensive and insufficiently innovative. Most important, broadband is out of reach for too many Americans. Something has to be done, she believes--and regulation is the way to do it. . . . Ms. Crawford makes some useful points about the potential problems of oligopolies; other things being equal, more competition is better for consumers. But her passionate advocacy gets in the way of careful analysis. . . . Washington's fights over telecommunications--and just about every other industrial sector--could use a lot less militancy and self-righteousness and a lot more sound economics.
added by sgump | editWall Street Journal, Nick Schulz (Jan 11, 2013)
 
In Captive Audience, she [Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard and a former assistant to President Barack Obama for technology policy] argues that the market for broadband in America is insufficiently competitive. Consumers are harmed, she says, because service is too expensive and insufficiently innovative. Most important, broadband is out of reach for too many Americans. Something has to be done, she believes--and regulation is the way to do it. . . . Ms. Crawford makes some useful points about the potential problems of oligopolies; other things being equal, more competition is better for consumers. But her passionate advocacy gets in the way of careful analysis. . . . Washington's fights over telecommunications--and just about every other industrial sector--could use a lot less militancy and self-righteousness and a lot more sound economics.
added by sgump | editWall Street Journal, Nick Shulz (Jan 11, 2013)
 
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Ten years ago, the United States stood at the forefront of the Internet revolution. With some of the fastest speeds and lowest prices in the world for high-speed Internet access, the nation was poised to be the global leader in the new knowledge-based economy. Today that global competitive advantage has all but vanished because of a series of government decisions and resulting monopolies that have allowed dozens of countries, including Japan and South Korea, to pass us in both speed and price of broadband. This steady slide backward not only deprives consumers of vital services needed in a competitive employment and business market-it also threatens the economic future of the nation.This important book by leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford explores why Americans are now paying much more but getting much less when it comes to high-speed Internet access. Using the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBC Universal as a lens, Crawford examines how we have created the biggest monopoly since the breakup of Standard Oil a century ago. In the clearest terms, this book explores how telecommunications monopolies have affected the daily lives of consumers and America's global economic standing.

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