Linesharing and the Brand X decision

Submitted by acohill on Fri, 07/15/2005 - 10:12

The Supreme Court decision late last month (called Brand X) that cable companies do not have to share their lines continues to get debated across the Internet. I'm a contrarian here. While it's true that the cable companies enjoyed a monopoly position the marketplace for a long time, we changed the rules in 1996. They now have to compete, and I don't see the logic of expecting them to share their systems with their competitors. It's like demanding that UPS allow FedEx to use UPS trucks to deliver FedEx packages. In any context other than telecom, it would not receive even a minute of serious consideration.

Most of what has been written about the Brand X decision takes an adversarial, two position approach to this problem. Either we allow the cable companies to enjoy a de facto monopoly OR we force them to share their lines with their competitors.

But that's not the only two options. Both continue to perpetuate the worst aspects of the monopoly-based system we thought wasn't working in 1996. They still aren't working.

Another alternative is to build out community-owned and managed infrastructure and allow ALL service providers to share it, just as business competitors like UPS and FedEx share community roads. Last time I checked, this community-managed road sharing system has been working just fine for decades.

We need to stop letting the legacy providers define the debate, and insist on evaulating and discussing a wider range of alternatives.