[Infowarrior] - Comcast: Competion means we have to raise rates

[Richard Forno]

Corporate Doublespeak: By Forcing Competition On The Market, We Will Need To
Raise Prices
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071101/145432.shtml

Earlier this week we wrote about plans by the FCC to ban deals that gave a
single service provider exclusivity to an apartment building or housing
development. Service providers (particularly the cable companies who locked
many of them up) loved these deals as they were granted a guaranteed
monopoly. Of course, most of us realize that monopolies are bad for
consumers and lead to higher prices (monopoly rents and all). Yet, now that
they're gone, Comcast is responding to the deal by saying that it's actually
competition that will cause them to raise prices. Reader slide23 writes in
to point out Comcast's corporate doublespeak:

    The following statement may be attributed to Sena Fitzmaurice, Senior
Director of Corporate Communications and Government Relations: "Consumers in
apartment buildings and condos across the nation received a blow today from
the action taken by the FCC. The result of this decision is likely to be
higher prices for services and years of litigation and uncertainty for
consumers. The significant concessions building owners have been able to
bargain for on behalf of their residents will be lost."

Yes, Comcast is going to use the fact that they now have to compete within
apartment buildings to raise prices. Or, so they say. Somehow, you get the
feeling that once the local DSL providers starts offering faster/cheaper
service, Comcast will have a change of heart on the matter. More seriously,
perhaps what Comcast really means is that it believes these kinds of
services are natural monopolies, which may actually be a defensible
position. Of course, Comcast probably doesn't want to go down that path at
all. Once you admit you're in a space where a natural monopoly makes sense,
then you open yourself up to forced line sharing and (more importantly for
Comcast...) regulations barring any kind of traffic discrimination. Given
last week's Comcast kerfuffle over traffic jamming, the last thing the
company should be doing is suggesting that competition hurts the space,
because that just gives politicians all the ammunition needed to put network
neutrality laws in place.

The company can't really have it both ways. It can't go around saying it can
run its network like a private company in a competitive market that doesn't
need any regulation out one side of its mouth, while at the same time
claiming that it's facing a natural monopoly where competition hurts the
market out of the other side.