Moore's Lore: new technology. Computing, connectivity, mobile, convergence, communications, software, etc.: "The key word in telecom policy should be competition.
Right now the industry's biggest problem is a growing shortage of competition. Telecom companies and cable companies have combined to create a Broadband Trust that can enforce high prices and ruinous conditions on consumers. The failure of the Microsoft anti-trust suit has created a Software Trust that keeps new ideas from bubbling to the surface. We already know about the Media Trust, a few huge companies controlling what is seen, heard, published and read across America.
The result of this is we're losing our edge. British journalism is dominating our media because Americans can't compete. Koreans have better broadband because Americans won't compete. The Internet is being pushed toward Linux because Windows won't compete.
America faced this same kind of situation 100 years ago, only then we were talking about industrial Trusts. There was little competition in oil, or steel, or transport, for instance.
Tools were created, and used, to break up these Trusts. The result, in every instance, was not only more competition, but more growth, and more wealth for the Trusts' owners, like J.D. Rockefeller.
While these tools remain on the books, they are not being used. There is no political will -- from either party -- to use them.
The result could well be surprising. The Trusts are not going to just go on-and-on, as they think. Instead, the falling value of the dollar will see many of them bought out, in pieces, at what to the buyers will seem knockdown prices, and what to the sellers will seem kings' ransoms.
There will be competition, one way or another. The question is whether that competition will be among American companies, or Indian, European, and Chin"