Steelie Neelie stares down telcos over fibre sharing Telco operators have a wonderful habit of neither listening nor being rational when local loop unbundling is ever mentioned. The reactions, spread across the European press, to the two consultations announced by Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice President for the Digital Agenda, mostly accuse her of being mad and her ideas …
Steely Neelie is one ace of a commissioner, it looks like she really does her work properly, knows the issues, and is firmly on the side of consumers and against monopolistic entrenched interests. She recognises all the FUD these companies throw out, and calls them out on their BS.
If only more of the EU worked that way..... (hey, I can dream, can't I?)
I can understand what she is saying, but the various governments used to own this stuff on behalf of the customers. Then the greedy whatsits sold it all, said they didn't want to run it, and they just wanted the money (sounds like corporates!). Now they are saying that they want to say how it is run.
The consumer in me says what she is saying is good, but when will they force Apple to license their R&D (OS X) on other hardware, or force Mr. Dyson to license his patents to Hoover et al.? How is that different?
It's called a regulated private monopoly and the regulators have been in place since they sold it.
They sold it to get some money/give money to friends/take advantage of greater private sector efficiency/take advantage of cheap private sector unskilled labor/allow the company to expand internationally.
The difference is having competition (PC, Windows, Linux) and barriers to entry (none, Dyson actually took over from Hoover et al.).
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