Just because a provider is the only one with the infrastructure to service one area still doesn't make them a monopoly.  They may have control over servicing that area, but they don't control the entire market.  Anyone who puts up a tower is immediate competition.  Since 3G internet is relatively new (and not all that anyway, I'm all about WiMax and LTE) the old argument is still out there in force because for a long time it was true...there was barely any competition in a lot of areas since upgrading cables can be an expensive proposition.

Some monopoly arrangements are simply convenience.  It would be inconvenient to have a bunch of cable companies digging everywhere, just like it'd be inconvenient to have more than one post office.  Now that wireless internet is becoming prevalent, a lot more underserviced people will have options.  I'm one of them.  I just switched from dialup to 3G, and I'm honestly not convinced I want to stick with it.  It is better 90% of the time, but the modems I've had the 'pleasure' of using just plain suck, and the plans are far more restrictive than the cable company caps people are bitching about.

For the record, I boycott these kinds of things.    

I'll do some bizzar expensive foreign satilight internet that can only get me a 1.5 Mb connection before I let somebody charge me for the amount of data being downloaded.   (like paying for 1.5 Mb a second is fine, but '90 Mb total a minute' is retarded and misleading)  

I'm all for having a steeper price on bandwidth based on my MTU, but charging per Gb downloaded is retarded and doesn't make any sense.  Its not like the bandwidth is lost when I download a Gb movie, it is available again the moment I stop using it.   And unlike things like water, upgrading servers and such can directly change the amount of bandwidth available, i.e. they can make more just by thowing more cash at it.   So it makes no sense to charge based on an unrelated number.

It is like Mark-to-mark sales (spending money based on expected returns from investments that haven't actually payed off yet)

How about no.

They're bleeding cash in the cable business so fast they may not be in the game at all a year from now.  Cable is being replaced by fios, and that dinosaur is on it's last legs.

Nesrie, government backed monopolies are not monopolies created in a free market, you're supposed to actually refute a point, not reinforce it with more examples.  All but the olive press example are government backed monopolies.  Lincoln created the railroad monopoly to get it built for free, the telephone monopoly was created by the patent, the Tang dynasty formed a commission to regulate the salt trade.  Most unfortunately for you, the one example not government backed was a temporary monopoly and proof that free markets work.  A brilliant man used his knowledge to corner the market on olive presses for one season, and only one season.

The reason they do it like this is because most users burst, they don't sustain, bandwidth.  The average user hits a website and wants to get that website very quickly.  This means they want a very high throughput but once they have the website they won't do much at all on the connection again for another 5 minutes while they read that site.  Then when they click a link they want to burst again.

Assuming all users did that, then there wouldn't be too much trouble since you only need to have as much bandwidth available as is concurrently being bursted at any given time.  Since the majority of time is spent idling per user, you can handle far more users than if you guarentee bandwidth to each of them (for a lower price to the consumer).

However, as we all know, many people these days don't just burst, they max out their connection as much as 24/7 (torrent addicts) and even the average users are now getting into online TV, YouTube, etc. where you will use a steady (and high) amount of bandwidth for a long period of time.  This means that where the broadband providers used to be able to "provide" 6MBit to 1,000,000 people at a time, when all those people are watching Hulu at the same time all of a sudden everyone is down to 56k modem speeds.

So their solution is to drive off all the high bandwidth users so they can keep offering high burst bandwidth to the users that don't use it that much overall.  From a business standpoint this is good for them, because their margins will go back up.

This of course leaves room in the market for someone to cater to the high-bandwidth users.  One option would be to charge them whatever it costs assuming they do use the bandwidth 24/7.  This means a 6MBit connection will likely run several hundred dollars a month, but you are guarenteed to always have 6MBit to yourself whenever you want it.  In some cities you can already lease a line like this, though often setup costs are prohibitavely expensive.

In the end though, my guess is that if the cable companies started charging a variable rate based on bandwidth actually used and the overal network utilization, people would be even more pissed off (even though this system makes the most economic sense for everyone).  In such a system if you used 1MiBps for an hour at peak time you would be charged a lot of money.  However, if you did it at off-peak, or you only used 500KiBps then your fees would be much lower.  People don't like this though because they feel the company is being sneaky and trying to hide fees, even though this makes everyone pay for what they use.

Seems like an april fools joke to me.... But paying for traffic is quite common around the world, but $1/GB is ridiculous. Specially if there's no "free download limit"...

If a company tried that in sweden they'd be out of business in less than a week. It's a buyers market, it's better to be without internet (or even to go DIALUP) than pay through your nose for that kind of service.

So olive presses, telephone, US steel, railroads, oil, diamonds, software, grain, monopolies were all caused by governments... and you never said anything about a time period limitations, monopolies happen. They just do.

Unfortunately for you, you take this a lot more personaly than I do and get your jollies from odd places. Go ahead, show me a 100% free market.

Monopolies *can* occur in a truely free market but only if the company with the monopoly offers the highest quality and lowest cost services possible.  If that is the case then it's not a problem.  If that is not the case and the market is truely free then competition will appear.

In a non-free market (worst case, socialist state) monopolies are common and bad.  The government has a tendancy to try and fix problems created by regulation with more regulation.  This inevitably leads to more regulation, etc. until you are living in a purely socialist state (everything is 100% controlled by the government).

There are none in the world, I've looked extensively.

Well, cant help but think that with the economy the way it is now, if this pisses off enough people and they leave Time Warner, they may be forced to change their policy. Just thank god right now I dont have to deal with this idiocy

Never existed.  People don't like letting things happen.  It's against their nature.

Read your paragraph right there and consider why I would mention time in response to it.  You are inferring that a free market devolves into monopolies naturally.  Reality is the opposite, all monopolies and near monopolies created through brilliance and enginuity, have fallen.  Standard Oil created a monopoly by giving us low cost kerosene.  They were as underhanded as could be in their business practices, but they gave great benefit to society, and declined on their own without any help from the government.

As soon as they stop pretending they still have competition and take advantage of their status, the monopoly is gone.  Competition floods a rich market and kills the idiots off.  They are a self correcting anomaly, even coercive monopolies like Standard Oil rarely last long.

Edit: Fuck I'm typing slow today...

So first you say that there were not monopolies created in history by free markets. And now you say there were but they all have fallen. Who ever said that a monopoly has to exist indefinitely to be a monopoly in the first place? Given enough time, everything is finite. You are all over the place with this. Monopolies that give a benefit to society. Then monopolies that are only created by regulation. Then monopolies that declined on their own. So which is it? If they are a self correcting anomaly of the free market, then what was your point to begin with exactly? That they exist now and will end someday so let them finish their natural course and be beat out by someone who offers something better? That is not what you said at all to begin with.

And I never said heavy regulation was an answer. However, you can have a monopoly in a limited area. It's not a global monopoly or a national one but it is a monopoly when there is no equitable substitute from one service/good for another.

You can, but if other people CAN offer service there and just haven't, it isn't a monopoly in any meaningful way.  In the basic definition of the term, yes, but as far as I'm concerned not really.  To me, a monopoly has to be enforced one way or another and not just there due to an underserved market.

You are confusing natural monopolies with the complete lack of a monopoly. There are real regulations and barriers to entry into the utility market. They are still monopolies but natural monopolies which makes them a little different than the kind of monopoly you might encounter in a game of Monopoly.

The game of Monopoly is about as interesting as a pile of dead rats.

I'm not confusing anything.  Other companies may not be able to offer the same service in the same manner, but they can still offer the same service.

Actually, not in all areas aer there alternatives. That's the point. And natural monopolies exist. It's not something i just made up. Just because you experience something in your corner of the world doesn't mean it's the same everywhere else.