Can Amazon Become Your Internet Service Provider?
While the cable television business has slowly crumbled, its big players, which include Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) and Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR) have made up for their pay-TV losses with broadband gains. That has happened because cutting the cord requires having an internet connection.
You can't stream without broadband and, in some markets, internet service providers (ISPs) still have monopolies. In much of the United States consumers have two choices at most, with one often being a lower-speed DSL service.
Limited competition gives ISPs pricing power and allows them to offer notoriously poor customer service. Nothing has been able to change that status quo because offering internet service requires an enormous amount of infrastructure. Now, however, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) has a plan to become an ISP and it wants the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to sign off on it.
Source Fool.com
