Limiting Free Weather Service? Forecast Bad For Protected Businesses

from the save-it-for-a-rainy-day dept

Companies often cry foul at free services that allegedly take away their business. The unfairness claims get even more adamant when government is subsidizing the competitive freebies. These complaints seem to be the basis of a pending Senate bill that would strip the federally funded National Weather Service of its weather forecasting. Lest you wonder what else a weather service might do, the legislation would allow NWS to keep making hazard alerts, like hurricane warnings. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Rick Santorum on behalf of companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which argue that the overlapping free services are anti-competitive. The problem with that argument is that studies show the exact opposite is true: free services in the weather business have actually spurred competition, not hindered it. A huge, thriving industry has grown around free weather info because companies have been forced to build value on top of the commodity, which becomes the input for innovation rather than the final output. In this case, it appears government intervention helps boost business and competitiveness. As the NWS could tell you, messing with that might quickly lead to disaster.
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  1. identicon
    jeremiah, 21 Apr 2005 @ 2:16pm

    No Subject Given

    I could be wrong, but haven't I already paid for access to this data via my taxes?

    Oh, Rick Santorum. Say no more....

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Strange Love, 21 Apr 2005 @ 3:25pm

    Re: No Subject Given

    He he, you said Santorum. You cheeky bastard!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Nick, 21 Apr 2005 @ 4:22pm

    Prediction:

    Home weather monitoring hardware on your roof (build it yourself or buy a premade kit) + distributed computing weather prediction software = all weather predicting companies out of business within 30 years.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    dennis, 21 Apr 2005 @ 4:36pm

    No Subject Given

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    S Proper, 24 Apr 2005 @ 10:26am

    No Subject Given

    Basic weather service required by pilots and utilized by hundreds of thousands of radio and news providers around the country. This bill passes and we are all put at risk and seriously lives could be lost.

    Bad bill, greedy seedy. Seriously, look at whats happened with network news. Do we really want our weather forecasts to be that bad?



    link to this | view in thread ]


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