Speaking of queer commodities...
LITS,
Bandwidth, as a commodity, is no more "queer" than a warehouse full of copper ingots, a pile of corn, space in a shipping container, commercial time during the Super Bowl or steaks at the butcher shop.
If it is widely produced, widely available, widely consumed and has a price, it's a commodity.
Bandwidth falls under the category of commodities, like fresh fish, hotel rooms, and airline seats, which admonishes the seller to "sell it or smell it."
The fiber laid around the globe in the 1990's--pre-Google, pre-smartphone, pre-Video on demand--was dramatically in excess of demand at the time. It is questionable even today if all those costs have yet been recovered. Unused bandwidth earns nothing. The same as a shipping container returning to China empty earns nothing. Filling it with the by-product of an ethanol plant, benefits the US farmer, the shipping company, the Chinese consumer and the US balance of payments.
We can argue about the good and the bad of commoditization, but no one can argue its effects on prices.
Enron's history was in natural gas trading after natural gas deregulation forced producers to divest themselves of their pipelines. Their job was getting the gas from the wellhead to your furnace in the most efficient manner. They knew everything there was to know about the buyers and the sellers. They also ferretted out potential buyers and sellers.
Forgetting for a minute issues of corporate greed, outrageous salaries, etc., Enron was engaged in out and out fraud. Untimely, coordinated shutdowns of power plants with the sole purpose of creating an artificial shortage is also illegal. The extent of the crisis was partially a result of a stupid partial deregulation of the California electricity market. Fortunately, most of the perps went to jail and several are still there. The shame is that the outside auditors didn't suffer the same fate.
Talk about too much time on my hands. It's a holiday.