Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

cableco

3 Reasons I Get a Rash from my Industry

August 23, 2010

Actually, I don't get a rash from the Industry but from a large portion of the people in my Industry.

There are so many changes happening right now - every where. Our Industry is experiencing so many factors: declining prices, hyper-competition, anti-competitive actions, forbearance, Net Neutrality, and so much more.

Agents are locked in their business model and don't want to step outside the comfort zone.

Who Will Own the Home Gateway?

August 21, 2010

In the article about the Intel-McAfee merger, I mentioned that Cisco's acquisitions have not actually resulted in any great innovation. The Flip is still the same old camera. The cable box is certainly cheaper, but less reliable. (I have gone through 3 HD DVR set-top boxes with BrightHouse Networks in less than a year.)

Debt and Finances

August 16, 2010

I'll readily admit that I am not a financial wizard. I am risk adverse and think that playing the stock market is like a casino (the deck is stacked against you). Then I read The Big Short by Michael Lewis and I was amazed that most of the Players on The Street don't know more than me, except they know when the rats are bailing a ship, so they can too.

That being said, I wonder how we have developed such an over leveraged Industry.

FCC Report of Obviousness

July 23, 2010

The FCC released the Sixth Broadband Deployment Report. Due to the FCC changing the definition of broadband from the decade old standard of 200 Kbps downstream, most DSL won't count as Broadband since the FCC now defines broadband as 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. In accordance with that, you would expect the report to state that hundreds of millions of Americans cannot get broadband, but  "The report, based on data provided by service providers for December 2008, found that between 14 million and 24 million U.S. residents (which is about 4.5% to 8% of the U.S.

Things are Round and Round

July 15, 2010

As one door closes, right? Well, WISPA is putting together a deal with DirecTV so that it's mainly residential wireless ISP base can grab some cash switching people from cable TV and Internet to fixed wireless internet access and satellite TV - kind of a cut the cable promotion. 

It used to be that independent ISP's had to worry mainly about the ILEC, but in the residential (consumer) market, the worry is cable - Comcast, Cox, TWC, BrightHouse, CableVision and Charter.

The funny thing is that some of the MSO's are collapsing their wholesale division. Just like the ILEC's, the MSO's don't really want someone else to own the customer. So even as Charter opens up its wholesale cable modem program to FISPA members, I have to wonder how long it will be in existence.

Channel Partners Expo in Boston in 2008 when the cable guys were all lined up on a panel handing out crumbs of info about their newly developed channel program, all anyone wanted to know was how much commission and would there be an added spiff.





So How is VoIP Doing?

July 8, 2010

HDTV Experience

June 16, 2010

I have Bright House Networks for my Internet access and TV. I have a Toshiba LCD HDTV. I have had problems with signal disappearing to the TV for a while. I have also been experiencing problems with Video-on-Demand not working and the Guide.

Do You KNow Your Broadband Speed?

June 1, 2010

I think my cable modem from BHN is 7MB x 1MB but not sure that it what they promise, best effort or what I guess it is. I'm not alone.

"Four out of five home broadband users (80%) say they do not know the speed of their home internet connection. That is, when asked to specify their home internet connection speed, described as "the download or downstream speed of your connection per second," the vast majority of home broadband users in the United States cannot identify it.

Re-Title the Internet

May 4, 2010

Last Friday, FCC Chairman Genachowski received a letter from three law professors, all experts on telecommunications law and open Internet rules. "Tim Wu (known for first popularizing the concept of Network Neutrality), Susan Crawford (former White House advisor on telecommunications policy), and Marvin Ammori (lead attorney and representative of intervenors in the FCC's Comcast proceeding and court appeal), called on the FCC to reclassify broadband transmission service as a Title II telecommunications service." [save-the-internet]

Since AT&T blogged about it without mentioning Crawford's name, I know that the spin machine is in effect. But the FCC must act fast before the Duopoly can mount a PR campaign and a war machine.  I'm a firm believer that anything that a Fortune 1000 company lobbies against is best for the consumer. And every time AT&T wants anything, it usually means it's time to reach for the KY. 

For a detailed legal explanation of why broadband was never classified as a Title II telecommunications service, read this.

Of course, the re-classification would be fought, but so what?





Changing the Cable Channels

February 23, 2010

As we head into the Channel Partners Expo in Vegas, we get the story of an agent being played by a carrier. Now it's not that unusual for agents to have carrier commission collection issues. There have been many stories about it in the last 18 months. What makes this unusual is that the carrier is a cable company.

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