The first thing is that the same team that lost four years ago (in a primary) was probably not going to win you this election. While I understand loyalty, we are in politics and business to win. To win, you have to be like a sports team. On a team, every draft and every opportunity we trade up to better players. We don't keep the whole team in place. We get a better running back or pitcher or quarterback (football, baseball, hockey).
Channel managers get swapped out all the time, but, with few exceptions, the upper management stays the same. Good strategy and its execution comes from the top, that management team. Sometimes they need to be shaken up or replaced. You want A Players in every position.
Also, what worked four years ago in strategy and marketing may not work today. In fact, we saw that this was indeed the case. Think about all the changes in just four years - or go back eight years to when social media first entered the picture for political fundraising.
From that we get to my second thing that drives me crazy: the marketing. This consists of the message and the medium. What was the message?
For the GOP with 20+ candidates, that slate looks like any master agent's UCaaS roster. How do you differentiate? How do you position against 20 candidates? You could go features, but that isn't what anyone cares about. WIIFM. What's in it for me? If you can't answer that, you are lost.
This election cycle there was the issue of fake news and misinformed voters. Now with the GOP Senate starting to repeal ObamaCare, we have seen that many folks didn't realize that the ACA (Affordable Care Act) was nicknamed Obamacare. Or that Kentucky residents had re-branded ObamaCare to something to raise enrollment. The misinformation about the ACA is widespread. So is the misinformation about UC, UCaaS, UC&C and SD-WAN.
When you have misinformed buyers, you need to do an education campaign. The best education campaign was Schoolhouse Rocks. It is easier to do today than it was in 80s. More platforms for the content. Cheap to produce quality video. You don't have to be Disney to do this, but you do have to make a conscious decision to go this route. You have to realize that your buyers need/want education. You have to strategize what that education is going to look like.
I know I yell message all day every day but you are putting out a message every day. Unfortunately, the message is ineffective.
]]>Telcos spent billions on both fiber and TV services. [Verizon reportedly spent $23 billion rolling out FiOS since 2004, some of it from rate hikes, some from government subsidies.] Unfortunately, by the time telco TV, like Windstream's Kinetic, is widely available cord cutting is accelerating.
From DSLR, "Telco TV and satellite TV providers saw record pay TV subscriber losses last quarter, according to the latest analysis by Leichtman Research. According to Leichtman, the pay TV sector lost about 210,000 subscribers last quarter, though this figure is dramatically lower than the 430,000 subscriber net loss stated by Wall Street research firms like SNL Kagan. While traditional cable providers "only" saw a net loss of 90,000 video subscribers last quarter, the telcos were particularly hard hit, losing 375,000 video subscribers last quarter -- compared 45,000 during the same quarter last year."
In the broadband realm, "Cable companies added a net of 775,000 broadband subscribers last quarter, compared to a net loss of 150,000 broadband subscribers during the same period," writes DSLR. [see chart here]
For consumers, it is all about the Internet and smartphones, according to Pew.
Telcos didn't want to get into the DSL game. Mainly to protect a highly profitable T1 business. The same way they threw obstacles at Google Fiber, the LECs threw obstacles at the newly minted DLECs - NorthPoint, Rhythms and Covad. Sure, some of it was incompetence on the part of the DLECs and GF, but the hurdles kept tripping them up. After they all filed bankruptcy, the RBOCs decided to get into the DSL retil game, to the chagrin of the independent ISP, who was finally making money on DSL. Undercut by the vendor, many ISPs failed or limped along for years, which affected many small businesses as the ISP was usually the local computer expert and Internet Provider. This was something that the LEC could not provide: personal service to the small business. To this day, the Duopoly can only supply commodity service with almost non-existent support. As they have gotten bigger and bigger to take advantage of scale, the support to the small business has suffered.
Small business is 99% of the businesses in America. Yet every provider wants to go up market.
There are almost 28 million small businesses in the US and over 22 million are self employed with no additional payroll or employees (these are called nonemployers). Over 50% of the working population (120 million individuals) works in a small business. But it is under-served by the Duopoly.
From the FCC's 2016 Broadband Report:
Think about those numbers. VZ spent $23B. Other telcos spent billions. The FCC donated billions in BTOP, BIP, ARRA, CAF, CAF II and USF funds to the effort to build out broadband across America. Private companies (PCOs, ISPs, WISPs and CLECs) have invested hundreds of millions more. Cable dropped bilions. Yet not everyone has good Internet????Or a choice of more than 1 ISP?
I have to wonder where this goes. The telcos spent billions to get triple-play just as that bundle becomes undesirable. They now have to build out fiber to stop losing broadband subscribers, so more hundreds of millions. At a time when their debt is High - and the pies for TV, broadband and voice are stagnant. Even cellular has peaked.
They are all chasing Enterprise, which I imagine means 500+ employees. There are only 30K businesses in the US with more than 500 employees. So Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink and Windstream are fighting desperately over the same 30,000 businesses and government contracts. With VZ acquiring XO (approved today); C-Link acquiring Level3 (ugh); and WIND Buying EarthLink, that leaves Zayo as the sole big indie.
What happened? Bad short-term decisions that cost jobs, revenue losses and more CAPEX spending than if they had just done it from the beginning. To still see announcements from the telcos about Gigabit deployments in select cities is just plain sad. The monopolies that were the Bell companies re-constituted but lost their edge. It's like they don't know how to compete at all. They just lean on their brand and hope for the best.
EoC wasn't widely enough deployed and sold. Yet everyone is banking on SD-WAN, which will likely just make SLAs crumble.
Small business has suffered from this mess -- and further with the mega-mergers and consolidation. Small businesses - all businesses - rely on telecommunications to do business. The Internet is vital to our economy. Let's hope we don't stifle it anymore.
]]>Cable is over-charging customers and training agents to avoid accepting cancellations (following the AOL procedural manual probably). Plus cable is tied with health insurance companies for the worst customer service. And yet people still buy from them. (Case in point, I have Bright House or Charter/Spectrum now.)
"In its latest competition report, the FCC estimated that about 61 percent of U.S. homes only have the choice of one cable company or the satellites if they want to watch television." [source]
Now that they are consolidating and debt is increasing, cost cutting will become Job 1.
DSLR has a story about Altice's first moves as owner of Cablevision. There is going to be some cost cutting because "Altice has told New York regulators it won't reduce customer-facing jobs for four years," per the WSJ. Altice is taking over Cablevision just six months after taking over SuddenLink - spending $26.8 Billion to buy the two MSOs.
"We believe that investing in service and delivering a best-in-class service experience is the most important factor in driving long-term customer growth," testified John Keib, Time Warner's former executive vice president and chief operating officer for residential services. You want to believe them, but since FCC or Congress haven't fined them, why would they fix anything? You only fix what affects your Wall Street numbers.
Rackspace is offering fanatical support for AWS. Maybe companies will pop up to offer fanatical support for resold cable modems.
Interesting side notes:
Frontier and Charter are suing each other in Connecticut for false advertising!
Disclosure from ARS: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns about 13 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.
]]>And firms - including Apple and Yelp - are also opposing a new cyber-security bill - CISA. Got to be tough to give all that Super PAC money and not get your way.
TechDirt: Tim Berners-Lee: 'Just Say No' To Facebook's Plan To Bastardize The Internet. To give free Internet to the third world, Facebook wants to subsidize it; limit it to unencrypted and approved sites; and watch all the traffic to design ads. How thoughtful.
The FCC had to remind carriers that booze and other personal items are not part of telecom costs.
Recognizing that viewers are tired of ads, Google Unveils YouTube Red: a $10 Per Month Ad-Free Option that allows downloading.
ESPN - the most expensive channel package on cable - lost over 3 million viewers in the last year. ESPN blames lite channel packages (like Sling, Google Fiber and others) and cord cutting. As a Chris Berman fan, I have been watching ESPN since almost the beginning. Look, Poker is not a sport. Hours and hours of repeated SportsCenter should only be on ESPN News! Why pay $7 per month for just Monday Night Football, some MLB games and basically for the NFL Network. It stopped being a top sports spot years ago -- and it catching up to them.
The difference between ESPN and Google is that Google takes risks and uses data to guess what its consumers want. ESPN only listens to sponsors. That is the problem I see with so many companies today.
Want to make money? Make the viewing experience personal. Then Boom! people will flock there and pay for it.
]]>"There's a myth in Silicon Valley that any attempt to regulate the Internet will destroy it, or that only software developers can understand the industry. When I flew over to give this talk, I wasn't worried about my plane falling out of the sky. Eighty years of effective technical regulation (and massive penalties for fraud) have made commercial aviation the safest form of transportation in the world. Similarly, when I charged my cell phone this morning, I had confidence that it would not burn down my apartment. I have no idea how electricity works, but sound regulation has kept my appliances from electrocuting me my entire life. The Internet is no different. Let's not forget that it was born out of regulation and government funding. Its roots are in military research, publicly funded universities and, for some reason, a particle accelerator. It's not like we're going to trample a delicate flower by suddenly regulating what had once been wild and untamed." - @baconmeteor [source]
]]>"Today, nearly 40 percent of American households either do not have the option of purchasing a wired 10 Mbps connection or they must buy it from a single provider. Three out of four Americans do not have a choice of providers for broadband at 25 Mbps, the speed increasingly recognized as a baseline for broadband access."
The discussion revolves around - surprise - arbitrage! There would be investment IF there was enough money in last mile residential; if regulation was lighter; if, if, if.
Quite a few feel that the answer will be wireless. I don't think there is enough spectrum for that, but I could be wrong. And even if there is enough spectrum, metered pricing will crush every wallet.
That said, I think many people don't have a real good ground view of telecom. In many parts of America, there are a number of independent players (non-Duopoly) that are rolling out fiber to the home or fiber to the MDU (condo/apartment building/etc). Stealth in NYC; Socket in Missouri; Sonic in Cali; and Hunt Telecom in much of Louisiana where they are laying fiber to businesses and schools.
WISPs (wireless ISPs) who typically use fixed wireless gear to offer broadband have been transitioning to fiber in a number of rural communities, like Shelby Broadband is doing in KY. And they are doing that without government funds - all bootstrapped.
Another theme is that investment is down in broadband due to the Net Neutrality rules that are being argued in SCOTUS. *cough*cough*bullsh!t* Investment appears down for a number of reasons.
One reason is that the investment dollars of the ILEC/RLEC group are government funds from USF, CAF, RUS, NTIA right now.
Number 2: The cost to pass a home with fiber when FiOS started in 2004 was about $2700; now it can be as low as $700 depending on density, geography, topography. Also, the biggest spender in FTTH was VZ with FiOS, so investment has declined since they stopped spending the $24B. C Spire and Google aren't going to replace that kind of spending. However, CenturyLink's Giga announcement and Windstream's 100Mbps PR are shining some light.
Number 3: I have been in the room when execs at AT&T have said they have no answer for DOCSIS 3.0. Verizon did a co-marketing deal with the cablecos (as part of the SpectrumCo deal). That isn't competing!
How deflating do you think it was for ILECs when Comcast said it was doing 2Gbps?! That isn't about regulation. That is like being in a high school boys locker room and realizing that you have puny equipment muscles.
ILECs don't cross LATAs any more than cablecos do. Only WOW! and RCN overbuild. Wholesale agreements to get FiOS and U-Verse access have been ridiculously hard to acquire until just these past few months. APEX by AT&T opened up U-Verse infrastructure to wholesale partners. Verizon is a little stingier with FiOS probably due to their outsourcing wholesale to one person in a nursing home in Phoenix who only has phone access an hour a day. True story. Ask any VZ wholesale customer.
Until a vendor comes along like Hatteras did with G.SHDSL making it easy to deliver g.Fast to premises end to end, DOCSIS 3.0 will win. VDSL2 is just now becoming economical and stable. And the deployment costs for VDSL2 with fiber-to-the-node is less than FTTH. I think if you didn't see the industry from the ground level, you can make pronouncements all day long that are misleading or skewed.
We need the best broadband network in the world if we are going to compete globally. If not, no one will be able to pay their cell phone bill.
]]>I look at our space and wonder what will happen.
VZ is rumored to be selling Terremark and its PBX business. It needs cash. You can say it is looking core, but does it want to be like Sprint?
Tom Goodwin, an executive at Havas Media, whose essay on March 3 on Techcrunch.com began: "Uber, the world's largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world's most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world's largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening."
This headline from Morgan Stanley is a joke: Capital Creates More Commerce. If you meant, higher wages, better jobs create more commerce I would agree. Our economy is based on consumer spending and the Internet. The average wages have been stagnant or declining in the last 10 years. So how does the consumer spending increase - or even sustain?
More and more people are not W-2 employees, but 1099 self-employed - also called freelancers, contractors, even mistakenly entrepreneurs. 1099 means covering your own office, equipment, benefits, insurance, taxes and retirement. Good luck with that long term.
"Suddenlink is the 7th largest U.S. cable MSO with 1.5 million residential and 90,000 business customers across several states including Texas, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Arizona." [telecomp]
"Altice is a multinational cable and telecommunications company with operations across the globe, including Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. This is their first foray into the U.S. market."
I get why Altice would want to enter the US market (same reason AT&T has bought its way into the LATAM market) - growth requires expansion. The pie is not growing. The pie is being split by more and more players. When the pie can't grow, the top execs want to cash out. See TWC, tw telecom and apparently Bright House as examples.
The largest corporations keep hording cash and buying companies. They get bigger. Bigger is never better. Ever. Not one case of it.
This isn't about the 1%. The 99% that spin the economy every day are getting jailed (where private corporations are taking tax dollars to jail them - but have a quota so police and courts have to fill them).
The education is broken. Why do we have a federal department of education? College loans are drowning our kids, while colleges expand using that loan money. Again getting bigger not better.
Robots are automating jobs out of existence. What then?
We have the same issues as we did during the run of West Wing from 1999-2006: education, homelessness, war, huge defense budget, deficit spending - but now we have 3 larger problems:
We aren't taking care of our veterans that we continually send off to combat. We can't grow our economy fast enough to get out of this financial mess that is a bubble. And we have a new housing crisis.
The new housing crisis is that no new affordable housing is being built. Twenty-somethings and even thirty-somethings can't get a mortgage due to student loan and credit card debt (and stringent mortgage guidelines). Rents are sky-rocketing. So where will workers - teachers, firemen, janitors - live?
"The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation." - James Freeman Clarke
Technology is not going to fix any of these problems. In fact, you could say that tech has exacerbated a couple of these problems.
Not so much a rant as a can you believe this??
I was going to link to citations for all of these issues, but just Google it.
]]>There has been a backlash on workers and unions in America over the last 7-10 years. People don't realize that the unions helped create the middle class as well as passed quite a few strong labor laws that were pro-employee.
We see it with the indirect channel. More and more companies want a sales force that they only have to pay for performance -- and even then not pay as promised all the time.
We are slowly moving to a society of self-employed freelancers, many of whom are ill equipped to run that business or to make a living wage.
The decline of the middle class, stagnate wages, declining buying power -- these factors will directly affect the Fortune 5000. Why do you think every company is looking abroad or at M&A? There isn't much organic growth left. The pie isn't getting bigger; it is flat or shrinking. And we live in a consumption-service economy. Take a look at any major street in any city in America: it is all service businesses: dry cleaners, take-out food, Dollar stores, groceries, pizza.
The income inequality is at its worst. Congress is passing a tax break for the top 0.2%! Who will pay the taxes as wages decline?
There is constant grumbling about hand-outs and entitlements. Social Security, pensions, and unemployment are not handouts. Workers paid for those benefits. Want to talk about hand-outs how about the benefits that Congressmen receive including federal healthcare and retirement. Or how about all the industries subsidized by the federal government like Big Pharma, Big Agra, telecom, defense, airlines, finance, manufacturing -- I am having a problem thinking of a business sector that has not received a bailout, tariff protections, federal monies, or, in the case of defense, federal salesmen selling their product and paying for it with tax dollars. So who gets the handouts and entitlements?
And our biggest corporations - VZ, BoA, GE - don't pay taxes. The media has done a fine job of bamboozling Americans. The propaganda has turned American against American, when we should be united against the inequalities we face.
Want to see some crazy stats about Baltimore? Go to the Wash Post's Christopher Ingraham twitter account. Or just this one tweet for a chart.
Meanwhile, we spend an inordinate amount of time on Ebola outbreaks, gay marriage and other nonsense that just spins us up and keeps us from focusing on real problems in America. (Even science is under attack.)
]]>Furchtgott-Roth writes, "The FCC set up a casino with federal communications regulation. It was a coin toss: heads one industry favored by the FCC would win; tails another industry hostile to the FCC would win. The courts were left to toss the coin." He continues with this: "Companies favored by the FCC and companies punished by the FCC in the 1990s could not both succeed. As it turned out, the courts largely sided with the latter set of businesses that opposed the FCC. Those investors who had relied on FCC rules discovered, belatedly, that they were little more than a mirage. Federal rules that go beyond federal law can maintain the illusion of legality for a few years, but not forever. Eventually, the law caught up with illusionists at the FCC."
"What followed can only be described as one of the most misguided investment periods in American history." For a guy who worked on the Telecom Act and at the F Agency, he sure doesn't understand the telecom business.
He thinks it was the whims of the FCC and the courts. Maybe, but much more likely that Bubble was based on Arbitrage. The business of telecom is "I will save you money while making myself some." Since the long distance battles of the 1980s, it has been about Price.
Telecom is based on extracting as much margin as possible with as little investment, network build and future planning as possible. That was the CLEC model up to about 2005 when the "whims of the courts" as Furchtgott-Roth puts it picked winners and losers.
The industry professionals knew that UNE-P was going to go away, but those CLECs - Z-Tel, Birch, and a number in South Florida - chose to ignore the writing on the wall, chose not to build out, chose to keep extracting money, and to roll the dice that UNE-P would stay a while longer. Then BOOM! UNE-P was gone and with it the "business models" of hundreds of CLECs. Inter-carrier compensation kept some afloat. Bankruptcy became a saving grace. New models had to be created around a wholesale offering that was far less profitable.
When you view telecom as Arbitrage, it explains everything. It even explains the battle Comcast and Verizon had with Netflix -- it was all about the money - eking out some more pennies per person. It's sad because it isn't about innovation or user experience or anything other than how can I save you money and eke out some income.
]]>Backing up, the FCC wrote a blog explaining their process from comments to rule-making. You can read it here. they had 4 million comments (largely due to John Oliver)
I agree with this article from Yahoo - How Comcast, Verizon, and the Rest of Big Telecom Blew the Net-Neutrality Battle - the Duopoly said a lot of things that were anti-open Internet and then the Netflix mess occurred. Mind you, that is the only one we know about due to what Level3, Cogent and Netflix have publicized. There could be a number of other sites who had to pay to play but were quiet about it.
The New Yorker points out that once again DC insiders are bad predictors of policy. I remember the Brand-X case
Peter Bernstein was shocked that the sky didn't fall with the ruling.
Some folks see this as the Obama take over of the Internet (ObamaNet). I don't see how that is, since we have had Title II regulation in place since the 1930s. Verizon said we might as well go back to Morse Code - a creative reply to the order.
Former Commissioner Copps "objected strongly a dozen years ago when then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell took what he considered a big wrong turn: classifying cable companies' broadband Internet business as a lightly regulated "information service."" [source]. That turn was corrected with the 2015 Open Internet order.
Sonic CEO says: "I Welcome Being Regulated As A Common Carrier!"
Tim Wu was happy. So was Tim Berners-Lee, Public Knowledge, The Greenlining Institute, Etsy, Netflix and many others who support this order. (I wonder how many have actually read the 300 page order yet - it has not been published yet.)
I would have been happier if the decision wasn't split along party lines, but I can't remember a vote that wasn't - all the way back to when Powell was Chair (and got all this started). DC is nothing but partisan hackery anyway (followed by the Spin Machine). It did seem like the Commissioners - especially Ajit Pai - was spending a lot of time lobbying for his next gig.
No idea why the GOP doesn't like it; they have been saying all week that they don't even use email!! (And they represent the people??? Of where? Amish?)
It likely means more taxes though to pay for the USF programs.
It also will likely be decided by the court system, not the regulatory body.
]]>Rob Powell agrees that lawsuits are coming and yet no one knows what passed yet.
From NECA: "The FCC issued a News Release on February 26, 2015, announcing it adopted a Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order at its February 26, 2015 Open Meeting that reclassifies broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service under Title II. The Commission said the new rules would apply to fixed and mobile broadband alike, and include bright line rules, such as no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization, as well as give the FCC authority to address interconnection concerns. The Order forbears from enforcing 27 provisions of Title II and over 700 associated regulations that are not relevant to modern broadband service, including rate regulation and last-mile unbundling, and does not require broadband providers to contribute to the federal USF at this time. The FCC said it will enforce the Open Internet rules through formal and informal complaints. Order not yet released."
Apparently one Dem commissioner was going to balk and then didn't. Apparently Congress - especially GOP - was going to write a bill and didn't. Like a bill from Congress would be any better for consumers than this order? I think not.
Facebook is atwitter with opinion and links to articles that are just opinion -- like this one. I say come down. We only really know 2 things: taxes are coming and the rest will be settled by a court next year.
Oh, we know one more thing: Verizon and Comcast brought this on themselves. Messing with Netflix was the move that got this fast tracked. Both thought because they won in court before they were above it. If the masses can't be entertained - can't get their streaming content -- they may wake up, pay attention to all the bullsh!t going on in Dc and at the state level and on Wall Street - and revolt!
You can read the statements here at the NPRM.
]]>The other dockets at the F Agency are still embattled, including VoIP inter-carrier compensation, special access circuits, Open Internet / Net Neutrality, and the mergers (Comcast-TWC and ATT-DTV).
I haven't jumped on the Title II bandwagon, because the devil is in the details (and that proposal is like 300+ unreleased pages!)
I will say this about Title II: despite voice being regulated we still have call completion issues in rural America; we still have dropped calls (VoIP and cell); and we still have too many amateurs delivering voice services (causing some of these problems). The TDM-to-IP transition is in mid-stream but without any real oversight or structure in place. VoIP inter-connection is still a problem. It would be nice to have HD and Fax work any where due to all VoIP lines being as connected as TDM lines are.
Calling Title II regulation Obamacare for the Internet is just plain spin for TV time by a bunch of old white men who can't turn on their computers themselves and still think of the Internet as a bunch of tubes. (I am very tired of politicians - all of them.)
FCC Chair Wheeler's "strategy of reclassifying the service providers stems from a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington last year that voided FCC open-Internet rules. Judges said the agency improperly treated Verizon Communications Inc. as if it were a utility -- something the FCC couldn't do because of its 2002 ruling." [source]
None of this would have come to pass if Comcast and Verizon hadn't played games with Netflix. These same 2 idiots ISPs are the only 2 to sue the FCC over Open Internet rules. They should have been happy with the way it was, but greed.
In addition, I think the FCC gave cable enough prizes this year: by changing the definition of broadband to 25 Mbps x 3 Mbps they essential called ADSL dial-up. With the sale of more Verizon wireline assets to Frontier, cable will win some more. Isn't that enough for the Duopoly member with an almost monopoly on residential broadband in America and an increasing hold on small business Internet and voice services?? The Comcast deal for TWC with Charter should NOT go through. There is no benefit or upside to the consumers for this to happen. None. And that is the sole mandate of any F agency: protect the sheople consumers. The FCC lacks follow up AND enforcement of merger conditions. So why approve a merger that will need a lot of conditions -- for a company clearly against Open Internet????
The Big 3 - AT&T, VZ and Comcast - are all set to file lawsuits after this order passes. I like how "Michael Powell, who as Republican FCC chairman led the agency to its 2002 decision," weighs in as president of the NCTA for his decision in 2002. How did he get to be FCC Chair again? Oh, right, he worked for Rumsfeld and his daddy. That's qualified.
It seems FCC Commish Clayburn is looking for the spotlight and to add drama by asking for lighter conditions now. Ah, politics. It makes for crappy regulation. But maybe it is more about the next job offer, as Clayburn seems to be doing the delay that the GOP commissioners were seeking. Why does it always go along party lines at this F Agency?
This is a decent read: Title II Proposal Brings Certainty - and Questions.
In 2002 till 2006, the FCC - usually twisted by the courts - made a number of rulings that set the current Duopoly up for riches. I think the exchange for that was supposed to be broadband for all in the US. To at least keep pace with Moldova. Instead, they pocketed the rate increases, played games with OTT content providers and VoIP providers daily, made deals with each other not to compete and lobbied up the ass in place of actually making good on their promises. They not only deserve Title II; they all deserve eminent domain of their networks.
Governments take over houses because a new plan concept will bring more taxes. Why is this any different?
This is also why the big merger should be denied -- they break their promises.
"With broadband defined as a Title I "information service" as it is today, the FCC lacks the legal language and authority to punish carriers for things like super-cookies" from VZW, write VB. In what world do we pay companies to spy on us? Oh, right, sorry.
It would be nice if the FTC has some cajoles, but they don't, so it is up to the FCC do rein things in.
I hear this from the old angry white men on TV: How much do you love America that you consistently play with the one resource that makes America competitive? The Internet is what is spinning our economy. It is what provides many people jobs. And yet the top ISPs won't provide a dumb pipe equivalent to Moldova to Americans?
]]>Both have been running from wireline for a while -- since maybe 2006. I think they wanted forbearance to get rid of unions and that copper plant. The wireless divisions are non-union for the most part. Unions and pensions are killing them financially (they say).
AT&T will record a $10 billion charge in fourth quarter. "The company expects a pretax loss due to changes in pension and post-employment plans and abandonment of certain copper assets." And "The Dallas-based company will also take a $2.1 billion non-cash charge after deciding to abandon certain copper assets deemed unnecessary for future network activity as customer demand for older voice and data products declines," writes CNET.
Verizon nears "the end" of FiOS builds, according to ARS. "Verizon lost $2.23 billion, but FiOS and wireless businesses remain profitable. Verizon posted a net loss of $2.23 billion in Q4 2014, despite making a profit of $9.63 billion for the full year. The loss included "significant non-operational items... primarily related to the annual actuarial valuation of benefit plans and mark-to-market pension adjustments," Verizon said."
VZ nears the end of landlines as it makes a deal to sell off as it makes a deal to sell Cali, Texas and Florida wireline and FiOS to Frontier for $10 Billion.
The RBOCs both spent big in the AWS-3 auction. AT&T spent $18B and VZW spent $10B. AT&T bought Nextel Mexico from NII Holdings and Iusacell. Verizon just sold Cali, Texas and Florida to Frontier for $10B plus, according to this SEC filing.
Cable won the broadband war when the FCC raised the definition of broadband to 25 Mbps. Now cable will again win market share as it did when Frontier took over Connecticut. Where does Frontier keep getting this money from? And why can't they ever have a smooth transition?
The RBOCs want out of copper (VZ more than ATT) - and want to focus on wireless which is profitable for them. BUT their churn is getting out of control. AT&T "said postpaid churn, or the rate of customer defections, rose to 1.22 percent and average revenue per phone user declined 10.7 percent from a year earlier." [reuters] The cellular market is flat in the US. AT&T has been looking to expand to Europe, but the EU says NO (probably due to Room 641A and Snowden revelations). So it is off to LATAM for AT&T. Verizon is kind of stuck because they have all that debt from divorcing Vodafone for sole ownership of VZW.
Now the FCC is making their DSL obsolete and about to add Title II regulation. The RBOCs are likely ready to leave that headache to Frontier, Windstream (70% of revenues are broadband), and the cable coalition.
Oh, if the Title II goes through for mobile broadband, VZW's super cookies will be burnt.
I was going to talk about this: "Chairman Wheeler Proposes to Classify Internet Access as Telecom Service" but everyone has made so much work of it in the last few months that I decided to give my readers a break. Please note, however, that ACA, et al. Oppose Title II Regulation on Small ISPs; WISPA opposes the plan; and CTIA Urges Different Open Internet Rules for Mobile Broadband Providers. No one likes change. Lawsuits already filed - even before the order has been voted on and finalized. You can blame just 2 companies: VZ and Comcast -- and then spread some blame over to the FTC for not jumping in the fray.
]]>This will mean less CAF and USF monies to telcos, since they don't offer broadband any longer. OUCH!
Does this also mean that we don't have to pay USF on DSL?
Does Nigeria now have more broadband access than the US?
This will likely speed up the rate at which the RBOCs - AT&T and Verizon - sell off copper lines.
This wasn't done in a bubble. Connected homes use more bandwidth as the report suggests. Innovations at CES and 4K TV that Netflix will be sptreaming soon require 25 Mbps. The telcos have not done a very good job of keeping pace with the broadband needs of America. This is why that Obama at the SOTU mentioned muni networks. If telcos won't upgrade, get out of the way of progress you bloated monopolies!!!
]]>The price of crude oil is $45 per barrel today -- as Saudi Arabia enters the day with a new after the death of King Abdullah yesterday. Yemen's government collapsed this week. Europe is trying to avert another financial crisis. It's a little bit of turmoil (again) globally.
Meanwhile, in the online travel race with Priceline (which bought Kayak last year), Expedia buys Travelocity from Sabre Holdings for $280 million.
Founded in 2005, Box went public today. As NYT explains, "Box can focus on a more pressing issue: standing out in an industry that has quickly filled with competition, particularly from much bigger rivals like Google and Microsoft."
The online data storage industry is as crowded as the Hosted VoIP sector. Consolidation is happening in each sector, but not nearly enough. Why more is needed? Too many players with too few customers and little branding. Remind you of the Hosted VoIP sector too?
Evolve IP, a Broadsoft based cloud services company, bought an MSP, Webcore Technologies. It adds management experience, customers and some services and skills that Evolve didn't have.
If you are looking for a PSTN conference bridge for Office 365, take a look at PlumUC's latest move.
Going to be in Miami Beach next week for ITEXPO? Let's grab coffee or if you are around on Tuesday, come to dinner.
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