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Comments on news posted 2006-01-31 09:09:28: AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre repeated comments to the Financial Times yesterday that he wants content companies to pay a QoS tariff. "I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network - obviously not the piece for the customer to .. ..
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ib50MbSoon
Formerly TwoKDialup
Premium
join:2002-06-07
Coloma, MI
| You ain't seen nuthin' yet.... Hey Edster,
I don't know why your people missed this but I got a brilliant idea!
Have your email servers strip the headers off your customer's email. Then, if they want to know who sent the message, they'll have to pay another $9.95 a month, sort of like CallerID. It'll be a huge profit generator. | |
| 
TelecomJunky
Premium
join:2005-12-12
Kansas City, MO
| A conversation with At&t's CEO, Ed Whitacre. Once again At&t CEO Ed Whitacre is out in front showing how competition friendly At&t (formerly SBC, formerly At&t) is.
“We have to figure out who pays for this bigger and bigger IP network,” said Mr. Whitacre. “We have to show a return on our investments.”
Whoa, hold on there, Skippy. Are you saying that it is not your responsibility to pay for your high-speed infrastructure investments, that you do not have the responsibility of setting pricing structures so that you can achieve ROI from sales to your customers? Who then should foot the bill for your FTTH projects?
“I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network – obviously not the piece from the customer to the network, which has already been paid for by the customer in Internet access fees – but for accessing the so-called Internet cloud.”
Wait a second! Aren't these content providers already doing this? No, don't answer. I already know they are.
Like every end user, every content provider has to pay for a high-speed connection to the Internet. In fact, unlike your end users who can pay as little as $14.95 a month for T1 (1.5mbs) speeds to the Internet, content providers must pay much higher rates for direct connections to the backbone.
The common rate for a full T1 to the Internet backbone, not some other company, but directly to the backbone will run content providers anywhere from $500-1000 a month. In addition, they must sign multi-year contracts and pay hefty install fees. Worse yet, most content providers can't get by on a meager 1.5 mbps T1, they need DS3s (45 mbps) or OC192s (9.6 gbps) at costs of tens of thousands per month.
“If someone wants to transmit a high quality service with no interruptions and ‘guaranteed this, guaranteed that’, they should be willing to pay for that,” the AT&T chief said.
“Now they might pass it on to their customers who are looking at a movie, for example. But that ought to be a cost of doing business for them. They shouldn’t get on [the network] and expect a free ride.”
You are killing me. Do you actually here yourself when you speak? You just said, "that ought to be a cost of doing business."
Exactly, Mr. Whitacre, it ought to be the cost of doing business. Thus, if you can not achieve ROI selling DSL for $14.95 per month, perhaps you should consider raising your rates to a sustainable level. Do not ask content providers to foot your bill, content providers already built the cost of their high-speed access into their products and services and so should you! | |
| Techie714
join:2005-08-02
Anaheim, CA
 ·ViaTalk
| Ed Wants YOU to Pay More Basically he is asking us ALL to pay more. What an asshat that Ed guy is. We are all paying enough for our access but NO Ed needs more money to keep all those 30,000 telco people employed & pay for all those benifits. I'm glad I have NO SBC services. | |
| redhatnation
Premium
join:2005-06-02
Woodbridge, VA |  Turnabout is fair play
(Yes, my networks are only a couple of /16's, /18's, /19, and /20 but they get a bunch of eyeballs every month.) | |
| 
kinkaido
@comcast.net | Muzzle needed Will someone please put a muzzle on this ass (Ed Whitacre)!?! | |
| Mutiny32
Network Security Engineer
join:2000-07-04
Lees Summit, MO | I have two words for you, Ed Whitacre F*ck you. | |
| jpark
join:2005-02-05
Jackson, TN | Arrogant beyond belief. "... but for accessing the so-called internet cloud."
The Internet is now a cloud and each drop of rain must pay Ed Whitacre to fall on the rest of us.
Incredulous. | |
| | jpark
join:2005-02-05
Jackson, TN | Re: Arrogant beyond belief. I posted this intending it as a comment, instead it became a new topic (hit the wrong button). Don't know how to delete a post. | |
| | | disc
join:2005-12-31
Raleigh, NC
| carriage fees model? This is almost like the flip side of the carriage fees issues that we're always hearing about in the CaTV/DBS world. Just witness NY Times: A Fight Over Fees Unplugs 'The Golden Girls' Network
. But in that case, the content owners are charging the fees, and the carrier passes them on to the subscriber.
It's a game of hard-ball for each side to meet their profit margins: content owners telling subscribers to switch to alternate carriers, and carriers threatening to go w/o specific content. Conventional wisdom is that the carriers lose power in these types of negotiations as the subscribers have more options to reach the same content. I'm guessing that content owners lose power when their content isn't high ratings. In any case, I would assume the same hard ball tactics and balance of power would apply for carriage of internet content too. | |
| majella77
join:2001-10-03
Chicago, IL
| This crap won't go away This idiot said the same thing back in the fall, and then when the shitstorm hit his retarded ass, he backed down.
Now he's bringing this crap up again!?
The only thing that will stop this idiot from this "Soprano" type extortion is the government... Ooops i guess Ed can go ahead and start booking those 'fees' to the bottom line any day now. | |
| 
inteller
Sociopaths always win.
join:2003-12-08
Tulsa, OK
| i just love how they have figured out how to tier so suddenly, the internet has certain levels? thats odd, it all looks the same to me. i hope when I type messages like these in the future they all are on the same teir or some might drop and then it be a mess.
--
"WHEN THE LAUGH TRACK STARTS THEN THE FUN STARTS!" | |
|
ismella
| boycott boycot this company. they've lost their way. | |
| grandpinaple
join:2006-01-03
New York, NY
| Fuck AT&T Providers realize they will have to upgrade because of improved content by the companies they want to extort. This is the first time in history they will have to do something good for the consumer where their profits will stay the same, but the levels of service will increase. This is all about control and keeping things the same. This guy is really starting to piss me off though, this is worse than RIAA/itunes because here their are no forces to stop the pipe builders from implementing and maintaining this BULLSHIT. | |
| 
odreian615
join:2006-01-18
Chicago, IL
 ·AT&T Midwest
| If you have dsl with any major telco you will know what I am talking about have you ever notice when downloading music, movies, etc any large file how the only site that works pretty well is Yahoo yahoo is already on the 2 tier bandwagon got the jump on Google I guess by already being bed fellows with Telcos they call it co-branding | |
| 
GlobalMind
Domino Dude, POWER Systems Guy
Premium
join:2001-10-29
Hollywood, FL
| Very questionable.... The more of this I read, the more I question what is being said.
I read the article, and honestly I don't get it. I would like to know what content providers (something not fully defined anywhere) are asking for all this QoS? AT&T seems to be saying "we are getting beat up by these guys demanding QoS guarantees."
The content providers are purchasing their circuits to connect with. As a business, those lines come with some level of QoS. So what's the issue? Are the content folks asking for more & more QoS? This isn't clear in any of these discussions.
Regardless of what some folks around here seem to think, the CEOs of AT&T, SBC and others ARE talking about this - however, the context & message is so garbled I don't know how any of us can clearly interpret what they're saying.
Thus we read between the lines. First he says that this is an issue of more QoS, then he says the content company shouldn't expect a free ride. Huh?
If these guys all honestly think that some content company needs to pay every one of them to make sure their content is available to all internet uses, he's nuts. He talks of cost of doing business...yep, same back at AT&T. In the same vein if he also thinks that the content providers need to contract with every long line circuit provider to get more QoS...well that argument at least holds up a tad more.
The thing is he's mixing the two like they're the same thing. They clearly aren't.
If you aren't looking to charge for content delivered on a best effort basis, then why be such an arse about this and make the hard line comments like these? There are clearly some other motives here.
K.
--
TheGlobalMind.com
Chaos, panic & disorder. My work here is done.
Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go? | |
| | johnh123
join:2002-11-19
Chicago, IL | Re: Very questionable.... I think he is talking about allowing 3rd parties to stream content to your set top box, among other things. | |
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