| reply to Zorglub
Re: whiners said by Zorglub:
said by boogie74:
No less economical than having 10 different companies putting peanut butter in jars. But they do- and it's not impossible for them to compete by doing it on their own.
Boogie
Actually, it is very different. The telco business is one of very high fixed costs (laying down the fiber, etc.) and of extremely low variable costs. That is clearly not the case with regular consumer products, be it peanut butter, bread or a toaster.
So, that's why we'll never see 10 different companies each laying down their own fiber/copper/coax to our house, because they would not be able to recover their upfront investment. That barrier to entry is so high that we'll never see a truely competitive market on the service side unless the conduit providers are forced to share the conduits.
I can't agree with this concept. One might as well apply it to ANY business plan with high start-up costs- for example, international airlines, radio and tv stations, wireless phone providers, data storage and transport providers, etc.
The investment in 60 to 70 Boeing 747-400 jets would definitely make for a large barrier to any company wishing to sell overseas transportation. Likewise, the investment in several thousand GSM cell towers nationwide to provide a wireless service is a large investment and hence barrier. Satellite service is even MORE costly- as you must actually rocket a satellite into a geo-synchronous orbit. But companies are doing it all the time.
There is no reason why a company would be prevented from deploying fiber to the premise even if there is already a fiber drawn from somewhere else. You can't argue that it's a waste of time to do it and make it so redundant- only to claim that it's now too expensive when it's pointed out that redundancy is good and desireable.
Boogie |
