Qwest: 10-15Mbps 'Plenty for Foreseeable Future' > Qwest between a rock and a hard place

Qwest between a rock and a hard place

reply to fAcEtIOUs

Fiber to the house
Bruce

reply to sporkme
I'd imagine muni competition, like the UTOPIA project, are Qwest's biggest concerns...and I dunno about the cable companies in the vast areas Qwest serves. Also consider the population density in their service area makes it much harder to get the ROI they need to keep investors happy.

They do need to move a little more aggressively, I think, though. Perhaps it would be wise for them to open up what fiber they do have to service providers, like Utopia has? I dunno...
KM
--
Lake George Poetry

reply to fAcEtIOUs
"Competition is putting current Qwest executives in a no-win situation" and "and the executives lose their jobs. So, the only thing they can do is go slow"

So, the executives are NOT acting in the best interests of the shareholders, the executives are acting to save their own jobs! Who'd a thought!.

If that's the case, then by all definitions of capitalism, Qwest should fail then! I mean, no government subsidies, no special laws, just capitalism, pure and simple. If Quest no longer makes financial sense, then it fails. The shareholders value drops to ZERO. Oh well, they took the risk, too bad they lose all their money. The only way they can prevent this from happening according to your description would be to *gasp*.. not practice true capitalism (i.e. get the government courts involved, etc).

(Poobah throws a bucket of water on the corporate apologists) Hmm..what's a corporate apologist to do! "I'm melting.. ahh, you wicked girl.. I'm melllllllting"
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Sure the internet has lots of porn and piracy, but I'm sure there's a downside to it.

reply to KoolMoe
Qwest's dilemma is pretty simple.

If they really want to compete with cable, they'll have to have big capacity into the house. They may think that 15-20 Mbps will do it, but it may not, depending on viewing habits, success of HDTV, and other factors. But we're looking at significant bucks for either level of video-capable speed.

In any event, the most that they can reasonably hope for would be to get about half of the video market--cable will fight to keep as many video customers as it can.

Nobody on Wall Street following telcos thinks "risk" of any type is a good idea--especially when the best you can hope to get is half of somebody else's business. Nobody following telcos on Wall Street sees the potential of true, full video on demand, either.

The result is that even if Qwest frees itself from a "Bellhead" mentality, it still has to deal with stock analysts thinking in that manner.

A dilemma, yes--but no tears shed here.

calvoiper
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VoIP--the death knell of remaining voice monopolies!

reply to fonzbear2000
You may also see FTTP which is Fibre To The Premises which means the same thing. FTTx where x is some letter in the acronym that stands for Fibre To The x.
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This post sponsored by ME.. A pleasure to read

reply to G_Poobah
You have a lot of opinions, but I think your getting carried away just a little. I've read some of your past posts, and you seem to contradict yourself heavily here. Do you want pure capitalism? Then the rbocs should not have to share the network with other carriers. If so, then the other technologies like cable, wireless etc should too. You want true capitalism? Local governments should not provide broadband then, that is a community , coming from commune , ie a communist ideology and therefore very far from what you want to achieve. You want pure capitalism? Then by all means verizon and the rest of the carriers should be able to pick and choose whom gets ftth. And I'll bet it would not be YOUR neighborhood. It would be the Hampton's NY, Beverly hills CA, etc...
Not that its not happening, but they aren't as flagrant as it would be otherwise.

reply to fonzbear2000

reply to jtorre69
With that logic, gov't wouldn't be providing roads either.

Even if they don't provide the content portion of a service, a neutral ground of infrastructure would certainly be of benefit. You would then have content providers competiting for customers and unlike FIOS or other deployments you don't have customers having the choice of take it or leave it.
I feel this gov't deployment should only be done by munis who have bonds passed by the locals to pay for it so those using it are the ones paying for it.

What true capitalism? Get rid of public schools and every other public service. Partial capitalism works just fine, as does muni broadband.
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WAR HAS NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING, except ending slavery, facism, communism, Nazism....

reply to sporkme
You are kidding, right?

Why is Verizon the measurement of everything broadband? VZ may be deploying Fiber in many areas, but the lay is still very small. It looks like a large deployment because they are pickign areas in various cities and it makes it look like a nationwide roll out - but the bottom line is that VZ is still decades away from coming close to a systemwide deploy.

Further, competition? Try Comcast. Comcast is a serious threat to Qwest in the areas it serves. I can attest to that in the Twin Cities area as CC has taken about 145,000 phone lines from Qwest and with CDV they will take more.

Comcast will be launching DOCSIS 3.0 nationwide as it becomes available - this is not a guess, this is for sure. Comcast has been pushing for the 3.0 platform and has plans to lauch it. Unlike 2.0, which wasn't much worth investing in,3.0 is talked about by corporate all the time.

Want your competition? There it is.

Now, on the Qwest side, they are very correct that 10.0 is going to be enough for the close future. Why? Well, cable WILL be the more expensive choice as they believe it's all about value for the dollar. (reserve your comments if they are immature, thoughtless, or just bashing comments) Cable is pushing to give value for the money, not number of channels for a price. I tend to agree that there is a difference. Some people may experience issues with their cable (so do phone and sat customers, just read these forums) but cable does have a better product at this time and looks like they will in the future not to mention they roll them out much faster than phone.

HOWEVER - the reason that 10mbps will work for Qwest is simple - they will be going after the market that wants a a lower price, lower level of service to fit thier budget.

Cable wants to build the service of the future, phone wants to simply serve the "needs" of their customer base. To think that everyone wants or needs 200mbps up and down is foolish, or, simply living and thinking in your own world. EVEN with HD TV, and other advance services, NOT EVERYONE NEEDS OR WANTS THEM! There are many levels of needs out there - cable will serve most of them and phone will grab the rest.

Example - over New Years Eve, two nightlubs across the street from each other. One sold a huge street party package, grand dinner buffet with real nice food and other entertainment for a cover of $50.00. Normal cover is $10. That club usually has 600 people inside a given weekend night. NYE, they saw about 275. The club across the street, a little smaller, usually has no cover or a $3.00 cover and holds about 200 people. NYE they USED to sell an event for $20 but this year decided to sell a cover at $5 and really offer nothing more than a place to go a drink, watch musioc videos and creat their own party. This year, this bar was so packed and the line was out the door and they couldn't take everyone while the bigger club charing more had less - as usual. The smaller bar had net more moeny this year over last becuase they simply trimmed down their offering, offered the low price basic package for less than the competitor and they attracted a larger crowd.

Some people here have this fantasy that somehow all prividers are going to jack up their speeds and offerings and drop the price to near nothing in order to "survive" when the truth is, there is no need for everyone to offer the turbo charged service for everyone. I think they are realizing that there is still a very large market for those subscribers looking for less of a service for less of a price.

The moral? Yes, 10 *is* enough for Qwest.

reply to Steve