What Telco Threat? > Not as though I get...

Not as though I get...

gwion (a welsh name I believe) posted

"start spending all that marketing cash on fiber and improving the network... learn to compete. It's fun, really, try it, for once. Cable's monopoly is dead... the king is dead!"

Tell that to Verizon.....I can't move for Verizon commercials. Without that spending MAYBE they could roll it faster.

I believe that cable is so far ahead of the game...they will never catch up.

Hob
--
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

reply to gwion
Hob, you know me... I've been around here for ages, and so have you... G lad to see you still active and sharp.

Welsh... indeed. Thank you. Gwion is the uninitiated Taliesin... or Merddin (Merlin). Seeking knowledge and wisdom... "I was, at first, little Gwion... at length, all kings shall call me Taliesin ("radiant brow")"

I grant you, too, that cable is making strong inroads to the user desktop... that's why I tend to sort of "cheerlead" for telcom, make sense? I want to see an active, competative market, and, above all, I want to see innovation and the advancement of technology. We need a free market to do that, and, slowly, I do think that's what we're getting.

We're undergoing what I've previously referred to as "the second industrial revolution"... the "tech revolution". There's so MUCH meat on our joint table... telcom and cable... that the real question isn't who'll eat, it's how much we can eat, together. I want to see a real gentleman's game, here, where you call and I raise and the end game is told by our cards. I referred to Teddy Roosevelt, one of my own American heroes, in another post, and I mean to say that I hope his spirit will live in this revolution... innovate, create, and improvise, until the net result is a better and constantly improvibg comm system for everybody.

I stand by my statement, by the way... "spend that cash where it matters," Marketing strikes me as the cart leading the horse, today. I know cable can do it... I've seen the "first strike capability" in communities I've done contract negotiations for... but I'm sort of put off, I admit, at the degree to which cable will struggle to "max out" a build. I'm sure you understand my meaning. That is, to get the last DROP of usefulness out of a capital expenditure. Comes a point, frankly, where that "drop" castrates the company and its longer term viability. Looks great, on a balance sheet, don't get me wrong. But it stagnates technology, and waits for obsolesence.

Real world example: I represented a town, some years back, and the (monopoly) cable co insisted that, if we gave a second franchise, they would be bankrupted, and have to pull out. We gave it... and the two companies are now BOTH enjoying the "fatted goose". Neither went bankrupt. Rates are good, too, for subscribers... around 30 bucks a month.

The end result was a "cleaning of the pipes", both companies became better providers. They had to... they stood head-to-head competing for subscribersa. And the bankruptcy thing? Oh, ahem... well... the morning after the Borough Councillors voted to grant the second franchise? The old monopoly cable co was rolling -- literally, the morning after -- rolling fiber trucks all across the Borough! Amazing, ain't it, what a little "competition" can do for a company's health!

PS - A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines... Mister Emerson --- rather obviously --- hadn't yet met Mister Thoreau --- the sponge ---, but I do digress...

--
Semper Eadem
--

Dreams unwind. Love's a state of mind.