 gwionwild colonial boyPremium,ExMod 2001-08
join:2000-12-28
Pittsburgh, PA
kudos:1
1 edit | reply to BillRoland
Re: You forgot about telco investors... That would, in fact, be great, in the short term. There's a LOT of cash in "basic" internet service and all. But the problem arises in terms of long run strategic positioning. I think Verizon and T are thinking quite soundly, for that part of the equation. As far as investor discontent, Verizon's not really experiencing it, they're just sort of languishing at around 30 bucks a share, which isn't bad, in the industry, these days, adjusted for earnings and all. T is still suffering from their failure to execute very well over the past ten or so years, but they're staging a pretty solid comeback... I really had them written off, a few years back, as roadkill on the information superhighway, but they're doing a good job at re-directing their resources at profitable markets.
As anyone with any military or law enforcement background knows, there are two distinct ways of looking at a battle, the tactical and the strategic. Sometimes, we write a given battle off, as a tactical impossibility, to gain a strategic advantage. Concede the battle for the sake of winning the war, in other words. I really think Verizon and T are doing just that, with their aggressive next generation deployments. Right or wrong, they're playing a card that all of the players will, eventually, have to play. They've just turned it over sooner, rather than holding it in their sleeve.
In ten or so years, it's inevitable that all of the players in this game will either have to deploy fiber at very least into the neighborhoods, or they'll have to throw themselves on their swords. My point, all along, hasn't been to "cheerlead" Verizon or AT&T, but to taunt the other players to try and match them. In the game we call our "economy", aggressive deployment of new technologies is rewarded, over the longer term, and those unwilling to forsake huge near-term profits for longer term vision tend to get steamrollered, eventually, by those who will.
Look back at the Railroads, the steel industry, whatever... complacency has never been rewarded. Only vision and ingenuity are rewarded. Look at our auto industry, floundering, because they're holding fast to an outmoded business model. They're being passed up as though they're standing still by the European and Asian automakers, because the competition is offering the latest and greatest, and is willing to take risks in marketing and design. In the long run, and assuming they can meet the challenge, it's going to improve the American companies. It's going to make them compete, and offer what people want, rather than what seems most profitable in a short term analysis.
That's the problem, in America, with tech... we model it after the old Detroit concept, of milking the last drop of profitability from a design, before we incrementally step up to the next generation. On a month-to-month basis, that seems quite logical, money's made, risk is minimized... but, in the long term, assuming risk is the only way of remaining viable. Someone will always be there, someone who has no established record, someone with little or nothing to lose in the risk equation.
That's what's built America into the technological powerhouse we've been for the last century. When Teddy Roosevelt broke the monopolies, America surged... not that year, not next year, but over the course of the century. He could have sat back, and enjoyed a "here and now" windfall from the monopoly stagnation at the turn of the last century, but he recognized that we could all be enriched, into the next generation, with the fetters removed, and with a free market demanding innovation and growth, rather than complacency.
Grow... build... dream! That's it... that, really, is all there is! 
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Semper Eadem
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Dreams unwind. Love's a state of mind. |
