| reply to asdfdfdfdf
Re: you would be happy about this..... said by asdfdfdfdf :
I disagree.
Why would the telcos chase a competitor into an area they weren't in before? Because they risk losing all relationship with that customer. The telcos don't show much interest in spending money where they have captive customers and no competitors. The incumbents have shown, however, that they are very interested in making sure that there are no competitors providing service, even if they don't want to provide service themselves. Take the response to threats of municipal operations, for example. Why do incumbents spend money to fight municipal build out in areas where they haven't built out themselves?
If bpl comes into an area the telco suddenly faces the prospect of losing future opportunity for a broadband customer and ALSO faces the possibility the customer will move to voip services and they will lose ALL relationship with that customer(even providing local voice service). I would bet you they would be in the area, the next day, spending the money needed to maintain that relationship. They dread losing control of households. Once a household has a non-telco broadband provider they often transition other services away from the telcos as well.
This is true to an extent, but there's some point at which the cost to maintain the relationship and the resulting time for return on investment exceeds reasonable limits. Arguably, areas that would make sense for a competitor to go into are areas that would make sense for a telco to protect its turf. But, the economics of BPL aren't better than these competitor technologies like cable or wireless, so BPL is not likely to trigger an avalanche of competition. Cable and wireless undoubtedly have already picked the low-hanging fruit. |
