Time4aNAP
Premium
join:2007-04-09
Des Plaines, IL
1 edit | reply to ackman
said by ackman  :"We continue to pursue opportunities to manage our business more efficiently," translation: "We're going to India" No, it's more like 'translation: "We're out of business"'
Covad is the one and only surviving back-office DSL provider that I know of. It's the only one in my area--even AT&T provides its DSL service through Covad. It was hard enough to compete back when potential customers couldn't fathom paying more than $20/mo. for "the Internet". (The same people thought nothing of paying ten times that for Cable TV, and thousands for the latest big screen TV / a TV in every room of the house.) Since SBC was granted the privilege to charge potential competitors near-retail prices to use their lines wholesale, it's been mighty hard for Covad to turn a profit, even without any DSL competitors.
If we lose Covad, we lose all of the competitive DSL ISPs. With AT&T being at both ends of Covad's revenue stream, and their DSLAMs colocated in AT&T's COs, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if Covad goes into receivership, AT&T (and Verizon and Qwest) will be the receivers. If that happens, the new Ma Bell (think "Mom" from "Futurama") will gain ownership of the equipment, in situ, no less. And without any other DSL work to be had in the US, they can name their price (think "minimum wage & salary") for out-of-work DSL techs.
The end result will be less than a serious effort to provide service to users, and all about stealing away as many customers from cable companies as they can, the goal being to put the cable companies in financial jeopardy as well. In this deregulated country, if the cable industry went bust, the FCC, FTC and SEC would have little choice but to allow the Mega-Bells to re-acquire the cable franchises that they had divested themselves of previously, for pennies on the dollar. And that would give "the phone company" a synthetic, unholy, but technically natural monopoly on all local wireline traffic in the US.
By the end of the decade, we could be right back to a single AT&T, after SBC, Verizon and Qwest agree to merge, and put the same squeeze play on the remaining long distance providers and cellular companies. If that's allowed to happen, I predict that "the phone company" will suddenly lose interest in offering non-telephony services like cable TV and Internet, and price them out of the reach of the average consumer.
Don't think it could happen? When the old AT&T was broken up, did you think that the Baby Bells would be allowed to merge, get back into the long distance business, own cable franchises etc? |
