 espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2
 ·Clear Wireless
| reply to funchords
Re: Statistics are fun said by funchords:I did the calc once showing that, for $40/mo, we all ought to be running 30 Mbps connections (and that was more than a year ago). This is given the typical costs and capabilities of delivery in telecom equipment. The gatekeeper, in most areas, has been the last-mile ISPs. I'd love to see the math on that. Even with a much cheaper delivery solution like Ethernet you're still looking at $7/mbps carrier costs from the rock-bottom players like Telia and Cogent, and that's in a carrier neutral facility where they can put in a box like a Force10 E600 and provide 336 fiber hand-offs within the facility all on one single piece of hardware.
said by funchords:I hardly blame them for not wanting to get into a continuous upgrade cycle. But we don't have anything near the competition that would otherwise create fair market prices. Comparing privately funded and built networks in the US to those funded or heavily sponsored by government funding isn't a good way to arrive at fair market value. That's like comparing the pricing of a T-shirt at Target to the price of a T-Shirt at Good Will; the factors that lead to the pricing are so vastly different that you need to at least be conscious of the differences.
said by funchords:When both players have kept prices high and speeds low despite reductions in their own costs or improvements in their own equipment, then consumers have no place to go but to their wallets. Reductions in equipment costs doesn't help you when you're still paying off your current equipment. That only helps you on your next equipment refresh interval, which for infrastructure is a 3-6 year cycle if you're running things short, and as long as 10-15 years on a conservative cycle. |
1 edit | In fact, the amount of money cable providers have spent on their equipment, BOTH OLD AND NEW, has decreased every quarter. So you're either misinformed or a bald-faced liar. Let me bequeath some more meaningful information.
Comcast, for instance, has an operating cash flow margin of 39 percent in the first quarter of 2009, up from 37.8 percent a year earlier and 37.4 percent in the first quarter of 2007—and it has been rolling out the (relatively cheap) DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades for some time already.
Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable, which kicked off the most recent debate over metered billing and Internet data caps, likewise posted some excellent first quarter numbers. The company's overall revenues were up five percent from a year before, but when broken down by category, Internet access did much better—11 percent higher. In its 2008 annual report, TWC also indicates that its Internet expenses had dropped by about 12 percent, even as the revenues increased.
Back when it was still issuing statements trying to justify its unpopular data caps, the company stressed that the business was a good one now, but that it needed plenty of future cash to pay for all the upgrades that higher Internet use was forcing on the company. But in the first quarter of 2009, the company substantially cut its capital expenditures, from $846 million a year ago to $769 million for this last three months. |
