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 elbm
join:2000-08-03
Reisterstown, MD
3 edits | Re: What? I work for Verizon, CWA member and work out of one of those garages they are looking at closing.
As for the last mile and aggregating it-- CO density up to this point had been dictated by the limits of copper. With fiber in the local loop, the ability to "aggregate" and transport the local traffic longer distances, with smaller cheaper equipment, the use of soft switches-- is going to cause the landscape of outside plant telcom to change. And it should. Garages need to be closed, and they should. The closings are not going to result in job loss just movement because the plant still needs to be built and maintained.
As for other comments about land line and voip and telcoms inability to compete. It is not a fair comparison. As touched on in other post voip providers have no infrastructure, they own some servers, switches, lease some bandwdith...
Pots lines: A copper pair on average cost $700.00 just to place and splice. That is after the telco pays to place poles, dig trenches, place manholes, conduit or what ever structure is going to be used for placing the cable. The copper pair then either goes to a SLC system ($100k+) and then to the CO or straight to the CO. In the CO is millions of dollars of multiplexing, power, switching and transport equipment. To hook up a new customer requires a truck roll at an average cost of $110.00 per hour loaded cost. A cot must make the physical connection in the CO. All of this just to get a customer hooked up to the local office-- millions more in equipment to to transport call locally and many billions more to do long distance switching and transport.
The telcos have decades long investment in these structures. It took the telcos about 40 years to make the network fully digital, 1964 (the year the first digital line carrier went into the field-- the first T1) till some where in the '90s that the last non digital switchs went away. It took that long because it is incredibly expensive to do, lot of the work can not be done quickly, it was a massive transformation of a live working network with out service interruption (we spend huge amounts of time and resources to avoid service interruptions during migrations and upgrades.) and tech changed and evolved as the upgrade went along. Point being the telcos can not transform this massive network over night, in the next year or years. That is why fios still does pots, VZ would love to do a full migration to ip telephony, they are working on it but VZ unlike voip start ups-- has to be ready to service millions from the time the switch is thrown.
Comparing voip to pots is like comparing a virtual machine to an actual PC.
edits- typos | |
|   kapilThe Kapil
join:2000-04-26
Chicago, IL
1 edit | Re: What? You're an endangered species. A gang rape of unionized telecom field workers is about to take place over the next decade...and the respective ILECs they work for are going to be first in line to bend them over.
Yes, fiber is easier to maintain than copper, yes, the marketplace has changed, yes there's a lot of investment in copper....this is all true.
But, you see, the real problem is that the "phone company" business model is no more. It vanished overnight.
"Phone companies" today, and by that I mean ILECs, are essentially a collection of independent businesses.
Let's see....
There's the "infrastructure" business. The part of the company that owns and runs the physical plant...which is used not only for the company's own products but also resold to ISP, CLECs, Wireless providers etc.
The ILECs make a killing on these products and it's a huge advantage and conflict of interest....they've killed almost all independent DSL ISPs by delaying delivery of local loops and charging too much for them.
There's the ISP business. This is where the world is headed...everything will just be yet another IP based service and the "phone company" will just be a dumb pipe provider.
The dying wireline voice business. It may be dying but it's still hugely profitable. Plus it has ancillary businesses that are pretty substantial in their own right....directory publishing, equipment sales, "field services"...repair, installations etc.
Then there are the wireless divisions....which are hugely profitable, growing like crazy (although the market in terms of number of subs to be had is pretty saturated). Owning the wireline infrastructure needed to support the wireless business gives T and VZ an unfair advantage over Sprint, T-Mo and other smaller wireless carriers.
Of course there's also Video and other assorted projects that may or may not be successful long term. They're either a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" type strategy or designed to restrain the growth of cable companies.
The 1996 act did not go far enough. We should have broken up the ILECs into two separate divisions...one that sells or markets the retail products to end users and the other that sells infrastructures to all LECs, including the ILECs own retail division. We could (should) have even nationalized the infrastructure division since it's really a utility and a critical component of the national infrastructure.
But this did not happen. Then, of course, on GWB's watch, we let the original Ma Bell pretty much reassemble itself....restricting competition further.
The copper plant was subsidized by the tax payers who let the ILECs operate as a regulated monopoly for over a century.....and now that it's time for us to get a return on our investment, the telcos are selling off the unprofitable markets in their territories and cherry-picking the areas where to want to invest so they can reap huge profits.
Don't forget the dismantling of the local franchise on the video side which dealt a further blow to universal coverage and removed yet more consumer protections while de-funding local access programming. There's also the USAC/USF racket where the taxpayers and competing providers pay, essentially, protection money to the ILECs....for universal service that is nowhere to be found
What happens to the unprofitable masses? They get sold to other companies or get spun off....those companies are already performing poorly and will eventually go under.....and the unprofitable, run down infrastructure that has been starved of investment will become a public charge because the people in those area will still demand service.
A scam, nay - a fraud of the highest order has been perpetrated upon the American public by ILECs and it's about time someone hold them to account.
If I'm - a high school drop-out - is the only one who gets this, we're in serious trouble as a nation. Where is the leadership we elected to run this country? Why is the FCC, and the FTC, asleep at the wheel?
--
»www.VoIPTrunk.com | |
| | elbm
join:2000-08-03
Reisterstown, MD | Re: What? I agree 100 percent that there should be a separation between wholesale access and retail service.
Pots lines are not profitable-- only the advanced services allow the company to make money on dial tone.
Most of the money made on the wire line side is on hi-caps--some DS1s, some DS3s, OC3s 12s 48s.... TLS, EDSR rings, VON circuits, ethernet, RPR these are the stuff that service government and large cooperations. As an example- We have one brokerage firm in my local area has 9 buildings all with-in 15 miles of each other. They use various combinations of every circuit/service above, except rpr, with full multi- multiple path redundancy and they're cost is somewhere around 250k per month and are locked into long term contracts.
As for the demise of the telcom worker-- there is alot of network that has nothing to do with phone service or fios as described above that is going nowhere any time soon. | |
| | | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | Re: What? Please don't take this wrong, either, but I'm sorry to say that many telephone workers are VASTLY over paid which is figuring into the cost of over priced services. Sorry, in this former telecom worker's mind, the unions are also not helping these industries one bit.
The CWA, which I used to be a memeber of, is corrupt. The day they stepped foot into and tried to take on cable television as a unit was their biggest mistake. It was a HORRIBLE conflict of interest. They can't represent cable and phone together and pay money into political lobbies at the same time.
Comparing the work load of a cable worker to a phone worker, the represented cable worker is paid FAR less than phone workers and often have two to three times more work load.
Further, you are right.. the retail vs whole sale part of telephone needs to be two separate working units. As of today, they refuse to really look at it this way. Yes, there are many needs to consider for service available, however, that can all be reduced (which unions hate) into a more simplified network - of fiber.
Verizon is laying the fiber and so are many small companies. The reason I bring up smaller companies is important... they realize the upfront cost, but the long term simplified expenses and savings using a universal, powerful delivery medium.
Voip/Telephony is the way of the future. Pots is dying and almost dead. I also support what you say about indi voips throwing in switches and servers - however, I can't sympathize with providers crying foul that their "networks" are costly and need vast attention to be installed and maintained. They need to shift their models out of thinking they are going to provide the services that connect people, when clearly they are not doing much to innovate (except their corporate officer pay scales - yes, I said it)
In short, much of the reason for NOT doing a vast/mass conversion of the countries network is political. We're working hard to protect over paid workers and work force (and not transitioning them into other areas) and keeping the public in the dust when it comes to new technology which is wrong. Change is painful and no one in this country is willing to realize that there ARE going to be workers that get displaced when this happens - it's called progress.. the unions need to realize this. However, the unions believe they are more than a bargaining unit for the employee. When there is no longer a position for the employee, their part of representation is over. The unions are in many cases destroying this country and holding us back instead of innovating and moving us forward.
Sorry, these are just my feelings, I feel strong about them.. just like we don't want corporate hand outs, and charity, I also don't want unions being rewarded for failures too.. EVERYONE has the right to take hits in their life and this is no exception. | |
| | | | | | Re: What? How much in your mind is "overpaid"? What are they earning now? What do you believe they should be paid? And why do you believe they're being overpaid?
Also, if you believe they should be paid less, then would you agree that there should be severe limits on the amounts executives can be paid? As in, maximum of 6 figures for salaries *plus* bonuses? | |
| | | | | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | Re: What? I already stated in my mind why they are over paid.. please read my post.
Also, you're not going to trap me like so many try to do in this situation... I don't believe everything has to equate to a common factor. We're not talking about executives and pay, we're talking about phone technicians being paid what they are in contrast to other comparable techs in the industry. So, no, I don't agree, in this case at hand, that executives should be capped or limited on pay. I believe in a free market .. however, since I bring up free market, I'm also sure you're someone that bitches right along that phone rates are too high.. got news for you, executive pay is nothing when you compare it to the over all hourly work force, annually.
I don't compare apples and oranges. However, if you want to have a SEPARATE discussion on executive pay, OUTSIDE of this conversation, I'd be happy to have one with you. | |
|
| kvlou
join:2009-07-31
Englewood, OH | "Dumb pipes"...I love that one! It would
be a " No Pipes" (cable,voip,clec,ISP,hell all of them)
if it weren't for the ILECS. Your welcome. | |
|
 funchordsHelloPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA
kudos:5 | said by elbm:I am work for Verizon, CWA member and work out of one of those garages they are looking at closing. As for the last mile and aggregating it-- CO density up to this point had been dictated by the limits of copper. With fiber in the local loop, the ability to "aggregate" and transport the local traffic longer distances, with smaller cheaper equipment, the use of soft switches-- is going to cause the landscape of outside plant telcom to change. And it should. Garages need to be closed, and they should. The closings are not going to result in job loss just movement because the plant still needs to be built and maintained. As for other comments about land line and voip and telcoms inability to compete. It is not a fair comparison. As touched on in other post voip providers have no infrastructure, they own some severs, switches, lease some bandwdith... Pots lines: A copper pair on average cost $700.00 just to place and splice. That is after the telco pays to place poles, dig trenches, place manholes, conduit or what ever structure is going to be used for placing the cable. The copper pair then either goes to a SLC system ($100k+) and then to the CO or straight to the CO. In the CO is millions of dollars of multiplexing, power, switching and transport equipment. To hook up a new customer requires a truck roll at an average cost of $110.00 per hour loaded cost. A cot must make the physical connection in the CO. All of this just to get a customer hooked up to the local office-- millions more in equipment to to transport call locally and many billions more to do long distance switching and transport. The telcos have decades long investment in these structures. It took the telcos about 40 years to make the network fully digital, 1964 (the year the first digital line carrier went into the field-- the first T1) till some where in the '90s that the last non digital switchs went away. It took that long because it is incredibly expensive to do, lot of the work can not be done quickly, it was a massive transformation of a live working network with out service interruption (we spend huge amounts of time and resources to avoid service interruptions during migrations and upgrades.) and tech changed and evolved as the upgrade went along. Point being the telcos can not transform this massive network over night, in the next year or years. That is why fios still does pots, VZ would love to do a full migration to ip telephony, they are working on it but VZ unlike voip start ups-- has to be ready to service millions from the time the switch is thrown. Comparing voip to pots is like comparing a virtual machine to an actual PC. Anyone who missed this message ought to read it. Awesome!
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- District of Columbia -- KJ7RL
Test your Broadband connection today! -- »measurementlab.net/ | |
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