| reply to ptrowski
Re: Welcome to the club.... This type of pricing and caps are inevitable for at least 2 reasons:
1 - there is limited wireless capacity available and the rapidly increasing demand for wireless video will put pressure on the capacity available. Pricing mechanisms are the fairest way to allocate usage of the bandwidth.
2 - The continuing push for more regulation and for network neutrality can cause costs to go up and foreclose options for pricing flexibility. In other words, get the new pricing mechanism in before some gov't regulators foreclose on the option.
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Are you happy with your rep in Washington, DC? |
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 Z80APremium
join:2009-11-23 | 3 - Reluctance to reinvest in infrastructure to keep pace with demand despite record profits. |
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | People continue to trot out this misinformation, contrary to the telecoms' financial documents showing billions being spent on CAPEX. |
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| reply to Z80A
said by Z80A:3 - Reluctance to reinvest in infrastructure to keep pace with demand despite record profits. »www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/06/···4.apple/
In an effort to deal with the surge in usage, AT&T increased its capital spending budget to between $18 billion and $19 billion in 2010. It promised to use a portion of the money to upgrade its wireless and backhaul networks to handle the onslaught of new wireless traffic. This is roughly $2 billion more than the company had invested in the previous year.
The upgrades include the addition of 2,000 new cell sites. AT&T has also been adding three times more fiber links to existing cell sites than it had in 2009. This will increase capacity for the backhaul network that connects the cell towers to AT&T's main network. The backhaul portion of the network is a critical component to AT&T's network. »www.marketwatch.com/story/verizo···10-04-22
Capital expenditures totaled $3.5 billion in the first quarter of 2010. Verizon reiterated its guidance that total 2010 capital spending will range from $16.8 billion to $17.2 billion. 50% of Verizon's cap expenditures go to Wireless. And about the same % for AT&T.
Cap expenditures are running about 4x their profits. So to say that they aren't investing in infrastructure is wrong.
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Are you happy with your rep in Washington, DC? |
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iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Comcast
| The thing is that AT&T is adding tons of customers and the capex isn't keeping up. For what it's worth, dividing capex over all of AT&T's 87 million customers you get $218 per year per customer. Not bad considering there's OpEx involved and profits have to fit somewhere, but that amount is less than what a user would spend over a year on the iPhone data plan if we're talking about 2GB, and less than any contract-bound user pays as long as you don't count add-a-line.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't AT&T ARPU somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 at this point? Even with capex they're still making a healthy profit... |
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Z80APremium
join:2009-11-23 Reviews:
·Cox HSI
2 edits | reply to fAcEtIOUs
Spending more doesn't mean anything if usage growth far exceeds spending growth. And IF you're claiming they are spending enough then you are making the case that AT&T's new caps are absolutely unjustified by the financials since they were highly profitable without the caps.
So either the network is hurting and they need to cap (they aren't spending enough to keep up with demand), or they are spending enough to keep up with demand thus caps aren't justified. |
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