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mgraves1
Premium Member
join:2004-04-05
Houston, TX

mgraves1 to ArgMeMatey

Premium Member

to ArgMeMatey

Re: [General] June 15, 2018?

said by ArgMeMatey:

He failed as an entrepreneur, at least in the areas with which I am familiar, but he has some good ideas and perspective.

I'm not sure that I agree about Dan being a failure as an entrepreneur. FWD was more of an experiment than a business. It was funded by other activities of the Pulver organisation. Noone else was doing anything similar at the time, which is why it was a success as an experimental service. It was part of the argument presented to the FCC in winning the Pulver order.

It outlived its usefulness to many people and could not be converted to a paid model. Does that mean that FWD was a failure. I don't think so.

Jeff Pulver and his team took some big risks in envisioning things beyond what the ILECs were even considering. Their impact should not be underestimated.

ArgMeMatey
join:2001-08-09
Milwaukee, WI

ArgMeMatey

Member

said by mgraves1:

FWD was more of an experiment than a business.

That's fair. I'll just say he's probably finding more financial success as a pundit and policy guy than as a service provider.

The key exchange in the interview, in this respect, is,

... Even with the real estate “windfall,” that you call it, are the big telephone companies really going to make the big investment it’s going to take to phase out the old network and make everything IP?

Daniel Berninger: I don’t want to speak for the telcos. I can give you an analyst’s perspective...

Berninger goes on to talk about increased revenues and reduced costs, but there's plenty of risk for an established monolith trying to compete with the younger, nimbler crowd. Mainly, as has been widely commented upon, AT&T and Verizon do not want to become just a set of tubes that carry others' more profitable services.

So they can set that date, but rest assured that unless the ILECs see greater profit over the new horizon, they will play every conceivable card to keep things where we are today.

I realize that AT&T is on record trying to get out of the regulated POTS business, but one problem is that nobody is stepping up to provide a similar level of service at a reasonable price. That sets the stage for easy finger-pointing, if anybody should suggest moving along in a way that would be less profitable.