Posted on 08/04/2007 11:53:48 PM PDT by HAL9000
Excerpt -
~ snip ~It is very doubtful, almost impossible, that we'll catch up to those countries ahead of us in broadband penetration. They are too far ahead and our native demand is simply less because our Internet economies are developing more slowly. Absent some miracle, the game is already over.
As I wrote two weeks ago, the situation is likely to improve somewhat over the next year or two as the telephone companies sacrifice a little to lock us in before we switch to DOCSIS 3 cable modems and the cable companies, in turn, offer incentives to jump to their voice products. But these companies don't think at all in international terms and they simply don't care about international competitiveness or the growth of our economy. They should, but they don't. And they don't because they have never had to. Though they are required to operate in the public interest and to provide public services, these monopolies have never been forced to consider our place in the world.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at pbs.org ...
I hope so. We'd be better off with Windstream or CenturyTel as our ILEC. We would see much more broadband deployment around the state.
I want to be clear one one point: I think you folks in the field do a great job. It's those bandits in San Antonio who are screwing up everything. I would hope that if AT&T does divest Arkansas wirelines, the local employees would be hired by the new owner.
‘We would see much more broadband deployment around the state.’
That’s my point. You wouldn’t.
Profitable areas are competitive. Non-profitable areas depend on an overall push by the company to see any gain. Rural Arkansas would see broadband when everyone else sees it.
I disagree. Windstream and CenteryTel are the ILECs in several areas of Arkansas. A simple comparison of those two companies against AT&T shows that they are already deploying broadband in rural areas far more aggressively than T.
SBC should have taken care of their existing wireline customers before spending billions on their acquisition spree to expand their territory. I believe that AT&T plans to let the rural copper wirelines rot - then eventually they will shut down and abandon the rural wirelines and tell everyone in rural areas to switch to cellular. (Of course, a lot of AT&T workers here will lose their jobs when that happens.)
One other point - Windstream and CenturyTel are making good profits in their rural service areas. AT&T could too, but the refuse to make the investment.
Once we’re all wireless, this will all be moot. It will be like bemoaning that the U.S. will never “catch up” in buggy whip manufacturing. True statement, but so what?
Broadband data is not public.
Their profits are. And CenturyTel and Windstream are hardly raking in the dough.
They’re raking in plenty of dough. It’s difficult to compare Windstream’s performance since they just spun off from Alltel a few months ago, but CenturyTel’s income increased 5% over the previous quarter, and their broadband growth rate is 20% higher than AT&T’s.
Exactly. Thank God America has a lot of wide open spaces and a dispersed population. If we lived jammed together we would have higher broadband penetration like a Japan or a South Korea which is #1 or close to it in broadband usage
When you’re at the bottom there’s no place to go but up. AT&T is the largest ISP in America.
I agree completely. I've used dial up, dsl and Comcast cable which was blazingly fast for downloading some videos and Linux distributions and Windows Vista from Microsoft. I'm back to DSL because it's cheaper right now. It's annoying sometimes that it is slower than Comcast cable internet. But for real world productive use, not aimless entertainment, DSL speeds are fast enough for me and I would think 99% of business
Like you say dial-up was too slow but cable speeds are overkill
I'm thinking about starting a grassroots movement to get Steve Jobs appointed to the AT&T board of directors - or better yet, make him the chairman. The company needs someone to repair the damage inflicted by former crook-in-charge Ed Whitacre, who ought to be sharing a prison cell with Bernard Ebbers.
The analysts are basing their predictions on the iPhone hype. Without that, they’d be selling.
Gizmodo.com - Several AT&T Stores Forced Customers to Buy Accessories With iPhone
That’s reaching. Sorry. But if that was the case they’d be saying “sell” or “hold”. Not the case.
>> I do not understand, what is the problem here?
Same question here.
That could be due to the fact that we are the 3rd largest country in the world and require hundreds as much fibre cables as these tiny countries no larger than good sized US metropolitan areas or states.
When China, Russia and Africa all have larger and faster networks than the USA, I'll worry.
In my case, they cut the copper at the street, tied it to the fiber and used it drag the fiber through the conduit to my house. My phone line used to be crap — scratchy and staticy and too far from the CO for DSL. Now it's crystal clear, and I have 15mb/sec down internet (the ultimate capacity of the fiber is actually much higher).
WOW, this thread got a lot of posts, I did not follow it up since I posted my question. Again, I am bit lost on what exactly is the problem? The US is the most advanced technological nation in the world so I do not know what this fuss is about?
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