Posted on 10/22/2016 1:35:59 PM PDT by vette6387
Time Warner Cable merged with Charter Communications on May 18, 2016.
We’d have better technologies. Instead of trailing Europe and Asia as we do now we’d be selling them our old systems like we did before AT&T was broken up.
Ripoff lying company ( Att). Every month they bill 50 percent more than the rate they quoted And it usually takes 6 or 8 hours on phone and computer to get them to correct it. Very very aggravating. I say Att should be broken up LIKE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE! thanks
Oh, boy. Some guy made a mistake in posting. Why don’t you call for his banning?
Except for Bell Atlantic, US West and Bell Labs, it’s all been pretty much put back together.
They could have had most of the end result if they’d just made AT&T sell Bell Atlantic to GTE. Of course, then some lawyers and International Bankers and politicians wouldn’t have gotten rich.
They’re not a monopoly anymore, that’s why our phone systems stink. Back when we had a national phone system AT&T was always driving new technology for the big places and trickle the systems down. Once things became regional there was no long the drive for upgrade. Where I live is on the same back bone we got in the late 90s, we’re not worth the money to upgrade, we were never more than 10 years behind pre-breakup. The national communication system should be a utility, it works better.
As far as I know NYT can be excerpted.
“Excerpt and posting rules thread: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1111944/posts
They attempted to buy Time Warner Cable, but that deal fell through. Time Warner Cable is now merged with Charter Communications - while it still has the name, Time Warner Cable is no longer a part of Time Warner itself - a much larger company.
You mean except for the two most profitable parts and the part that drove the technology forward. Those are kind of important pieces.
They are trying to buy Time Warner, not Time Warner Cable - Time Warner Cable was actually spun off of the main company and is now part of Charter Communications.
AT & T is the owner of DirecTV.
I’m not so sure about that. What would be the advantage of allowing a company to maintain a telecom monopoly like that?
Why don't you support doing it properly?
Well, I used to work for them, post breakup.
Funny story: MaBell wanted to sell modems. Thing was, Hayes set the standard and MaBell still had the attitude that since they invented the modem in the first place, they didn’t have to use the Hayes command set.
Wanna guess how well that worked out?
We used USR modems at The Labs.
How about the picture phone? They struggled with that for years. Now I can pull a 3x6 device out of my pocket and FaceTime to another device anywhere in the world, from anywhere in the world.
Sure, maybe they would have gotten there, but was the incentive for them to do it, there?
I only wish we hadn’t lost the Labs, first to Lucent, then Alcatel, and now to Nokia. But that wasn’t government’s doing. We did that all on our own.
Competition has been good.
The upgrade path. AT&T had a very well worn path in place of constantly upgrade LA, NY and Chicago (often timed fed by federal dollars) and then trickling the previous systems down. This meant all cities were regularly getting their system upgraded whether it was worth the money or not but it really didn’t cost them anything since they constantly had systems to spare. Once the monopoly was broken it became a matter of accounting, the system was no longer primed with parts to spare, they now have to decide if this city is worth the money. Where I live has had 1 significant system upgrade since the breakup, and that was nearly 20 years ago. We’re not worth the money.
Do you really believe that? If we're trailing Europe and Asia, it's because they caught up to the U.S. after the post-WW2 period when we were the only major industrial power in the world. Nothing we do with the corporate structures we have here in the U.S. is ever going to change that.
There were plenty of modems out there not using the Hayes set, it’s not like the Hayes set is that awesome, it just managed to become the standard.
They “struggled” with the picture phone because the technology wasn’t there yet. And they knew it, but they also knew there was only one way to GET the technology. Your 3x6 “device” is a computer, probably has 10 times as much computing power as Deep Blue. The technology is here now.
The incentive for them to do it was the same as it had always been: as a national company constant upgrading was profitable. Because the big cities HAD to be constantly upgraded it gave them the equipment to upgrade EVERYWHERE with trickle down. Baby Bell didn’t have that driver.
We went from being 10 years ahead of Europe in phone tech to 10 years behind in just over 30 year. Competition has been DISASTROUS.
Then so be it. If it's not financially practical for AT&T to upgrade your infrastructure, then I sure as hell don't want a public utility doing it.
Here in New Jersey we have the opposite problem, where Verizon is deliberately letting its copper infrastructure go to sh!t in an attempt to force customers to fiber optic -- whether they want it or not.
We’re not in AT&T. And the problem is just because it’s not profitable for the PHONE COMPANY to upgrade our system doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be profitable to the CITY and the PEOPLE to do it.
See you just outlined ANOTHER problem with the lack of a national system. In a national system they would have upgraded you to fiber because it’s a good idea.
“Think we would have all the coms technologies we have today if MaBell had been left alone?”
I can tell you from personal experience that AT&T does NOT EVER WANT to be first with any technological improvement. They won’t be last, but they will NEVER be first. They are a bunch of candy-a$$ed money grubbers who will hang on to the old for just as long as their competitors will let them. So by buying up the competition, they actually cut the advancement of technology while filling their pockets with your hard-earned money.
“So.. you work for the Times?
You just claimed so.. by listing yourself as the author.”
This is probably the third time I’ve ever posted an article, so I still have to learn more about the process. My concern was to not get FR in trouble with the Slimes. You need to find more things to do for yourself. Sheez!
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