Re: Why is Congress Considering Such Anti-Consumer Telecom Bills?

Bruce Kushnick wrote:
>> (Asian countries are now using 100 Mbps in both directions for their >> standard. That is 500 times more powerful.) > Could someone elaborate on this? > Does this mean that if I were to go to Asia, everyone > everywhere -- wealthy and poor, urban and rural, democracy and > dictatorship -- all have a nice 100MBPS hookup at their disposal?

These discussions are usually talking about Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc ... Where population densities make my town of Raleigh look more like Montana. Broadband implementation costs are all about location, location, location. If you have block after block after block of 500 unit or more apartment buildings, this (100mbps Internet) is MUCH easier to do. Plus toss in a totally different tax and public utility structure and you get things in one country which just can't be done in another.

Somehow I don't think that's the case. Now I don't know the utility > situation in Asia (which is a pretty huge land area), but I suspect a > heck of a lot of people don't even have electricity nor telephones, > let alone this high speed connection.

Now you're talking about rural Thailand, Cambodia, China, etc ... (And someone I know to travels to China frequently says that in many ways that country is becoming very very very split between the big cities and the rural areas.

Actually, I suspect the telecom situation in the U.S. -- overall -- is > better than in Asia. Undoubtedly a few parts of Asia (such as very > wealthy people or countries) have some fancy hookups. But I suspect > the great masses do not.

It's more homogenized but better? That gets into issues of subsidization vs getting what you pay for. And As someone who grew up and lived in the more less developed parts of this country but traveled to major cities for years, I was amazed at how backward the big cities here could be in terms of phone service, cable TV, etc ... All in the name of protecting their citizens. That has changed a lot in the last 20 years but still it was amazing to see. I read somewhere recently that cable TV service in San Jose is still stuck in the 80s.

Consequently, I think the use of "500 times more powerful" is a littnle > exaggerated hyperbole. > I am not familiar with the issues adequately he raises to comment on > them. But over the years articles against the "big evil Big Guy" > tended not to be not so reliable. Perhaps significant facts were left > out or inappropriate issues emphasized. For example, back during the > early MCI-AT&T fight the issue of cream skimming, lack of rural > service, mandated cross subsidy, and local connection cost was ignored > by AT&T critics. > I was searching thru the telecom archives and found a post criticizing > the Bell Systems' PBX offerings of 1969 as being junk. I personally > saw some modern good systems in use in those days and a check of the > Bell Labs history confirms the offerings. To put it another way, how > much computer horsepower could you buy back in 1969 for $2,000? Today > you get quite a bit and people say it's easy to make your own PBX from > that. But back then I don't think you could hook up a string of > Altair's and make an ESS out of it, and real computers of that era > cost a heck of a lot more. But people seem to expect that the Bell > System would have offered cheap yet powerful electronic systems in > those days, long before the technology even existed to make it happen. > (Sorry, offering a few ICs at the local hobby store doesn't count.) > All I know is that when Verizon was finally allowed to offer long > distance my costs went down and service quality went up. The > "consumer advocates" wouldn't let Verizon do that in order to "protect > me". How they protected me from those restrictions I don't know nor > understand. LIkewise, I'm not sure painting today's big telcos as bad > is necessarily in the consumer's interest. > [public replies, please]

AT&T's major problem was that it bread bureaucracies. Any time you have decades of cost +10% for profit pricing, the costs will creep up.

IBM had the same thing when they owned the market. Just as Akers retired and things were really headed south the org chart was 15+ steps from the top to the bottom. His replacement (I forget his name) started first on things like this. Within a year it was down to under

10 and shrank a bit more later. I was there for a while during this time on a short term deal and it was amazing how insular the employees were. They ridiculed the competition without even knowing anything about their products or why a customer might want them.

In another direction, my wife works for a major airline. They survived the last 25 years due to the man at the top realizing that the universe was changing. The company staff and management fought him tooth and nail all the way but at the end of it they didn't wind up like Pan Am, Braniff, Eastern, etc ... And they never went through bankruptcy. But they still are not fully there. Maybe it literally takes 2 generations to clear out the dead wood. And for anyone who thing Southwest has it perfect, they really just got an 6 or 7 year extension on the old ways. They are NOT a low cost carrier, their labor costs near the top of the scale. What they did was win big on a bet back 6 or so years ago. They bought very long term futures contracts on jet fuel and won. These contracts have all expired. They've publicly stated that their fuel cost increases this year will be larger than last years profits. No more flying on fuel based on $30 a barrel oil.

My point to all of this is that the world changes and big dominant companies hate change. It makes them work to maintain their dominance and what they really want to do is coast and talk about what they are doing, not actually do something.