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gwion
wild colonial boy
Premium,ExMod 2001-08
join:2000-12-28
Pittsburgh, PA
1 edit | A few thoughts, from the VZ point of view...
It's still a corrupt subsidy, and Verizon's RIGHT. They deserve fair market value for their property, their capital, their investments. Their competitors have no right to preferred status, none, zero. It's socialized telecom; and it belies the FCC agenda: "torpedo all RBOC's". It amounts to nothing more than an affirmative action program for rich white entrepreneurs with CLEC interests. If you told me I had to sell in the money options to new investors who don't have the skill, capital or experience to be trading, to begin with, and I had to sell 'em for less than the open market bid price to "help the guys get a leg up," I would simply quit trading... period. Why in heaven, earth or hell would I build plant, if I knew I had to sell it below wholesale, even below cost, to some wet behind the ears newcomer whose "telecom" doesn't own an inch of outside plant, and whose entire capital investment is a room full of servers, desks and file cabinets??? What business do they have in the business if they can't capitalize building out their own plant, and can't afford to pay fair market for leasing access to mine? Of COURSE this puts a brake on buildouts. What, we would expect a company to dump money hand over fist into something they can't leverage as a profitable investment in capital? Hell, on that reasoning, I'll put a few park benches and a bandstand on my lawn, and give it to the neighborhood for a dollar a month as a parklet... sure I will. 
That said, certainly, Verizon's holding out fiber to the home as the next super-biggie tech development; and, certainly, that's expressed in terms of rollout in years... try around a decade, maybe more. The average RBOC has millions of miles of outside plant to update... MILLIONS. Especially Verizon, the biggest of the big in these terms... and this stuff's old. POTS dates back to the turn of the last century. Typical outside plants in some areas are fifty, seventy five years old. And perfectly adequate for POTS. But obsolescing fast, in terms of telephony as a digital medium.
I give VZ some credit; at least they're out of the "talk a good show" phase, and they're actually trying to start implementing a deployment. There's so much dark fiber in this country from the old dot gone boom (trunk lines) that we need our heads examined if we don't do something with the stuff. A decade is actually a "very" ambitious time frame for this vast network. Remember, Ivan's stated goal is fiber to the home "system wide" within fifteen years... yow. Anyone realize how many miles of glass threads that involves??? And how many hours of work? This isn't an enterprise buildout... where we just rewire a few buildings on a corporate campus. This is pretty much a system wide complete rebuild of the outside plant of a huge telco. --- and it obsolesces a lot of the equipment that services the lines. Fiber is a different technology from copper. Much of the old equipment simply doesn't "work" on fiber.
In that context, we should be impressed, not impatient. It would require old Merlin returning from the mists of time to implement something like this in a couple years. This buildout's huge.
Finally, my own big question, though... I always like to get a wrench in the works, somewhere... we all know it's true, and it's axiomatic, that technology has the shelf life of a ripe yellow banana. Sooooooo... in ten years... will this be "2004 technology in 2014?" Hmmmmmm... 
--
Semper Eadem
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep. | |
garagerock
Premium
join:2002-06-14
Louisville, KY | »www.fcc.gov/telecom.html | |
Zorglub
join:2000-11-18
Fremont, CA
| reply to gwion
At the end of the day, since these companies enjoy a near monopoly status in their home areas, their money is really the money they collect from us customers. The same customers who gave them indirectly the monopoly. So at the end of the day, their money is really our money.  | |
EnzonE
join:2000-03-23
Indiana, PA
| reply to gwion
said by gwion  :
I give VZ some credit; at least they're out of the "talk a good show" phase, and they're actually trying to start implementing a deployment.
Wow I can't believe you're saying this, are you sure you're from PA, let alone work for the company? Don't you know that VZ screwed the state out of Billions in promise of fiber deployment state-wide by this time? (»Picture Perfect Deal) All of your economic jargon is nice and all, but I wouldn't give them a single ounce of credit; either give back the cash to the tax payers or make PA top priority for fiber deployment. I'm sick of all the praises for this company; it's rediculous!
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Verizon 768k/128k @ 16,200 feet from CO.Activated June 13 2001.Now at 17,047 feet! | |
tommytomtom
join:2002-08-15
Springfield, VA
| reply to gwion
"It's still a corrupt subsidy, and Verizon's RIGHT. They deserve fair market value for their property, their capital, their investments."
So, the real problem is politicians who sell the idea of pseudo "competition" to placate the ignorant? If this is what you mean, I agree.
"It amounts to nothing more than an affirmative action program for rich white entrepreneurs with CLEC interests."
Hey, does it always have to be about race; if you need to bring race into your argument, maybe you need to rethink your position? Plus, some of my best friends are white? | |
dsless
join:2001-05-16
Pittsburgh, PA | reply to gwion
They have had years to start upgrading stuff that is 75 years old and the public has payed for. So from a tax view point we still are paying high rates for old stuff that has been written off and not getting anything in return. | |
NPGMBR
join:2001-03-28
Arlington, VA | reply to tommytomtom
Shi* - All of my friends are white ............. does that mean im not really black? | |
Voyager2K2
join:2001-10-04
Wayne, PA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| reply to gwion
said by gwion :
It's still a corrupt subsidy, and Verizon's RIGHT. They deserve fair market value for their property, their capital, their investments.
Since you brought it up, PA wants it's 2.1 billion dollars back.
Unemployment is bad in this state.
If Bush want to carry PA so bad how about getting VZ to pony up OUR 2.1 billion?
It's becoming quite obvious they have no intention of stringing fiber in this state any time soon.
When they do they can try to cut another deal.
Verizon is a bunch of thieves and should be dealt with in a federal court for committing massive fraud against the citizens of the state of Pennsylvania. | |
PDXPLT
join:2003-12-04
Banks, OR
| reply to gwion
said by gwion :
Remember, Ivan's stated goal is fiber to the home "system wide" within fifteen years... yow.
Well, it it really was fiber to everyone in fifteen years, I might say "yow". But I believe that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Given that, ubiquitious fiber will never happen. Not in the absence of government involvement; the same government involvement that made POTS available to all. But the political climate for that happening today just isn't there. The government can't even get it together to provide rules for reliable electrical power, let alone for something more esoteric as advanced telecommunications(!)
A friend recently told me the two primary core competencies of the ILECs are lobbying, and litigation. This arises out of their roots as a regulated monopoly, and they still act that way. And with the regulators moving in the direction of giving them more monopoly power, they increasingly act that way.
I have a friend, now retired, who worked many years for AT&T Bell Labs, back when it was the only phone company. He told me once that AT&T's plans for upgrading their long-distance network from analog copper to digital fiber stretched out over many decades. They saw no reason to do it faster. A monopoly never does.
All that changed overnight when MCI was allowed to enter the long-distance market, and started airing those "you can hear a pin drop" commercials. The fiber switchover within AT&T went into fire drill mode, and was completed in a few years. | |
gwion
wild colonial boy
Premium,ExMod 2001-08
join:2000-12-28
Pittsburgh, PA
| reply to gwion
It said they would be a "few thoughts from the Verizon point of view."
I didn't say it was my point of view. It may be; it may not be. Some may be... and some not... but it's certainly a fair point of view for Verizon to have. They're not in business to subsidize competition, and it IS a subsidy. It's a subsidy any way you look at it. Just because someone's rich doesn't obligate them in an ethical way to play with a handicap in their business. If someone can compete, fine; if they can't compete without a subsidy, then perhaps that very fact makes a substantial case that the industry is a "natural monopoly," by its very nature, or that in the alternative the wannabe competitor is unqualified, in terms of capitalization and business plan, to be in that business, to begin with. Telecom is one big hole into which money gets thrown, in the grand scheme of American business. The costs of maintaining a telecom is summed up in two words: "physical plant." The costs of building and maintaining a physical plant are astronomical.
I certainly do want to see competition; qualified competition. Not paper pushers who wholesale bandwidth and line capacity from Bell whatever at artificially preferred rates, and then resells it to me. What incentive does this guy ever have to contribute to the national infrastructure? Why not just cruise on forever, using someone else's infrastructure, letting someone else's rate payers and share holders pay to keep it up and running?
Unqualified competition is nothing more nor less than a parasite on the industry, the technology and the national infrastructure. It's here today and gone tomorrow. Anybody reading along get great rates from someone back in the dot gone days who went belly up in the shakeout? Fun being left without service, isn't it?
That's precisely the situation we could create if we aren't careful. Big telecom has lots of warts, don't get me wrong. But one doesn't toss out the prince and start auditioning frogs because he happens to have a wart on his nose. There do need to be incentives, if we want a competitive telecom industry, because, in fact, the astronomical costs of doing this right do amount to a "natural monopoly", in almost every way. Oddly, I think this is something that fails to register with most people, including the Wall Street analysts and the Beltway crowd. Try wiring up a network to serve just your block. When you're done, please post the costs... in round millions... you incurred. And you have to set up your own infrastructure. Not lease from the local RBOC. Ah, hell... for the experiment, go ahead. Lease the line. The mini-CO ought to set you back quite enough by itself to make you put off the yacht and lear jet for a few years.
There you go... in a nutshell. I have no allegiances, no vested interests... just my analysis. Don't even own any stock in VZ, right now. Or any other RBOC. My analysis isn't based on the politics. It's based on the pure economics. If you want to subsidize the alternate provider, great... but subsidize them directly, from the government trough. Making their competitors subsidize them is --- taken from a distance, and looked at with an entirely detached, objective eye --- hilarious and blatantly absurd. And what incentive does that give Verizon or SWB or any of the other RBOC's to want to invest any more than is absolutely necessary to provide service in their plant? If you tell me I'll have to share my new plant with my prime competitor, but he'll pay me 15% less than the market value of the space, why would I build it? No new plant... that isn't mercenary business predation; that's common financial sense, the same sort all of us would apply to any transaction we entered into for ourselves, or for our companies...
--
Semper Eadem
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;Yet they, should the last scene be there,The great stage curtain about to drop,If worthy their prominent part in the play,Do not break up their lines to weep. | |
93254336
Weapons Of Masturbation
Premium
join:2001-10-20
| said by gwion :
And what incentive does that give Verizon or SWB or any of the other RBOC's to want to invest any more than is absolutely necessary to provide service in their plant? If you tell me I'll have to share my new plant with my prime competitor, but he'll pay me 15% less than the market value of the space, why would I build it?
What the RBOCs should recognize is that their "prime competitor" is fast becoming the cable service providers, not the CLECs. Deriving 85% of market value from the CLECs is much better than 0% from the Cable companies.
- Dan
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"Are you not aware that I get farty and bloated with a foamy latte?" | |
gwion
wild colonial boy
Premium,ExMod 2001-08
join:2000-12-28
Pittsburgh, PA
| reply to gwion
... good point, doctor. And I'll also hasten to point out that, amid all the wrangling, it's ironically VOIP that's stealing subscribers, not alternative POTS or DSL providers. At least Verizon seems to be recognizing this. A major part of their end-game with all of the recent upgrades, I have no doubt, isn't a desire to give away more service for less, it's to provide a network that, should you and I decide to go VOIP, and any other "OIP" technologies as they're developed, will have the integrity and capacity to handle it. Verizon wants to, if they can't be your POTS carrier, be at least your ISP/VOIP carrier. Which makes good business sense.
But the real point, in context, is that while the war's fought between ILEC and CLEC over the subsidy issue, it may well transpire that the winner will be an entirely different technology. The CLECs, the weaker of them, might just dry up and blow away before the issue really... becomes an issue of any great magnitude. Verizon, I'll grant, seems to want to be ready for that showdown, whenever the technology's ready to become pervasive... I wonder if the rest of the industry is seeing the emerging threat as clearly?
... of course, there may be an entirely new tech next month. And all this might be mooted. Technology, as has been said so often, has the shelf life, these days, of a ripe, yellow banana.
--
Semper Eadem
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;Yet they, should the last scene be there,The great stage curtain about to drop,If worthy their prominent part in the play,Do not break up their lines to weep. | |
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