connectivity issues

[Derek Martin]

On Sun, Aug 12, 2001 at 07:37:33PM -0400, Don Olivier wrote:

> The message I take from Odlyzko's paper is that many of the
> "connectivity issues" that trouble us today are consequences of the
> desperate struggles of people facing the possible collapse of their
> business models, and therefore won't last forever.  That's reassuring if
> you take the long view; and it might even help with short term tactics,
> by suggesting good places to stick our needles.

I'd like to be able to believe that...  The problem, as I see it, is
that AT&T seems to be rapidly becoming monopolistic in the Internet
service arena.  As I understand it, they have one of the largest
international dial-up services (though AOL is much larger, as everyone
knows), they pretty much own the cable Internet market, and own a
large percentage of the Internet backbone infrastructure.

A lot of the eqipment is the same equipment they have used to provide
telephone service.  AT&T has leveraged its assets from previous
monopoly business activities to give themselves a dominant position in
the ISP business.  For a newcomer to compete with them, they would
need to either already have huge cash resources, or make a capital
investment of a size that would almost guarantee they would not be
profitable for decades.

AT&T scares me...

And your local telephone provider is in much the same position
w/regard to DSL service.  They generally own the lines that their
competition will be using, so you're dependent on them one way or
another.  It's practically impossible for a competitor to undercut
their prices, because they have to lease resources from their the very
people they are competing against, and depend upon them to maintain
those resources in good working order.  Just ask Covad how easy it is
to compete with that!

I've actually heard stories of Verizon stealing pairs from a
competitor's existing DSL connection in order to satisfy orders.
I can't say how true they are...


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Derek Martin          |   Unix/Linux geek
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