Net Neutrality

[Malcolm]

Are you saying they do? What?

Here's their advert.

[GORDON]

Ah, they are partnering with other companies that have actual cables.

If I hadn't had 99.99% uptime over the last 8 years with my Time Warner Roadrunner internet, I would look into it.

[TPRJones]

I don't think this is a "temper tantrum" as the pompus do-nothing doesn't understand business writer of the article suggests.

...

The problem here isn't that that we don't have enough federal oversight. The problem is these are all heavily regulated industries. The feds involvement is what has already screwed things up. You don't go to the people that created the problem for solutions.

I agree with you about government interference. If we had a free market in these areas we probably wouldn't have all these damn localized monopolies like we do now.

But this is absolutely a temper-tantrum by AT&T. Regardless of how the law ends up they'll be able to make a good profit on their infrastructure if they build it. But a reasonable profit is not good enough; they want to be able to ass-rape some customers in the process and if they don't get to do that then whaa whaa whaa.

[Vince]

But this is absolutely a temper-tantrum by AT&T. Regardless of how the law ends up they'll be able to make a good profit on their infrastructure if they build it. But a reasonable profit is not good enough; they want to be able to ass-rape some customers in the process and if they don't get to do that then whaa whaa whaa.

Horse shit. How will they make money? Selling what?

[Malcolm]

Access to others.

[Vince]

A company doesn't build a factory unless they know what they're going to manufacture in it. This is basic business modeling. Do you think anyone was starting a health insurance company before the ACA bill was written and passed after Obama made it clear that was what they were going to attempt?

[Malcolm]

As has been stated previously, looks like a win for Google.

Here's how AT&T can turn a profit, re-fucking-gardless of how things go down. And here.

Comcast had the largest portion of the U.S. broadband Internet pie at the end of the second quarter, with more than one-fifth market share. Comcast was followed by AT&T and Time Warner Cable, with Verizon and CenturyLink rounding out the Top 5.

Whoa, Comcast? Hmm, what does AT&T have in common with Comcast? It's not enough to be the backbone ISP the local operations run to. No, they have to be dicks and run them out of biz. I don't think they're going to have trouble cashing in on the physical infrastructure they've got in place.

"After these systems closed, consumers in these rural areas saw a reduction in competition as their only choices for video service became DirecTV and Dish Network," [ACA Senior VP of Government Affairs Ross] Lieberman said. "Given the rise in programming costs, we are likely to see even more system closings in the coming years. Moreover, we’re also likely to see more small cable systems controlling costs by dropping programming, particularly independent programming."

[GORDON]

The fiber would be a huge asset no matter how the law lies. Yeah, being able to charge money for the same traffic twice, from both client and server at the same time, would be nice for them, but it would still be a very rare fast internet resource for a lot of people who would pay a lot of money to use it.

I am also inclined to think they are throwing a hissy fit. "You are destroying American jobs because we can't continue the project with the law in flux!" Bullshit.

[Vince]

I've seen things like this happen up close. If you can't do a cost analysis on a project, the board isn't going to green light it. Period. If it is green lighted and the analysis goes out the window, if the money isn't already committed they're going to stop it. Even projects that everyone agrees need to be done, or everyone agrees there's money to be made, without a measurable model, they aren't going to green light it. Bean counters require that stuff before they release the money. Can you imagine what an outside auditor would do to you if you came to them with a plan that says we might make 20 million off this next year or we might make 5 million.



Edited By Vince on 1416062822

[TPRJones]

The only way AT&T could fail to make a profit on their new expansions would be if the feds nationalized all the ISPs. I don't think that could happen. Making them common carriers would not impact at all their ability to sell internet access to their customers. It might effect the finer points of VOIP, but that will likely be solvable and even if not VOIP is a very small part of their business model for home service at this point (usually sold as a cheap add-on to the ISP). I'm pretty sure it wouldn't effect TV as that is carried through a completely different set of frequencies on the line and isn't using the same bandwidth pool as their ISP service which should be sufficient to get that around the problems related to prioritization.

I understand what you ware saying about analysis and projections, but the bottom line is your previous question of: How will they make money? Even without the VOIP and TV if they can't make money selling high-speed internet access as the only option in a captive market, then they don't deserve to stay in business. And if the company is no longer nimble enough to adapt to a changing marketplace then perhaps it's grown too large.



Edited By TPRJones on 1416164739

[Vince]

I understand what you ware saying about analysis and projections, but the bottom line is your previous question of: How will they make money? Even without the VOIP and TV if they can't make money selling high-speed internet access as the only option in a captive market, then they don't deserve to stay in business. And if the company is no longer nimble enough to adapt to a changing marketplace then perhaps it's grown too large.

I don't disagree with anything you said there. We had a two day class at my company with the CIO who had come from HP and Home Depot before that. The entire two days was spent talking about all of the ins and outs of projects and costs and budgeting for exactly this sort of thing, and that's exactly what he was driving home. It might be a needed project that the future of the company depends on. And it may be a project that's going to make the company a shit ton of money. But if you can't quantify the projected profits and properly depreciate the equipment and properly put everything in its proper column then the finance side of the business isn't going to release the money and really shouldn't if they're doing their job.

[GORDON]

But a partially completed project is a complete loss of sunk costs, if they stop. Their shareholders should be revolting if they aren't going to finish the project to make SOME money instead of stopping the project and flushing what they have already spent.

[Vince]

But a partially completed project is a complete loss of sunk costs, if they stop. Their shareholders should be revolting if they aren't going to finish the project to make SOME money instead of stopping the project and flushing what they have already spent.

But the bean counters will stop it (more than likely) because they're talking about probably billions of dollars that haven't been spent yet. Would it take 10 years to make back the investment or 5 years? If you can depreciate the money already spent before making back all of the money for the completed project, they'll probably scrap it and divert the rest of the money into something that will make them more money. Probably private networking and cellular networking. Or something else entirely.

[TheCatt]

First rule of finance: Never make a decision based on sunk costs. They are completely and utterly irrelevant.



Edited By TheCatt on 1416188900

[Vince]

Catt, don't you have a background in some of the business finance side of things? I was thinking I remembered that for some reason.

[TheCatt]

Catt, don't you have a background in some of the business finance side of things? I was thinking I remembered that for some reason.

I have an MBA in Finance, undergrad in Econ.

Overall, I can understand the AT&T position, like Vince was saying: If you cannot project a return on capital above the company's goal/threshold for approving projects, you don't do the project.

[Vince]

Okay, cool. Like I said, I took that two day class but a lot of that was Greek to me. From what I was getting from it, what they were saying seemed to apply here.

To be honest the impression I got from all of that was that the rules are kind of made up and arbitrary, but that's fine as long as everyone are using the same made up and arbitrary rules for scoring and rating everything.

[GORDON]

FCC says net neutrality = more taxes.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic....-tax-on

[Malcolm]

FCC says net neutrality = more taxes.

http://www.foxnews.com/politic....-tax-on

What the fuck?

[Vince]

ROFL!