Re:This sucks!
by
Skapare
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Some of these DSL providers, including Rhythms and North Point, had positioned their business plans in the direction of becoming a full CLEC and offering not only DSL, but everything else that a CLEC would offer, including voice and other data circuits. What they found is first there were too many of them fighting over the small market that would abandon the ILEC. Their DSL sales may have been going OK, but sales in other business plans were just not bearing fruit, yet they had invested lots of money overbuilding that structure. While DSL sales were happening, because of cut throat market posturing, profits from it were very small at best, and most likely negative anyway.
If a business plans to achieve 40% market share, can't be profitable with less than 25% share, and faces 9 competitors with the same plans, something's got to break. The smarter ones can live through it.
-- now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Sorry, my fault they went under
by
the_rev_matt
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I seem to have a curse. Two of my last three employers are no longer (and the third is in critical condition).
Seriously tho', Rhythms was incredibly disorganized internally (at least in May-Nov 1999 they were). Poor communication, lack of clear goals, the usual internal politics etc. The development group was mostly overpriced/underskilled consultants who really did a lot of damage. About June of 99 they decided to hire the decent consultants (yours truly included) and drop-kick the rest, and that was certainly a good first step. Their Director of Development (Jamie Horgan) after about Nov of 99 was awesome but I don't think he could single handedly save the company from what ultimately killed them: Incumbent telcos. Going head to head with those monstrosities is begging to go out of business. You think MSFT is bad? Try dealing with Qworst, and it was only that much harder for Rhythms because the CEO defected from Qworst (it took a LONG time for Rhythms to be able to offer DSL service in their own town, because Qworst kept dragging their feet as punishment for her leaving to compete). I consider myself extremely lucky that I'm moving to a state that does not have Qworst.
Re:Welcome to the Post-Internet Age
by
bricriu
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Perhaps you mean "one less company --> more monopolistic power for the Baby Bells." They don't have to worry about remaining solvent, despite (as pointed out above) the ongoing (and insufficiently punitive) fines they face for not opening their networks.
Ya just can't ignore stuff like that:-(
--
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
the sad truth about DSL
by
FrostyWheaton
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
It appears that most DSL providers are victims of the same business model that sunk so many.com's: "Sell at a loss, and make it up in volume." Now there is a chance that DSL could be provided for $39.99 a month, but the customer base would have to be huge in order to keep the price that low. They unfourtunately ran out of money before they could build up a large enough customer base to make the business profitable.
Personally, I'm somewhat saddened to see so many DSL providers dying an early death, but that's the free market economy for you.
-- Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
The Company is also reducing its workforce today by approximately 700 employees, or approximately 75 percent of its total workforce. Approximately 85 percent of the affected employees are in Colorado.
There are approximately zero copywriters now employed at Rythms.
-- Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Bellsouth charges Earthlink $33 per DSL line in
by
Shivetya
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Bellsouth charges Earthlink 33.00 dollars per DSL line in Atlanta, and EL charges me 49.95. I submitted a story about an idea to break up the baby bells (but alas it was rejected) http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-6818658.html? tag=tp_pr
Your going to see more and more of these resellers fail simply because when the bell's do open their networks they jack the prices so high that they don't ever have to fear that their own services unit (read ISP+) will have a problem selling overpriced product.
I wonder how long before they justify raising the rates they charge to Earthlink (Bellsouth raising rates) because of needs to improve the network.
-- *
Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Yet another uninformative top-level post.
by
Giant+Hairy+Spider
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Really now, how hard would it be to refer to them as "Rhythyms, a DSL connection provider," instead of forcing you to read the story to figure out whether it's something you care about.
--
--- You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Free Markets, Public Works, and Monopolies
by
FreeUser
·
· Score: 5, Informative
A colleague of mine and I were discussing this just this morning (he is a Ritym's subscriber).
Many of the DSL failures are a result, at least in part, of being jerked around by the provisioner of the last mile of wire. Here in Chicago that monopolist would be Ameritech -- notorious for deliberately delaying and mucking with the installation of competitor's DSL lines, despite a plethora of FCC regulations designed to prevent this sort of unfairness. I had personal experience with this, as did my colleague, when our DSL lines (from different providors) were provisioned.
When breaking up so-called "natural" monopolies with the intent of creating competition a very obvious oversight has been made, at least here in the United States, quite probably as a result of the rather radical anti-anything-that-remotely-smells-like-it-could-m aybe-be-considered-socialistic-by-anyone-to-the-ri ght-of-Gengis-Khan political atmosphere that has imbued the country since the early Reagan days. To whit, why do "natural monopolies" exist, what makes them a "natural monopoly," and why shouldn't the factor, or commonality, be treated as a public works project the way we do other "natural monopolies" such as roads and highways?
Take electricity, water, and telecommunications as examples. What made the electric company a natural monopoly? Not power generation, but delivery to your home... i.e. the physical wire. What made telecommunications a natural monopoly? Once again, not the intervening network and its services so much as the last mile of wire to your house. Water? Not, in most places, the water acquisition (it can come from rivers, aquafers, lakes, even the air if you can figure out how to do that economically) but rather the physical pipe to your faucet.
Instead of even considering nationalizing the infrastructure (there's another word which has fallen victim to the anti-communism hysteria of the early 80's and has remained taboo since) we have chosen instead to impliment an absurdly byzantine set of regulations prohibiting this, requireing that, and hopefully resulting in a level playing field. An approach far more favorable to error or outright corruption, and far less conducive to a level playing field and the competition such would engender than simply treating the wire like a public road, with equal access to all, would have.
I would submit that bottlenecks which create so-called natural monopolies, such as highways, the last mile(s) of telephone wire, and perhaps even the entire power grid, should be treated the same as highways, paid for and administered by government via taxes or access fees and provided to all of the competing service providors under the same terms.
The disadvantes would be the same ones we have with highways: a certain amount of government bloat, a certain amount of corruption in contracting and subcontracting, and a certain amount of government ineffeciency.
Just as with highways the advantages would far outweigh this, however: a level playing field for all competing businesses, an elimination of byzantine FCC regulations designed (and failing) to counter the monopolistic advantages under the current, wholely private, approach, an administration that is open to public scruitiny and nominally accountable to the public via our democratic process, and quite possibly economies of scale that might well offset the added overhead inherent in government administration of any project.
Monopolies are ineffecient, whether they are government or private. Where they must exist, as with roads, it makes far more sense that they be in public hands, a part of the public commons, rather than in the hands of some private Robber Barron a la' the Rhein River of two centuries ago.
Finally, I would argue that a free, competetive market cannot exist when the underlying infrastructure for that market resides in the hands of a private monopoly. Indeed, it appears that a competetive market on top of such an infrastructure is difficult, perhaps impossible, to maintain even if it is highly regulated. However, as we've seen with the success of our transportation companies, airlines can compete very well with public airports and automobile companies as well as trucking companies compete very well on public highways.
Perhaps it is time we reevaluated our love affair with private ownership of nearly all our basic infrastructures and put aside our aversion to nationalization and consider the question from the point of view of how to we structure things to eliminate private monopolies and maximize competetive free markets while at the same time minimizing the need for intrusive government regulation.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of these DSL providers, including Rhythms and North Point, had positioned their business plans in the direction of becoming a full CLEC and offering not only DSL, but everything else that a CLEC would offer, including voice and other data circuits. What they found is first there were too many of them fighting over the small market that would abandon the ILEC. Their DSL sales may have been going OK, but sales in other business plans were just not bearing fruit, yet they had invested lots of money overbuilding that structure. While DSL sales were happening, because of cut throat market posturing, profits from it were very small at best, and most likely negative anyway.
If a business plans to achieve 40% market share, can't be profitable with less than 25% share, and faces 9 competitors with the same plans, something's got to break. The smarter ones can live through it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Seriously tho', Rhythms was incredibly disorganized internally (at least in May-Nov 1999 they were). Poor communication, lack of clear goals, the usual internal politics etc. The development group was mostly overpriced/underskilled consultants who really did a lot of damage. About June of 99 they decided to hire the decent consultants (yours truly included) and drop-kick the rest, and that was certainly a good first step. Their Director of Development (Jamie Horgan) after about Nov of 99 was awesome but I don't think he could single handedly save the company from what ultimately killed them: Incumbent telcos. Going head to head with those monstrosities is begging to go out of business. You think MSFT is bad? Try dealing with Qworst, and it was only that much harder for Rhythms because the CEO defected from Qworst (it took a LONG time for Rhythms to be able to offer DSL service in their own town, because Qworst kept dragging their feet as punishment for her leaving to compete). I consider myself extremely lucky that I'm moving to a state that does not have Qworst.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Perhaps you mean "one less company --> more monopolistic power for the Baby Bells." They don't have to worry about remaining solvent, despite (as pointed out above) the ongoing (and insufficiently punitive) fines they face for not opening their networks.
:-(
Ya just can't ignore stuff like that
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
It appears that most DSL providers are victims of the same business model that sunk so many .com's: "Sell at a loss, and make it up in volume." Now there is a chance that DSL could be provided for $39.99 a month, but the customer base would have to be huge in order to keep the price that low. They unfourtunately ran out of money before they could build up a large enough customer base to make the business profitable.
Personally, I'm somewhat saddened to see so many DSL providers dying an early death, but that's the free market economy for you.
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
There are approximately zero copywriters now employed at Rythms.
I think I'll stop here.
that the rhythm method does not work.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Bellsouth charges Earthlink 33.00 dollars per DSL line in Atlanta, and EL charges me 49.95. I submitted a story about an idea to break up the baby bells (but alas it was rejected) http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-6818658.html? tag=tp_pr
Your going to see more and more of these resellers fail simply because when the bell's do open their networks they jack the prices so high that they don't ever have to fear that their own services unit (read ISP+) will have a problem selling overpriced product.
I wonder how long before they justify raising the rates they charge to Earthlink (Bellsouth raising rates) because of needs to improve the network.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Really now, how hard would it be to refer to them as "Rhythyms, a DSL connection provider," instead of forcing you to read the story to figure out whether it's something you care about.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
A colleague of mine and I were discussing this just this morning (he is a Ritym's subscriber).
m aybe-be-considered-socialistic-by-anyone-to-the-ri ght-of-Gengis-Khan political atmosphere that has imbued the country since the early Reagan days. To whit, why do "natural monopolies" exist, what makes them a "natural monopoly," and why shouldn't the factor, or commonality, be treated as a public works project the way we do other "natural monopolies" such as roads and highways?
... i.e. the physical wire. What made telecommunications a natural monopoly? Once again, not the intervening network and its services so much as the last mile of wire to your house. Water? Not, in most places, the water acquisition (it can come from rivers, aquafers, lakes, even the air if you can figure out how to do that economically) but rather the physical pipe to your faucet.
Many of the DSL failures are a result, at least in part, of being jerked around by the provisioner of the last mile of wire. Here in Chicago that monopolist would be Ameritech -- notorious for deliberately delaying and mucking with the installation of competitor's DSL lines, despite a plethora of FCC regulations designed to prevent this sort of unfairness. I had personal experience with this, as did my colleague, when our DSL lines (from different providors) were provisioned.
When breaking up so-called "natural" monopolies with the intent of creating competition a very obvious oversight has been made, at least here in the United States, quite probably as a result of the rather radical anti-anything-that-remotely-smells-like-it-could-
Take electricity, water, and telecommunications as examples. What made the electric company a natural monopoly? Not power generation, but delivery to your home
Instead of even considering nationalizing the infrastructure (there's another word which has fallen victim to the anti-communism hysteria of the early 80's and has remained taboo since) we have chosen instead to impliment an absurdly byzantine set of regulations prohibiting this, requireing that, and hopefully resulting in a level playing field. An approach far more favorable to error or outright corruption, and far less conducive to a level playing field and the competition such would engender than simply treating the wire like a public road, with equal access to all, would have.
I would submit that bottlenecks which create so-called natural monopolies, such as highways, the last mile(s) of telephone wire, and perhaps even the entire power grid, should be treated the same as highways, paid for and administered by government via taxes or access fees and provided to all of the competing service providors under the same terms.
The disadvantes would be the same ones we have with highways: a certain amount of government bloat, a certain amount of corruption in contracting and subcontracting, and a certain amount of government ineffeciency.
Just as with highways the advantages would far outweigh this, however: a level playing field for all competing businesses, an elimination of byzantine FCC regulations designed (and failing) to counter the monopolistic advantages under the current, wholely private, approach, an administration that is open to public scruitiny and nominally accountable to the public via our democratic process, and quite possibly economies of scale that might well offset the added overhead inherent in government administration of any project.
Monopolies are ineffecient, whether they are government or private. Where they must exist, as with roads, it makes far more sense that they be in public hands, a part of the public commons, rather than in the hands of some private Robber Barron a la' the Rhein River of two centuries ago.
Finally, I would argue that a free, competetive market cannot exist when the underlying infrastructure for that market resides in the hands of a private monopoly. Indeed, it appears that a competetive market on top of such an infrastructure is difficult, perhaps impossible, to maintain even if it is highly regulated. However, as we've seen with the success of our transportation companies, airlines can compete very well with public airports and automobile companies as well as trucking companies compete very well on public highways.
Perhaps it is time we reevaluated our love affair with private ownership of nearly all our basic infrastructures and put aside our aversion to nationalization and consider the question from the point of view of how to we structure things to eliminate private monopolies and maximize competetive free markets while at the same time minimizing the need for intrusive government regulation.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy