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AOL Time Warner Netscape CNN... and AT&T?
Baldrson noted a bit running on Yahoo right now where the AOL, Time, Warner, Netscape, CNN mega corporation is in talks with AT&T for their cable network. The inevitable and scary consolidation continues ever onward. The US govt will be sold on eBay in a few years, but only Microsoft and the corporation formerly known as Netscape AOL Warner CNN AT&T Time (NAWCAT) will be left to bid. But since Nawcat will already own ebay, there will no doubt be rumors of unfair play.
"Citing ``people familiar with the situation,'' the paper said AOL would hold a 40 percent interest in the business and leave AT&T with the majority control it wants.
So AOL/TW won't get the entire AT&T cable market, just part of it.
Yet another reason I use ADSL.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
Everybody knows that AT&T Broadband is for sale. It only makes sense that another cable company would be the one making the purchase. Comcast made the first offer, Cox is rumored to be interested, of course AOLTW is going to be interested. It makes sense for them. This isn't so much an evil megalo-corp bent on world domination as it is a large company that probably can't hit growth targets without making acquisitions.
And as far as size goes, there are plenty of companies out there that would dwarf AOLTW...some people need to calm down and take a look at the world before freaking out...
Juiced? Or Not?
An interesting resource guide to what the major media companies own.
Some RR people are already effectid. A fiew weeks ago our RR started using ATT service, Which ment my system takes longer to route DNS requests and Ocasionallys drops them. I am not a fan of ATT I never saw good ISP service from them. In college they switched to ATT and my Internet connection just stank IT is amazing how big of a traceroute I get now. ATT and RR means less performance for RR
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Kind of reminds me of the situation in Italy, where their prime-minister is a business man owning the most popular private Italian media networks. He got flamed a lot for this by the European press, during the last Italian elections. Now that he won and is the prime-minister of Italy, he is also in control of the goverment television networks (RAI). Can you imagine the CEO of NAWCAT being the president of the USA?
To err is human, but to forgive is beyond the scope of the Operating System...
here:
Why Broadband Is So Narrow?
where the state of broadband is discussed in good detail. In fact, this month's issue of Forbes ASAP had a few articles (check the first 4 listed starting at Internet II in particular) discussing the current viability of broadband, future implications of Internet II, how the Internet should grow in the future, and how the government should help its growth.
I don't know enough about the current situation regarding these topics to make intelligent comments about it, but these articles IMO did a good job painting the current picture. I HIGHLY suggest these articles for anyone not familiar with the current nightmare growing in broadband regulation/deregulation, the growth of the net, and DSL vs. Cable Modem providers.
t.
"Corrupting our youth one mind at a time"
Seriously though, the fcc is mandating that RR open up the pipes for other ISP's to offer cable modem service. First on the list, Earthlink. 15 seconds (yes, it's in the court order, 15 seconds) after Earthlink gets their 1st cable modem subscriber, AOL is allowed to start offering their service via cable modem.
Pain in the ass for us because we've had to do a whole lot of work on the back-end systems and provisioning stuff so that they can be provisioned according to which ISP they're subscribing.
This stuff with AT&T is a little confusing because after AT&T bought MediaOne, they were ordered to divest of all their shares of RR, which they did. AT&T in the Boston area is still using the RR brand itself, but they actually aren't an RR affiliate any longer. They'll be discontinuing their use of the RR brand sometime soon, I'm told.
I do know that AT&T was really impressed with the way RR did business. Their @home offering is just ridiculous compared to RR. They thought they could just have this big cable modem operation by bringing in a bunch of 3rd party vendors to build the shit, drop it in place and it would just run... NOT. When they saw how RR does things, I think they realized how aweful their operation was. I even heard that @home was giving customers static ip addresses in some divisions (don't know if this is still the cast)... While that may sound attractive to end users who want to run servers, what they don't realize is that it pretty much prevents growth. When utilization in a particular area grows, you need to be able to split the area up, which requires an ip renumber. If you can't renumber because everyone has a static, pretty soon the area is going to get horribly oversold resulting in super-slow access.
So, as far as how it affects RR users, it shouldn't, really. I suspect RR is just going to be another service offering, so it will be one of your choices of ISP's, pretty much. The worst case basis is that RR simply becomes a delivery vehicle for aol... *%!$ that noise...
"I can be self-referential if I want to," said Tom, swiftly.
This has actually happened. The US overthrew the democratically elected gov't in Guatemala in the 40's to save the United Fruit Company. They installed a puppet dictator. So much for the crap about spreading democracy...
e .h tml
http://web.mit.edu/thistle/www/v9/9.06/7genocid