McNealy Says Telcos Falling Behind in Net Race

BobB-nw writes "Telecommunication companies need to go beyond just providing bandwidth and look into acquiring Internet destination sites that are heavily trafficked, says Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy. "I have explained to every telco that either you become a destination site, or the destination site will become a telco," McNealy said at a news conference at Sun Microsystems' Worldwide Education and Research Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday."

Comments

Re:he is quite right

[pipatron]

You already can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRQ

The ISP is owned by The Pirate Bay guys.

Re:Do we want content providers to own the net?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Yeah roadrunner, Verizon Wireless and others already do this. I use Mobile Web on my phone and I can't change the homepage on the phone to something else. It sucks.

Is this really true?

[MyNameIsFred]

...In only 3 years almost everybody discontinued their phone subscription - everybody has at least one mobile phone...

I don't live in Finland, so I can't speak from personal experience, but your statement is at odds with news reports. As I understand it, while cellphone penetration is very high in Europe, so is landline penetration. IIn both Europe and the US, about 80 percent have a cellphone. And a comparable percentage have landlines. In the US, many of my friends have tried dropping their landlines. However, a large fraction get them back because of the higher quality of service. Certainly, I vastly prefer the landline quality, it sounds so much better.

Re:Still need those damned wires

[X_Bones]

You just can't get around the fact that a wire (fiberoptic or copper) still has to be laid out there for the best results. And no "destination site" is going to be laying that line anytime soon.

Maybe you should try telling that to Google. I bet they'd be pretty surprised.

Re:Still need those damned wires

[elrous0]

Obviously, I wasn't referring to some transatlantic trunk line in my post (or even U.S. backbone line). I'm talking about the lines that run to your house or apartment (the ones that cable and phone companies control pretty much exclusively).

Re:Still need those damned wires

[plague3106]

Again, why not just have the government own the lines, and they determine a price? That would be better, because unlike the telcos, they wouldn't charge $400 per customer, just what they need. So we get your same result, but cheaper.

Re:Still need those damned wires

[RalphSleigh]

This is exactly what happens in the UK. BT own most of the lines and do their own DSL, but there are loads of outfits that resell BT's DSL for about the same price. Most of them even outsource their tech support back to BT openreach. Some outfits do offer local loop unbunding, where they buy your line and install their own equipment in BT's exchanges, but in the end it comes out pretty much the same for the end user.

Re:Stick to your core

[LarsWestergren]

Some would argue that all of these deviations from their core business is why Sun is in the trouble they're in now.

Lately they have been doing quite well I thought. They made a decent profit last four quarters in a row.

McNealy is a shitty CEO, and should have been canned a long time ago.

Er, you know that Jonathan Schwarz has been the CEO of Sun for quite some time now?