Slashdot Mirror
Cablecos, Telcos Working To Strengthen the Duopoly
The LA Times is running a piece on cooperation among cable companies and telcos. No, not cablecos cooperating with telcos; rather, both industries working on industry-wide initiatives aimed at getting a leg up on the other. AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest have been working on a site, Moveroo.com, aimed at easing the pain of people moving within the US — by making it easier for them to hook up with the incumbent telco at their destination, for instance. Odd that there is no mention of which cable services might be available where they are heading. The cablecos are cooperating on a more ambitious initiative to standardize targeted advertising nationwide, using data gathered from the set-top boxes used by Time Warner, Cox, Comcast, Cablevision, Charter, and Bright House Networks. The article quotes a spokesman from a utility consumers' action group: " [The spokesman] said these moves by the telecom and cable industries may be good for the respective businesses, but they almost surely won't be good for consumers. 'All they're doing is creating obstacles to each other's industry from gaining an advantage,' he said. 'That's not competition.' Well, it is. But not the kind that benefits customers."
Our backgrounds were actually quite different. I was a local lad, born and brought up in the small town where we both lived, and I came from a family who had lived in the area for several generations. Sigi, on the other hand, had been brought to England as a baby by his parents, who had managed to leave their native Poland during the turmoil of the 1940â(TM)s. Heâ(TM)d moved to work at the same firm where I worked when his previous job, where he had served his apprenticeship, came to an end when the factory closed. But we had a great deal in common. We were much the same age, in our late twenties,, although Sigi was perhaps a year or so older than me. We were both married, with two young children â" Sigi had two girls, and I had a girl and a boy. The kids came to each otherâ(TM)s birthday parties. We often went out on family trips together. We actually lived in almost identical bungalows, built by the same builder but in different parts of the town. The only difference was that our homes were âhandedâ(TM). Sigiâ(TM)s I thought of as a left-hand version, whilst mine was right-handed. It was really strange to go into his home and see the recognisable, but opposite, layout. But the main thing that cemented our friendship was the fact that we sat next to each other at adjacent drawing boards in the drawing office of the engineering factory where we worked. This was a large open-plan office which accommodated, together with the Section Leaders, some twenty or so draftsmen. These were mainly of the mechanical discipline, but with just four electrical draftsmen as well, of which we were two. In a factory which manufactured heavy road-building machinery, the main emphasis was always going to be on the mechanical engineering side of things, and we always felt that us âelectricalsâ(TM) were considered by many to be a necessary evil. But, whatever type of work we did, we all of us worked well, and got on well, together. Sigi and I helped each other a lot in the course of our work. If I had a problem finding a suitable part, he helped me sort it out. If he couldnâ(TM)t get a schematic quite right to do what was required, weâ(TM)d work it through together. It was a good relationship, it worked really well between us. But nothing could disguise the sheer boredom that sometimes overtook us, doing the same type of work month in and month out. So it was with a breath of relief when early one afternoon, we saw our Section Leader come over to us, and ask us if we would like to take a couple of hours away from our drawing boards and tidy up the Development Room. Of course it was an instruction rather than a request, but he was a polite fellow and always gave us our work in this manner. The mere thought of getting away from the schematics, assembly drawings and bills of material which occupied most of our time filled us with joy, and so it was with a scarcely-concealed grin of delight that we immediately downed our pencils and made our way to the Development Room. The electrical assembly and electrical stores area of the factory was located on a mezzanine floor just beside the machine shop. Beneath the mezzanine was the wages office, and some storerooms. After a long struggle, our Electrical Section Leader had managed some time before to persuade the management that a special area was needed to allow him some space to carry out testing and development of new equipment. And so one of the storerooms had been allocated and converted, with a couple of workbenches and some storage racks etc. The room we had been given was windowless, with just an extractor fan for ventilation. Nest door to it was the telephone switchroom, and opposite to our room was the entrance to the wages office. On reaching the Development Room we found it to be in a right mess. Tools left laying around, parts and equipment strewn all over the floor. Not a five-minute job by any means. But we immediately made a start by implementing what we always referred to as âCobbolds Lawâ(TM). This we had been taugh