Dare I reply to this...
C'mon, put up your dukes moderator! I'll take you on.
Oh yeah, what were they talking about? What's an Acer? What's XP? What's a Vista? Is that what I hook my internets up too?
Oh so are looking for an experienced programmer, and you came to Slash dot to recruit? Are you sure you want to hire Star Trek nerds and High Brow Curmudgeons.
I may have taken the article in too narrow a sense. Our cable networks here in the US are still primarily used to transmit television shows. Telecom usually refers to telephone providers. Most of that bandwidth is still used for analog T.V. signal. I think we are up to 8 Mbps/256 kbps with Comcast cable in my area.
The cable networks (like Comcast) are autonomous entities in themselves. They lay their own fiber networks. There are no last mile alternative providers for cable, so you either subscribe to the local cable monopoly or not. Cable companies want nothing to do with the "recent" telecom acts, and have been lobbying hard to not be under the umbrella of Telecom.
The old Telecom companies also want to be separate from the cable networks, because they don't want cable treading on their turf. Thus we are stuck with crappy dsl service, because the cable company only provide their premier internet services in hi population areas. We have a model of competing networks that entirely private and redundant.
I'm sure that the network core is publicly owned in Sweden. Which would be sensible, but I live in America. It all has to be private by gum.
The article was very broad in the context of what services it was talking about.
If he is talking ISP services. There are 4 things that small businesses want their Telco to provide.
1.Cheap Email capacity (including domain registration and what not)
2.Quick Reliable Internet Access (meaning access to web services)
3.Phone service
4.Affordable Web hosting space
They want it to be setup in a way that involves as little foot work by them as possible, and they want it all in one place, because they don't understand the technology. Google can do Google stuff for all they care, they want email handled privately and simply. It's probably a niche market, but I think if a company could offer all these things with good customer service they would have the market cornered.
One thing to realize is that people go ape *&%# over their email. When they call the ISP it's, because the email stopped working. They will say this even when they know their internet service is interrupted.
Google is now offering cheep domains, web space, and nearly infinite email capacity. "All" they need is the phone/isp service to take a step into being be THE one stop shop.
Qwest offers all this stuff, but they piss people off. Small Telco's offer a lot of this stuff at a premium but with less capacity.
So he may have a point in some markets.
They tried that like ten years ago fifteen years ago with various Telco acts. Now those last mile companies are merging.
I once worked tech support for a company called Eschelon. Eschelon touted how strong it was as a company by how many companies it was buying up. Eschelon's focus was on providing better customer service to complete with Qwest's bad reputation. We were a "last mile" and resale company. My job was to make the customer feel better about their 3 year contracts, and . Quite often customer's and customer vendors would call in calling us a "cancer". I had a really hard time saying, "I'm sorry you feel that way, but..." I totally agreed with them.
We over charged buisness's for Qwest ADSL service. Many of our Sales reps out right lied to customers by telling them they were going to get 1.5 MB service when in fact they were getting IDSL. We charged a flat rate for all DSL products. It was called upto 1.5 DSL for 70 bucks a month not including the phone line and a 3 year contract to boot. And T1's. Don't get me started on T1's. Also with the benifit of a last mile company you get additional outages. The equipment and software that interfaced with Qwest would frequently take a dive. We had subcontractors that handled some of these products so we are talking about layers within layers of possibly redundant extraneous systems. Lost data and accounts due to overzealous executives purchasing random companies. Just before Eschelon was to be bought by Integra we purchased 3 other small to medium last mile telecoms. I have no doubt that we were attempting to boost our stock price to sell. There were rumors that Integra was also planing to go public. I have no doubt the ultimate goal of these west coast companies is to be the biggest fish so they can have the best sale price for Qwest.
So all this is going on and the customer asks why their DSL only works intermittently all week. I cannot tell them that the lines we leased with Qwest are nearing capacity, and their DSL has been throttled, because Integra will not let us lease any more lines with Qwest until we are migrated over in 6 months.
What we are talking about here is a problem that is endemic with telecoms. Every competition has a winner in this industry. Bigger means more subscribers and less over head. There is an inevitable tendency to gobble up the nearest competitor before he gobbles you up. Inevitably, what you end up with is a bunch of poorly thought out business's in charge of people's life lines to the out side world. The competition of which you speak is a fantasy.
Insanity...
I'm thinking dolphin tow rope, and fish launchers. You see you launch the fish out ahead of the dolphins and that's how you steer the boat.
Oh and it can easily scale up too!
Think Blue Whale tow and krill launcher.
I'm not twelve. Really. I think it would be fun, but PETA would be all over me on that one.
But the Blue Whale Loves pulling the boat.
Slashdot Mirror
Dare I reply to this... C'mon, put up your dukes moderator! I'll take you on. Oh yeah, what were they talking about? What's an Acer? What's XP? What's a Vista? Is that what I hook my internets up too?
Oh so are looking for an experienced programmer, and you came to Slash dot to recruit? Are you sure you want to hire Star Trek nerds and High Brow Curmudgeons.
I may have taken the article in too narrow a sense. Our cable networks here in the US are still primarily used to transmit television shows. Telecom usually refers to telephone providers. Most of that bandwidth is still used for analog T.V. signal. I think we are up to 8 Mbps/256 kbps with Comcast cable in my area. The cable networks (like Comcast) are autonomous entities in themselves. They lay their own fiber networks. There are no last mile alternative providers for cable, so you either subscribe to the local cable monopoly or not. Cable companies want nothing to do with the "recent" telecom acts, and have been lobbying hard to not be under the umbrella of Telecom. The old Telecom companies also want to be separate from the cable networks, because they don't want cable treading on their turf. Thus we are stuck with crappy dsl service, because the cable company only provide their premier internet services in hi population areas. We have a model of competing networks that entirely private and redundant. I'm sure that the network core is publicly owned in Sweden. Which would be sensible, but I live in America. It all has to be private by gum.
The article was very broad in the context of what services it was talking about. If he is talking ISP services. There are 4 things that small businesses want their Telco to provide. 1.Cheap Email capacity (including domain registration and what not) 2.Quick Reliable Internet Access (meaning access to web services) 3.Phone service 4.Affordable Web hosting space They want it to be setup in a way that involves as little foot work by them as possible, and they want it all in one place, because they don't understand the technology. Google can do Google stuff for all they care, they want email handled privately and simply. It's probably a niche market, but I think if a company could offer all these things with good customer service they would have the market cornered. One thing to realize is that people go ape *&%# over their email. When they call the ISP it's, because the email stopped working. They will say this even when they know their internet service is interrupted. Google is now offering cheep domains, web space, and nearly infinite email capacity. "All" they need is the phone/isp service to take a step into being be THE one stop shop. Qwest offers all this stuff, but they piss people off. Small Telco's offer a lot of this stuff at a premium but with less capacity. So he may have a point in some markets.
They tried that like ten years ago fifteen years ago with various Telco acts. Now those last mile companies are merging. I once worked tech support for a company called Eschelon. Eschelon touted how strong it was as a company by how many companies it was buying up. Eschelon's focus was on providing better customer service to complete with Qwest's bad reputation. We were a "last mile" and resale company. My job was to make the customer feel better about their 3 year contracts, and . Quite often customer's and customer vendors would call in calling us a "cancer". I had a really hard time saying, "I'm sorry you feel that way, but..." I totally agreed with them. We over charged buisness's for Qwest ADSL service. Many of our Sales reps out right lied to customers by telling them they were going to get 1.5 MB service when in fact they were getting IDSL. We charged a flat rate for all DSL products. It was called upto 1.5 DSL for 70 bucks a month not including the phone line and a 3 year contract to boot. And T1's. Don't get me started on T1's. Also with the benifit of a last mile company you get additional outages. The equipment and software that interfaced with Qwest would frequently take a dive. We had subcontractors that handled some of these products so we are talking about layers within layers of possibly redundant extraneous systems. Lost data and accounts due to overzealous executives purchasing random companies. Just before Eschelon was to be bought by Integra we purchased 3 other small to medium last mile telecoms. I have no doubt that we were attempting to boost our stock price to sell. There were rumors that Integra was also planing to go public. I have no doubt the ultimate goal of these west coast companies is to be the biggest fish so they can have the best sale price for Qwest. So all this is going on and the customer asks why their DSL only works intermittently all week. I cannot tell them that the lines we leased with Qwest are nearing capacity, and their DSL has been throttled, because Integra will not let us lease any more lines with Qwest until we are migrated over in 6 months. What we are talking about here is a problem that is endemic with telecoms. Every competition has a winner in this industry. Bigger means more subscribers and less over head. There is an inevitable tendency to gobble up the nearest competitor before he gobbles you up. Inevitably, what you end up with is a bunch of poorly thought out business's in charge of people's life lines to the out side world. The competition of which you speak is a fantasy.
Have ever visited Kosavo?
Olympic swimmer tow and gold medal launcher. You can even use steroids to improve performance.
Great white and or Orca tow plus sea lion pup launcher. Now I am done for.
Sperm whale and Squid launcher.
Insanity... I'm thinking dolphin tow rope, and fish launchers. You see you launch the fish out ahead of the dolphins and that's how you steer the boat. Oh and it can easily scale up too! Think Blue Whale tow and krill launcher. I'm not twelve. Really. I think it would be fun, but PETA would be all over me on that one. But the Blue Whale Loves pulling the boat.