No Tollbooths
An excellent post by Tom Evslin on his fractals of change blog about the Ed Whitacre BusinessWeek interview (about which we previously wrote about here and here. Tom writes:
This isn’t about freeloaders; it’s about tollbooths. As local access monopolies, the baby Bells have been able to maintain tollbooths for voice traffic for years. Voice over IP (VoIP) got much of its original impetus by providing a bypass around those tollbooths. Even though they’ve done better than their long distance rivals (whom they are now buying), it’s getting harder and harder for the baby Bells to increase or even maintain profits. They could have been leaders in Internet access but they weren’t. Now they are providing DSL – great. Now they would like to erect new tollbooths on what used to be called the Information Super Highway – that sucks.Read the rest of this excellent post. Tom ends: "Meanwhile, it’s a good idea not to get your broadband hookup from someone who’s already said that they intend to erect a tollbooth on YOUR pipe. If you have a choice, that is." And that lack of choice is the point, isn't it. SBC (when do we start calling them AT&T?) is trying to make sure that we don't have a choice. When will our government be back off of their Martin-vacation to protect us, the consumers? Wasn't that supposed to be their job?
1 Comments:
The Sherman Anti-Trust act is the most damaging law in the country. Until you accept this, it is impossible for your posts to make sense.
AT&T should have never been broken-up in the first place.
Furthermore, when SBC, Verizon, etc... put glass fibre piping into your home, you'll have two competitors locked into a price war for your Cable TV, Phone, and Internet service. Yeah, they own the pipes, but why does that matter as long as there's TWO going into your home?
Don't forget the 3rd and 4th competitors... Satellite and wireless and on-demand. With the advent of WiMax and other improving wireless technologies including satellite (DirectTV, Sirius, etc), you'll have 3 and 4 choices for each service. Radio or Yahoo Music Engine??
Monopolies get fat dumb and happy just like rich individuals. They start to relax and take the eye off the ball. This is where new companies can find niches to exploit, to the benefit of the economy and the consumer. MS could not kill Intuit. Intel couldn't destroy Nvidia and ATI. Oracle can't destroy IBM and MS.
Western Union failed to stop AT&T.
Pan Am failed to stop Howard Hughes' TWA and Southwest Airlines.
Standard Oil, had it not broken up, would have led to cheaper energy alternatives MUCH sooner, since smart minds would have attacked the rolly-polly behemoth.
But in the meantime, before new technology and investment creates means around the monopolies, the monopolies are great value generators. Plenty of jobs, a fat dividend for retirement funds, and reliable and GOOD SERVICE. Not everything is best served cheap.
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