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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: So why don't US citizens get this?
Dave Crocker wrote: > I have always understood the issue to be the presence or absence of unfettered > competition. Competition is good. It's lack is bad. The problem is that it is rather hard to enable full competitive environment in the last mile. No city, no citizen wants to have 300 wires running along the poles on streets. In fact, a properly managed monopoly (with rules to grant access to the last mile) can probably financially justify deploying fibre to the home far more easily than in a competitive environment. The big problem in north america is whoever decided to make ADSL work on old copper. Had ADSL never materialised, the telcos would have been forced to put fibre to the homes. But now that they have invested in the ADSL quagmire, it becomes much harder for them to justify fibre to the home. But a CEO with vision would get the telco to stop deploying remotes everywhere and leverage the fibre's ability to reach longer distances and cover neighbourhoods with far fewer remote/nodes. The problem is that CEOs are not hired for their vision, they are hired for their ability to please wall street casino analysts (who in term please shareholders with their articles in the various wall street casino newspapers/magazines). Competition only works when the goal is to please customers. It does not work when the goal is to screw customers as much as they will tolerate. (Consider mobile telephony in north america, especially Rogers/Bell/Telus in canada).
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