Industry

Kronos

Bambi Francisco thinks that AT&T should pick up Covad

it'll keep losing customers like myself if it doesn't get with the program and offer another product. I'm not talking about the low-hanging fruit called local phone service. What's the value of low-hanging fruit if it's spoiling anyway? I'm talking about high-speed Internet access. [via Broadbandreports]

Ma Bell? I'd think more appropriately Kronos. AT&T, like other telecom entities, ILECs included, would prefer to seek rent through gaming the regulatory system rather than investing in facilities. Purchasing capacity from the provider of that last mile of wire may be cheaper than investing in the last mile itself, but it ignores the writing on the wall.

What mattered most in my decision-making process was high-speed Internet access. The local and long distance services were just add-on commodity features. SBC got my business because it had the high-speed offering. It wasn't because the local phone company had better local or long-distance rates, and certainly its awful radio commercials in the Bay area almost drove me away.

February 26, 2003: AT&T looking local

David Dornan, CEO of the nation's largest long-distance company, said Tuesday that AT&T had identified three systems as early favorites to provide the connection between its telephone networks and residential or business customers: cable TV lines, steroid-injected wireless networks and electrical grids.

9:06:51 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry

Bundling Against the Cold

Sun is bundling the other planets into the Solaris operating environment [c|net via OSNews]. From a software distribution perspective, I think this makes a fair amount of sense: ship everything in one package, then install, and license (and patch), what you want. What needs to be there is a means to install a minimal system. Because while everything and the kitchen sink may be on the media, I don't want it on my servers. That, ease of licensing, dependancy resolution, and package management, will make or break the implementation.

It has to be easy to buy, easy to install, easy to run, and easy to maintain — not like trying to determine which minor version of which Java SDK needs to be downloaded. Making life less confusing for the purchaser and those of us on the line can only help Sun's prospects.

5:52:43 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry, System Administration

Powell wanted the new bargain to be "enjoy your monopoly on the pipe to the home, but now everyone with a pipe to the home can offer whatever they want down it" believing that, in the packet switched world, any pipe can be a phone, TV, radio, etc.
— Zimran Ahmed

3:27:40 PM #
categories: Industry

In the matter of Municipal Broadband

Playing Twenty Questions: SBC Survey or political propaganda? [Broadbandreports]

3:10:14 PM # Google It!
categories: Industry