[89242] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Welcome back, Ma Bell
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Patrick W. Gilmore)
Mon Mar 6 00:35:51 2006
In-Reply-To: <20060305.192549.13636.546296@webmail50.lax.untd.com>
Cc: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2006 00:35:11 -0500
To: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Mar 6, 2006, at 3:24 AM, Fergie wrote:
> An overreach? Really?
>
> I'd say that you're not paying attention.
Sorry, Fergie, but I gotta disagree with you here.
In the 1980s, cell phones were not even close to useable by most
people, but now there are lots of people who don't need anything
else. Not to mention cable TV providers doing voice. Oh, and that
whole VoIP thing.
Etc., etc.
So I would say that equating the BS & SBC^wat&t merger with the (lack
of) choice we had in the 80s an overreach. Really.
> And how do you come to that conclusion? By the fact that "very
> little" of the original AT&T is in the current monolith?
>
> Well, given the entire 'two-tiered' money-grab-tastic issues
> involved, I'd say you're a little out of touch.
Hey, I didn't say it would be good for the consumer. :) Clearly,
this is not the best possible situation for the end user.
But the current situation is still much better than the 1980s. And
way better than before that. (Remember when it was _illegal_ to own
a phone?) One could argue that there were times between 1990 and now
that was better for the consumer, but not all of them.
IMHO, of course.
--
TTFN,
patrick
> -- "Eric A. Hall" <ehall@ehsco.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 3/5/2006 7:10 PM, Steve Sobol wrote:
>> Eric A. Hall wrote:
>>
>>> What are people worried about here exactly?
>>
>> The same lack of competition in telecommunications that we had in
>> the 1980s?
>
> Well that's an overreach. And if the primary concern is
> consolidation then
> we should have blocked NYNEX and Bell Atlantic from merging back in
> 1997,
> since this deal is basically SBC + BellSouth/Cingular, which is mostly
> indistinguishable from the earlier one.
>
> I think people are reacting to the brand, the AT&T ghost really, since
> there's none of it left.
>
> --
> Eric A. Hall http://
> www.ehsco.com/
> Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/
> coreprot/
>
> --
> "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
> Engineering Architecture for the Internet
> fergdawg@netzero.net or fergdawg@sbcglobal.net
> ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
