You have some provocative ideas but doesn't it depend on what they lease from the MSOs.
As part of the package, aren't the MSOs providing transport from the analog headend free of charge. Furthermore, I was under the assumption that T was providing an OC-48 backbone between major ATHM peering points.
Doesn't this leave just the major backbone links in dispute if capacity grows considerably and exceeds their OC-48 requirements.
Who knows what backbone capacity will cost. Look at the major backbone capacity as a result of the numerous CLECs in the biz [wcom, Williams,gblx, ixc, lvlt, qwst, abiz, elix, gst, mcld, nopt, just to mention a few]. Who is to say that all these companies, who are in the business of leasing capacity couldn't end up in a bandwidth gas war to provide the necessary capacity to ATHM. The fact that ATHM would be in the fiber biz could be disasterous for the bottom line. Why not do a good job of shopping the leases and driving the cost per bit into the dirt. |
