Didn't you say that Comcast failed to use effectively the ATHM brand? So if that is true, then why is it so bad to give up what they never exercised and apparently were not benefiting from?
The branding is worth two cents and the people know if they go ATHM they are stuck with TCI, and we all know about that little Fremont item of earlier today. It is worth more to be anti-ATHM brand, an alternative to that co-conspiratorial horror, TCI. I don't blame Malone completely, but I would never have gone along with the people's demands for fairness. It ended up creating a total mess. Many old thread denizens can testify to how much we raked poor old John over the coals and now it is all coming to pass why.
You talk as if the broadband networks are built. They aren't. That's why, "time waits for no one, and it won't wait for Comcast". Because the market is nascent, it behooves everyone to jump into the outstretched arms of MSFT and AOL in order to set up yet another broadband system. Now we are talking competition and what is in the customer's interest. We wouldn't have gotten here if the FCC had caved in to the demands made by consumer interest groups, cities, AOL, et al. Isn't it funny that now it is in AOL's bigger interest that they didn't get their wrong demands. That's why you may notice that I have softened my tone towards the FCC since last November. For one of the first times in history government made a decision that was constructive even though it went against the pundits at Yale, Harvard, and the east coast clique of elitist socialism. |
