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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: axial who wrote (31376)	9/16/2009 8:29:43 PM
From: Crossy	Respond to of 46821

TRIG, you get to the essence of the argument here. I wouldn't however go as far as you did with the equation that lobbying was illegal or it alone produced the results. It is the weakest link. The biggest problem imho is that most actors across ALL political camps, with the exception of tech-savvy people and Internet and Network specialist are just damned uninformed and pretty naive of what's at stake here. Don't forget the "old" ILECs covered BOTH (!) party cases well ... after all that bill was called TAUZIN-DINGELL for a reason. And in good ole' Dem leaning Chicago, Mr. Daley was particularly well connected into old AT&T and later into SBC.. To some of the weird Left, competition doesn't matter, they long for a state monopoly or role of provider of last resort - despite on the dislocations their interventions and meddling iwth the price system produced. To some on the Right, freedom from/of interference was more important than competition itself. Both are low-intelligence solutions with dismal outcomes. We deserve better. Just being pro-market (which I certainly can be told to be) doesn't mean we don't need no rules of engagement. You can do almost laissez-faire in many industries with no so called "network externalities" at work (talk about retailing etc.). But in infrastructural sectors, it's all different. The alternative is NO MARKET. Without a market, there is not competition. We have known that status quo - for more than 60 years or more. People on this trail aren't "pro-business" for business sake, but because I believe that market provided goods gives consumers more choice and better quality. The essence is not business but competition. And yes - competition is indeed a merit on its own. take care CROSSY

To: axial who wrote (31376)	9/17/2009 12:46:15 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

After spending a little time yesterday with a power grid guru whose visions of the grid closely parallel my own with respect to the Internet, something occurred to me, which I think is pretty amazing. It makes no difference how smart or stupid a network may be, because the pipes that carry payload (and this applies to electricity, Internet data, voice, tv content, even water and gas) are implicitly dumb in all cases. The intelligence resides in network nodes. The pipes/wires/ducts/tunnels are dumb. This holds true for the high-voltage and distribution parts of the power grid, and it holds equally true for the backbone/second-mile/last-mile sections of telecoms and cable facilities as well. High-voltage transmission system owners (the Regional Transmission Operators) argue that they are not being adequately compensated for carrying the juice. They claim all the money is being made by the generators. They further argue that much of the energy carried over their longer spans incur "losses", resulting in measurably reduced yields of megawatts actually delivered over time -- not unlike dropped packets on congested Internet routes -- hence the question: Who pays for the lost power en route, especially during abnormal conditions and contingency situations? They must support flows of all sizes and durations regardless of how loads shift from hour to hour, day to day, month to month. These are the same dumb pipes that everyone's squabbling over: the part of the network that 'costs', not the part of the network that generates revenue. Structural separation would give the incumbents new-found freedoms from the burdens of facilities management, and at the same time allow them to aggressively go after the content end where all the gravy's being made. The problem they face, however, and I wholeheartedly believe that this cultural issue is a major part of the overall equation, is that they have been institutionalized for such a long time at this point, just like a patient that's spent too much time in a hospital, or a prisoner who's spent the last half-decade in a penitentiary, that they wouldn't know how to compete "on the outside" without the crutch of the vertical hooks they have enjoyed into the outside plant for so long. Methinks they merely need a little push, is all. They'll do fine. Of course, it may mean tossing overboard or rewriting quite a bit of billing code and useless back-office architecture, but hey, welcome to the 21st Century. ------