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" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
