3 ms·
> but the real problem is ISPs which don't want to be nothing but a transport provider. This is very, very true. Anyone who has worked at a telco should've hea
by paulojreis 11y ago
> but the real problem is ISPs which don't want to be nothing but a transport provider.
This is very, very true. Anyone who has worked at a telco should've heard the "we don't want to be a dumb pipe" argument. The thing is: they can't be more than that! I don't want their applications, they are not very good at doing applications. I don't want their content, they don't seem to get content production at all. Even their research, it has become less and less relevant.
As a customer, I'd rather see all that money spent on efficient ways of transporting bytes, or even directly subsidizing the customer bill (so that they can support smaller ARPUs). But no; I have to pay extra to support the entertainment of their engineers, in order to get sub-optimal apps and content.
- pjc50 11y agoIt's the other way round: the extra stuff is there as "market differentiation" in order to justify the high prices and prevent commoditisation. The problem is that if you're selling a commodity the price ends up close to the marginal cost of production. Whereas every company wants to have some unique IP they can charge monopoly rent prices for, like Apple. Same with vendor crapware on phones and PCs. I call this stuff "value subtracted software".
- charlesdm 11y agoThat's exactly the point. The reason they don't want to be a dumb pipe, is because they want to use that to justify increasing their ARPU.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoDon't ISPs give up common-carrier protections for things like copyright when they interfere with the traffic? This should make them liable for contributory infringement on any copyright infringements by their customers that they don't take action against.
- tajen 11y agoI like your thinking. So including ads/warnings/popups is effectively making a derivative work on material that Comcast doesn't own. They become liable for copyright infringement.
- digi_owl 11y agoFrankly the whole "don't want to be dumb pipe" thing is a telco variant of "perpetual growth". Frankly at one point or other every large company in every mature market has to contend with having reached their growth limit. There are only so many customers in this world for the products and services offered. The only place that could grow forever is Wall Street, by piling derivatives upon derivatives and passing them round like hot potatoes. Everywhere else has to contend with us being on a physically finite planet.
- malka 11y agoThey cant, because of debt. Capitalism is a never ending running forward, being pursued by debt. If you stop, you get eaten.