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Well, AT&T was so insignificant that the government broke it into 8, 7 regional phone companies and a core continental provider. The core (AT&T) then sold its t

by sgt101 2y ago

Well, AT&T was so insignificant that the government broke it into 8, 7 regional phone companies and a core continental provider. The core (AT&T) then sold its tech capability (Lucent). One of the bits (South Western) then ate the core and decided to call itself AT&T once more, now it's one of the biggest (13th) companies in the USA again. However, the internet meant dumb core, smart edge. This, and regulation meant that telecoms companies have struggled to make themselves relevant to consumers. Any attempt to do so (undermining net neutrality) generally inspires rage in everyone. Technical change has lead to the situation now of the core just being what happens in data centres and between data centres - everything else is just noise. Telcos weren't able to raise the funds to invest in cloud at the rate that Amazon, Google and MS were because they had other investment pulls (3,4,5G, FTTH) and much less free cash - and so they got shut out.

unixhero 2y ago
I work in a Telco Fortune500, thanks for a great argument for why telcos didn't innovate.
- sgt101 2y ago
  >I work in a Telco Fortune500 Sorry to hear that friend ;o) I hope that the pay is good/useful and your work environment is positive. >great argument for why telcos didn't innovate. I really think it is all down to not having the money. Regulation, legacy costs and costs required to sustain the core business have drained telcos of all cash. I think that this has been especially painful for Europe and is political - for example in the UK there was even a special tax to claw back £600m from BT at one point. Add in the costs of 3G licenses which must have been £30b or more overall then you can see why Europe doesn't have a competitive technology sector built on it's telco heritage. This all happened during the .com boom when Amazon and Google were evolving - imagine what would have happened in Europe if even 30% of that cash had been available to support innovation.
  - nolist_policy 2y ago
    The telcos all stripped themselves in a race to the bottom. They outsourced everything that wasn't nailed down.
    - sgt101 2y ago
      Everyone has outsourced anything that isn't nailed down, that's why not to pay attention to ceo's threatening to outsource you. If they can/could they will/would no matter what. The threats just mean that they can't. There is nothing special abut telco's in this regard. Telco's don't have leverage to compete on anything but price really, they don't have the capital to innovate, they are prevented from vertical integration by regulation, customers will not pay for service... and it's expensive. So, it's bargain basement time. Their investors have piled them with debt and now are looking at them as an annuity business. One big issue is that humans only have very limited bandwidth requirements and so much networking can be done in the data center vs out on the edge now. This means that I don't really see another generation of edge networking coming along and realistically this does reduce telcos to the old utilities that they once were. Time for renationalisation?

by sgt101 2y ago

unixhero 2y ago

I work in a Telco Fortune500, thanks for a great argument for why telcos didn't innovate.

sgt101 2y ago
>I work in a Telco Fortune500 Sorry to hear that friend ;o) I hope that the pay is good/useful and your work environment is positive. >great argument for why telcos didn't innovate. I really think it is all down to not having the money. Regulation, legacy costs and costs required to sustain the core business have drained telcos of all cash. I think that this has been especially painful for Europe and is political - for example in the UK there was even a special tax to claw back £600m from BT at one point. Add in the costs of 3G licenses which must have been £30b or more overall then you can see why Europe doesn't have a competitive technology sector built on it's telco heritage. This all happened during the .com boom when Amazon and Google were evolving - imagine what would have happened in Europe if even 30% of that cash had been available to support innovation.
- nolist_policy 2y ago
  The telcos all stripped themselves in a race to the bottom. They outsourced everything that wasn't nailed down.
  - sgt101 2y ago
    Everyone has outsourced anything that isn't nailed down, that's why not to pay attention to ceo's threatening to outsource you. If they can/could they will/would no matter what. The threats just mean that they can't. There is nothing special abut telco's in this regard. Telco's don't have leverage to compete on anything but price really, they don't have the capital to innovate, they are prevented from vertical integration by regulation, customers will not pay for service... and it's expensive. So, it's bargain basement time. Their investors have piled them with debt and now are looking at them as an annuity business. One big issue is that humans only have very limited bandwidth requirements and so much networking can be done in the data center vs out on the edge now. This means that I don't really see another generation of edge networking coming along and realistically this does reduce telcos to the old utilities that they once were. Time for renationalisation?