4 ms·

I think you hit the nail slightly off center with, "...people aren't going to spend a bunch of money hiring people to build things unless there is a potential f

I think you hit the nail slightly off center with, "...people aren't going to spend a bunch of money hiring people to build things unless there is a potential for a big payout at the end." Verizon and all other ISPs will make money and lots of it, period. Whether or not they make insane profits or more insane profits is what investors are looking at. Also, in regards to building infrastructure they already play games when reporting how much they've spent upgrading and maintaining infrastructure. Why would they do that? Because they know that the total amount is so ridiculously small when compared with their profits that they'll be laughed at if they try to make it a reason against regulation.

rayiner 12y ago
I'm not sure what numbers you're looking at. The ISP business isn't that profitable. The biggest pure cable companies are TWC, Cox, and Charter. Cox is privately-held, so we don't have information about their finances, but Charter is losing money. TWC has almost 3x the revenue of Facebook, but only marginally higher net income.[1] Moreover, the pure ISP business is even less profitable. Both TWC and Charter would be $1-2 billion per year in the red if you eliminated their video programming revenues and associated costs. Verizon's FiOS is apparently profitable on an operating basis, but there is question whether the company will be able to recoup its capital costs: http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2014/05/would-verizon-recover-its-cost-of.html http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2014/05/would-verizon-recover-... [1] It's very profitable when your users generate your content for free, and you can shift tax liability overseas.