Competition in the wired network broadband space is currently about as good as it’s going to get for the foreseeable future, and could even backslide, according to Blair Levin, Stifel Nicolaus analyst. That accords with the thinking of analysts at the Phoenix Center, who have argued for some years that robust competition between cable and telcos, while not as good as having more facilities-based competitors, is as much as can be expected in the U.S. market, and offers the practical hope of delivering competitive benefits to users, despite hopes for more.
“Prospects for the long-heralded ‘third pipe’ appear dim and dimming,” Levin says, as reported by Telephony Online. There has been no shortage of possible contenders over the last 30 years. Wireless always tops the list. Then there are the electrical utilities, municipal networks and broadband-over-powerline technology, none of which have made much of a dent.
One wag quips that "wireless is the technology of the future, and always will be." But Clearwire appears set on building a facilities-based, national third pipe. And fourth-generation networks, overall, might shift share away from wired alternatives, many believe.
“The market is as competitive as it is ever going to be, as far as we can see," says Levin. At least on the wired network side of the ledger, that likely is true.
But Levin says 4G wireless rollouts in 2010 or 2012 could represent a significant change in the competitive landscape.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Broadband: As Good as It Gets
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
We have all repeatedly seen comparisons of equity value of hyperscale app providers compared to the value of connectivity providers, which s...
-
It really is surprising how often a Pareto distribution--the “80/20 rule--appears in business life, or in life, generally. Basically, the...
-
One recurring issue with forecasts of multi-access edge computing is that it is easier to make predictions about cost than revenue and infra...
1 comment:
Ok, I'll bite. I think Levin has unfortunately bought into the flawed notion that telecom "pipes" should be a competitive market rather than a shared infrastructure on which competition and innovation thrive to deploy services. The evidence would suggest that the (increasingly numerous) countries that have surpassed the U.S. have realized that stimulating competition for pipes, each of which will have only a fraction of the market to cover that costs, will never result in cost-effective broadband transport. Our impatient capital market is just not at its best when asked to fund infrastructure. And the Comcast lesson may well be that coupling infrastructure and services will inevitably stunt innovations that compete with the services the pipe-provider is trying to sell.
I sure hope Obama can do better than Levin as a policy-wonk on this stuff.
Post a Comment