 Steve B
join:2004-08-02
Seattle, WA
1 edit | Yeah.... I read the article in question this morning. My eyes popped wide open when I saw the "razor thin margins" part. Its obvious they don't see the billions made each year by VZW. After reading the article, I was left thinking these people are full of crap. | |
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 | MMH
Premium
join:2002-03-03
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·Comcast
| Re: Yeah.... said by Steve B  :I read the article in question this morning. My eyes popped wide open when I saw the "razor thin margins" part. Its obvious they don't see the billions made each year by VZW. After reading the article, I was left thinking these people are full of crap. Billions of dollars and profit margin are not the same thing, especially when costs are also billions of dollars as well. As soon as people see the word billions they go in to shock and start screaming rip-off. Well with the international megacorps we now have percentages are what should be looked at - not just the dollar amounts. | |
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| | Steve B
join:2004-08-02
Seattle, WA
| Re: Yeah.... If that is the case then it comes back to if they are investing those billions back into the network....where are the claims about the network that the article made coming from? If those claims are true, then the company isn't putting money back into the network and those "razor thin margins" aren't so thin.
My point that I was originally trying to make is that the article is full of crap. Either the claims are true or the margins aren't so thin. | |
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| | | openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA | Re: Yeah.... But the wireless carriers are spending billions on CAPEX. Look at the 10-K and 10-Q reports.
I wouldn't say the article is "full of crap", but it does kind of paint a relatively rosy picture for the telecoms. | |
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| | sonicmerlin
join:2009-05-24
Cleveland, OH
| said by MMH :said by Steve B :I read the article in question this morning. My eyes popped wide open when I saw the "razor thin margins" part. Its obvious they don't see the billions made each year by VZW. After reading the article, I was left thinking these people are full of crap. Billions of dollars and profit margin are not the same thing, especially when costs are also billions of dollars as well. As soon as people see the word billions they go in to shock and start screaming rip-off. Well with the international megacorps we now have percentages are what should be looked at - not just the dollar amounts. I think you're seriously missing the point. Verizon has been spending a huge amount of money upgrading their network to 4G and expanding backhaul. This is a one-time investment, the sort of thing a company in a competitive market would be willing to go in the red for. Despite rolling out FIOS and 3.9G LTE, they're still making billions.
You also need to look at profits in context to history. AT&T's profit in 2005 was $4 billion. By 2008 they had tripled that to $12 billion. Despite the recession they're still over $10 billion.
This all points to massive price-gouging on the part of the carriers.
The most important number is what kind of profit margins are they receiving on their customers.
Looking for a minute at the ISP landline business, the French company Free manages a 50% profit margin despite selling triple plays at $40/month to all of their customers. THis is despite laying down fiber to new customers and planning their entrance into the wireless market.
Back to wireless, it's well-known just how much of a rip-off wireless prices in the US are. This has a lot to do with the merging of the baby bells over the last 20 years. SBC and AT&T in particular were a major blow to the competitive market, as before AT&T was taken over they had begun to lay down middle-mile backhaul that would finally provide some real competition to SBC. | |
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SLD
Premium
join:2002-04-17 | I stopped reading/watching CNN awhile back. They are just a puppet of the Time/Warner corporate voice. | |
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| | sonicmerlin
join:2009-05-24
Cleveland, OH | Re: If you wish to send Carriers a message... What 4G networks in Japan? I'm living here (well I just got back from a 3 week trip to India), and I haven't heard anything about 4G. | |
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| | sonicmerlin
join:2009-05-24
Cleveland, OH
| said by cameronsfx :Stop buying anything for one week. And, current users, don't use anything for a week. Call it cellphone free week. If carriers start losing business because consumers are fed up with piss-poor service or no network usage a week since customers say, "Network sucks anyway. Taking a week off," they will have to change. Landline companies are listening when people are dumping it by the hundreds of thousands a quarter. Only problem is that 4G networks in Japan, cellphone nut country, has not provided a good ROI or one at all. If there were 300 million companies and 4 customers, do you think those smart, intelligent companies would be able to work together to gouge the customer base?
We are not the Borg. We cannot act in unison, especially over something that is not life-threatening. That is why we create government, which is supposed to be dedicated to protecting us from death by a thousand cuts. | |
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glinc
join:2009-04-07
New York, NY | meh If US 3G is not remotely closed as the 3G in Europe or Asia what makes CNN think 4G will be 100Mbps?. US 3G is a joke, it doesn't even reach those countries toes at all and they want to jump on 4G ship already. | |
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BK
join:2001-09-10
Wheaton, IL | Much ado about nothing.. I don't think phones are ready yet for 4G. More data will take more processing power which leads to less battery. That is no fun
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-formerly sMoKeNiNja | |
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aztecnology
O Rly?
Premium
join:2003-02-12
Murrieta, CA
 ·Verizon FiOS
| Re: Much ado about nothing.. said by BK :I don't think phones are ready yet for 4G. Because they are just starting to make the 4g phones now, since there wasn't a 4g network to use them on...
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.:|:. Go Wheatley or Go Home! | |
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| | watice
join:2008-11-01
New York, NY | Re: Much ado about nothing.. exactly. First the chicken, then the egg. And whooooooo the hell cares about 4g on a phone right now? It's going to be marketed to ppl in rural areas, and/or laptop users in major cities. | |
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ke4pym
Premium
join:2004-07-24
Charlotte, NC | Actually... My pressing question is: "When can I get my mits on some beta/prerelease I-want-it-now hardware?" | |
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| heimdm
join:2008-06-22
Martinsville, IN
| Re: Actually... The LTE deployment will hopefully provide high speed internet to almost all areas. Many rural areas still can not get 1.5mb or higher, so even if LTE provides 3mb for under $100, that is a deal.
LTE is not designed to be a replaced for fixed lines in high density areas. It is designed to pluck away subscribers that are not serviced by DSL, cable, and WISPs. There are many areas today where the only option is a 350 T1. | |
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| | bobb4jesus
join:2008-12-09
 ·HughesNet Satellit..
| Re: Actually... True it is a deal. But many rural users can't get even 1.5 Mbps. Around here we're lucky to be able to get 1.0 Mbps satellite. LTE or WiMax would make a big difference and if the speed is even the same as satellite for a slightly lower cost, less restrictive download limits and half or lower pings, we'd be happy with that. | |
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| | | sonicmerlin
join:2009-05-24
Cleveland, OH
| Re: Actually... said by bobb4jesus : True it is a deal. But many rural users can't get even 1.5 Mbps. Around here we're lucky to be able to get 1.0 Mbps satellite. LTE or WiMax would make a big difference and if the speed is even the same as satellite for a slightly lower cost, less restrictive download limits and half or lower pings, we'd be happy with that. I was in India for the last 3 weeks in a farming village, and I read about plans for BSNL to deploy $5/month WIMAX at 2mbit/sec. | |
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del ftl
@algx.net
| Karl you had to have noticed this already in the industry It's because there's a huge portion of the populace (investors/news agencies/tech bloggers). Who were sold the idea that fiber to the home was completely unnecessary and a waste in resources and that 4G (specifically lte) would blanket our major cities with 100-500 mbit per user internet speeds, and instantly vault us into the japan, korea, europe world of cheap fast broadband.
I ran into several of these people while working through my Information Services masters program. They came armed to debates with industry publications showing projected 100mbit minimum throughput per user with networks being able to support up to 1000 users per tower with such speeds. These speeds these individuals claimed would be the STARTING speeds for 4G lte in 2010, and quickly would reach 500mbit per user. I wish I could see what these guys from my education would be saying now that it's been announced that lte will start at probably under 10mbit.
Dont get me wrong, I do believe lte (4g) has its market and place for providing broadband connections, just not like they were expecting. | |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ | Razor thin margins? Give me a F'n break! | |
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thender
HTC
join:2009-01-01
Brooklyn, NY
clubs: | I get between 10-25 KBps on Verizon's 3G network in NYC So I have little faith in ANY advertised speeds for the future. | |
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munky99999
Munky
join:2004-04-10
canada
clubs:
 ·Bell Sympatico
| Who defines 4G as 100mbit? Sure wimax and lte could do that... but it'd be like 1 tower per every 12 people. Which nobody would expect anyone to design such a network.
Who cares? 10mbit is plenty of speed to do what you like.
It's those damn caps. Which will make your bills insane. | |
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| openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA | Re: Who defines 4G as 100mbit? The ITU  | |
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dib22
join:2002-01-27
Kansas City, MO
| The pre-4G technology 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) is often branded "4G", but the first LTE release does not fully comply with the IMT-Advanced requirements. LTE has a theoretical net bitrate capacity of up to 100 Mbit/s in the downlink and 50 Mbit/s in the uplink if a 20 MHz channel is used - and more if Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), i.e. antenna arrays, are used.
The Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005) mobile wireless broadband access (MWBA) standard is sometimes branded 4G, and offers peak data rates of 128 Mbit/s downlink and 56 Mbit/s uplink over 20 MHz wide channels. The IEEE 802.16m evolution of 802.16e is under development, with the objective to fulfill the IMT-Advanced criteria of 1000 Mbit/s for stationary reception and 100 Mbit/s for mobile reception.[4]
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G | |
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| sonicmerlin
join:2009-05-24
Cleveland, OH
| said by munky99999 :Sure wimax and lte could do that... but it'd be like 1 tower per every 12 people. Which nobody would expect anyone to design such a network. Who cares? 10mbit is plenty of speed to do what you like. It's those damn caps. Which will make your bills insane. What you like to do is based entirely on the growth of the internet. Provide people with higher speeds, watch the applications pop up and suddenly what you like to do requires more bandwidth than before.
The people developing these protocols are fully aware of the necessary advance of technology. Just because US ISPs have largely excluded the last mile customers from participating in this progressive march doesn't mean the rest of the world must do so as well. | |
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Seen It
@swayzee.com
| Margins A company I worked for a few years ago was a limited partner in three Contel to GTE Mobilnet to what is now Verizon RSAs. What people do not understand when companies like Verizon say razor thin margins what that really means.
Here is a simplified way of looking at it...They have broken themselves into a minimum of three different aspects of the business. Transport, Network/Switching, and Billing/Customer Service plus a category called General and Administrative. Each one of these separate categories must make money and are treated independently within the organization. They all get rolled up and gets a stamp, which has to make money as well.
That final product is what they are referring to having razor thin margins because all there sub departments are expensive.
If you looked at the product as a whole the profit margin is huge.
It is all a matter of perspective. | |
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XBL2009
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join:2001-01-03
Chicago, IL
·AT&T Midwest
1 edit | Re: Margins said by Seen It :
A company I worked for a few years ago was a limited partner in three Contel to GTE Mobilnet to what is now Verizon RSAs. What people do not understand when companies like Verizon say razor thin margins what that really means.
Here is a simplified way of looking at it...They have broken themselves into a minimum of three different aspects of the business. Transport, Network/Switching, and Billing/Customer Service plus a category called General and Administrative. Each one of these separate categories must make money and are treated independently within the organization. They all get rolled up and gets a stamp, which has to make money as well.
That final product is what they are referring to having razor thin margins because all there sub departments are expensive.
If you looked at the product as a whole the profit margin is huge.
It is all a matter of perspective.
The company made $12 Billion in profit, it doesn't matter if a division lost money. Eat me poor, Drink me rich is the motto of Taverns.
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Capitalism is competition, if you don't have competition then you don't have capitalism.
Rush Limbaugh is the cliff clavin of the republican party.
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drewdini
Premium
join:2010-02-21
Clayton, CA
| USA lags in 4G It is pretty sad being in such a great country, where we lack in everything like European countries who have true 4G wireless (VODAPHONE TOO) which is Verizon, better schooling, and a national health plan. Just wish I could get decent speed on my blackberry from Verizon as a Modem | |
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Z80A
Holder is a Racist
Premium
join:2009-11-23 | Re: USA lags in 4G What countries see 4G, which is defined by the ITU as 1Gb local and 100Mb widespread service? What handsets are they using? | |
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CNN Is Upset That 4G Service Won't Be 100 Mbps
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