Glad I am not invested in Verizon. This is what happens when people have a conflict of interest.
** News broke that the FAA had awarded a huge contract to Starlink earlier this week and–considering Elon Musk’s current role–that set off plenty of alarm bells for anyone who thinks corruption is bad, especially since the government already had a contract with Verizon. As it turns out, that new Starlink contract is actually worth $2.4 billion, the Washington Post reports. While the FAA said on Wednesday that “no decisions have been made,” two sources reportedly confirmed the plan to cancel the contract with Verizon.**
Not yet. I remember At&T before they were SBC and then back to AT&T. Never again. I remember Sprint, who was then bought By Tmobile. I remember Centurylink and a guy bragging to me how big his dividend was right before they cut it. While Verizon is probably the best of the best, it is still in a dying industry.
That is hard to get my head around, the way I see people wandering around, with their head welded to their phone.
Big flap lately about whether/when to allow school kids to have cell phones. Somehow, I went all the way through public school, and college, without a cell phone.
I agree Steve and Verizon has a great infrastructure built out and they have been able to get a premium for that infrastructure. The problem is they are in a race with very little more marketshare, shrinking margins and legacy pensions. Now they have to compete with satellites that do not have all that infrastructure to maintain. It has to scare any of the legacy phone companies to death. When you can cover a wider swath of the public with a satellite and everybody is covered everywhere. It will take time but eventually they will be taken out. I don’t see how they will be able to compete on price.
Keep ramping up the amount of stuff they send down their pipe, by eliminating alternatives?
Ever notice how the broadcast TV spectrum keeps shrinking? UHF TV used to go to channel 83. Then it was cut to 69. A few years ago, it was cut again, to, iirc, around channel 36. You don’t notice it, because the tuner on your TV displays the old channel number, even though that is not the channel the signal is actually broadcast on. The CBS affiliate in Detroit is channel 62, but it actually broadcasts on 21. The PBS affiliate in Detroit is channel 56, but it broadcasts on channel 20. Where is all the spectrum going? To the cell operators. Several years ago, AT&T proposed over the air TV be shut down entirely, so the cell operators could have all the spectrum. So, instead of free over the air TV, I would need to pay TPC to stream TV over their cell network.
I can see them having the pipes moving data all over the country but how much Revenue will that give them? It’s not like having the recurring revenue from all the households and people. Also keep in mind they already have the pipes so they are already getting that Revenue.
If they had maxed out the amount of stuff they want to send down their pipes, they could not be constantly pressuring the FCC to give them another chunk of the TV band.
VZ might have committed the crime of having people on the payroll who are not fit, straight, white, Christian, men. Can’t give an FAA contract to a company that “discriminates” against white people by hiring anyone else, right?
Nobody said they maxed out the pipes because the pipes are only limited by the equipment they put on it. A piece of fiber will carry a lot more data than they are able to put across it. The reason they want the TV band is the same reason all the cell phone companies do. That is where the constraint is with the cell phone companies. But Satellites do not have that same constraint.
Something to think about. It comes out that Musk is trying to take a 2.5 billion contract away from Verizon and give it to Starlink (which Musk happens to own) then the FCC sends out a communication that they are investigating Verizon on DEI charges on the same day. Coincidence? Trying to bury the information on a huge conflict of interest? Corruption?
That is the most conspiratorial reason. Think it would have been a little too obvious, if it was the the FAA investigating VZ for the crime of “DEI”? Verizon is also trying to take over Frontier, which needs FCC approval. And VZ is dependent on the good will of the FCC to operate at all.
Right, the constraint of RF bandwidth. Give the cell operators more RF spectrum, and eliminate a competitor, at the same time, and they can take more money off of people.
I think they use the DEI crap to hide stuff because they know some people will get worked up about it.
Let me ask you this. What law is DEI breaking? I know you are going to say Trump made an executive order but what law does it break? I think you are taking your eye off the ball by getting all wound up about DEI. When you give that credence you only fall into the trap. The real crime is taking the contract away from Verizon and giving it to Starlink. I am surprised you can’t see that.
I agree it is a convenient cover story, if the primary objective is to find some pretext to give the contract to Musk. I also think the anti-DEI stuff is real, a blatant effort to turn back the clock to when only straight, white, men, had the opportunities, to pander to the base.
As the long running “DEI risk to corporations” thread said, “DEI” is something that has come out of left field, to bludgeon any company with. Over recent months we have seen many companies run away from their DEI policies. The administration probably wants to make a really lurid show of prosecuting a company for “discriminating” against white men, and if one of the insiders profits from it, so much the better.
I believe the DEI is a squirrel story to keep people chasing their tail. None of it stops anyone from discriminating any more than before. People who were going to discriminate didn’t need DEI to stop them.
But satellites have other problems, physics! The delay time to send a signal/content up and receive it back down has some serious delays, OK for streaming, but really tough on conversations… Low earth orbits help, but also have a bit of drag on them have to be boosted from time to time, I don’t think the starlink sats are that low, or can boost themselves… And I read recently that quite a few are falling out monthly… Don’t recall the numbers, but…
Yep, there are limits… Huge fiber networks would be best, but also expensive… And hooking up cities, a permit process nightmare…
And weather. When I worked in an Office Depot store, the data link with corporate in Florida was by satellite. Every time there was a storm at either end, the wind would blow the dish out of alignment. One time, a hurricane came close enough to Jacksonville that the wind kept disrupting the dish at that end for a day or two.
