The Worst Trade Show in the World

Back in the day I used to attend Supercomm every year. I got my last job at Supercomm. Turned out to be a rip-off, the biggest financial mistake of my life.

Now the show is called Globalcomm, and it is (if anything) worse. Globalcomm is where Bell companies worldwide go to buy equipment and tell lies.

Some of the lies they tell:

• Networking is hard.
• Networks have to be very expensive.
• Networks can only be run by big companies.
• Costs are rising.
• Competition is just another word.

For the last five years, Michael Powell and (now) Kevin Martin have hauled themselves to this show and gone along with the double-speak, while the U.S. Internet has become less-and-less competitive.

It was good to see Carlo at Techdirt call Powell on this nonsense today. Complete with links.

My own view follows.

It's all Internet now. There is no phone network. There is no cable network. There are just bits.

The phone and cable duopoly seek to carve out 99% of those bits for themselves, and sell you only 1% as a "last-mile" that is incapable of providing the services which bits can provide all over the world, that is, services which compete with the other stuff they're selling.

Oh, and they don't want any competition. Not from CLECs. Not from municipalities. Not from ISPs. Not from broadband suppliers. Not from Google.

They call this competition, and they use the power of the government to enforce this Orwellian reality.

Kevin Martin complies with their requests because (for now) they have the money. And thus the U.S. Internet becomes more-and-more like that of Mexico every year. (Boy is Canada going to be surprised.)

Martin, like Powell, is a tool of monopolists. Our bills are rising-and-rising, and the capabilities of our links are falling-and-falling, while choices are disappearing, and the actual costs of providing the transport are falling like a stone.

An 802.11 radio can move 100 mbps for $200. The cost of moving a gigabit over optical fiber goes down every year, not just thanks to DWDM but in making fiber ,  in what fiber is made of, in what fiber can do, but in delivering more bits per fiber.

So backhaul is cheaper, the last mile is cheaper, switching can be optical, and everything can be Internet.

Yet we're paying more for less, and Kevin Martin is praising all this as "competition?"

Moron.

Comments

[Jesse Kopelman]

I said this to a coleague who is a retired Verizon VP and he agreed, "if the FCC doesn't free up more unlicensed spectrum to support all the municipal networks being built they should be renamed the ICCC (Incumbant Carrier Colusion Commision)."