
Verizon: We Can't Become Dumb Pipes - taylorbuley
https://mondaynote.com/verizon-no-we-cant-become-dumb-pipes-ddab2b41a2d8
======
iamleppert
Has Verizon actually had any happy content customers? Every time a carrier
tries to go into content creation they try to do it on the cheap and force
their monolithic soul-sucking corporate culture onto creative types and it
never has worked.

People don't want to work for Verizon, or Comcast, or other such companies.
They treat their employees like dirt, and are generally unconcerned with user
experience, doing things the right way, and view customer service as a cost
center.

All of their products have been developed in a centrifuge of "just good
enough" with an eye toward minimizing effort and maximizing profits. Its
entirely a cultural thing set by the leadership of these companies and will
not change until there is a fundamental (albeit unlikely) shift in leadership
at the top.

~~~
rdtsc
> had any happy content customers?

Not me. They got us a FIOS deal when we got our house. I used them for 2
years. Super fiber speed, except they would throttle youtube. So here I was
paying to this supposedly superior quality and speed and getting throttled by
them. So I dropped them and switched to a plain old cable provider (just for
internet, we don't really watch tv anymore). Cut my costs more than half. On
paper the speed is lower, however, the latency and lack of throttling for
things like Youtube and other media is better.

Now since Verizon installed their equipment on our premises, they keep coming
back every few months, in person -- as in they have someone drive out to our
door, begging us to come back. They even offered to match the price we pay for
cable currently (but it is always some stupid 2 year contract thing, that I
know will go throught the roof when the time is passed).

~~~
ec109685
Do you have cites for throttling YouTube? That seems entirely terrible for
retaining users.

~~~
slv77
Comcast and Verizion discovered they could use their monopoly position to sell
both ends of the pipe.

Comcast I know went through and systematically shut down private interchanges
with major content providers and also refused to upgrade public peering
points. There were some peering points that we're seeing 10%+ packet loss. The
result was terrible performance to any provider who didn't buy "internet
access" from Comcast even when the only access that was needed was to
Comcast's own customers.

A friend worked as a peering coordinator for a major content provider at the
time and nobody had ever asked to be paid to deliver content to their own
customers before. This created a standoff and I'm not sure how it ended but I
believe the content providers caved.

Of course I'm pretty sure this is what was the spurred Google Fiber. One thing
that Google seems really good at is to ensure that nobody can use their
monopoly position to cut them off from the customer (Android, Chrome, Fiber).

~~~
hexane360
Yeah, Google is very good at vertical integration. Make sure it's competing a
little in all areas.

[http://insidertestprep.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/05/Vertic...](http://insidertestprep.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/05/Vertical-and-Horizontal-Integration.png)

------
terravion
It would be great if there was a major telco that was excited about being dumb
pipe and just crushing the others. That seems to be what Google Fiber is an
attempt at creating but the capital required is so great that only a hundred
year old company like Verizon or AT&T is really in a position to execute on
that well.

~~~
Animats
There is - Sonic. Sonic is a dumb pipe company. No middle boxes, just bits.
Sonic fiber is deployed in Santa Rosa and is slowly moving into San Francisco,
but their management doesn't want to go into heavy debt, so it's slow. You can
also get Sonic in many areas of California, but it's over leased AT&T lines.

The CEO of Sonic says that being a fiber provider is profitable without any
additional services, and that their wholesale cost for upstream bandwidth
keeps dropping.

~~~
equalarrow
I have Sonic FTTN 50Mbps service. I've used Sonic over the years and have
always enjoyed their service and their mission as a business. I've lapsed a
few times because their DSL in some places in SF is just crap, but that's
because of AT&T and distance to the closest CO.

Where I'm at now (prob less than a mile from their fiber service, sigh..),
when we first moved in, we got Comcast. Of course, the Comcast service was all
over the place. Some days 1Mb, some 100Mb (which I never signed up for, but
just received), some 45Mb (what I signed up for). As usual, I had man techs
come out to try to fix things and of course, none did and all of them had a
different excuse as to why things didn't work. So many support people promised
me good service but I never got it.

Fed up, I saw I could get Sonic FTTN and it's been rock solid for over a year.
It's never gone down and just works - as I would expect. It's too bad we don't
have more ISPs like them because if we did, access would be a totally
different experience.

~~~
pigscantfly
As a (very anecdotal) counterpoint, I subscribed to Sonic for a year in an
apartment in Mountain View near Latham and Rengstorff with absolutely abysmal
results. It's been two years, so the exact details are hazy, but I believe the
plan advertised a 20 Mbps down rate. What I received was a connection that
tended towards 100 Kbps down and peaked at about 125 Kbps. There were frequent
outages - around once a week - for minutes at a time, not to mention a three-
week wait for installation (having already paid the sign up fees). Sonic was
totally unhelpful in resolving any of these issues and made it extremely
difficult to cancel my contract without incurring large fees (despite their
deceptive advertising) to the point that I waited until moving out. I will
never use them again for anything and actually prefer Comcast.

~~~
ac29
I don't think Sonic has ever advertised a guaranteed bandwidth for their DSL
offering. It's always "up to", which greatly depends on a lot of things with
DSL. It's too bad you had such a terrible experience with customer service,
I've been with them for almost 10 years and all my experiences have been good.

But in your situation, it sounds like you were likely extremely far from the
central office, and probably had lousy indoor wiring as well. 20Mbit/s is
basically the "I can see the phone company office from my window" speeds (less
than 1000 wire-feet, give or take).

~~~
mbreese
A lot of it has to do with the AT&T copper that they are actually connecting
over too. I had their paired DSL offering in Redwood City. One of the lines
got something like 10Mb/s, but the other was an abysmal 2Mb/s. It just wasn't
worth it to keep the second pair. Sonic was a great company to have as an ISP,
but in most areas, they are only as good as the copper they get from AT&T.

~~~
ac29
Yep this is half my point, line quality is huge in DSL. Sonic (or any other
DSL provider) couldn't reasonably give you a guarantee on speeds, even though
they know how far you are from the CO (last time I checked they gave you this
number when checking availability). I have paired lines and they are also
unbalanced (approx 6.5 and 5.5 down), despite assuredly taking the same path
from the CO.

------
fpgaminer
ISPs have royally screwed over my company. When we moved into our office a few
years ago the only option for Internet was a local phone company. They charged
us $500 per month for 2mb/2mb, forced us into a two year contract, and of
course bundled that service with the usual unreliability and crap customer
support. I couldn't believe it.

Eventually after the contract expired and much searching and begging we had a
glimmer of hope. TimeWarner offered to drop fiber to us for something like
$300 a month, 100/100\. Couple months later they bailed out. AT&T later
stepped up and actually went through and dropped the fiber, still 100/100, but
at $1500 per month.

So yup, we're paying almost a full-time, minimum wage employee's salary just
for 100/100\. I get 100/20 at home for $50. I cannot think of the words to
express how I feel about this...

~~~
thirdsun
Why would your company move to a new office without checking the available
internet options first? This seems incredibly careless. Fast internet and
limitless bandwidth isn't everywhere and that's not exactly a secret.

~~~
pixl97
Because the Telco/Cableco lies to you.

If you move to a location that doesn't have service already the answer you
receive from the provider is near useless. They will tell you they are able to
service the location, doesn't matter if they can or not.

~~~
thirdsun
If you rely on the answer to that question you better make sure the provider
can be held accountable to that. Particularly as a business you'd probably
want that in writing instead of talking to a random customer support person.

------
deathanatos
> _We don’t need your Internet. There is no way we can make money on it. We
> don’t want to be just dumb pipes!_

Is the whole argument (from the telecoms) here that they can't differentiate
the service as dumb pipes? Like offering decent speeds (1 Gbps … please? Heck,
even 100 Mbps for not an insane price), decent service (customer support that
knows what "ping" or "latency" means? Not requiring weeks of back-and-forth
with customer support to debug issues?), IPv6 support[1], a router that routes
corner cases[2], optionally paying for a static IPv4 address[3], being able to
reverse DNS my IP to a name of my choosing, no "no servers" BS in the
agreement, not MitM'ing data[4], not selling my data[5]?

Some of this is perhaps them not being dumb pipes: I could purchase my own
modem; the "no servers" and MitM'ing are directly _not_ being a dumb pipe.

[1]: I finally have this as a Comcast customer. My parents (also Comcast) are
still waiting.

[2]: My router fails at correctly routing packets bound for its public IP if
they originate inside the private LAN and are bound for a destination under
port forwarding. Comcast considers a router not exhibiting this bug a
"feature" called "NAT loopback" … which they don't support.)

[3]: my understanding is that Comcast does not offer this to residential; they
do to business class, but this hampers people like me that love experimenting,
but aren't businesses.

[4]: Most ISPs intercept at least DNS queries and respond with forged results
(to serve ads); this can cause software to fail with error codes different
from the actual problem (because the ads mask the underlying issue).

[5]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/att-selling-
data_n_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/att-selling-
data_n_3561263.html)

~~~
superuser2
Intercepting DNS queries would be news. Generally they just push their own DNS
servers via DHCP, and it's up to you to override them with ones that don't
serve as portals in place of NXDOMAIN.

~~~
deathanatos
Ah, okay; I suppose that's a fair characterization of it. (I do now override
their DNS settings, and I don't think I've seen one since I've done so.)

I still find the ISP one questionable, though I suppose there is a difference
between running your own (as the default that most people will not know how to
opt out of) and outright intercepting.

------
frandroid
> Carriers’ fear of commoditization is alive and bad; how else to explain
> Verizon’s necrophiliac acquisitions of AOL and now Yahoo?

Sentence of the week.

------
pmarreck
Tech trivia: This was written by the inimitable industry veteran Jean-Louis
Gassée, former top exec at Apple, founder of BeOS, chairman of PalmSource.

Some of his attributed quotes are real gems:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-
Louis_Gass%C3%A9e](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gass%C3%A9e)

I would love to have some wine with this guy and talk tech!

------
Cshelton
The future of Telco is not in the ground, but through the air. This is the
entire reason Google Fiber acquired WebPass.

It is relatively simple to transmit extremely high connection speeds through
radio waves. I have a receiver on the top of my house that is a point to point
signal, pumping 1 gig +, and soon to be much higher, speeds.

Google's strategy to expand GF will not longer include a massive ground
infrastructure move, but use point to point to get to the neighborhoods. An
entire zip code can be offered GF services at a fraction of the cost and a few
months of labor. Google, along with many other broadband startups will hit the
big telco's very hard. I'm not even sure if they see it coming yet. I'd
imagine they would, but after dealing with AT&T for the last two months on
something, I'm not very confident in there being any single person in the
entire organization who has a clue about what they are doing.

~~~
ac29
You aren't getting gigabit class service to "an entire zip code" using only
wireless. There are hard physical limits to how radio waves propagate and how
many bits you can squeeze into a given amount of spectrum [0]. Radio links can
provide high bandwidth or long-distance and reasonable obstruction penetration
but the former doesn't really come with the latter. Range and obstacle
penetration come in the sub-GHz class radios, but there isn't much bandwidth
available.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem)

~~~
Aelinsaar
Microwave seems promising.

~~~
ac29
Microwave, as a radio term, isn't very useful. It covers 300 MHz to 30 GHz
[0], which is nearly the entire usable radio spectrum. In industry
terminology, microwave generally refers to >GHz radios, which have real
problems in terms of obstacle penetration and range. In the >GHz range, you
more or less require line of sight for transmissions over a kilometer or so,
which often isnt practical. Free space path loss [1] is also an issue on long
links, as signal loss is proportional to the square of frequency.

A good practical example is to compare 2.4GHz WiFi to 5GHz WiFi. At the same
power level (both are restricted to 1W in the US for unlicensed operation),
2.4GHz will cover approximately four times the distance ~(5/2.4)^2. However,
much more spectrum is available in the 5GHz range, and signals cant travel as
far which leads to less interference given an equal number of transmitters.
Those factors give higher throughput, but free space path loss constrains
coverage on 5 vs 2.4 GHz WiFi.

Another example would be cellular: low frequency towers are used to expand
coverage and improve building penetration, high density high frequency towers
are used to improve speeds.

Feel free to email me at my profile address -- I work in the sub-GHz
narrowband radio industry.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave)
[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-
space_path_loss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_path_loss)

~~~
Aelinsaar
I'm talking about site to site.

------
spdionis
Meanwhile in the poorest country of Europe I have 100/100 mbps speed for 8$,
and not a much worse 4G connection with a 5 gb limit for anothef 8$.
America...

------
loupereira
Telecom companies should be regulated like electric and gas utilities

~~~
harryh
If we did that then we'd all still be stuck with DSL. Electric and gas
utilities aren't expected to drastically improve performance year over year,
but we want that from our telecom providers.

~~~
digi_owl
How about municipal fiber runs? Stuff it into the ground, and then offer any
service provider access.

~~~
harryh
Because city governments are really great at investing appropriately in
infrastructure!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis)

~~~
theothermkn
> Because city governments are really great at investing appropriately in
> infrastructure!

>
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis)

This sketch of a sketch of an argument that you have laid out it a total non
sequitur. It seems to me that you're pointing to the Flint water crisis as
proof either that all municipal infrastructure efforts are disastrous, or that
enough of them are that the public utility alternative is essentially dead. If
that is the "argument," then the easiest way to defeat this is just to say,
"Flint was _news_ because it represented a rare and egregious failure."

That's it. That's all we need to say to rebut that in its entirety.

If we stop there, however, we miss the opportunity to point out the converse:
It's _not news_ when customers get gouged for sub-par service, because corrupt
and monopolistic practices are rampant within capitalist institutions,
especially around lock-in. Cable companies. Phone companies. Privatized
utilities. Airlines after deregulation. Military suppliers. It's just not
news.

We'd also miss the opportunity to point out that the tactic of pointing to one
criminal failure of a civic organization as _proof positive_ that private
industry is _universally_ better is a favorite tactic of a certain obnoxious
kind of 20-something free-market fanboy set.

HN is better off when that set either stays home or ups its game.

~~~
rayiner
Our public infrastructure spending is trillions of dollars behind:
[https://next.ft.com/content/6aa759f8-16c0-11e6-b197-a4af20d5...](https://next.ft.com/content/6aa759f8-16c0-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e).

Flint is an extreme example, but almost all municipal water systems are a
disaster. In Atlanta, the sewer system dumps raw sewage in the Chattahoochee
when it rains. In Chicago, old lead pipes are poisoning kids. It happens
because rates are set by elected boards, not by markets, and because
municipalities are not forced to bear the external costs of poor
infrastructure.

~~~
snowwrestler
U.S. broadband speed and cost lag other industrialized nations too. The only
general lesson here is that the U.S. is big and infrastructure is expensive.

~~~
rayiner
Does speed lag? Akamai says otherwise.

~~~
snowwrestler
Your comment made me go look it up. Q1 2016 Akamai report ranks the U.S. 16th
for average download speed. ZDnet currently ranks the U.S. 41st for average
speed on their broadband speed test though. Both are obviously non-random
samples, but Akamai probably has a less skewed distribution.

I thought it was interesting that for the % of homes with at least 4mbps
service, Akamai ranked the U.S. 44th globally at 88%. That's another way to
look at infrastructure: how many folks have broadband at all?

Whether these numbers count as "lagging" is in the eye of the beholder,
obviously. We're not top ten in any category.

~~~
rayiner
See my post to the other reply. We're ahead of Canada, Australia, and the
other big, economically diverse European countries. I don't think that counts
as lagging.

------
Fej
Dear Verizon -

Yes, yes you can.

Love, The Internet

P.S. It would be cool if you stopped tracking us, while you're at it.

------
nameless912
As someone who works for a company that is (partially) an ISP: we want
_nothing more_ than to be a dumb pipe. Traffic shaping and dynamic content
acceleration are hard as hell, they barely work, and 90% of us engineers would
rather not do them if we didn't have to. But the edict from on high says
"optimize bandwidth for content!" and "Buzzword buzzword buzzword profits!"
and the technical staff suffers.

~~~
hooph00p
...tell me more.

~~~
nameless912
Truthfully there's not much more I can tell you without getting into
proprietary infos, but here's what I can say: because of "value-added content
delivery" or something, we have to work harder. And it's kind of a giant
clusterfuck most of the time.

~~~
TeMPOraL
"Value-added", modifier noun, meaning "something utterly useless and often
harmful to the customer that adds value for company by fucking said customer
over".

------
mrweasel
I never hear anyone from the ISP side explain why being a "dumb pipe" would be
such a bad thing, other than "they wouldn't be making enough money". For the
outside it would seem that the ISP are wasting money coming in from the "pipe"
business on the media side of things.

It seems like it would be a simpler business to be in, rather than trying to
be a media company.

~~~
usefulcat
Probably it's because internet service is a commodity, and commodities tend to
compete primarily on price. Also, consider the context: these are companies
that are accustomed to not having a lot of direction competition.

~~~
shanacarp
commodities can be graded. See, for example, crude. Brent black sweet is
considered the black gold standard, but you can get other kinds of crude, and
you adjust from there

------
Meegul
As my dad would always say: "Can't, or won't?"

------
pmontra
This is more or less what the CEO of the mobile operator I was working for
told me, circa 2002. Obviously they are almost only a dump pipe now because
it's very difficult to compete alone against all the world of content
providers.

By the way somebody made it, starting from the device and not from the
network. Look at this:

> You, the entrepreneur, provide a Minitel service: e-commerce, banking,
> entertainment. The French phone monopoly does the billing and collecting for
> you by adding a few items to the end of François Dupont’s monthly phone
> bill. For this service, France Telecom takes a 25% vig.

s/Minitel service/app/

s/French phone monopoly/Apple and others/

s/25%/30%/

Best bets about who's going to snatch those money from them in the same way
they eventually snatched them from France Telecom?

------
_superposition_
"...The Minitel business model was a thing of beauty, a well-tended garden
that didn’t admit outsiders. In this world, the Internet was the unwashed
enemy... To paraphrase one of my past collaborators, the Minitel did less, but
it cost more"

Replace Minitel with iPhone and call me in 10 years.

~~~
bertiewhykovich
I don't think this is a fair comparison. From the perspective of most
consumers, the iPhone does just as much as its competitors. (This is even true
for me, an engineer: I neither need nor want my smartphone to be a generic
computing device.)

The iPhone certainly costs more than its competitors (even, perhaps, its
technically superior competitors), but it's a mistake to think that this cost
isn't purchasing value. An iPhone customer is buying the ease of use and
universal compatibility of the iPhone -- and I invite anyone who thinks that
this is overvalued to contemplate the phrase "Linux on the desktop." (Thinking
about Linux also highlights a basic principle of the technical market that
techie types often miss: "power" tends to inversely correlate with ease of
use, and the majority of people would much rather have their device work than
have their device be receptive to hacking that they'll never even
contemplate.)

The purchase of an iPhone is also a very explicit investment in social
capital. Sneer all you want at status symbols -- they're an effective form of
social currency, and dismissing them is highly irrational.

~~~
digi_owl
Here we go again, claiming that the reason Linux is not on the consumer
desktop is technical. Nope, it is squarely economical (and quite a bit
political). when the OEM contract with Microsoft makes it expensive to do non-
Windows PCs, the OEM opts not to.

Ever since KDE 2.x Linux has been just as good as Windows from a technical
standpoint (and likely easier to fix once the inevitable error comes up, as
there are few to none opaque binaries involved).

Ease of use is a smokescreen, as there is no "tabula rasa" users running
around any longer.

~~~
bertiewhykovich
I used Linux on the desktop for years. I ultimately switched to Macintosh
because I was sick of battling my operating system to fulfill basic consumer
needs. To be fair, this was five years ago, and I'm sure that Linux has made
usability strides since then. But it's hard for me to believe that the ethos
of Linux -- a platform by developers, for developers, that is additionally
hindered by the FOSS orthodoxy of certain camps -- has been fundamentally
altered in that time.

~~~
sgt101
This - I loved it, but I couldn't afford the random time sinks doing things
like making my notebook talk to a projector or give me a keyboard mapping that
worked for every key.

------
chinathrow
I am on fiber, my ISP is actually the dumb pipe and they love being it. I
chose them for this very reason - a business ISP turning B2C as soon as fiber
got rolled out where I live. Unfiltered, unmetered symmetric 1 Gbps.

I need an ISP who does not touch the dumb pipe.

------
jcoffland
The end of the article goes into a discussion about acquisitions but misses an
important point. The reason Warren Buffett makes good acquisitions is because
he owns the company so he only benefits if the acquisition works whereas CEOs
and the board of directors make money either way. Execs are motivated to make
the largest value acquisitions because they personally make money on them not
because it's good for the company. This situation has been gutting our largest
corporations for decades.

------
revelation
Nobody wants to be a dumb pipe, yet most of the value creation in the world is
based on utter commodities. Dumb businesses are the very norm.

~~~
neolefty
Data / examples?

~~~
dredmorbius
Infrastructure, particularly transportation and communications.

Ports, navigational aids (from lighthouses and buoys to GPS), railroads,
telegraph, transoceanic cables, rural electric and telephone service, highways
and interstates, airports, air traffic systems, standardisation of parts,
measurements, communications, frequencies, procedures, accident and incident
investigation.

We devalue commodities because their _price_ is low, but the _value_ if often
quite high. I'd knocked an argument against supplying California agriculture
with water in favour of municipal use, in part on the basis that ag prices are
depressed in a highly distortionary fashion.

But if you want the real winners, look at coal, oil, and gas, which are
underpriced by factors of hundreds, thousands, or millions, and which make the
modern world possible. The end of that gravy train will be painful.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _standardisation of parts, measurements_

This is what probably single-handedly enabled technological civilization. The
original walled gardens, craftsmen making each according to their ideas and
workshop setup, were putting a cap on complexity and reliability of things.
Without standardization and commoditizing, there's no way for one to
specialize on providing _parts_ for the solution.

~~~
dredmorbius
Necessary but not sufficient

------
johansch
"This cannot end well."

The death of Verizon would be a good thing though, no?

~~~
taylorwc
This is actually a tough question to answer. In the long run, the death of
carriers/MSO's in their current structure would likely be a good thing to the
end consumer. In the near-term, it would be a very bad thing. Verizon has the
best geographic coverage in the US and a more performant network
infrastructure (on the whole) than its competitors. The thing that's easy to
forget about carriers is how amazingly capital-intense it is to build a new
one.

~~~
johansch
It's not like the infrastructure would physically cease to exist if they went
bankrupt.

~~~
taylorwc
No, but it would likely be purchased by a competing carrier or MSO that
functions in an identical fashion.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
More likely a private equity firm.

------
Kurtz79
Well, they are halfway there.

Jokes aside, in this day and age it's not hard to consider "bandwidth" as a
commodity similar to water or electricity, why a company supplying it should
be different from an utility company ?

Provide a "dumb pipe" service that is convenient and reliable, and customers
maybe will consider adding "smart" services on top of it.

------
EA
I read the title and couldn't help but think about pipes.yahoo.com after VZW's
recent acquisition.

~~~
maxerickson
Those were smart pipes though.

------
pkaye
Speaking of minitel and walled gardens isn't that what Apple is doing with
their app store.

------
_greim_
Okay, so let other people be dumb pipes by not lobbying against municipal
broadband everywhere.

------
bcheung
It's not so much that they can't, it's that they don't want to and it would be
unwise from a strategic standpoint.

Being an ISP is a commodity business and has really low profit margins.
Ironically though, people still have so few choices.

------
amelius
In all fairness, you can't blame a company for not wanting to become a
commodity producer. Being a dumb pipe is a race to the bottom, no matter how
well you perform. I'd say we have to blame the system instead.

~~~
k__
Sure, but "become"?

I already see all internet providers exactly as this.

Sure, they try to sell me "more than just internet" and I get calls regularly,
but the only good stuff they offer are their "pipes".

~~~
amelius
So you agree that we can't blame them, and need to address the "system"
instead?

Perhaps these pipes should move to the public sector?

~~~
k__
I don't know.

I fear the public sector a bit, because it's so slow...

------
adventureartist
>Does he really believe he can sell formerly unsuccessful Yahoo services to
Verizon subscribers?<

This article misses the point: This is about selling Verizon subscribers
through Yahoo/AOL services.

------
rocqua
Too bad, because I just want a dump pipes service. I'll pay a premium for well
maintained and up to date pipes. But I don't want anything else.

------
ex3ndr
So, how to sell to Verizon better software and better services to help them
build nice services and not enterprisish crap?

------
dkarapetyan
Article ends with "This can not end well". I'll do one better: It will not end
well.

------
somenomadicguy
Does anybody remember the fabulous disaster which was the excite@home merger?

Same thing, different decade.

------
leoh
Two words: rent extraction

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aggieben
I would pay a hefty premium for a well-done dumb pipe.

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spacemanmatt
Verizon: We can't provide what customers want.

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known
Copy/Compete; Otherwise you can't survive :)

