AT&T: 15 Mbps Internet connections "irrelevant"

Sat Apr 1 20:58:39 UTC 2006

On Sat, 1 Apr 2006, Daniel Senie wrote:
> Since AT&T provides nearly all of the transit bandwidth to Comcast in
> New England, this thread says to me, more or less, "those folks at
> Comcast claim speeds they can't deliver, because the backbone they
> use -- which happens to be AT&T's -- is too congested to deliver
> those speeds anyway." Or something like that.

If you listen to Comcast's presentation to financial analysts, you
know Comcast has already announced plans for its own 40Gbps backbone
using dark fiber leased from Level 3. There are probably a few howlers
in Comcast's presentation too, but network geeks aren't the intended
audience.

Financial analysts probably joke about technologists making presentations
and getting tongue-tied about basic accounting terms too.

> Yes, clearly I'm poking fun at AT&T here. Large providers who want to
> play in both the wholesale and retail space really should think about
> how their marketing in one area affects their claims in another.
> That's a non-marketeer's view, clearly.

The next few years should be very interesting, and provide lots
of fodder for pundits everywhere. Comcast buys backbone service from
AT&T.  AT&T buys programming for several video channels from Comcast.
They'll both need to exchange phone calls with each other in every city
they sell local phone service.

While its great fun to make fun of pointy-haired bosses everywhere, it
may be more useful to look past the various foot-in-mouth statements
and try to understand what each of them is trying to accomplish.  Even
though they are all fierce competitors, they also all do business with
each other.