1. anonymous SBC employee on November 2, 2005 11:11 PM writes...

As an SBC employee, I've seen it from the inside, though, of course, not the "real" inside. I am also an ex-AT&T employee (and soon to be again, it seems). I've seen this catfight from both angles for the last 25 years, and I know not to trust either side's public statements.

Interestingly, they accuse other organizations (probably quite correctly) of "astroturfing", but I notice that there is an unspecified number of their board who prefer to remain anonymous. Good form!

I read the teleTruth paper and while its statements all rang true on the surface, my memory of the events was a little different. I remember gearing up for Project Pronto and getting all excited, but when the access-line losses started getting severe, we cut back. The paper falsely accuses the company of inaccuracy, saying that PP was about fiber but we did a bait-and-switch by then referring to it as a DSL project. In fact it was a FTTN/DSL project from the beginning (which disappointed me, of course), and this note is coming to you over that DSL line, which I couldn't get until the fiber was pulled into the DSLAM box a mile from my house. And if there's any question about what really happened with all those trailers full of muddy pipe sections and slanted framework, looking like a cross between an injector razor pack and a Gatling gun, tearing up all the lawns on major streets all around town, it was quickly dispelled when, after I was re-wired to the new splicebox farther from the CO but closer to my house, my v.92 modem, which almost never topped 28.8 kbps before, routinely hit the regulated maximum of 53kbps.

The thing that happened at the same time, however, was that UNE/P-based competition was eating our lunch - not only through lost lines but through paying more to maintain those facilities than we got in rents.

Of course, that was the official line, and it was certainly highly disputed. And, as I've said, I never take what my own employer says as the truth uncritically. However, as I've mentioned before, whatever people say in the press, they never lie with their checkbooks. Both sides were spending their money on lawyers and lobbyists - either to change the mandated discounts or to maintain them - instead of backhoes and bulldozers - to build new facilities: us because we really were making money, and could make more by building more, and them because they could save money by building their own.

And as for the Golden Fleece, the Holy Grail, of long-distance entry: yeah, that's a really profitable business today, isn't it? If we really tossed the opportunity to offer broadband services to get into THAT, well, I'd have to say that Big Ed is a bigger idiot than even you think he is.

We can all watch and see now if the newest effort, Project Lightspeed, turns out to be just another sop to the regulators so we can get the AT&T merger through, right? Then what? Oh, I get it: then we'll own the whole Internet, and we don't have to do anything but just sit back and collect the money from our tollgates... and everyone will just happily pay up, just like they do with Microsoft today...

Needless to say, I do not share your opinion that Ed Whitacre is an idiot.

Be that as it may, his public statements do, in fact, suggest just such a bizarre dream. Of course, before he could do that, he'd have to dream up some scheme to smash Wi-Fi, because there are at least a thousand times more WAPs in use today than he has COs, hundreds of times more even than all his DSLAMs, and the necessary architecture for the Wi-Fi "treetop networks" is already well worked out...

Well, he could always get the FBI or someone to point out the imminent danger of terrorist attacks using WiFi...

2. Mel on November 3, 2005 05:36 AM writes...

Bill Gates was paraphrased as having said (in 1981), "640k of memory should be enough for anybody.''

Whether he actually said it, no one is really sure.

But it seems that Ed Whitacre has replaced Bill Gates' historically and technologically naive statement with one of his own. Quoted last year in BusnessWeek Online, he said, "I don't know why a customer would need 100-megabit speeds that transfer the Library of Congress in a second."

See: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_44/b3906044_mz011.htm

3. Bruce Kushnick on November 3, 2005 05:41 AM writes...

Dear SBCer,

While you may not be as critical as we are, you missed some of the major points.

This scam start in 1993-1996, when state laws were changed to give the phone companies more money. There was no losing lines, there was no competition and this was not about project pronto.

For example, Pacific Bell told customers they would be rewired by 2000.
http://www.newnetworks.com/cabroadbandpacbell.htm

And this is what happened. When SBC took over, it shut down every broadband deployment. But don't take my word for it, here's what the San Diego Tribune wrote:
http://www.newnetworks.com/californiabroadband.html

And this happened in virtually every state SBC entered --- BEFORE there was competition or lose of lines.

Once the ink was dry, SBC took a hatchet to everything.... Read how Ameritech was supposed to have 6 million households wired, and their deployments were cut in all 5 states...

This same scam happened with Verizon. Here's what New Jersey promised
http://www.newnetworks.com/OpportunityNewJerseyFiber.htm

And here's a scathing review by the ratepayer Advocate from NJ ---
http://www.rpa.state.nj.us/onj.htm

This was fiber to the home, 45mps, not DSL over copper.

Project pronto was nothing more a scam to get the Ameritech deal to happen.

And Lightspeed, SBC's new wiring, is the same thing for the AT&T deal.

This entire scam happened so that the companies could a) get rid of rate-of-return, and thus deregulated profits, and b) have the telecom act passed with the clause to enter LD....

We're estimating that $200 billion was collected and should be investigated.

We also need to note, many state's commmittments, like PA, NJ, went through 2010, and SBC and Verizon simply got the regulators to not investigate fully, or hold them accountable.