> I wouldn't think anyone would consider Sprint a dying company. They just > acquired Nextel so they've got money to spend. > > Maybe as an ILEC (which they are here in Ohio) they are viewing Vonage > and Voiceglo as a force that needs to be stopped to prevent further > eroding of their POTS network. I know that I cost SBC money when I > dropped them for Vonage. They aren't getting the $$ for that line > installed to my home anymore. (Which makes me downright giddy when I > think about it.) Imagine if my whole neighborhood switched after SBC had > built-out facilities... that would cost SBC a lot of money. They put > those POTS lines in counting on them being active and producing income > for a long time. Even if service is provided by a CLEC, the line makes > money for the ILEC. But if the line is switched off before the payoff > horizon, they lose money.
Having been in the telephony business for a long time (and know a number of Sprint Corp employees), all telco's in the US are loosing lines (and associated revenue) primarily to Cellular, and a small amount to the Vonage-type services including those in the local cable business. Sprint's documents prior to the vote to merge with Nextel indicated their intent was to spin off the local telco's, with the longer range intent of selling them or trading for other non-telco properties. Two large US communications companies reportedly are interested in discussing such deals with Sprint/Nextel. The merger with Nextel is suppose to be creating a very competitive cellular business, with lots of economies to be gained from consolidating tower space/rental (duplicate facilities on the same tower in many locations) and from duplicate staffs. Sprint's long distance sub was basically converted to voip a long time ago, but that LD network was managed as a closed/internal network that most customers had no direct access to. That network still exists, but its primarily carrying internal traffic including PCS cellular traffic. You can guess what it will be used for with the merged PCS and Nextel facilities. Their stated intent includes the delivery of other digital services to customers, but they've not tipped their hat (publicly) as to what those services might consist of just yet. Obviously, their customer base will look completely different then what it is today, and will likely be focused on a much larger population after the local telco spin off. As a consulting group, our company has been working with several smaller telcos. Some already have the fiber facilities in place (even in their largely rural serving areas) to provide digital tv signals to every single customer. The majority are also deploying voip to any of their customers that want it. And, a few are waiting for the WiMax stuff to settle down before they deploy that as well. (The smaller telcos are far more nibble then the big 10.) Rich _______________________________________________ --Bandwidth and Colocation sponsored by Easynews.com -- Asterisk-Users mailing list Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users