31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for June 12, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 127 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:26:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Price-gouging cable companies are our latter-day robber barons
Message-ID: <3cb90ceb-1a15-4c4d-94e6-ca41e5e652f0@2g2000yqr.googlegroups.com>
RE: Price-gouging cable companies are our latter-day robber barons
> ... They rationalize it like this: even though the cable
> companies have a gross profit margin of around 97% - meaning
> 97 cents of every dollar they make is pure profit - they still
> have to pay to service cell towers and invest in broadband.
> They have expensive equipment to maintain, see? That's not
> monopoly pricing power. That's just basic subsistence.
Service cell towers? 97% profit? Wow ... the industry sure has
changed since I was a cable guy!
If a cable company is indeed making 97% profit, that implies that the
other 3% covers all other costs. Little things as payroll, employee
benefits, programming fees, retransmission-consent fees, internet
connection charges, administrative overhead, advertising, customer
care, customer billing, maintenance, public relations, government
relations, insurance, legal services, rent and lease expense,
utilities, vehicle expense, franchise acquisition and compliance,
franchise fees, copyright royalties, FCC registration and compliance,
operation and maintenance of video-signal reception and processing
facilities ("headend"), operation and maintenance of cable modem
termination system, distribution and maintenance of video converters,
distribution and maintenance of cable modems, outdoor distribution
facilities ("outside plant") extending from the headend to every
customer's premises, utility-pole attachment fees ("pole rental") for
aerial outside plant, contractor-hotline ("one-call") notification
services for underground outside plant, verification of the technical
integrity of internal wiring inside customer premises (even though the
company may not own it), access control (accurately connecting each
subscriber), detecting and prosecuting unauthorized connections.
And yes, "servicing cell towers." Many cable companies rent tower
space to PCS carriers, so obviously they have to maintain them. But
does the writer actually believe that cable companies use cell towers
to distribute their signals?
Neal McLain
Retired Cable Guy
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 03:22:35 -0700
From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Credibility Crunch for Tech Companies Over Prism
Message-ID: <51B6FA6B.2040902@thadlabs.com>
On 6/9/2013 11:52 AM, Monty Solomon wrote:> [...]
> The executives said Google only hands over data based on
> legally-authorized requests that it reviews individually.
>
> U.S. officials briefed on the matter said Friday that the NSA
> receives copies of data through a system they set up with a court
> order. They don't have direct access to the company computers, those
> people said.
> [...]
Has everyone already forgotten NSA's Echelon and the Russian's SORM?
I believe we've had a thread on this before in comp.dcom.telecom in
which I posted numerous relevant URLs since I maintain a personal
archive regarding Echelon and SORM because it interests me.
Regarding the above's "They don't have direct access to the company
computers", that's very true because they don't need direct access.
Why?
Because the NSA taps all Internet backbones worldwide along with all
radio and telephone traffic worldwide, so anything going to/from
Google and all other ISPs and providers and anyone else is already
intercepted using fiber prisms on ALL fiber backbones everywhere
on Earth, and that's "just" Echelon. Russia's SORM-IV is similar.
As I posted previously, here's an article about the NSA tap on AT&T's
US West coast fiber backbone (and there are many more such articles)
with this one from the San Francisco Chronicle dated November 7, 2007:
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Former-AT-amp-T-worker-details-federal-Internet-3237018.php
The NSA all-world-backbone taps are again confirmed in this article
dated May 4, 2013:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston
Everything is now being stored at the NSA's Utah facility which has
a yottabyte capacity (1 trillion terabytes or 1 quadrillion gigabytes)
which is why they needed the ZFS filesystem being developed at the
DoD's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL); info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS
and
http://zfsonlinux.org
and this one as an "only" 50 petabytes test bed:
http://zfsonlinux.org/llnl-zfs-lustre.html
Info about the NSA Utah data center is here:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/03/20/nsas-secret-data-center-is-a-threat-but-only-to-americas-enemies/
Thad
***** Moderator's Note *****
It's nice to know that when Big Brother tells me to face the
Telescreen, I'll be able to answer "Which one"?
Bill Horne
Moderator
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