---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20160804042922.GA18482@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2016 00:29:22 -0400 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: What Verizon gets by buying Yahoo by Natalie Jarvey The telecom adds millions of eyeballs as it seeks content to avoid becoming a "dumb pipe." On July 26, the morning after Verizon agreed to buy Yahoo for $4.8 billion, CEO Lowell McAdam announced that the company's catchphrase "Can you hear me now?" had become "Can you see me now?" It was a nod to how important video content has become for the telecom giant, which in the past year has bought or invested in a stable of media properties that includes AOL, AwesomenessTV and Complex. The deals are key to Verizon's plan to avoid obsolescence in an age when young people would rather Snapchat or watch YouTube videos than talk on the phone or switch on a TV. It's a future in which Verizon's 113 million customers use their phones to open a Verizon app like streaming service go90 and watch videos produced or licensed by its media arm before they are directed to an ad placed using Verizon's intricate network of advertising technology products. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/what-verizon-gets-48b-yahoo-916589 -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <nns7ub$uj2$1@news.albasani.net> Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2016 07:53:48 +0000 (UTC) From: bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> Subject: Re: Alternatives to AT&T DSL service Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote: > bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote: >> As far as I can tell, The U-verse AT&T is trying so valiantly to >> sell to me remains "copper to the premises". Does it somehow become >> exempt from "interconnect" rules if I change to U-verse? > > Yes. The telephone service over U-verse is not tariffed and does not have > to meet the state PUC specifications in any way. They are not required to > do anything they don't want to with it. > Ok, that explains why they're so hot to sell me U-verse. It seems clear that it's in my best interest to refuse. >> Who is responsible for maintenance of my copper link? Historically > > It will remain AT&T. However, when something goes wrong, you will > have a normal human being at the ISP whom you can talk with, and THEY > can fight with AT&T. So you will no longer have to deal directly with > AT&T's "customer service" team. > The AT&T "tech" who visited did a reasonable job of showing me that the premises-to-CO copper isn't the problem. He claimed the problem is ~20 miles away, in Sacramento, in AT&T's "redback" routers. Interestingly, the tech claimed he didn't know anybody who could reliably solve the problem without changing my IP numbers. As a stopgap he arranged to have "VCC" changed and that seems to have helped some, but at least once an 80 _second_ ping time occurred. Usually ping time to the peer is now around 10 ms, with random packets taking tens to hundreds of times longer. Multi-minute slowdowns seem to have gone away. Does this story make sense, or am I now a mushroom? Thanks for reading! bob prohasa ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Thu, 04 Aug 2016