Again, you don’t need to rely on assumptions about the motivations of “large Telco executives.” Look at what Google did with Fiber.
I don't usually get pedantic about typos, but the twofer here really made it hard to understand what you were saying
I didn't notice either until flylikeabanana pointed it out
That's just ridiculous across the board. I guarantee, with 100% confidence, that a small local co-op does not have a cost structure below the big Telco's. My co-op pay SIGNIFICANLTY more for:
Routers
Switches
Conduit
Fiber
ONTs
Trenching Crews
Support
They pay less for:
Executives
???
It's laughable that you say it's true of any business that small businesses pay less than large. I can tell you what the discounts are for switches that I've sold in the past to a Fortune 500 vs. Joe Shmoe's Trucking - large corporations are frequently paying HALF of what a small business would for the same thing due to their volume.
What's likely is the co-op doesn't have the same level of support, uptime, or redundancy major telcos need to sustain. Every bit of which adds a hefty amount to the overall cost.
[1] https://www1.salary.com/ATANDT-INC-Executive-Salaries.html
[2] https://www.wallstreetzen.com/stocks/us/nyse/t/statistics
And it’s not a matter of having fat margins. Wal-Mart’s margin is under 3%. Verizon’s wireline operating income margin is usually under 10%, often under 5%.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Walmart+Neighborhood+Marke...
You seem to be saying that your cabin community was able to find a solution that would not be acceptable to a large telco. Why isn't that OK? Why should the large company be forced to do something they don't want to do if, by your example, other organizations are capable of servicing those communities?
To rephrase the question: What, if anything, prevents smaller organizations or non-profits or niche companies from servicing areas that large telcos will only do through regulatory mandates? Can the business/regulatory climate be improved to facilitate these smaller organizations? Are there existing regulations (for example access to poles or conduits) in some areas that block smaller organizations?
Because they're also actively lobbying to kill any local co-op formation. Successfully in many states. They tried here and got shot down, then proclaimed they were going to build out fiber themselves in the co-op's targeted service area (they didn't).
There are states where they were successful in getting laws passed preventing "wasteful government spending on broadband networks" - the end result of this will be people who literally have no possible way to EVER get broadband.
How exactly do they do that?
These corporations are not stopping local co-op formation. They are lobbying for laws that severely limit (and in some cases, prevent) their ability to operate.
That's what I'm curious about. What's in those laws they're lobbying for?
See[0] for yourself. You keep "asking questions" about stuff that's decades old. It makes me wonder if you're not asking in good faith. Please prove me wrong.
[0] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
Through groups like ALEC[0]. And that's nothing new.
The devil is in the details but arguing that municipalities shouldn't compete with private businesses is not the same thing as arguing that private businesses shouldn't have other private competitors.
I have no doubt that telcos lobby heavily to restrict competition. Last mile infrastructure regulation is complicated but I'm more in favor of a level playing field (i.e. regulation) for access to poles/conduits/rights-of-way than having municipalities operate their own broadband architecture or even worse operate and then protect themselves from competition by other providers.
Ask the telcos lobbying to stop it. That's the problem.
Odd, laying fiber was deemed "too expensive" to lay in a community where we have a family cabin. Instead, someone formed a co-op. Everyone is getting wired, and the speeds:price is SIGNIFICANTLY less than Comcast, with symmetric up/down to boot.
I appreciate you've got a job to do and a talk track, but it's simply not accurate. What you MEAN to say is: wiring everyone in a community results in a margin profile that's below what large Telco executives find acceptable, so they focus on areas with high adoption rates and low deployment costs and tell community's that it's just "too expensive" to do anything else.