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Police accuse bank robbery suspect of gobbling up note (with dashcam video)
Victim of beating in Kent last week is declared dead at Akron hospital
Dad accused of forcing son into field, killing him
Man found dead in North Akron home is identified
Can DNA tests free ex-Akron captain?
Browns' roster nearly devoid of consistent players
Coventry man killed in crash at I-77 ramp
College student mistaken for deer, shot to death
Blogs:
Pets:
Cat-loving chihuahua suckles seven abandoned kittens
The Heldenfiles:
Friday Night Notebook
Patrick McManamon:
Browns vs. Lions live …
Akron Zips:
Hitchens leads Zips in second-half comeback
Tribe Matters:
Seven players added to Tribe’s 40-man roster
Cleveland Browns:
Robiskie, Harrison inactive
Kent State Sports:
Kent State blown out in second half, loses to Temple 47-13
Cleveland Cavaliers:
Gameblog: Cavs vs. Philadelphia 76ers
Buckeye Blogging:
OSU – Michigan college football rivals meet in Baghdad
Varsity Letters:
Four area football teams play tonight
All Da King's Men:
The Sunday Sanity Challenge
Blog of Mass Destruction:
Will Health Care Reform Pass?
Akron Law Café:
Health Care Financing Reform: (69) The Brookings Institute Study on "Bending the Curve" – Four General Strategies
See Jane Style:
Vintage Chic
Car Chase:
TIME TO GET YOUR COLLECTOR CARS WINTERIZED
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Silverdome Potentially SOLD!
Ohio Travels with Betty:
George is looking for a Thanksgiving buffet in Akron.
Sound Check:
Steely Dan Plays "The Royal Scam" at E.J. Thomas Hall
HRLite House:
A Random Rant on Testing
Akron Gamer:
Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
Broadband and wireless options allow customers to sever connections
By Peter Svensson
Associated Press
Published on Sunday, Aug 17, 2008
NEW YORK: Phone companies have been feeling the heat from cable companies for years, as those traditional TV services have expanded their own phone offerings and fought hard for broadband Internet subscribers.
But in the quarter that just ended, the heat appears to have reached the intensity of a blowtorch, with the telephone companies losing out in both voice and broadband service.
''Cable is taking share, and it is taking it in gulps,'' said telecom analyst Craig Moffett at Sanford Bernstein.
Looking at most of the large cable companies and the largest telephone companies, he calculated that the cable side got 80 percent of new broadband subscribers in the second quarter. Usually, cable's share has been around 50 percent.
This is particularly worrisome for phone companies, because for years, they've been compensating for a drop in landline phone subscribers by the addition of broadband. If the cable companies get the broadband business too, there's not much left to cheer in the fixed-line phone business.
''The telcos' wired businesses suddenly look not only like they are weakening . . . they look like they are positively collapsing,'' Moffett wrote in a research report.
AT&T Inc., the country's largest phone company, added 46,000 broadband subscribers in the quarter that ended June 30, far below the results of recent years. It added 400,000 in the same quarter a year ago.
Verizon Communications Inc., the second-largest telecom company, for the first time reported a decline in the number of customers using DSL broadband, over traditional copper phone lines. It lost 133,000 DSL lines. Verizon compensated by adding 187,000 customers to its fiber-optic ''FiOS'' service, but even that figure was lower than before.
Chief Operating Officer Denny Strigl said attracting new customers was a challenge for DSL, but he added that existing customers were staying, or upgrading to FiOS. FiOS has been at the center of Verizon's investment and marketing strategy for a while, but it's available to less than half of the people in its local-phone service area.
Seeing the same flow of new customers to the cable companies, analyst Ben Piper at Strategy Analytics noted that cable broadband is faster than DSL in most areas, and that the cable companies have done a better job of marketing.
On AT&T's second-quarter earnings conference call, Chief Financial Officer Rick Lindner played down the effect of competition, blaming his company's weak broadband-subscriber figures on the economy.
But the effect of the economy appeared to be much smaller at the largest cable company, Comcast Corp., which added 278,000 broadband subscribers, more than the largest telephone companies combined. It said 67 percent of them had switched from DSL.
The phone companies also continued to lose voice lines, both to cable companies and because some people are just using their cell phones instead. But the losses sped up slightly in the quarter because of the weak economy and because of competition.
AT&T lost 1.56 million phone lines in the quarter, up from 1.35 million in the same quarter a year ago. That's a rate of 10 percent per year. It blamed, in part, the downturn in the real-estate market, which has hit hard in some AT&T service areas, like Florida and the Midwest.
Meanwhile, Comcast added 555,000 voice customers.
Cablevision Systems Corp., which competes with Verizon's FiOS in 30 percent of its service area, added 52,000 broadband subscribers, 10 percent better than a year ago, and 81,000 phone subscribers, up 26 percent.
Of course, Verizon and AT&T have wireless arms that are benefiting from the trend away from landlines. Ultimately, they might get the last laugh in the voice business, believes Victor Schnee, president of research group Probe Financial Associates. The move to wireless phones, he said, is really ''the cloud hanging over this whole area.''
NEW YORK: Phone companies have been feeling the heat from cable companies for years, as those traditional TV services have expanded their own phone offerings and fought hard for broadband Internet subscribers.
Get the full article here.
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