By James Carlini

COMCAST’s recent $45 Billion acquisition of Time-Warner Cable was big news in the Cable TV world, but it should be looked at from a different perspective. Instead of looking at COMCAST as a Cable TV provider, we should be looking at it as another alternative to the traditional network carriers like AT&T and Verizon for our data needs both at home and at the business location.

NEW COMPETITION OR NO COMPETITION?

Maybe the incumbent network carriers like AT&T and Verizon don’t look at COMCAST as being a real competitor because its focus is more on Cable TV but in reality, the network grid that COMCAST has could go head-to-head in markets where incumbents like AT&T provide U-Verse.

Did you know if you get U-Verse, you cannot get a second high-speed U-Verse line? I found that out recently and could not believe how short-sighted that is from a marketing strategy standpoint. It leaves AT&T wide open for someone like COMCAST to come in and provide a second line for work-at-home couples. This was our solution when AT&T could not ante up a second line.

This raises a huge question as to the available network resources AT&T has in the street. If their policy is to not provide a second line, it means it doesn’t have enough network capabilities in the street. The solution is to go with a second provider like COMCAST.

RE-THINKING THE CORPORATE STRATEGY

COMCAST should be re-evaluating what its business model is. When all the Cable TV providers started, their focus was that they were in the “entertainment business” and not in the network carrier business. In reality, they were building a network infrastructure.

Today, with that network infrastructure in place, they should be re-thinking on what they want to sell as services. They may need a shake-up of executives who are too tunnel-focused to the cable TV market.

Having a second line come in from a totally separate carrier and network topography, creates a strong resiliency for mission critical applications. You can get this at the household level in almost all cases.

99% of the commercial buildings are still in the horse-and-buggy days of having one main connection to one central office of the phone company for connectivity. Corporate tenants who have mission critical applications should be using more than one network access point for their core business applications.

It is time to move forward from the horse-and-buggy days and start adding redundancy to all networks that carry any applications that you consider mission critical. If you work from home, that connection to your customer base is mission critical. Do you have network redundancy in place? You should.

CARLINI-ISM: If you have mission critical applications, you should be connected to two separate network carriers to avoid a single point-of-failure.
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