Yesterday's Battle and Today's Victory

If I were Randall Stephensen, chairman of ATT, I would be doing a lot of contemplating right now, about whether the deathstar logo and brand needed a serious redesign.

With Lowell McAdam, chairman of Verizon, having bought spectrum assets from Comcast, Time Warner and Brighthouse for approximately the same $4B that ATT now has to pay Duetsche Telekom for the failure to merge with T-Mobile.

Verizon out maneuvered ATT, but waited to make the deal until ATT could not capitalize on it.

In Washington, the dream was the Cable Operators would go head to head and bring competition to the wireless world. Comcast was supposed to buy Sprint and just like the home, the battle between “Cable and Phone” would escalate.

It was always a Washington pipedream. And now Verizon is stronger and ATT is weaker, because regulators saw the deathstar and did not see the check – mate by Verizon.

With Ivan Seidenberg and Larry Babbio retired, Verizon is Verizon Wireless. The future of the company is more committed to its wireless future and you will see FIOS being rethought.

The battle if we can call it that is now on the over the top video services. Where FIOS Online will compete with NetFlix, xfinity and all the other online services. The problem there is the network operator is an afterthought.

So we have the strange reality that the guys who are suppose to be our concern for Net Neutrality all expect that over the top delivery is a done deal.

Reality check #2 for Washington. The Net Neutrality boogey man is not in the closet.

Just like FIOS, Cable has accepted over the top as its future. So the war is over for the last mile. Like WWI it was trench warfare, and like Armistice Day it ended with both sides walking out of the trenches and settling for the borders to stay as is for now.

If trench warfare is over then its time that Washington to stop digging up the past, and thinking its protecting the rebels from the deathstar.