The whole problem with Click! Network is that their management are idiots. They never have had any idea how to compete in selling broadband access.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Click’s always controlled the wholesale prices that the ISP’s use to set their prices. They kept the wholesale prices higher than they should have been because they were trying to milk the bandwidth for all they could \u2013 trying to wring out every little last penny. And they always followed Comcast’s pricing rather than trying something innovative \u2013 like offering discounted service for low income, handicapped and seniors. And they always lagged behind in speeds, making it hard for the ISP’s to be competitive, which has also affected revenues overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issue of finances that has been hotly contested. Because there\u2019s never been an independent audit of Click’s finances, we really don\u2019t have any idea whether it\u2019s making or losing money. But if management had learned their product, and taken the initiative and been more imaginative in their pricing and bandwidth offerings, it certainly would\u2019ve helped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Examples of Click management\u2019s stupidity are manifold. One good example is when Comcast upgraded its network to DOCSIS 3.0, it took Click three years <\/em>before they caught up. In the mean time, the Click ISP\u2019s were stuck selling a vastly inferior product at higher prices. Do you suppose that ever affected revenues? Looking back right to the start, I can document probably a half a dozen examples of where this exact same scenario played out over and over and over. But Click management never learned from their mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attitude of Click’s management has always been that once they offered some particular speed package \u2013 say 12 MB\/s \u2013 then that\u2019s all that people would ever want. That’s an updated version of AOL\u2019s supreme arrogance, when their CEO famously said, \u201c56K is all the people will ever need.” We all know what happened to AOL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Click management never had a clue of what was coming down the pike in terms of bandwidth and applications. And so they were always way late to the party with upgrades.\u00a0 Time and again, they demonstrated a profound ignorance of the market they existed in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their cardinal sin: they did not know their product. Not at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So as when Comcast upgraded their network to DOCSIS 3.0, Click was caught completely <\/em>off guard – even when the upgrade had been much publicized for most of the year beforehand. It’s like Click management were impervious.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t have a clue what was coming. And as I said, in that particular instance the effects were particularly egregious because it took them 3 years to catch up. These same sort of problems persist today, with Click ISPs still at a competitive disadvantage in terms of Gigabit speed offerings.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the network is losing money \u2013 and like I said that is hotly disputed <\/em>\u2013 then this is the reason why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The way to solve this problem is to get rid of the current management team and hire people with a clue. Not shoot the horse – which is what privatizing Click would accomplish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Chattanooga EPB can offer gigabit broadband for $68 a month, and Mason County PUD offers gigabit broadband for $60 a month, Tacoma can <\/em>\u2013 and still make money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have the physical plant, let\u2019s use it. Not give it away for pennies on the dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The surplus declaration is a sham<\/em>, designed to subvert the democratic process, and cheat the people out of their right to vote on whether Click should be sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I suppose since the Council\u2019s masters have mandated the sale, it must go ahead. It\u2019d be unfortunate if the Council lost their payoffs for nonperformance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The whole problem with Click! Network is that their management are idiots. They never have had any idea how to compete in selling broadband access.\u00a0 Click’s always controlled the wholesale prices that the ISP’s use to set their prices. They kept the wholesale prices higher than they should have been because they were trying to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[21,22],"class_list":["post-595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadband","category-politics","tag-click","tag-click-network"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}