From WSJopinion: Network operators should let go of the content creation dream and focus on content delivery, writes declanganley
Since the birth of the commercial internet in the 1990s, the big network operators have complained that while they carry all the traffic, someone else always seems to reap the rewards. As you read this, AT&T’s market capitalization is only a smidgen lower than. And don’t even mention the market caps of the web giants—you might send a telecom executive into apoplexy.
A glance at postmerger AT&T illustrates the problem. AT&T buys Time Warner, and now it owns “Game of Thrones” and all the rest of it. It can differentiate itself from its competitors by giving content away to its wireless and wireline subscribers—but that undercuts the margins of the entertainment business. And for the consumer, it’s a marginal benefit. They probably pay for Netflix, too, andsubsidizes Netflix subscriptions for its customers .
The irony in all this is that the public, and official Washington, has treated network operators as the villains of the internet world, even as the streamers, web giants and social networks eat their lunch. From the perspective of the network owners, the whole net-neutrality controversy looks almost surreal. If internet service providers had the power to control what people saw on the internet, they’d surely be making more money than they do.
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