Van, I just moved to Sc from Mobile(born and raised). The 2 weeks after Katrina sucked, is that when you were there? Finding gas was fun!
DirecTV, EchoStar await their fate at AT&T With A PartnerShip
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What, from his viewpoint, he sees it zero chance for directv to stay. Far from saying, he knows it will be that was, bc hes a deciding vote.
Still gotta be careful broadcasting on an open forum what an employee/board member of a company tell syou.
We got there in mid september right as Rita was churning away in the gulf and she hit about 4 days into our work trip. Gas was still rough and some stations were out but I was able to find gas pretty easily and kept my eyes open for stations along the way to each stop.
Gotta say I liked Mobile and Saraland but the LaQuinta I stayed at right next to the highway left alot to be desired mostly with the black mold that was along the seams of the walls to the ceilings and behind the headboards. Outside of that I wouldnt mind living there out east of town across the bay up in the hills south of the freeway going to Florida.
I had expected to see alot of damage when I got into Mobile but other than a few billboards and some tree's down there wasnt much to see in Mobile, however I did see alot of damage in Pensacola from the Navy station out to Pensacola beach wich was the hardest hit by two years of hurricanes making land fall and if you go to google maps and bring up the hybrid zoom in on Pensacola beach and look at all of the blue tarp roofs. I wish that the clarity was better, what it doesnt show is the homes that were damaged in what had to have been 15 - 30 foot surges carrying large objects, one of the houses had a large hole through the second floor like a car had driven through it.
Oh yeah, Pcola was hammered by Ivan the year before. Its finally returning to normal. Biloxi was decimated.
Its one thing for a lowly technician to say " Naw I dont see at&t going with directv, its a zero chance" but when its someone at or above middle management making that kind of statement is risky if there are others around to hear it, remember the old morgan stanly commercials where the two business guys are talking stocks and the second guy says " My morgan stanely broker says" and everyone stops to listen and leans in?
I saw the pictures of Biloxi, talked with some of the guys who went out that way while I stayed back in Saraland helping out in the office to get the guys to the job sites when most of the streets had no signs and mailboxes were gone.
Other than condos going up and a FEW houses, the MS Coast is desolate. Where all the beautiful houses were is just slabs and grass, still. Its gonna take a long time, if ever, for the coast to build back. I spend some time over there ( I live about an hour from Gulfport.) , and its absolutely heartbreaking.
Judging by the way the insurance companies have been stonewalling and pulling rather evil bait and switch practices with their customers I dont see more than half of those homes getting rebuilt at best. When my group was down there we were hearing news reports of insurance agents going to customers homes that had been damaged by storm surge, the agent would comment on the water damage and say to the customer that they were there to help and would tell them they could cut them a check to get them by while the insurance agency got started on the repair process, he would have them sign a release for the check but wouldnt tell them that by signing the release they waived their right to claim water damage by storm surge and call it water damage by flood instead, most all of the customers did not have flood insurance.
That is criminal. This should tell everyone that you need Federal Flood Insurance and soon we will all need some kind of Federal Wind storm insurance too . But I don't think that last one has been invented yet. The way we are going the insurance companies won't cover much of anything . Alstate doesn't cover flood insurance, and they don't cover mold from water leaks anymore and after 2005 I am sure they won't cover wind storm damage either. I am glad I switched to Farmers -Foremost Insurance. I have to pay about 726.00 a year for federal Flood insurance but I sleep better at night knowing I have better insurance for both my home and for flooding. I found out this year I live in a 100 year flood plain zone. Alstate Screwed me out of about $4000.00 worth of damage that I had to come up with on my own to repair all the damage from Hurricane Rita.
Yeah, the people in Miss really got screwed and some insurance companies moved out due to the lawsuit.
I had considered moving to Florida by transfering through work but have heard that the insurance rates in Florida have skyrocketed since early 2006, has this also happened in Texas to?
I fished out my pay stubs for that time period and I grossed $9767.73 for working 28 days with no time off and averaging 12 hours a day, couple that with my perdiem wich was also on the high end of $1,500 or so and my room stay it cost the company $16755.63 for those 28 days not including costs related to the travel use of the van going to and from Michigan and while down there and other related cost's. Out of the three techs that included myself who stayed there for 28 days I was the costliest of them all as I had the highest pay rate and highest perdiem.
I can't speak for others in Texas but my mobile home insurance went up when I switched to Farmers-Foremost insurance. The federal flood insurance Allstate told me I had , but didn't , was quite high because I am in a 100 year flood plain. But all in all I now have better coverage for anything Hurricane related and I know that Farmers pays off quickly and doesn't stall like Allstate. I found out most of my neighbors with Farmers got $10,000.00 or more on their mobile homes and they had less damage than I did. They now cover my fence and outdoor building too. Alstate said I had coverage but lied AGAIN. I will never do business with them again. Had them for over 10 years and they really screwed me over when the sh*t hit the fan after Hurricane Rita.
I'm fairly certain everyone on the Gulf of Mexico has inusrance issues. When I moved to Sc, they are going through the same here and havent had a big one since 89.
I was actually living in Athens Georgia for a bit when the 89 storm came through SC, even here we got alot of rain and wind to the extent that the little rat shack trailer park I was living in at the time ( eh, 19 yrs old and trying to get started ) felt like it was going to slide down the hill into the creek wich wouldnt have been a bad thing considering that every Foxworthy redneck statement fit this place to a T.
I don't mean to rerail this thread, but I'll throw in my 2 cents, this is mostly a repost from the thread in the DirecTV forum.
I think they'll go with Echostar, mainly because AT&T is still run mostly by old SBC guys, so the relationship is already there. They've already got a ton of money invested in Homezone, and more stuff in the pipeline. Right now all they have with DirecTV is a marketing agreement, which would have to be expanded to let 2wire build new homezone boxes with DirecTV tuners in it..and would DirecTV even want to do that? who knows.
Also, Echostar being smaller than DirecTV works in AT&T's favor should they ever decide to buy them. Right now they're saying "U-Verse, U-verse" but AT&T now with Bellsouth has a lot of rural and spread out areas in the south where they won't want to lay fiber. Plus, IMHO U-Verse is destined to fail because it's severely bandwidth restricted. If they wanted to buy Echostar, it'd be cheaper (at least right now) because Echostar has fewer customers, and I haven't looked at the balance sheet, but I bet the Dish Network and Echostar brands carry less goodwill and brand value than DirecTV (not trying to troll, honestly). That would be a lot of money to throw away in rebranding DirecTV to AT&T video services. Plus, AT&T is reselling Wildblue as AT&T broadband in areas where they don't have DSL, so DirecTV would just kind of be an odd child out at the dinner table
I think they'll go with Echostar, mainly because AT&T is still run mostly by old SBC guys, so the relationship is already there. They've already got a ton of money invested in Homezone, and more stuff in the pipeline. Right now all they have with DirecTV is a marketing agreement, which would have to be expanded to let 2wire build new homezone boxes with DirecTV tuners in it..and would DirecTV even want to do that? who knows.
Also, Echostar being smaller than DirecTV works in AT&T's favor should they ever decide to buy them. Right now they're saying "U-Verse, U-verse" but AT&T now with Bellsouth has a lot of rural and spread out areas in the south where they won't want to lay fiber. Plus, IMHO U-Verse is destined to fail because it's severely bandwidth restricted. If they wanted to buy Echostar, it'd be cheaper (at least right now) because Echostar has fewer customers, and I haven't looked at the balance sheet, but I bet the Dish Network and Echostar brands carry less goodwill and brand value than DirecTV (not trying to troll, honestly). That would be a lot of money to throw away in rebranding DirecTV to AT&T video services. Plus, AT&T is reselling Wildblue as AT&T broadband in areas where they don't have DSL, so DirecTV would just kind of be an odd child out at the dinner table
I wouldnt be so quick to think that att wouldnt consider laying fiber in the south, just in northern Georgia alone the growth rate has been steadily increasing and is projected to continue for the next 13 years. Growth is happening all along the main freeway ( I-75 ) going through Georgia and from what Im hearing and seeing the port city of Savanah is also growing and has the second largest wifi precense in the state.
Yeah, but a distinct difference between growth in the south and growth in a traditional SBC or Verizon area (Chicago and New York, respectively) is that growth in the south tends to be very spread out where in say the Northeast, it's much denser. Plus, even if AT&T does rollout fiber (which I fully expect them to, regardless of the video implications), they will have many more customers out in more rural and suburban areas where they will be slower to install fiber. I think they would be smart to at a very minimum pick up a substantial stake in Echostar, that way they can keep Homezone for those in areas where they don't plan to offer U-Verse, and they could even benefit from Echostar's sales in non-AT&T areas where they would be competing with Verizon, etc.
As a matter of fact they could offer cell + video in verizon areas, and if they really wanted to be gutsy offer DSL as a CLEC and offer VoIP. Then there really would be competition between the baby bells.
The growth rate in just northern Georgia encompasses just about every single county Macon going north to Chattanooga TN and east to Augusta and west to the border. The Atlanta region officialy covers about 13 counties but the unofficial count is closer to 20 with all of the people that commute from area such as Athens and Greensboro and Lavonia to go to work in Atlanta on a daily basis.
The city and surrounding suburbs of Atlanta are already at 5 million or close to it, five thousand people are moving into the area on a daily basis, basicly its becoming the new New York ( the crimes making it the new DC and Detroit though) so again I can see them looking to lay fiber in this area specialy with the fact that its growing heavily in the tech field.
The city and surrounding suburbs of Atlanta are already at 5 million or close to it, five thousand people are moving into the area on a daily basis, basicly its becoming the new New York ( the crimes making it the new DC and Detroit though) so again I can see them looking to lay fiber in this area specialy with the fact that its growing heavily in the tech field.
