Aereo Shutting Down Operations, Closing Boston Office

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I'm surprised the company waited this long to close the doors. Seriously, after the Supreme Court handed Aereo its ass, what else was left except wishful thinking?

Aereo, the upstart television technology that aimed to take on cable, revealed today that they are officially shutting down operations. The company announced that effective November 12, the company is shuttering its Boston office and laying off its 43 local employees (while others will stay until the operations officially close).
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I thought they might be getting a new lease on life as a cable operator? Didn't the Fcc make a comment recently?
 
Shuttering? That sound right to anyone else or does that really sound kinda weird?
 
You've never heard of "shuttering the windows/doors"? Makes sense grammatically and logically.
 
jpm100 said:
Bureaucracies like the FCC exist to kill competition, not nurture it.
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I will agree to a point. However at the same time some of this competition that comes up tries to get around what others have to pay to offer cheaper services while claiming they are or are not a certain type of service.

When Vonage first came out they were much cheaper because they refused to pay any of the charges for long distance calls being sent over other companies networks. Which is what every other telephone company has to do. You call your friend 5 states over, your phone company has to pay a small fee to the other company for receiving the call and terminating it. Vonage refused to pay that and other fees and argued that if they had to pay these fees they couldn't under cut every one as much so they should be allowed to not have to pay that, 911 surcharges and other fees just because they didn't want to.

Magic Jack did the same thing by claiming they are not a phone service. There is a company that allows you to send voice from your computer and have it connect to a phone number. There is a second company that allows somebody to call a number and that gets converted to an IP connection and sent to your computer. Both separate company so neither allows you to make AND receive calls, and then a 3rd that ties both companies servers together as a single offering. Thus they are not a phone company as they do not have a single entity that allows you to make and receive calls only one or the other. So they shouldn't have to pay all of those fees and charges as once again they couldn't be as cheap as they are then.

Aereo falls into the same category. They wanted to offer TV service, while claiming they are not a tv service provider and thus shouldn't be held to the same fess because it would hurt their ability to under cut everyone else.

Companies like this find loopholes under which they can start up and try to undercut everyone else by a large amount then get pissed when the hole gets closed and they are forced to compete on equal grounds with everyone else in that market.
 
steakman1971 said:
I thought they might be getting a new lease on life as a cable operator? Didn't the Fcc make a comment recently?
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The FCC said they would support a plan that would effectively make Aereo a MVPD but that's just words. Congress or a court win would have to be the one to make that decision. They were probably waiting around to see if anything would be decided this year, it won't so there's no reason to stay in business.
 
Steve said:
I'm surprised the company waited this long to close the doors. Seriously, after the Supreme Court handed Aereo its ass, what else was left except wishful thinking?
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I think so. Back door deals and the possibility of companies wanting to buy them out for infrastructure. Long shot at best.
 
I can't say this surprises me. A part was hoping obviously, but knew better realistically.
 
once again big business has successfully bullied the courts to suppress innovation.
 
Exavior said:
I will agree to a point. However at the same time some of this competition that comes up tries to get around what others have to pay to offer cheaper services while claiming they are or are not a certain type of service.

When Vonage first came out they were much cheaper because they refused to pay any of the charges for long distance calls being sent over other companies networks. Which is what every other telephone company has to do. You call your friend 5 states over, your phone company has to pay a small fee to the other company for receiving the call and terminating it. Vonage refused to pay that and other fees and argued that if they had to pay these fees they couldn't under cut every one as much so they should be allowed to not have to pay that, 911 surcharges and other fees just because they didn't want to.

Magic Jack did the same thing by claiming they are not a phone service. There is a company that allows you to send voice from your computer and have it connect to a phone number. There is a second company that allows somebody to call a number and that gets converted to an IP connection and sent to your computer. Both separate company so neither allows you to make AND receive calls, and then a 3rd that ties both companies servers together as a single offering. Thus they are not a phone company as they do not have a single entity that allows you to make and receive calls only one or the other. So they shouldn't have to pay all of those fees and charges as once again they couldn't be as cheap as they are then.

Aereo falls into the same category. They wanted to offer TV service, while claiming they are not a tv service provider and thus shouldn't be held to the same fess because it would hurt their ability to under cut everyone else.

Companies like this find loopholes under which they can start up and try to undercut everyone else by a large amount then get pissed when the hole gets closed and they are forced to compete on equal grounds with everyone else in that market.
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Personally I was fine with them being considered a remote DVR service for hire. If I rented someone's closet and setup an atenna with a DVR that I downloaded and controlled over the internet, I would not be in trouble. At least not for the reasons argued against aereo. But if I hire someone to do it, its suddenly different. Bull. They maybe were responsible for copyright infringement but that's not how they were pursued.

They were found in court to be X and forced to shutdown. When they agreed they were X and tried to go 'legit' they were first told they weren't X and later allowed to linger until they ran out of money.

When originally confronted with this situation with the first cable companies, the FCC worked to make them 'legit'.

They offered a way to give consumers TV with only an $8 mark up on the content fee if they were allowed in the game. I bet if I got a breakdown of my "TV" bill Comcast has more than an $8 markup on how they get me TV. Of course they are riding on top of internet service I already pay for so that's not a problem.

They were beureaucratically executed for trying to break into the closed club and threatening to change the distribution model that could allow any number of TV rebroadcasters to spring into existence bypassing the 70's technology TV monopoly with a system much less prone to monopolization.
 
steakman1971 said:
I thought they might be getting a new lease on life as a cable operator? Didn't the Fcc make a comment recently?
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By the time that matters - if it even reaches that point - Aereo would be long gone. Mission accomplished.

Gotta love the sorry state of this market, anything new dies in legal limbo thanks to incumbents with big pockets. Aereo has to be a cable operator but not allowed to be a cable operator, catch 22 by the government on behalf of their donors.
 
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