What's Next in Telecommunications?

CNet is reporting that with the telecommunication industry's annual powwow coming up the hot button seems to be television rather than phones. From the article: "Judging from the diverse list of keynote speakers, it's easy to see that the phone business is readying itself for cataclysmic change. The traditional telecommunications market has already begun consolidating in anticipation. [...] Putting itself back together two decades after being broken apart, the new AT&T faces an entirely different competitive environment. Phone companies and cable companies will soon be competing directly with each other not just for broadband customers, but also for TV and phone customers."

Comments

Perhaps not too far from the truth

[MoonFog]

Here in Norway we've seen a rise of companies offering "triple play", i.e. phone, broadband and cable all over fiberoptics. Affordable prices as well, especially the phone is a lot cheaper than what regular phone providers offer.

Re:Destruction of "standards"

[dada21]

Thats nothing, my local city gave a grant intended to help a small buisness with tech training to the local comcast to train their employees in installing their new digital services.......

Or, better put, "My local city stole money from current and future taxpayers in order to give the money to someone else."

Very sad.

Re:Old fogeys...

[pandrijeczko]

If you're handing out memberships to an "old fogeys" club, you can count me in!

I'm pretty happy with standard DVDs on my non-HDTV TV at home connected to a reasonable hifi amp with a nice pair of speakers (one for each ear, works at my knowledge level of mathematics)...

I'm in the UK and just have terrestrial TV, when I watch it. I can't justify paying for a cable/satellite service that has adverts on it - I'd pay for no ads or have it free with ads, no compromise there...

I have a Nokia 6310i mobile phone that's about 3 years old & just makes phone calls & stores numbers - no camera, colour screen but it fits into my equally old car kit fine...

I have a 1MB DSL service because that's all I can get in my area. I'd like more but I'll live with this until there's an upgrade, it's no biggie...

I think far too many people (particularly the younger generation) get dragged into this "new technology is cool" thing without thinking about it - they just fall for the hype, hand over their money and off they go for six months until the next model comes out.

To be fair, I was probably the same 10-15 years ago but then there was less choice, less advertising and less constant change - now I figure something is worth buying only if most or all of its features are useful to me.

Yes, I'm turning into a miserable old git who actively avoids brand names ("How come Gap don't pay me to wear that T-shirt with their logo on it?") but what the hell... we ALL become our fathers one day...

Can't wait for television on stamps

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Think of it, those boring little static images you get on your snail mail. What if they could show you the latest Madonna video, or episode of Lost? Think of how much money the music, television and movie industries could make if they could beam their content to stamps?

I am surprised Apple isn't realizing the potential of showing videos and playing music on stamps. I mean, the iPod Nano is slightly bigger then a stamp.

I am also surprised Google hasn't figured this out yet, all that wasted space on a letter that Google could put ad words and Google adds on. That stamp is just dying to display Google content.

Also, think of the potential of not having to buy extra postage stamps when the Post office increases their delivery charges on a monthly basis. You could setup a stamp website that takes people's credit cards and automatically bills them for the increase in delivery charges and update the stamps face value, while the letter is CURRENTLY in transit! The post office could change their postage fees as easily as Gas companies change the price of oil!!!! No more returned mail for insufficient funds ... unless of course your credit card is maxed out from all the subscription service fees your paying to get tv, music, movies and video on a stamp.

Why is this so laughable, I mean, they thought TV on cellphones would work, why not stamps?

I don't know, I think the telecommunications industry has exhausted all their ideas for cell phones, I mean, TV on cellphones was so last week. The future is in Stamps I tell you, STAMPS!

Video Killed the Internet Star

[Doc Ruby]

Verizon and AT&T are sick of trying to compete with informed customers exposed to choices and chances to stick together in the conflict of their interests with vendors. Telephony was as interactive as they ever wanted to get - they always wanted to just shove content down their pipes to subscribed captive audiences. But cable TV arrived just when the telephony monopoly was weakest: the mid-1980s, when the monopoly finally was forced to at least compete in some markets, like long distance and mobile.

But now they've returned, buying up regional Bells and mobile operators rather than compete with them. Telephony is a lot like a duopoly, at least in "primary service" (the corp that bills the customer and maintains the brand): AT&T and Verizon. Their real competition comes from cable TV, with its own infrastructure, brands and increasingly telephony, and a little from Internet - the parts they don't own, like the cablemodem ISPs. So their strategy is to fight their main competitor, which is clearly cable TV.

They could have just made telephony better. Mobile phones so reliable they never permanently drop calls. Making the Internet so cheap that it "goes away" from customers minds, replaced by billable services. Integrating voice as merely a feature in every app that ties people together. Making ubiquitous "phones" the multimedia terminals of a complete telecom environment. But that meant taking a risk competing by improving the product, actually competing with cable TV in quality.

Instead they just want to leverage their competitive advantages, especially regulatory, to kill the competition and inherit those customers. All this talk of "2-tier Internet" is just a way to use up all the extra bandwidth capacity on video, making it scarce and expensive rather than cheap. The "nonpremium tier" will force competitors to substandard performance, or to subsidize their own demise, just like telcos did to DSL competitors for the few years they taught telcos how to operate that business.

All whether customers want more video or not. What we want is more P2P, more separated interests between networks, content and apps. More reliable, simpler features that connect us to each other. Instead we'll get a dazzling array of crappy features and content, all funneling a fat pipe from our wallets to the cartel controlling the network.