• If the application vendors can ride free and the telco and cable network providers are not allowed to block them, then the application vendors will have a huge cost advantage vis-à-vis the carriers they ride. The carriers will have both network and marketing costs, while the pure application vendors will only have marketing costs. In such an environment, the guest[base ']s end-user rates can be much lower than those of the host. The problem would be most extreme for the telcos, who have an existing revenue base at risk and who lack video revenues to help support at least a portion of their network. But even the cable-network providers would be at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the pure application vendors.
  
  
• The good news would be lots more end-user choices and lower prices. The bad news would be the threat to the financial viability of the underlying carriers who make that competition possible.

4:31:54 AM    comment   

I have never fought so hard for something in my life as I fought for UltraWideBand to get commercialized. Over the objections of the Defense Department, over the objections of a lot of people who had very deep concerns about this stuff, some established providers, incumbents who would have loved to see that technology get killed in its grave or kept out of the competitive sphere. *snip* It is like planting dynamite charges, you don't have to blow up the whole bridge, you can put one charge on the right span, and it will come down. And that's what I think a lot about: 'Is VoIP the thing, that put on the right span, is going to bring this thing down in a way that's constructive? Is WiFi? Is UltraWideBand?' And that's the way we think about it, so it looks little sometimes at the start, but when you extrapolate, you realize 'Oh my God, this is huge', like 'if this is right, the whole thing is coming down.' *snip* When I knew it was over was when I downloaded Skype [www.skype.com], when the inventors of Kazaa are distributing for free a little program that you can talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it is free. Its over. You can pretend it is not, you can fight these fights, but it is over.

The idea that pro-regulation is somehow pro-entrant or pro-consumer is often dramatically exaggerated. What it is usually about is protecting the vested interests of the incumbent.

4:13:29 AM    comment   

Joi [Ito] and I were typing at each other over the Net using Apple's iChat AV. I've never liked Internet chat. I don't like having to type that fast. So, at a certain point, I asked him whether he'd used the audio capacities that are built into iChat AV. I hadn't. A moment later we were conversing by voice through our computers. Despite the fact that Joi is presently in his country house outside of Tokyo and I'm at my condo in Salt Lake, it sounded like he was in the room with me. There was no discernible latency or loss of fidelity.

For awhile, we talked as though we were on the phone, and I marveled at being able to conduct a zero-cost trans-Pacific call. (Of course, there's nothing particularly new about voice over IP. But it's never been so stupidly easy to set up, in my personal experience, as it is with iChat AV. Also, it never sounded this good before.)

The really interesting shift occurred as we drifted back to what we'd been doing before we started chatting, leaving the audio channel open as we'd did so. We could hear each other typing. One of my daughters entered the room and spoke to me. Joi heard her and said hello. They had a brief conversation, their first since she was a little girl. Joi and I returned our e-mail. I wanted to set up an account on Technorati and broke in to ask him how to do it. He walked me through the process. There were other occasional interjections. I could hear the sounds of construction going on.

4:08:30 AM    comment   

Special congrats to you on predicting the need for a paradigm shift in circuit based telecommunications in this country. Of course it cost you your job at Bell Labs but opened up a whole new career. Today's Chicago Tribune says, "Verizon announces their rollout plan for a true packet network." SBC follows with their new projection and Nortel stock shoots up! Maybe Tellabs can make a comeback!

3:53:23 AM    comment   

[I recently had] a very unsettling "aha" moment. The future is already cast in stone. The stupid network has won. I work now for a financial company. Lots of bandwidth. Someone who knew I used to work for Lucent decided to tease me at a meeting: they suggested we add a few servers and become a telephone company. I suddenly realized that once broadband comes into a home there is absolutely no reason (other than reliablity to dial 911) to connect to such a specialized network as a telephone company. The functionality is a subset of my internet.

Switching is dead and cannot be revived.

Voice over IP removes any need for a telephone except for emergencies. And my cell phone (at home, where I can be sure of a signal) probably gives me that. *snip* [Even] wireless telephony is dead. A telephone is really just a small special-purpose computer. (Boy, just wait until some worm/virus/adware/other malware brings down THAT network. Hmm, software to prevent that could be valuable ... been there, tried that.)

*snip* I remain interested in telecom, but the interest is academic. It is difficult to see how I can be employed back in that sector.

I tried to be a big-picture person. I was far less sucessful at it than you. While you were putting together the stupid network article, I was warning about the demise of big switching because of PC-compatible line cards & switches. I failed to see the end of switching, although I did see the current business model heading into a brick wall. It (fortunately) kept me nervous enough to push me to develop skills marketable outside of telecom. *snip* As for my new career, I really miss the engineering. I want to get back to it ...

I'm very troubled with what has happened to my co-workers. Some - very few - were died-in-the-wool BellHeads. But most would have been fine if [telco] management had just pointed their noses in a different direction . . .

3:17:23 AM    comment