Tuesday, March 2, 2004|
Permanet, Nearlynet, and Wireless Data. For most of the past year, on many US airlines, those phones inserted into the middle seat have borne a label reading "Service Disconnected." Those labels tell a simple story -- people don't like to make $40 phone calls. They tell a more complicated one as well, about the economics of connectivity and about two competing visions for access to our various networks. One of these visions is the one everyone wants -- ubiquitous and convenient -- and the other vision is the one we get -- spotty and cobbled together. Call the first network "perma-net," a world where connectivity is like air, where anyone can send or receive data anytime anywhere. Call the second network "nearly-net", an archipelago of connectivity in an ocean of disconnection. Everyone wants permanet -- the providers want to provide it, the customers want to use it, and every few years, someone announces that they are going to build some version of it. The lesson of in-flight phones is that nearlynet is better aligned with the technological, economic, and social forces that help networks actually get built. The most illustrative failure of permanet is the airphone. The most spectacular was Iridium. The most expensive will be 3G. - More at http://www.shirky.com/writings/permanet.html [Clay Shirky's Essays] 11:51:36 AM  comment
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VoIP - Plan A vs Plan B. 2003 was a remarkable year in the US for voice over the internet (VoIP). If you needed a label for the events of the year, "Collapse of Denial" would be a good one -- after a long period of relative inaction, the FCC and the state regulators are suddenly pushing hard for a regulatory framework. The question is no longer whether voice is going to become an internet application, but when. "When" could still be a very long time, however. The incumbent local phone companies -- Verizon, SBC, BellSouth and Qwest -- have various degrees of interest in VoIP, but are loathe to embrace it quickly or completely, because doing so means admitting to everyone -- shareholders, regulators, customers -- that both monopoly control and artificially high voice revenues are going away. (The fact that this is true does not much lessen the pain of saying so.) As a result, they will likely try to convince regulatory agencies, both the FCC and the states', to burden competitive VoIP firms like Vonage with additional costs and rules, while delaying their own offerings. Complicating this de facto Plan A, however, is the fact that VoIP isn't a service, it's just a set of protocols, meaning that competitors don't have to buy into Plan A to deploy it. If Plan A is "Replace the phone system slowly and from within," Plan B is far more radical: "Replace the phone system. Period."
- More at http://www.shirky.com/writings/voip_a_b.txt [Clay Shirky's Essays] |
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VOIP is more than just arbitrage. Stuart Henshall describes the potential implications of Skype's ridiculously easy conference calling capability. [Werblog] 11:42:42 AM comment
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Ringtones are 10% of the global music market?. So says UK research firm ARC Group. Evidently this is what will replace the revenues bleeding out of CD sales. [Werblog] 11:42:02 AM comment
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That's the Weather, and Now, Let's Go to the Cellphone for the Traffic. A cellphone application aims to offer up-to-the-second traffic information through global positioning satellite receivers. By John Markoff. [New York Times: Technology] 11:41:07 AM comment
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Alcatel studies partnership, sale of mobile phone unit [IDG InfoWorld] 11:40:10 AM comment
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IEEE Spectrum Online: The End of Spectrum Scarcity. In fact, there's every reason to think we're on the cusp of a spectrum explosion--one that will trigger major shifts in investment, business models, and services. In the spectrum-rich future, wireless connections for new voice, music, and video services should abound, benefiting consumers and businesses alike. [Tomalak's Realm] 11:36:47 AM comment
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Last update: 6/28/05; 12:09:07 AM .
