It doesn’t rain, but it pours… Verisign’s Tom Kershaw, speaking in BusinessWeek, had this to say:
But the role of the telephone company is a different question. I’m not sure we’ll even say that word anymore. We’ll think of communications providers as people who provide us with broadband access and people who provide us with applications. You won’t just buy dial-tone like you do today. You’ll do IM with voice integrated [into the technology]. You’ll have games with voice integrated.
In tomorrow’s world, dial-tone is a commodity. What we’ll buy are connectivity, applications, and addressing / name resolution services (think DNS). Verisign’s play here is a very smart play. Today’s VoIP infrastructure has just rudimentary address resolution capabilities, and no credentialling. Anyone can spoof the voice network once you’ve attached an IP device. Verisign’s expertise in security and secure credentials could be a critical piece to solve that problem.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
