by alec on March 27, 2006
Techdirt wrote this morning that the VoIP space is getting more crowded with Internet era bubble models. This was in response to an AP story about Jajah and Lycos titled New Ways to Call Over the Internet Debut. Meanwhile, on Friday TechWeb News published Gartner Sees Rocky Road Ahead For Telecoms. Elroy Jopling, the Gartner analyst quoted says:
Similar to the disruption music download sites, such as Napster, initially brought on the music industry, the telecommunication carriers, especially those in the "voice telephony market, will suffer the biggest shock," said Elroy Jopling, research director at Gartner.
All three of these pieces point to the same theme: the old telecoms are dying. Businesses may emerge from those ashes, branded the same way, but they won’t be the businesses we know today. The networks are becoming less and less of a barrier to applications. Models built on network scarcity are doomed. It’s the emergence of the Voice 2.0 model. During the transition period, we’re going to see lots of whacky business models.
I’ll be speaking on some of these themes at VON Canada next week. Monday at 10:45 I’ll be delivering an industry perspective speech, focused on Voice 2.0.
And in the meantime, as Andy Abramson says:
The key is for the goliaths to start to work like the new upstarts and move faster than battleships, while still covering the same ground.
by alec on March 27, 2006
Michael Robertson was interviewed last Friday for SoCal TechNews. He talked about SIP, the kinds of businesses he likes to start, and entrepreneurship. I loved this paragraph where he says that the things he does are obvious:
What I think about, is I have two sons—and what they will think about their father and what he did. I think they are going to say “you had it so easy Dad” and “Your businesses are so obvious.” And they are so obvious. It’s not hard to figure out my business strategy—I am focusing on industries that can be completely digitized. Music is a perfect example—you can move it around, make playlists, play files. There’s no question all music is going online. Software, with Linspire and click and run – all software is going to be delivered online. Phone calls—no doubt they will all be delivered on the internet. These are undeniable truths. You can argue how quickly it will happen, but getting back to my kids—I’m sure they will say it’s so obvious. When they are adults, they will not be able to say that it wasn’t obvious that all voice calls will be on the Internet, that calling would not be free, or that instant messaging and email is free. Though it might have been revolutionary, they will say that it should have been pretty obvious to anyone looking around. That cuts to the core—I like businesses that are purely digital, which can really change the whole economic structure. What I mean by pure digital is things you can digitize and shoot around on the Internet, such as news, music, videos, and phone calls. You can’t shoot a pair of shoes, or a loaf of bread, or physical goods like that. If you can digitize it by moving to the Internet, it’s going to happen. And with that change, it knocks out old incumbents and makes new room at the table for new leaders. You get a seat at the table with adults and make some money during that transition period. The businesses I do are pretty obvious to me because they are all about digitizing an industry that previously was more offline, and moving those industries 100 percent online.
Worth a read.
