It’s worth reading Andy Abramson’s thoughts on AIM Phoneline. Essentially, after a little thinking about it, Andy has realized something we all should have seen — AOL has the largest network of Dial-Up POPs in North America. While MSN moved aggressively into broadband (because they couldn’t beat AOL at dial-up) in the late 1990′s, AOL clung stubbornly to that core business. Today, they’ve got the PRI’s, they’ve got the modems, etc etc etc. Giving away phone numbers that ride on that network is an incremental cost of, what, 10 cents per month per subscriber?
While everyone else giving away phone numbers is forced to negotiate wacky deals with Native American tribal phone companies in the middle of sparsely populated areas like the Nevada desert, AOL can just wade in and start capturing customers. Can anyone doubt that AOL will be the new phone company of America? Is it not obvious that the Voice 2.0 mantra of applications driving value on the new network will be realized first by AOL?
Brilliant. Abso-freakin-lutely B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T.
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.
