Simon Torrance dropped me an email today, letting me know about Telco 2.0, a website, a manifesto, a blog, a report, and a conference. It’s the full meal deal if you’re a carrier trying to figure out how to be relevant, rather than roadkill, in the future.Â
From the opening paragraphs of the manifesto:
We are a collection of like-minded telecom practitioners and stakeholders: investors, managers, analysts, consultants, suppliers and customers.
The telecom industry was structurally stable from the early days of the telegraph and telephone systems through to the arrival of mobile telephony, despite rapid technology change and varying fortunes of individual players. We now see a need for change in the industry to reflect a new world increasingly unlike that experienced before.
The “like-minded telecom practitioners” include our good friend Martin Geddes.
Further on in the manifesto they make their position clear with this statement:
“Telco 2.0†defines any business model where connectivity is supported by a sustainable economic model. This means the end of artificial cross-subsidies between services and connectivity. We assume an all-IP world where choice of applications, devices and platforms is entirely driven by user preference. Connectivity charges will increasingly reflect actual costs of delivery (unlike, say, mobile roaming charges); relatively trivial services like standard voice call routing are effectively free; and thus the scope for the latter subsidising the former ceases to exist Customers will only take your replacement offering because they want it, not because they have no choice.
They aim to help telecoms players rethink existing business models so they can succesfully transition to this new world. Good stuff, and likely very lucrative too (Martin has a family to feed, you know!).
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.
