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September 26, 2007
Carls Corner as a Newsletter
Carl's Corner
The Foreword.
I am sending this email blast because I have the least read blog in creation. It may be deserved because I am not a blogger by nature, but in the hopes of increasing my readerships to tens. I am sending out this email to friends with the hopes that each of these topics will generate some dialogue at http://carlscorner.pulvermedia.com. I want to remind you that the opinions expressed are entirely my own.
Agenda
- The Disruption Moves Slowly (but not Verizon)
- Thought Leading Innovators Track (Now I'm excited)
- Feedback on FMC
- Apology for my punny (not funny) humor
- The VON "E" Ticket
- Conclusion
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- The Disruption Moves Slowly (but not Verizon).
Verizon is going through a series of personnel changes where the Verizon Wireless side of the company (long living isolated in their own Shangri-La) is now in charge of the company in total. Ivan may have made the move based on this information.
MediaMark stated that 14 % of the US has a cell phone with no landline phone. While approx 13% of the US has a landline phone with no cell phone.
So the writing maybe on the wall for the role of the landline part of the company.
This is lead to a discussion between some of our friends that I have asked to express here with you all. Please remember the opinions expressed do represent any corporation's perspective.
Henry Sinnreich starts with the premise that all communication services are in effect the Internet.
From this perspective, I would contend that att, Cablevision, Vodafone, etc. are offering the same thing - Access
But this simple view point can get convoluted as some service providers ride on top of others.
Or as Willie Wimmreuter points out
The basic question to that answer is how to find some sweet-spots that will be honored and payed for by the "End-User" or the"final point of convergence", as Richard Stastny would say
Willie goes on to say... about end user choice
Just for the sake of usage freedom and global reach, the Internet of course will become the network of choice and here I'm with [Henry]
We just made the mistake way to often and sold the "Internet" but not the "advantages" to the user.
So why do we not stop selling the religion and sell the advantages, help or assistance instead. A user will go for it and even pay for if he can use it to his advantage
VoIP, P2P, etc. Instead, I try to help selling things; the user is willing to pay for and by that, the Internet, P2P or whatever will sell implicitly
Henry replied that
EU regulators seem to be enlightened about competition and avoiding such conspiracies like roaming charges.
They also have sympathy for Skype and Skype in mobile phones
Willie in a series of responses gave a good perspective.
Unless these incumbents see the "Internet as a service", they will not be able operate it in an open way and thus they will see providers from other countries and continents selling to their customers whilst they can only sell to customers of their own network
- What they make their living with?
* Voice- calls, SMS, Radio, Voice and Internet access
* Pipe rental
* Power consumption arbitrage
* Interconnect fees
- What will fade away?
* Voice-Call-Charges
* Billing Cost
According to an old study of [a PTT] Billing was nearly as expensive as their voice income. (Software, staffing, stamps etc.) of interconnect and freedom of service usage.
* Customers, since they are not open for user selection
So here is my question for you?
Pretend you are Verizon Wireless executives inheriting the assets previously considered the family jewels. Do you agree that Access to the Internet is the basic service for all communications going forward? If you are involved in building applications are you concerned that one day you will have to be partner? Do you see the widgets of Google and the hosting of Amazon as part of these strategic issues? How do you keep the profits from Wireless safely away from the bundling of the fixed side of the company?
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- Thought Leading Innovators Track (Now I'm excited)
Sometimes we are not very good at tooting our own horn. Well at least I am not. We have a very cool conference going on at the VON which is a hybrid of the unconference and the innovators track. You can find it on this link...http://www.von.com/2007/boston/web/confSchedule_gsct1182269232_icci1189592511.html
Just comes of the tip of your tongue. But seriously we always say Voice is Just an application and this is the place we will prove it. Including an expect battle of the SIP apps on the iPhone. In the unconference Tom Howe is going to be push for the developers to live up the pulver challenge
(see http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/007256.html )
But the best part of this part of the conference will be the interaction. If you come into these sessions, be part of the discussion. Not just a spectator at the revolution, but a citizen of the community.
The Innovators track has sessions looking developers tools like Ajax and Ruby (on Rails), Enterprise / Telco 2.0, Social Networking, Tossable digits, and of course the iPhone work arounds for better services.
This should be a fun set of sessions for those people looking to develop the new, disrupt the old or just think about the phone network of the future.
- Feedback on FMC
At the last few VON's our FMC tracks were very well attended. In part this was thanks to the excellent help from Alan Duric of Telio and perhaps it was in keeping with the fact that VON is a destination event that attracts the world.
In organizing the event, we got a lot of feedback that FMC had a specific meaning associated only with European deployments.
Mind you this was from the folks selling FMC to Europe
One suggestion that was made is that FMC was a misnomer in the end everything will be wireless.
Another perspective given was that FMC is the migration of the infrastructure for Unified Communication
The event was a huge succession and featured a lot of excited business people. One new area that is becoming a hot topic is Femtocells.
Femtocells back haul wireless calls to your wireless provider. In the US T-Mobile is offering this alternative and Sprint has a trial going on as well.
To me this looks like an ATA for Wireless.
It also looks like a next generation of Jeff's CellSocket. [It's amazing how long it takes for some things to come into vogue.]
For those interested we are going to have a preconference on FemtoCells as Fall VON, plus it will the subject of the Tuesday General Session.
For those wishing to continue the dialogue on FMC I am experimenting with a social network on Ning that you can get to by the url http://pulcom.ning.com. Feel free to join us.
- Apology for my punny (not funny) humor
I was on conference calls with Friends who were at VoiceCon. And they voiced the opinion that my pun in the E-mail blast promoting our Unified Communications Conference was out of turn.
I often get asked to write something from scratch and the easiest way for my writing to start is with a pun. 80 % of the time my puns get edited - thank G-d. This time it did not.
I have a tendency to see jokes as heckles (at someone's expense) and insights as appreciative. I apologize for my error in not recognizing the pun was a heckle.
- The VON "E" Ticket
Speaking about my E-mail blasts, I went on a rant to several thousand linkedin friends about an e-mail blast I sent out regarding Amol Sarva.
On the weekend, I watch/listen to C SPAN often and in listening to Amol speak I heard a strong position that needed to be heard by the community
As a former exec of Virgin Mobile he represents an interesting view that works for an MVNO as well as the more portal like players looking to make a new future for the wireless Internet
So we invited him to the VON Conference, but he is speaking to the delegates of the conference.
Not as part of the Keynotes open to all attendees
I am not sure people have understood the benefit of being a delegate and since most of the content is for delegates I want to state the distinction.
A delegate at VON gets to go to anything and everything
A delegate at the new events gets the benefit of the conference and the VON exhibit floor.
These conferences include Digium Asterisk World, Mobile Security, Unified Communication, Video on the Net and VONDex.
Exhibits Only attendees have the benefit of the content on the floor which is also valuable
I personally will be spending most of my time in the breakout sessions at VON including the innovators track.
- Conclusion.
Thank you for taking the time to read this far.
I allowed this email to go out via our mail system in case anyone wants to unsubscribe.
I hope you join the dialogue either on http://carlscorner.pulvermedia.com or http://pulcom.ning.com
Kind Regards,
Carl Ford
VP Content and Community Development.
carl@pulver.com
631-961-8955
PS Just in case you need the links for all the shows they are as follows
http://www.von.com/2007/rome/web/confSchedule.php
http://www.von.com/2007/boston/web/confSchedule.htm
http://www.digiumasteriskworld.com/2007/boston/web/confSchedule.htm
http://www.mobilesecuritycon.com/2007/boston/web/confSchedule.htm
http://www.unifiedcommunicationscon.com/2007/boston/web/confSchedule.htm
http://www.videoonthenet.com/2007/boston/web/confSchedule.htm
http://www.vondex.net/2007/boston/web/confSchedule.htm
PPS my apologies to marketing but I am starting people on the content pages. ;<)
Posted by carl at September 26, 2007 06:26 AM