Saw the word “convergence” pop up again on the ITU web site. I love that word. So soothing — “service convergence”. Looks perfect in your vendor presentation. We’re clearly remedying some unwanted divergence. Friendly. Reassuring. Wrong.
Now, what we need is someone to write a little browser plug-in. Every time you go to a web site with more than the threshold level of telecom jargon, it is triggered. And all it does is replace “convergence” with “displacement”. Voila! You can see the truth. Legacy service providers cease to be able to force bundling of service with access. Telecom and IT get “converged” into access and even more IT. The IT folks are doing just fine, thanks.
So next time you see a car wreck on the freeway with blood and oil oozing under the twisted metal, don’t panic. Have no worries. Let your fear subside. The car has simply converged with the concrete barrier. Converged with fate. Converged into history.
PS — Bear in mind that the ITU is a global industry association mostly populated by traditional voice carriers. It’s run under the auspices of the UN, hardly the foremost proponents of wrenching capitalist change. Loss of control of the application space weakens their political importance — viz their fights with ICANN. They don’t want to be converged with the unemployment queue, either.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 08:02 AMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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Brother Martin you speakth the truth.
But alas I'm sorry to inform you that Microsoft already has a patent on you de-jargonizer web browser add-on.
Now I dont bring this up to be merely facetious. Rather its to emphasize your point about displacement (or as I sometimes prefer to say co-option), and the battle between the access and application layers.
Software patents represent a huge "barrier of entry" for telcos to cross if they want to be a player on the application layer. Apple and Microsoft have a large inventory of patents waiting for the market to mature.
If you look at a telco's balance sheet and compare its asset inventory vs. the new value chain layers, you see a massive distortion. The asset mix is hugely skewed to "low-value" layers. Bummer.
I've been talking about how Yahoo, MSN, AOL, (maybe google, amazon, etc) are just marking their time for three years (especially after sprint raped them back in 1999 WAP fever), and will eventually own the subscriber base.
re:Flarion, A year ago many of my wireless investing buddies discounted my assertion that Nextel would go with Flarion, so I'm feeling pretty good about that.
But I have to ask, what do you privately hear about any regrets from "traditional" WSPs?
For the record, Flarion put on a very aggressive pitch for the sprint boys starting several years ago. Oliver and his crew are still claiming to wait for Release D 1xEV-DV, which just finalized the formal spec. Thus its another 2+yrs for any equipment to show up.
The final point being that the Telcos have had enumeral opportunities to wake up and smell the coffee over the past 5-10 years, and thus IMNSVHO they deserve to fail. Its the "american" way, afterall.
Posted by: at February 16, 2004 01:58 PM