Telepocalypse

Retail therapy

There’s a nice quote at the end of this America’s Network article on bland branding of US celular compared to lifestyle branding of Orange, Vodafone and Nokia in Europe.

Ultimately all will benefit from a broader set of higher quality products inherent in the shift by the carriers from voice corner store owner to multi-service, multi-segment department store purveyor.

Of course, the hollowed-out downtowns of many US cities bear the sun-beaten shadows of the names of almost-forgotten department stores from the past. The department store made sense because transport was the constraint to shopping. It wa just too darned hard to run a multi-point distribution network. And it was too hard to shop at multiple locations when you had to hop on a trolleybus (or horse and cart) to do it.

Once users had total and flexible control over their own transport with the arrival of the affordable motor car, everything changed. Of course at first there was a boom in department stores. More customers could make it into town more often from a greater area. Wal-Mart and out-of-town malls didn’t happen overnight. Indeed, history often turns full cycle with the Wal-Mart Supercenter or mall becoming a single shopping destination. But in the meantime most of the old institutions disappear or become shadows of their former glory.

Spot the similarity? Packet networks give flexible control over data transport to users. All the same principles apply. The same future applies to these all-things-to-all-men carriers. Things will look really great as pervasive broadband hots up. Boom times will return. But the business model of control will become an albatross that can’t be shaken off.