Telepocalypse

Vandalism for fun and profit

Two weeks ago I flew back from the USA. One of the privileges of a nomadic lifestyle is sitting at the end of the runway at Boston Logan airport for half an hour for mysterious reasons not explained by the captain, and then taking 90 minutes to fly the 191 miles to Newark. I’m trying to decide whether the pilot was lost, or just wanted to point out his mum’s house in deepest New Jersey to the co-pilot. We certainly circled one field and awful lot of times.

Anyhow, it gave me plenty of time to read the Continental in-flight magazine, and as a courtesy to following passengers I ripped out a few pages and stuffed them in my pocket. Here goes.

I just love this Ye Olde Telecom approach. We’ve looked at every possible type of message we think you ought to be able to send over the network and priced the bits accordingly. Sorry if your desired protocol isn’t one of the ones we’ve created a gateway for.

Also, has it occurred to Verizon that offering a, say, “$20 and call anywhere in the world as much as you want” plan might generate a lot more business in a fixed-cost environment? Would anyone dare spend ten bucks just to find their contact’s phone is going to voicemail?

And why on earth vary the rate depending on which bit of land or sea the plane happens to be over (no pun intended)? You might as well double the price for people with surnames beginning with vowels — it has just as much correlation with the value received by the customer. It isn’t like there’s a substitute product that varies with geographical position you’re competing against.

Now for some more fun. This is a really messed-up industry. Exhibit A, Gorilla Mobile:

Now termination and origination fee avoidance has been a preoccupation for competing telcos for decades. It’s just now we’re seeing it at the retail level. Pay us a small fee, and we’ll create an audio channel to your handset via the least-cost manner, and then interconnect you on cheaply to where you really want to go.

Exhibit B, Talk Parade:

Nothing exciting, I grant you. Just a softphone and VoIP-to-PSTN bridging service. But look at the positioning — “Laptop … $4.99 … FREE … Stop paying those high cell phone bills”. Ever get the feeling that they’re competing on price?

Now what’s totally screwy is that we’re seeing full-page ads for services whose sole purpose is disintermediation of the pricing structure of incumbent industry players. No new value, no new features, no unique convenience, no innovative distribution or pricing or sales method. Just arbitrage plays.

I’m glad they’re doing it: as David Isenberg said at F2C, it’s the public’s trillion dollar dividend from the dissolutin of the smart network. Yet these ads are all symptoms of a deep sickness in the teleconomy. Meeting customer needs plays a weak second to pricing games. That’s unsustainable in the logn run. Just enjoy the dividend cheques while they last.