Telepocalypse by Martin Geddes: All bar one

May 23, 2005

All bar one

I’m presenting to the International Bar Association’s Communications and Competition Law conference in Madrid today.

There are around 170 attendees. I’m the only one with a laptop open. This is not my usual crowd. There are no seats near power sockets — zero. But there is the general (and free!) hotel Wi-Fi. All praise the connectivity gods! Oh, and I might be the only person who isn’t a lawyer or regulator. As I was invited to come after I’d left home for my holiday, I didn’t bring my expensive consultant uniform. But I borrowed a tie from my Dad to make me look less conspicuous, so only my words and ideas should stand out from the crowd.

I’m curious to see how far away from reality the mindspace of this audience is. I’m going to present a short pitch that three of the words they use are in fact intellectually bankrupt, and should be avoided:

Convergence. No such concept error. Abort. Retry. Cancel. Think: displacement, divergence, fragmentation.

VoIP. Nul points. Fatal misunderstanding of what creates value in this new world. Think: Presence, social network integration, identity, transaction integration.

Telecom. Bad news — they’re getting a divorce, into Tele (the connectivity) and Com (the application). Good news: Divorce makes for good business for the family lawyers. Bad news: Com was making all the money, but just got replaced by six guys from Estonia armed with laptops. Worse news: Tele was cross-subsidised from Com. Terrible news: Tele is fundamentally impossible to fund from network operation. Need new ownership structure that aligns interests of network users and owners.

From what I’m hearing so far, this Eurotelco world is very different from the US one I’m more familiar with. Different jargon, outlook, structure.

More impressions later.

Posted by Martin Geddes at 08:16 AM

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» Convergence. No such concept error. Abort. Retry. Cancel. from The Unreasonable Man
Martin Geddes writing over at Telepocalypse, a weblog I'd not come across before. Important stuff. I'm presenting to the International Bar Association's Communications and Competition Law conference in Madrid today. There are around 170 attendees. I'm ... [Read more]

Tracked on May 26, 2005 09:14 PM

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