Telepocalypse

Achilles, your ankle is showing

Jaanus Kase of Skype notes that Skype users couldn’t vote in the Eurovision song contest because they don’t have access to the necessary SMS short codes. (You can send text messages in the new Windows client.) Thus Skype is innocent of enabling some cross-border voting fraud.

My business is advising telcos and their suppliers on living in an all-IP world, or at least resisting it in meaningful ways. This is a perfect example of how the IP abstraction failed to match reality. Internet addresses don’t respect country boundaries very well. Also, proxies can hide the real end point from the recipient. By making SIM cards only easily available in the “home” geography, and restricting access to the short codes onto to devices with a SIM card, widespread identity fraud is prevented. It’s not leak-proof, but more than good enough.

Tomi Ahonen regularly says that the best content will migrate to the mobile Internet (semi-closed) because that’s where the money is. I only half agree, but if it comes to be true it’s because the operators have a wider asset base than just billing. In this case, it’s distribution, identity, and partnerships (with short code users). Billing is just the icing on the cake.