[wplug] The End of the Telcos?

[Bob Supansic]

There is a provocative article in the April issue of "Linux journal"

well worth reading.  Bob Frankston, one of the two co-authors of the 
original Visicalc spreadsheet, sees the end of the telephone and cable 
companies.

His argument is fairly simple.  He distinguishes connectivity from 
content.  End users are interested in content; connectivity is merely a 
complication on the way to getting it.  Now that packet-switching 
technology has reduced all content to more or less the same form, all 
content can be delivered over the same wire.

And that "wire" can be made much simpler and cheaper than it is today.  
He argues that today's networks are legacy technologies from the era 
when phone calls, television, radio, and computer communication each 
required their own method of distributing content.  The content 
distributors know this and therefore scramble to control content to 
enhance what is, from a purely technological point of view, a weak 
position.  Thus mobile phone companies supply closed-source phones so 
that their control of content becomes a menu of separately-chargeable 
services.  (The interviewer quotes a British Telecom executive as saying 
the true core competence of telephone companies is billing!)  The attack 
on network neutrality is an attempt to create new tolls on the Internet 
turnpike based on content. 

So, get rid of all the increasingly obsolete connectivity technology, 
strip the "wire" down to its essentials, and the network becomes so 
simple and cost-effective that it can be turned over to local control.  
Just like sidewalks: they come with the house -- and you don't pay each 
owner to use them as you walk down the street.

Of course, I would anticipate some opposition to this from some quarters.