Embrace the new world or perish? A "Skype Adept" at the ITU fair in Hong Kong.
- [Editor: Skype Journal friend and blogger, Jan Geirnaert, went to the International Telecommunications Union Fair in December 2006. We'd planned to run his coverage but it conflicted with some of our down time. So here is Jan's first installment.]
Some quick notes. I have been running around here on the ITU fair in Hong Kong. Interesting event. It is a pity I could not "clone" myself in order to visit the 3G Congress at the same time or even attend simultaneously the same speeches, keynotes and slideshows. After all, these are all quite standard. Maybe the telecom guys will in the future (or they already have) invent something to give me live viewable access to these events. Or do they, because actually it would be enough to link just one good existing camera system (call it live press or video-feed) and link it up to Skype.
But I have some gut feeling that that is not what telecom guys want to do. Anyway, it is good to be there in Hong Kong at the ITU event, following what is going on in the industry.
I did not see any booth of Skype, which is not a surprise to me. I did see in a small corner a company showing a Skype / DECT dualphone. What I did see is the guys from FON.COM being represented here on this fair.
Which brings us to another topic, which is what cellco's and telco's will do when disruptive technology creeps past the walled gardens. We all know Skype is a master in bypassing firewalls and switches. Is this the advent of the Skype Blocking Devices? I think any good business plan will and should certainly investigate in keeping the network traffic for their preferred VoIP solution. It would be great to have a free or affordable mesh WiFi network in the future. After all, the current 3G / GPRS is expensive and slow. Ever tried to surf on a web page with your PDA or cellphone? No sensible person will do so. Sorry. Wrong concept. Maybe we are all hyped up here. Maybe we should all look at what is really needed and possible, and wanted. Let's move on.
My point is that if, during one week, a fair can create free WiFi for the users, they can also do it for a year, for a bigger population and for a bigger region. Welcome wimax and WiFi.
Communication should be free. Content should be affordable. Maybe the illegal copying and piracy will go away when the price per unit is not so high as it is now.
Then again consumers, users want to choose. Internet providers have to learn, on the level of content, that blocking is never a good idea to retain your customers. Nobody likes to be a prisoner.
Speaking for myself. I am running around here in Hong Kong and I am being "ripped off" by GPRS and ROAMING costs. In the hotel they charge me 100 HKD per 2 hours of Internet, and it is not even 2 volume hours. It is like "start using at hour xx and the time starts ticking." My point is that I prefer to pay a flat fee for a monthly amount of traffic, whether it is WiFi or GPRS. And roaming costs, well I don't like that. Now follow this, I went to the Vodafone-store to get a Hong Kong simcard which will give a number in Hong Kong, but again all kinds of limitations arise like call barring and stuff like that.
Summary: I would like to have a WiFi or wimax in this city so I can check wether there is a WiFi signal before I have to get GPRS (which is not fast enough to work with Skype). I also think there might be a chance some latency will be added to the free WiFi/VoIP system that "roam" on the network of others. After all, you want your customers to buy what you sell.
Anyway, we can summarize for today (the days are short and intense here in Hong Kong, there is really not much time to blog) with the observation that free WiFi works in the Media-center and on the ITU fair and, well, I hope that in the future one will see this for the whole city of Hong Kong. Telecoms will become Internet providers, Internet providers will become Telecoms, so the fighting can stop and we shall all benefit. Maybe I am dreaming. Are you?
Here are some questions that I might ask (with the risk of being perceived as a trouble-maker, but the question I ask are to the point). More on this later.
