Ostriches at the ITU
- [Editor: Skype Journal friend and blogger, Jan Geirnaert, went to the International Telecommunications Fair in December 2006. We'd planned to run his coverage but it conflicted with some of our down time. Here is Jan's second installment.]
My personal impressions on the ITU fair. Flat F(r)ee or pay per minute to the ostriches in the walled garden, wondering why the dumb pipe is drying up.
When I came back from the ITU fair in Hong Kong last week one sentence kept popping up in my mind. It sounded a bit like "the telecoms and their powerful lobby-groups are like ostriches living in a walled garden, wondering why their dumb (cash-flow) pipes are not delivering as much water into their water-buckets. And instead of leaving their walled garden, they stick their head in the sand to wait till more water comes in."
I also realized the huge power and presence of the global telecoms. But still I am trying to get out of the behavior that we all learned to accept: "give coin for dial-tone." I think it will take a while before that changes, if it ever does. Your technology can be very good (in this case disruptive) but you will have to establish a new balance and fight resistance on all levels. Again: my personal impression. For the record.
Besides this, the ITU fair is a huge illuminating summary of the current status of telecom related technology. It really gave me a wake-up and was a great eye-opener. After all, the information you get during the forums is the result of probably six months of preparation by the experts. If you are looking for a good summary, well don't miss out on this event. I loved it.
I also had the distinct impression that WiFi and WIMAX were looked upon as inferior technology, that could be neglected in the over-all landscape of how to get connected. This gave me a strange feeling since (speaking for myself here) I was constantly looking for a WiFi-solution that allowed me to use Skype at an affordable flat fee. I could not find any connection. Maybe I was not close enough to city center. Anyways. Many of my questions on the effect of disruptive technology (during the very interesting forums sessions on ITU) on the revenue were received with some -- well how would I say -- well they did not like that type of question. Maybe they were more interested in devices that could cause some latency on the foreign VoIP signals floating on their network.
I will never forget the visionary projection of one of the keynote speakers during a forum-session: "in the future you will have a cell-phone that will project a hologram of the person you are calling." That is very possible, but it is also likely that revenues of the telecoms will be a hologram if the business-model is not changed drastically. I believe that that pay per minute for telephony is going to be a dead concept. But not yet. Maybe in 2 years from now. Who knows?
The role of the regulators is a major factor in this process. If regulators allow the telecom to stop or slowdown the fast evolution and progress of all kinds of foreign VoIP-systems (that not necessarily create a revenue for the country itself), then things will go slow. Think about the different countries and environments that are already blocking or capping Skype and the likes of Skype.
I just wonder what will happen when the handset-makers are going to put WiFi-chip-sets in the more powerful range of WiFi-enabled cell-phones. Surely people would love to put Skype on their cell-phones, or the likes of Skype, and honestly the GPRS-data (which will increase the ARPU / revenue stream of data-services) will not work with Skype. Maybe for chat, yes.
My point is that the flat-fee data-channels will have to be more affordable and available than the occasional (free) or hotspot WiFi. But again, I believe that if you are in the business of selling telephony-minutes that this will be very tough. There is always somebody cheaper, and lately I have been using my IPAQ PDA-phone with Skype Mobile in it to do unlimited chats (cheaper than SMS), send affordable global SMS and even do Voice Over IP. In this type of scenario, I used a free WiFi service. It worked fine and telecom wasn't touched. I don't like and I don't have to pay for telephony per minute any more. I want flat f(r)ee and I got it.
I also don't like the feeling of being milked like a cash-cow, which exactly explains why I love WiFi so much. And honestly if I need to make a phone to the outside world, I will just go to Starbucks, drink a coffee and do my VoIP phone-call. Much cheaper than the expensive Vodafone.
In that perspective I am looking forward to hear more on the business-deal between www.iskoot.com, www.three.co.uk and www.skype.com. I have seen some videos of a presentation in London whereby a cell-phone (Ericsson and Motorola type) had an "embedded Skype."
But being an MS Windows user, I did go for an IPAQ with a sim-card. It is still more computer than phone in my world, but due to the built-in WiFi I don't have to carry a brick (laptop) in my backpack anymore on short trips that just need a communications device.
For typing and working the laptop is still needed - at least in my world.
