Looking at the typical carrier approach to presence and instant messaging makes me shake my head in wonder. You see, I’m convinced that the hubris of the large carrier is the most apparent when you look at how they approach web technologies. Actually, more accurately, how they imagine how the world will drop the current web deployments to fall in line with the carriers. I’ve seen slides countless times where the carriers would own the online presence of their subscribers, without regard to the 100 million computer users that currently have chat accounts with AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! I’m sure there’s at least one IMS strategy based on this functionality. I need to call my broker and ask if I can short an idea.
There are two basic reasons for this massive disconnect. First, carriers still basically think they own the subscriber, even in the face of mounting churn, competing technologies and service providers, so they still fundamentally act like it. They believe that the general population is lemming like enough such that they will follow whatever scheme they put forward. Given the success metrics around value added services, I’m wondering if they’ve turned off the learning phase of their neural networks. Second, they can only view the world through their lens and from their mindset, and then try to solve the problem at hand in a very carrier centric way. Carriers really want to provide this functionality, so… they think they will. I really want to be 6′2″ like Pat, but I’m not rushing for a tape measure. To me, this is clearly a case where for all the money, power and regulation that a carrier can wield, they simply won’t be able to have their way.
The salient fact about instant messaging and presence is that there’s a huge installed base that’s not moving. Ever. To succeed, carriers need to realize that they can’t provide instant messaging applications and still be the ones who own the IM network. If they really want to provide applications that are presence aware, they need move to the back back of the bus and play nice with the IM heavy weights. Carriers need to know their place in this part of the world, and fast, before somebody who does eats their lunch.
And that’s the next challenge for carriers. What exists in the current telephony architecture (or even in future ones) that foster and support connections to external services like instant messaging and presence? Not much. IMS is designed for reliability and control, not for extensibility and inclusion. Web services architectures are built to connect disparate services, companies and networks. Given the massive amounts of engineering, traffic, commerce and interest SOA and web services deployments already have, no carrier effort will displace them when they wake up from their deep sleep. As light weight programming models like mashups dominate new service creation, their effects will be felt in every industry, without regard to size. The mashup approach brings the carrier world into the existing IM network ecosystem, not the other way around.
Will carriers continue to live in the IMS world, where the carrier is the focus and the star? I bet they will for a while, because the pain is not too great for them. Like any addict, carriers need to hit rock bottom before they realize that the open network destroyed their ownership of the subscriber. But they will, and when they do, a new day will dawn for them.
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