I’ve recently seen blog posts bantering about the meaning of “telco 2.0″. (I hate labels that obfuscate. I love labels that illuminate.) I’ve sat in the audience as I’ve heard analysts discuss “convergence” as being the main driver. (The fewer details we give the safer we are and the less we say.) I’ve seen reports on unified communications that build business cases on efficiency, yet always seem to focus in on making “somebody” do the same thing faster. (I’m wondering if they think the way to get out of a hole is to dig faster.)

All of this makes my stomach twist. I read a story last night about a reporter pressing Carl Sagan about the possibility of life on other planets. Carl replied that he didn’t know. The reporter was insistent… “What does your gut tell you?” His reply was worthy of memorization : “But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it’s OK to reserve judgement until the evidence is in.” Even though it’s twisting, I’ll try not to think with it, but I’ll tell you why I feel like I do. There’s evidence that we have about where the future of voice lies, and in broad strokes, here’s what it is:

• It is much easier to provide basic voice services than it used to be. To date, the real impact of software based voice is that it lowered CAPEX and OPEX costs to such a point that very small groups can deploy a basic voice infrastructure using commonly available hardware, software and using increasingly plentiful bandwidth.
• Voice applications have not significantly changed in the past few decades. Our attempts at creating successful and plentiful voice applications have repeatedly failed. We failed to create significant new applications with CTI; we have failed to create them with VoIP. We are poised for failure with IMS.
• The two major successful areas of voice innovation have been in our ability to deliver voice more cheaply, and to deliver voice with more utility. You can thank voice over IP and, in the United States at least, deregulation for the first success. You can thank the mobile phone for the second.
• If it ever was a serious debate, it is one no longer. In the merger of the computer network and the telephone network, the computer network is dominant and pervasive. In other words, the Internet is the dog and the phone is the tail.
• The early evidence on the ability of communications enabled business processes is extremely compelling. Many independent groups report saving considerable money for business in disparate markets. It remains to be seen if this is a case of a huge gold mine on the moon, or if this is an approach that can be successfully replicated by the masses.
• By and large, people understand their future in terms of their present and past. If measured by the lowest barrier to entry and the highest rate of return, communications enabling business processes looks to be a major industry trend in the coming decade. As an industry, we fail to understand these future voice applications because they are so far afield from our past.
• Small is the new big. When the barriers to entry fall, proximity to customer dominates. Big companies might understand other big companies, but the bulk of the economy still sits with Mom and Pop.
• Our approach of large standards and large product efforts made sense when deployment risks were high. As these deployment risks fall, large standards and complicated approaches (both business and technical) will underperform simpler, light weight ones.

May you live in interesting times.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 5:26 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories |

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