A colleague alerted me to Walter Mossberg’s column in today’s WSJ [warning, subscription may be required], in which he tars the wireless carriers with hampering innovation and preventing rollout of technology. I love his quote where he compares cellphone carriers to “Soviet Ministries” that believe that they can decide better than the market what goods consumers need.
This is of course not news, but it is great that Walter is taking up the cause. I have ranted about this on my blog in the past, as has practically everyone that pays attention to the space.
My colleague writes:
Thought of you with this one. Wimax + VOIP is going to kill both the RBOC’s AND MNO’s, the latter who have become as bad as the former over time. VOIP has the potential to be truly disruptive because hopefully the exsiting PSTN management won’t flock to work at VOIP companies like happened between fixed lien and mobile companies. Management will fortunately hopefullly mostly come from Internet companies instead, and bring their more revolutionary and consumer-centric mindset with them
To which I add …
And, if Wimax + VoIP becomes subject to incumbent control, either directly or legislatively, then mesh + Skype will do them in.
Unfortunately, a lot of PSTN mgmt has flocked to voip companies, specially here in Ontario due to recent Bell initiatives to reduce their workforce.
A lot of voip providers stacked up on these Bell mgmt types hoping that they would lend some ligitimacy.
But it has led to stiffling of innovation and everything comes down to recreating the PSTN