Steve’s Tech Journal

Now we see where Ed Whitaker (CEO SBC) and Bill Smith (CTO Bell South) talking up premium-tiered internet has led (here, here, and what Billy Joel might have to say ).

A merger of bullies, who see the internet as their toll road. I fear bad times are a’comin, at least for those that rely on DSL or fiber from the “new ATT”. A mere 9.8 million of us.

I was reading an analyst article this morning, commenting on the TEMS market and the impact of this merger on equipment and platform sales. His point of view was that it will 12 to 18 months before you see much impact and it will be a while until the engineers legally can speak. But, he says, they are both investing in IMS.

Was it only a year ago that I thought IMS was so hopelessly complicated that it never stood a chance of moving to implementation??!?! Bob Franskton wrote a hilarious piece after Fall VON, with enough boxes and lines to keep telco geeks busy for weeks [dang, can’t find the photo of the IMS diagram. Bob, if you read this send me a link and I will include it]. Regarding IMS, it’s not the stupid network, I thought. It violates end-to-end and intelligence at the edge. It will never work, it will cost too much, and we the edge will route around any telco that dares try.

Well, maybe I wrote off the forces of darkness too soon.

I’m now reassessing, and I will be very interested to monitor Spring VON to see if IMS is making headway. Sigh, I guess it’s time to hold my nose and dig into the convoluted and misguided technology.