Telecom Disruptions
Brough Turner typed up a nice little piece entitled Skype’s Part in Telecom Disruption. It covers the apparent fact (sorry for the oxymoron) that telecoms as we have known it for the past ~120 years has entered a state of upheaval due to three successive “disruptive innovations” acting on it. The first is mobile phones, the second is “rich communications” (listed are IM, presence, location information) and the third is speculative “eCommerce 2.0″ where telecoms becomes an adjunct of eCommerce. What he lists as “rich communications” is just the start of rich communications IMO.
By “rich” I would say that we mean the annexing and subsequent morphing of telephony beyond present day recognition; so that the very concept of a “call” becomes rather meaningless - more of a “session” at most. But even that is questionable since to initiate a session implies that people are disconnected in the first place. Personally I think further down the line that such an assumption could be wrong. Instead all people will be potentially connected all of the time with aggregators and filters splicing the self-broadcasts based on one’s interests, desires, and social group information as well as those of the “calling party”. They will help decide whom to keep a “warm social” constant thin bit stream with or whom to drop or whom to add. Instead of “calling” the user will wish to turn it to a “rich communications” stream for a period of time with one or more person/s. If that sounds far fetched then I will concede and say at the very least social groups will remain permanently connected in terms of bit streams flowing between them; presence and real-time location just to begin with.
As regards eCommerce 2.0 it is often said that markets are conversations! Or put another away by James Enck “voice is no longer about a battle for minutes, but rather a battle for consumers’ attention“. For a little more insight read Martin’s article Why Skype Needs Google which he wrote before Ebay bought Skype and also read that part about the Ancient Markets in the ClueTrain Manifesto (jump down to “storylines”). Even bricks n mortar commerce may be embracing VoIP to achieve more product sales.
The disruptive influence on telecoms that Brough Turner does not mention (actually it could be tied together with his “eCommerce 2.0″ theme) is the blending in of media into telephony (or the other way around depending on your perspective). I see no difference between telephony and other user generated and distributed content that is on the rise, such as blogs, podcasts, mashups, and independently produced content. These will invariably fuse with telephony.