Inversion of the economics of telephony
One of my favourite Martin Geddes quotes is this one:
Here’s the deal. In the old world, the economic activity started when the phone call began. In the new world, that’s when the economic acivity ends. The money is all in presence, social networking, filtering, privacy management, and so on. It’s a complete inversion of the economics of telephony. Therefore expect many of the vendors to be disemboweled in the process.
Although no man can predict the future with complete accuracy, I would whole heartedly agree with the sentiments being expressed. So I was quite happy when trawling back thru two months of unread blogs to discover not only a good Telco 2.0 article but another great quote in a similar vein:
The basis of competition in this third wave is about prompting and connecting people who need to interact — social and contextual awareness — whilst preventing unwanted interruption and connection — i.e. security and privacy. By the time the phone call starts, the money-making is over. If the call was wanted, it’s the broker who gets the payment; if it wasn’t, it’s the filter.