Remember all those prayers? Please, please give us another little boom, we’ll be good, we’ll be careful. Please please please?
That old problem of wishing for the wrong things seems to be coming around to bite us on our collective behinds again. While we were praying for a new boom we should have added a few clauses for no war, no global warming, oil for less than US$50 a barrel, and let’s see, how about a plan for the next crash?
Doesn’t it just seem like we could be having a lot more fun if we weren’t worried about the world falling down around our ears?
And lordy, if we needed any confirmation that were are in the final days, the news that Apple announced Boot Camp to enable developers and users work with both Windows and Apple’s OS X should should have a few people thumbing through their Nostradamus. Now, let’s see. Is Bill Gates or Steve Jobs the antichrist?
No doubt Bill Gates gets a few votes given Microsoft’s little Grinch number pulling Vista out from under the sugar plum dreams of computer industry capitalists. Now they’re trying to figure out how to spin Chinese New Year as an International holiday.
A revelation
After our visit to 3GSM and CTIA this year we had a revelation. The mobile phone industry has accomplished a feat that has eluded PC makers and even game console makers — they have developed a low-cost device that connects people, entertains them, keeps them informed and on time. This has happened through the peculiar dynamics of the very focused semiconductor manufacturers including TI, Agere, Qualcomm, and Freescale, phone manufacturers working within a very tight envelope to offer more features than anyone else at better prices than anyone else, and mobile phone operators who have to figure out how to get more money out of their customers because the business of making phone calls is turning into a free-for-all with VoIP getting into the mix.
And then, on the other hand, there are Smartphones — even as the prices for computers are coming down under US$500, some Smartphones are going for more than US$600. Will business people finally be able to leave the laptop at home? Place your bets – variety is the spice of life.
WiFi wars
But before we get all googly-eyed about the next era of computing, we’d probably better pay attention to some of the wars over technology and access that are blazing away. For instance the ability to build free access to the Internet is pretty easy and there are plenty of people willing to build it – Google and Earthlink for instance have teamed up to build build a network for San Francisco.
Google will offer free access with ads and connections that are faster than dial-up, but not so fast as what Earthlink can provide. Earthlink will offer a service for $20 a month. It offers a similar service in Philadelphia and Anaheim.
In New Orleans, free Internet access is giving those people a way to communicate where wireline phone access is still a problem. Sounds great doesn’t it? Not to BellSouth, who says free Internet service amounts to unfair competition. Verizon has put up their legal dukes in Philly and elsewhere. In fact, just about everyone has a beef. Those advocating free services aren’t happy that the free systems are slower, the Electronic Freedom Foundation doesn’t like the idea that people have to sign on to the services so that their virtual wanderings can be tracked, and then there are telecoms. If you want to make a telecom executive leap out of bed screaming, sneak up and whisper “voice over IP” into said exec’s shell-like ear.
But maybe you have better things to do. You might want to pay attention to the gyrations of the U.S. Congress. Now there’s a bunch who just don’t like the idea of free anything unless it’s golf. Mobile phone companies protecting their turf are just the tip of the iceberg. There is much more going on in the U.S. as the cable and phone industry battle to redefine the Internet. The concept of Net Neutrality is under fire as the broadband Internet service providers battle services such as eBay, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Consolidation has put more and more of the Internet pipelines under the control of telecom industry including cable and phone companies such as Verizon and AT&T and they’re thinking that maybe they ought to get a little bigger piece of the pie from companies that draw more resources.
The telecoms have had pretty good success against efforts to strengthen Net Neutrality in the House and Senate with the claim that Net Neutrality will usher in too much oversight and government regulation. Rather, the broadband providers want to be regarded as private services free of government regulation.
The concept of Net Neutrality was codified by FCC Chairman Michael Powell in 2004 in his principles of network freedom (Wikkipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality). In fact, the concept of Net Neutrality was used by the FCC to protect voice over IP — hence that screaming noise.
If legislators put aside the concept of Net Neutrality then service providers could charge more for different tiers of service — people would pay more for a faster network or different services such as video, etc. An analogy could be drawn to the different layers of cable service that are offered U.S. customers. Imagine if the Internet were chopped up the same way.
As nice as it would be to just try and ignore the antics of government, it just won’t work – on any level. On the one hand you have wars, high-priced gasoline, and global warming; on the other you may get higher price tags for Internet entertainment.
Jon Peddie is a market analyst for his own firm, Jon Peddie Research, in Tiberon, Calif.
