bellhead.net

I have to tip my hat off to Ross MacLeod for coordinating a wonderful conference. The Voice2.0 panels were quite insightful, at times bringing tension between the participants and even with some in the audience. A little less attended were the break out sessions with the exception of keynote speaker Martin Geddes session of which I will write about in another post. Best of all, thanks to OCRI and a few other sponsors, it was cheap and thus offered the opportunity to hear from some smaller voices in the industry where the innovation seeds are rather freshly planted and growing vigorously.

I would give you a blow by blow account of the sessions, however, Alec Saunders beat everyone to the punch in his post. Instead I will recount what I felt were some of the more quotable moments as I heard these snippets replayed later in the day or in conversations the following day.

It is all about the Context

Martin succinctly pointed out in his keynote that the Telco 1.0 work treats “each call as an isolated event,” thus loosing the context of the conversation. Such a model may seem natural for an industry whose main competence is extracting the most out of billable events, but completely overlooks that tomorrows value is captured in what leads up to and occurs after these events. To make matters even worse, the context will now be found in new places like the Xbox or in of all places eclipse as illustrated later in the day by Mike Malinkovich of the eclipse foundation. The warning was clear, whoever controls the context of where voice is found will control the revenue.

Breaking the scarcity of Access

To be fair the comments on scarcity of access were actually made during the Future Communications Platform” panel as a jest that the Telco’s were shifting from a scarcity of resources economic model to one of a scarcity of access. Nevertheless it was a great lead in to talk of PONzzi schemes (pun intended) and the “Tyranny of the Take-up” in the “Alternative Networks” panel. Here the folks from CANARIE talked of real projects where the people owned the physical plant in a mostly regulatory free environment. The economic models were quite fascinating with one that had the home owner make the $2800 capital investment under the guise of tax rebates. In some towns bright yellow signs in flowerbeds join daisies, and indication just as telling of the owners prudent judgment in broadband provider, i.e. the co-ops, as it is of their green thumb. And most fascinating was the reverse PON, where the head end contains a user selectable lambda to whichever provider he desires.

I definitely can’t wait to see what next conference will bring