Long story short (excerpt from an email I sent to Tony Bates and Larry Lang): --- In our discussion yesterday on the Service Exchange Architecture (SEA) list, I mentioned a kind of a "Telecommunications Perfect Storm" (TPS) that we should at least be considering as a hedge against our current strategy. Recall that my perfect storm scenario was something like: (i). Someone, say google (or ebay/skype), learns how to run a profitable, low margin packet carriage business. Remember that the "hypothesis" is that packet carriage will always be a low margin business as a direct consequence of the end-to-end principle. Add to this the fiber (some say bandwidth) glut, and you can see scenarios under which there is a non-zero (or even significant) probability of this outcome. (ii). The access monopolies are somehow broken (say, by a technology like WiMAX), and finally, (iii). You get a set of peer-to-peer (p2p) applications that attack the incumbent revenue stream (starting with voice, but including presence, IM, video, ..). How many of these are in place today? Well, clearly google is building out, so there is potential for (i). to occur any day now. Likewise (ii) (linksys gear with 4 tunable radios, North-South WiMAX, east west 802.11bag, and you're there). Finally, (iii). has an existence proof that has all but wiped out the recording industry, plus gtalk, skype, vonage, ... So is the telco industry far behind? --- As you might imagine, in a "complexity rich" environment you find at most vendors these days, its a hard sell (hence the "hedge" mumbo-jumbo). All that being said, I have had a bit of success pushing the "simplicity" agenda. But its an uphill battle (again, as you might imagine). Dave On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 05:30:08PM +0000, Alexander Harrowell wrote:

And not by offering you anything you might want to buy, either, but by setting up wanky little tollbooths.

On 12/15/05, Fergie <fergdawg@netzero.net> wrote:

...

Bingo.

What they are really saying is:

"We're _telling_ you that you need it because we need new ways to generate additional revenue."

;-)

Cheers,

- ferg

-- Alexander Harrowell <a.harrowell@gmail.com> wrote:

The whole QoS/2 tier Internet thing I find deeply, deeply suspicious...here in the mobile space, everyone is getting obsessed by IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and explaining to each other that they need it so they can offer "Better QoS, like the subscribers want". What they really mean, I suspect, is killing third party applications that compete with their own. IMS=I Mash Skype. And, I suspect, "QoS" for SBC customer broadband will mean "the speed we advertise so long as you are paying us for VoIP/video/whatever, shite if you aren't".

[snip]

-- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg@netzero.net or fergdawg@sbcglobal.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/