I would see the competition of DSL and cable modems as the number one item in places where both of these cannot be used.
cost is problematic for the wireless industry and one in which I feel they are shooting themselves in the foot on. All the major carriers are holding the data services back while waiting for the "killer app" to come along and fund the entire rollout, to the tune of $50M to $100M from one person. Since there is NOTHING in this world that will pay upfront these kind of fees, the carriers wait year after year for some new enabling technology to rollout which may fund this. All the little guys who can pay $100k and then go build a business out of it are left standing without service. but if they understood that there are 100,000 "little guys" out there who can innovate and build devices and services upon this, then the pricing, the service and the overall system would come out. As it is now, the carriers are sold on waiting for 3G to come along so that they can get some "killer apps". Even the WK guys have not been able to get enough groundswell to get this going.
Let me give you a great analogy....in 1990, the internet and FTP sites were available, but nobody wanted to fund the build out of it, so it was very hard to use, very primitive and no business was really generated from it. Then Netscape came along in 1994/1995 and provided a way to build web pages, display data, organize and explore the net. they were the enabler. But can you name one "killer app" which was the money generator that paid everyone back then? by 1996, the net was one of the hottest growing areas of our time and by 1998, it was so large that it started to have an impact on the GNP. by 2000 it will make up 10-20% of the GNP. Ok, so as of today, NAME THE KILLER APP? So who is making the $300B revenue out there on the net? One killer app? No, 1000's of small businessmen who have a medium and who can exploit it.
We have become so driven on cost cutting and cost analysis, that nobody has the combination of guts and vision to make another internet happen....
(HINT: data connectivity itself is a killer app...) |
