Ken, Gary I am sure is not talking about Caller ID, voice mail, VPN, etc.etc. when he talks about how Bandwidth will become free to be replaced by SERVICE & Application.
He is talking about the possibility of PTT's & Carriers morphing into some sort of AOL/Time-Warner entity which will somehow sell all kinds of Internet oriented service (advertising, e-commerce, portal, information, etc.) and even shove down pay-per-view movies in return for FREE bandwidth.
Highly improbable. Carriers will continue to upgrade and expand network capacity -- spending literally trillions of dollars and will make sure they get their investment back by selling capacity to ALL the ISP's, ASP's, and other true service oriented companies in the data world...........oh and by the way, the Carriers will also CONTINUE to charge for long-distance. It will not become free in the way of force-playing advertised messages before cutomers can talk.
PTT's are not going to diversify into all these service/application oriented business and move down the "food-chain". They have tried this before and failed miserably as we all know how inept they are at marketing & applications.
What you are talking about (VPN, Caller ID, etc.) are more set of functionalities and utilities that Carriers will of course offer along with bandwidth. But clearly no Carrier is going to give free long-distance and attempt to recoup that lost revenue by charging for utility application like voice mail! It will have to one hell of an expensive voice messaging service. |
