re: bandwidth commodities, futures, derivatives - start discussion
Jay, Thanks for priming the pump for us here. I was in the process of readying a discussion on this topic, that is, bandwidth futures, and the commodities trading of bandwidth and its derivatives. The overall subject has been all the talk in some circles, fueled recently by the bandwidth.com article in Forbes a couple of months ago.
I've been fortunate enough to have had many telephone conversations, e-mail exchanges, and face-to-faces with some of the players over the years, and during this most recent round of interest, as well. My interest in this subject, however, predates the recent round of activity. It goes back to 1995 on the Compuserve Telecomm Forum where I ran a bandwidth thread titled Total National Bandwidth, or TNB, and prior. Perhaps Gilder's Fibersphere article in 92-93 had some influence in this thinking, or reinforced some of the notions behind it, which is more likely.
What I found in that writing was an incredible amount of corroboration concerning dark fiber and the dismissal of many of the myths which were held by the world at large. Most importantly, it demonstrated to me that I was not alone in my thinking on many of the same topics. As it turns out, many practitioners felt the same way as I did at the time, and I didn't realize it. But now I'm digressing.
Each time I've brought up the topic of bandwidth futures in the past, comparing bandwidth to air pollution rights and pork belly futures, I've received a very polite, yet unmistakable, ignore. I've got a sneakin' suspicion, though, that this topic is now very ripe for discussion.
If we're lucky, maybe we can get Jeff Pulver (www.pulver.com) to join us on this topic. Jeff, for anyone who does not know already, has been at the forefront of this thinking, and has been largely instrumental in promoting the sector on a global scale, for about five or six years, now. He went operational last December with an exchange of his own.
Jeff's Min-x.com "market making" operation has been on line since last November, I believe, dealing in VoIP minutes and other forms of bandwidth derivatives. I'll let Jeff describe what he does for himself if he elects to reply to my request, since it's been a while since we've chatted about this one on one. It would also be interesting to hear what he has to say about others like Enron encroaching on this nascent market space, even before it's had sufficient time to take shape, never mind mature.
There are only ten bona fide contenders in this space [exchanges] right now. I'll list them later on, but briefly to name some big ones, there is ratexchange, band-x, min-x.com, and about seven or eight others.
These web based companies face several forms of competition at this time, most immediately from emerging telecomms clearing houses of minutes, and from larger and more established market players, most notably the world class telco types of carriers (who themselves have begun in the clearing space), some of the Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs), and by new interests such as Enron such as you have highlighted, already. Can Tato's Enel and others in the world of power utilities be far behind?
techstocks.com
For now, I just wanted to acknowledge the validity of the subject you've raised, and I'll look forward to hearing what others have to say about this intermediary form of bandwidth business, who the competition consists of, and what other sectors threaten to blow them away. I'll turn it over to you and the thread. I have just as much to learn about this niche in many respects as most.
Now, let me see if I can get those 1995 arrows removed from my back.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
