Image via WikipediaFacebook has tossed its hat into the mobile handset ring according to TechCrunch today. The move is fascinating and adds a dimension to the whole new world emerging from the competition between companies who, five years ago, you would have never have thought of associating with the phone business - principally Apple and Google.
The idea of a phone that cuts out the old number dialling thing entirely and creates connections across a social media platform is a short leap ahead from the Google Voice stuff I was waffling about a few days ago, but it's a logical one. With the ability to make 'analogue' calls as well as Facebook to Facebook calls, the phone would logically use the same VoIP based technologies as MSN and Google are using to connect people directly today. The mobile Internet is about to get very hot indeed as 'telephones' transform into IP based devices that will support, potentially, voice and a huge range of other functionalities.
In that instance, you don't actually need a telco or its tottering infrastructure of switching exchanges - and you won't be paying circuit switched pricings anymore, just your flat rate monthly Internet access fee to your ISP. Today's traditional telco is not a sustainable business model: telcos will have to downscale and slim up to a tremendous degree or will have to find a massive new, services based, business model to add to the diminishing revenues that their decreasing importance in an Internet-driven communications model will yield.
Or they could just keep blocking everything. That's another option, I guess...
But block or not, it is inevitable that telcos that don't transform fast will die.
3 comments:
With crazy data prices, it will be a while before, at least people in the GCC, can experience competitive calling rates through data. That is, as you mentioned, if they don't get blocked.
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Alex the sad part is, even with mass adoption of VOIP we will be at the behest of our telco's for the internet service. And when they lose revenue with phone calls, they'll come up with 'creative' prices and packages to make that up. End result: Telcos don't die as much as we'd all like them to.
Well, I've bin-thinking...cause you know, I've bin-doing a lot of that lately.
All communications requires a channel, a medium.
The medium is the Airwaves.
The airwaves are owned by the public.
The public elects (or accepts grudgingly) a government to supposedly look after their interests.
The government leases out the rights of the public, including the airwaves.
The airwaves carry zero and ones that don't care less or more about what they mean "numbers, poems, naughty photos or the greatest work of philosophy since the Republic."
The Telcos care about monetizing the transfer of these zeros and ones (assuming that these zeros and ones are kosher of course)
If allowing facebook to "Partake" in this bit-pushing business will lead to more money, The telcos will do it (assuming that these zeros and ones are kosher of course).
If it doesn't, then the facebook will have to build it's own infrastructure of bit pushing channels, and that they cannot do without government approval.
Unless... unless The Facebook Phone has it's own global communication protocol that over-rides the local airwaves leased by the government.
So you see, Liverpool will completely kill Man United today.
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