Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Collapse of Denial
Clay Shirky writes:
[Embracing VoIP] means admitting to everyone -- shareholders, regulators, customers -- that both monopoly control and artificially high voice revenues are going away . . . As a result, [incumbent LECs] will likely try to convince regulatory agencies, both the FCC and the states', to burden competitive VoIP firms like Vonage with additional costs and rules, while delaying their own offerings.Exactly. I think Chairman Mike understands this too.
Plan A is "Replace the phone system slowly and from within,"
Plan B is far more radical: "Replace the phone system. Period."
. . . the phone companies are overestimating the threat of Vonage (which also wants to charge users to talk to one another) and underestimating the threat of Skype (which doesn't.) [If incumbent LECs] succeed in killing off their Plan A competitors, they will strengthen the far more radical challenge from Plan B.
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