isen.blog

My friend Alex Goldman, a reporter for ISP-Planet, wrote up a too-kind account of my keynote at Jupiter's Wi-Fi Planet keynote in June. A few excerpts:

David Isenberg earned permanent cred when, in his essay "The Rise of the Stupid Network" he told AT&T that they were building the wrong network, that the network of the future would be flexible, changeable, and programmable, unlike the proprietary, closed, and purpose built POTS network. He called the network of the future the "stupid network." It was 1997 and he worked for Bell Labs, who immediately tried to suppress the report (and failed). He now runs an independent, eponymous prosultantcy.

and

Isenberg said, "three years after the acute phase of the telecoms crisis, companies continue to struggle. There is no controlled or planned rollout of products and services. There is no 20 year or 30 year capital investment. Companies are rolling out small mobile devices that are replaceable and cheap."

The biggest companies, he said, are in trouble. "The dominant telcos, such as SBC, Verizon, and Qwest, are losing their base, sitting on obsolete networks . . . CLECs are up in smoke. They were created by a figment of Congressional imagination, as if competition could replace a state sanctioned monopoly . . . The cable TV companies are risk averse, they dislike competition, and I believe that even cable modems are about to hit an invisible ceiling of corporate fear that will ensure they never deliver TVoIP . . . The cellcos are now struggling too. Their ARPU is static. They love the walled network and will never let their 'value proposition' get away from them. Their idea of a killer app is a downloadable ringtone."

Isenberg's use of the term "stupid network" is confusing to some people [but t]he meta goal here is simple, "any application over any network."

Close enough.

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