The Rough Road From Telco To Connection Provider
from the and-so-it-goes... dept
Any telco that didn't see this coming clearly deserves to be in the trouble it's now facing. However, it appears that the old voice cash cow is finally losing steam to mobile phone service and VoIP. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but the fact that Business Week seems to find it a big deal suggests that maybe some of these carriers haven't been paying attention. Any telco that hasn't realized by now that they can no longer afford to just be a "telco" is in trouble. The business to be in these days is to be the "connection provider," whether that's as a wired or wireless broadband provider (and, probably, both). While the article frets about all of these companies losing their voice revenue, it's a fact of life. Smart companies will move on and realize that there are much bigger opportunities in providing a big connection where voice is just one application of many -- and that those applications won't all be provided by the carrier.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
