Let me take a stab at explaining Google's grand strategy.

My friends at ZDNet call this the Google PC, or a network computer.

Well, sort of. You may, instead of buying Microsoft Office, suscribe to Google's GMail and have a rudimentary office system with a gigabyte or two of storage.

But to say Google is going after Microsoft, the way we said Microsoft was going after IBM, is really to damn with faint praise.

If that were all there were to it, why would Google be planning on building out WiFi, or build out an optical network?

Google isn't aiming at Microsoft, or at IBM. It's aiming at the entire computing-telecommunications complex, building out what I'll call the Google TeleComputing Environment.

The idea is to take advantage of not only the Internet's ability to disintermediate clients, but its ability to disintermediate the phone network at the same time, and to do this in an entirely open source way.

What do I mean? Here are the ingredients:

• Universally-accessible applications, based on search.
• Universally-acessible networks, at broadband speeds.
• Universally-competitive systems, worldwide.

Google is flattening the world. More on what this means after the flip.

Continue reading "Google Flattens the World"

Americans are finally following the rest of the world toward the controlled interface of the cellular phone.

This has profound implications. Mobile carriers are not Internet Service Providers. They control where you go and what you do on their networks. They act as gatekeepers, and take a proprietary attitude toward every bit transmitted.

The difference between the Internet and a mobile network is like the difference between a downtown city center and a shopping mall. There is nothing inherently wrong with a shopping mall, but it is controlled by the mall owner, and everything which happens there must be aimed at making the mall owner (and his tenants) money, all assumptions of liberty to the contrary.

In other words, cellular turns the Internet into a shopping mall, neutering it, and making it solely a means toward a commercial end.

Thus, is has been difficult for mobile (Americans call it cellular) to gain the kind of reach and use that we find even in Africa. But that is changing:

Continue reading "The Internet as Shopping Mall"

The winds of change are blowing hurricane-force in Washington. Every politician in town knows it. So the natural inclination is to push the envelope as far as possible, knowing that it will be pulled back fairly quickly.

This is as true regarding the Internet as anywhere else. The Bell-cable duopoly hangs by a thread. Wireless ISPs have Moore's Law on their side. The incumbents need something very strong to counter.

This is precisely what they're going for with a bill in the House that would raise entry barriers to the sky and prevent independent ISPs from ever gaining a market toehold. (That's the chairman of the committee proposing the legislation, Joe Barton, up above.)

Naturally they call it "pro-competitive," but in the Orwellian Washington of today those with a Clue should never listen to what they say but look at what they do.

The bill is also filled with goodies for broadcasters and TV networks, such as:

Continue reading "Gittin' While the Gittin's Good"

Skype, like most VOIP companies, is a tax arbitrage play.

The idea is that you avoid the tax costs of telephony by running your voice calls over an Internet connection. As everyone gets broadband, telephone service dies a natural death.

But neither the Bells, nor the governments they feed, are willing to go away quietly. I've written often about how it's done here. But it's done everywhere.

The same day eBay announced it would buy Skype, China started cracking down harder on Skype, and its Internet-Phone version SkypeOut. Unlike the situation with, say, Falun Gong, this is an effort where telephone firms are, not reluctant, but eager co-conspirators.

Continue reading "Why eBay-Skype Could Be AOL-Time Warner"

The folks at Google write that they've appointed Vinton Cerf as their Chief Internet Evangelist, and brag on his nickname "Father of the Internet."

But what is he going to do? And what can he accomplish?

While Cerf was a fine engineer in his day, his record as an executive leaves a lot to be desired. Those with memories recall that he was with MCI all through the Worldcom disaster. He gave speeches, he took awards, and he had nothing to do with the fraud. He was out of the loop.

He was lipstick on that pig.

Will he be any closer to the loop at Google? Or does this mean Google is about to turn itself into another MCI?

The sad fact is that Google is rapidly becoming a bureaucratized mess. Current CEO Eric Schmidt ignored Blogger, he gave his corporate credibility a padding, he has loaded up on his personal fortune and generally made a hash of those things it was in his power to make a hash of.

Continue reading "Vinton What's the Frequency?"

Om Malik has a wise commentary today on how peer-to-peer services (p2p) is the killer app for broadband.

He offers a Cachelogic chart showing how p2p services (but more specifically eDonkey) are driving total Internet traffic. In fact, more than half the total Internet traffic monitored by Cachelogic, according to the chart, is eDonkey traffic. (The illustration was copied from Malik's blog, but credit should go to Cachelogic.)

Then Malik makes some really key points (boldfacing is mine):

• In the long term, however P2P traffic if not managed properly is going to become a big problem.
  
• The explosion in P2P traffic is going to have an impact on the people who don’t use the P2P services as well.
  
• Due to P2P’s symmetrical nature on average 80% of upstream capacity is consumed by P2P.
  

Continue reading "The Killer App for Broadband"

If you have a mobile phone, and it claims you have Internet service on it, you may not.

Mobile service providers have become increasingly aggressive in stopping access to services and sites they don't like, writes DeWayne Hendrick.

This is especially true for Vodafone, which owns half of Verizon Wireless of the U.S. (Verizon, in turn, has been the most aggressive in pursuing the "Walled Garden" approach here.)

According to DeWayne, Vodafone has summarily blocked access to all Voice over IP services, and even the main page of Skype, a VOIP procider. In the UK Vodafone is blocking access to all content that isn't "Vodafone-approved." (Translation: anything that might lose money for Vodafone.)

Continue reading "Mobile "Internet" Service Isn't"

One sad headline from this year is how Google has become so opaque and observers so suspicious that its moves are now studied the way Microsoft once was.

CEO Eric Schmidt did neither himself nor his company any favors when he cut-off News.Com reporters, after one of them questioned the privacy implications of the service by Googling him.

The launch of Google Talk (in beta) and the official launch of Google Mail (out of beta) sent this into overdrive.

I contributed with a positive comment on Google Talk, helped by a Pakistani friend. Other observers noted how Google Mail is now open to cellphones.

But not all the commentary was positive, either to myself or to Google. In fact, ZDNet colleague (and longtime friend) Russell Shaw gave me a right padding:

Continue reading "Google-ology"

NOTE: Many of the claims made in the item below have been questioned by Russell Shaw. See the full story here.

It's ironic, but my first invitation to use Google Talk came from Pakistan. From Karachi, actually.

Specifically it was from a long-time online friend named Tariq Mustafa (known as Tee Emm), who works in the high-tech sector there.

I am really excited on this Google IM thing (and so would be tens of millions of users very soon). I think I was ahead of you just because of the time-zone difference. Anyway, here is the summary I wanted to share with you of the excitement.

Why the excitement? IM has been around for ages.

The excitement is because this isn't really IM. Or it's not just IM. It's VOIP, integrated from the start with IM.

What this does is absolutely kill international long distance in a way Skype only dreamt of. I'm actually a naive user, but I was able to download, and load, a VOIP client (with IM) in less than a minute.

So can anyone else, anywhere else.

More from Tariq after the break.

Continue reading "Google's VOIP Play"

David Berlind, one of my bosses over at ZDNet, came up with an incredible statistic recently that deserves a lot more play than it got.

His source on this is Bob Frankston, co-founder of Visicalc and one of those great online friends I've never met personally. (As you can see by this picture, he's also well on his way to being a Truly Handsome Man (that is to say bald)).

Here's the key bit, as Berlind saw it:

By Frankston's calculations, for example, Verizon is reserving 99 percent of its government-ordained right of way (in the form of bandwidth that should be available to us as well as its competitors) for itself so that it may compete in the IPTV market.

Frankston's got the whole story, in hiw own words, here.

More on the flip.

Continue reading "Artificial Scarcity"

Birds are twittering about Verisign's moves to integrate WiFi, VOIP and cellular over campus-wide networks.

The idea is to give cellular carriers their own "triple play" -- combining paid WiFi (through controlled real estate), VOIP (long distance) and cellular service on one bill.

I understand why Verisign is on to this. What I don't understand is why the carriers are getting in bed with them.

Continue reading "Verisign, Cellular a match made in heaven (Not)"

The fastest way to save energy in this country is to build-out the Local Web. (The illustration is from the PRBlog, in a story about a local Web conflict.)

Every day I find limits in the local Web. Right now, for instance, I need a USB Bluetooth connector for my laptop. It's on the Staple's Web site, but delivery is three days away, and it's not at Staple's. It's on the Best Buy Web site, but it's not at the local Best Buy. I'm going to Fry's tomorrow (a 40-mile roundtrip) and if it's not there I'll have to wait for delivery.

All this driving would not be necessary if local inventories were rourtinely tied to Web sites (as they sometimes are at BestBuy.Com). That's one Local Web application.

There are many others.

Continue reading "The Best Way to Save Gas"

Verizon has begun selling one of the dumbest machines I've ever seen, a "DSL modem," (their term), wireless router and cordless phone combination dubbed Verizon One.

Essentially this ties together the obsolete telephone network with the Internet Verizon is actually selling and tells customers it's the same thing. It pushes fancy PBX capabilities on residential customers who don't need them. (Just to make things a little better, it locks them into its cellular service, too.)

The FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) can be easily seen in the phrase "DSL modem." DSL is a digital service. It doesn't need modulation or demodulation to trick an analog line into taking a digital connection, which is what a modem does. It is an oxymoron.

Dave Burstein wrote in to say this is a Westell device. Westell has a long history of making things on-demand for phone companies, so Verizon gets all the "credit" for this piece of nonsense.

What's ironic is I happen to know Verizon was talking to Netopia two years ago about a massive contract for DSL gateways that would have been far superior to this piece of nonsense. (Here's a 2001 press release, delivered in the early days of the relationship.) I have one of these gateways in my house now, a review unit. What would have made them powerful was a promised co-branded service providing full security to home users, saving them as much as $200/year on "security suites" from various software vendors. (There are currently no Netopia press releases, going back to 2002, referencing Verizon.)

More on what a truly clued-in person feels after the break.

Continue reading "Verizon's Futuristic "Vision""

The Computer Science and Telecommunication Board has released a fairly Clueful report on the Domain Name System that manages the Internet.

Unfortunately the Bush Administration has, on the very day the report came out, moved to undercut its key recommendation.

Here's the key bit:

Before completing the transfer of its stewardship to ICANN (or any other organization), the Department of Commerce should seek ways to protect that organization from undue commercial or governmental pressures and to provide some form of oversight of performance.

The report, in other words, supports ICANN under the U.S. government because it sees this as keeping ICANN independent of government or commercial interests. Moving toward ICANN's independence is desireable, the report says, in order to minimize the perception that the U.S. government is controlling the Internet.

So far, so good.

Continue reading "Bush Cuts Off DNS Intelligence"

A number of items have come across my desk today advertising cool mobile stuff, but failing to offer anything resembling a business model.

Here is one of them -- Navizon.

It's advertised as a "peer to peer location service" combining "WiFi, cellular and GPS." But what exactly are you supposed to do with it? Where are the applications that will get Navizon's money out, let alone a profit? No clue.

Continue reading "In Search of...Wireless Business Models"

I was giving more thought to yesterday's rumors of Cisco buying Nokia (or part of it).

The more I thought about it, the more I realized there is a very smart M&A move Cisco could make on today's technology board, something that would give it an infusion of both technology and backbone, plus get it into the mobile markets it seems so hot for.

Buy Broadcom.

Broadcom is worth over $14 billion, but that's barely 10% of what Cisco is worth today. Institutions hold two-thirds of Broadcom's shares.

But what's in it for Cisco? Plenty.

Continue reading "A Better Move for Cisco"

Intel holds the telecommunications balance of power in its hand.

Here's how The Register puts it, with its usual hyperbole:

Intel is throwing its financial, technical and lobbying weight behind the rising tide of municipally run broadband wireless networks, seeing these as a way to stimulate uptake of Wi-Fi and WiMAX and so sell more of its chips and increase its influence over the communications world.

And Intel is not going to back down. As ZDNet notes today, there's money to be made.

Continue reading "Intel Fights the Power"

Coke and Pepsi do not represent competition. It's a shared monopoly, the Drinks Trust.

The same is true for Wal-Mart and Target, Home Depot and Lowe's, and, to cut to the chase, your phone and cable companies.

By endorsing duopoly calling "competition" what is in fact a Trust, new FCC chair Kevin Martin has shown us clearly where the Bushies stand. Those who believe in competitive markets that can compete in the world need to digest this.

And Martin's model for the Internet policy? China.

So, do you want to be an ISP?

There is only one way to do it now. You have to be a WISP. You have to connect WiFi to WiMax, and reach competitive fiber.

Otherwise you're officially dead.

The FCC ruled, over Friday and Saturday, that Bell companies no longer have to wholesale their lines to competitive ISPs. They don't even have to charge competitive prices for backhaul to the Internet. They essentially repealed the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

Those phonr lines that were built with government-controlled monopoly powers over decades? They're now the sole property of four corporate entities. And they can do with this monopoly power whatever they want.

Continue reading "The WiMax Imperative"

The question of Wi-Fi and real estate is about to come to a head, at Boston's Logan Airport. (Picture from MIT.)

Declan McCullagh reports that the Airport is trying to close Continental Air's free WiFi service, based in its Frequent Flyer lounge, in favor of a paid service on which it gets a 20% cut of revenue.

Continental has appealed to the FCC under the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Massport, which runs the airport, is making bogus arguments about security (its paid service uses the same spectrum as Continental so if one goes under its argument, both go).

If this thing goes to trial it will be a very important case. Here's why.

Continue reading "Wi-Fi and Real Estate"

Two really stupid predications crossed my desk this morning. (The image is by Katie Guenther. From the University of Vermont.)

1. Laptops are about to be replaced by mobile phones.
   
2. Mobile phones are going to take the music download market from the iPod.
   

While a straight look at technology and the desires of consumers could lead you to these conclusions, they're dumber than dirt.

Let's start with the first one.

Even if people start leaving their laptops at home, laptop sales are not threatened by mobile phones, because laptops are replacing desktops. It's basic ergonomics. Where does your lap go when you stand up? If you're standing, or walking, you can't use a laptop, you have to use some sort of handheld device. As PDA functionality moves into phones, as the two markets merge, then, yes, phones become the handheld of choice. But that doesn't mean they replace laptops. It means they replace PDAs.

Now for the second prediction.

Continue reading "Dumb Predictions"

Rebecca McKimmon (left, from her blog) took a shot at Cisco's China policy recently, confirming through a spokesman that the company does indeed cooperate with the government.

This is not news. So does nearly every other U.S. tech company.

The U.S. policy is, and has been, full engagement with China. This has already hurt Cisco. Back in the 1990s one of the prices for getting into the market was to share technology. Cisco did so, and a few years later Huawei, a Chinese company, had routers and bridges very similar to Cisco's old stuff, along with most of the Asian market (thanks to lower prices).

McKimmon's point now is that China Cisco is cooperating with the worst excesses of the China government, which is seeking to have both the world's best Internet technology and full control over what people do with it.

That is a good point, but I don't think you don't go after Cisco to make it.

Continue reading "Cheap Shot in a Good Cause"

Let's review.

The Bells promised to serve us broadband if we let them run over Wireless ISPs. Done. No broadband.

So they promised us broadband if we would give them absolute control over their lines, ending any requirement for wholesaling. Done. No broadband.

Then they promised us broadband if we'd stop cities from buildig out wireless networks that might compete with them. Nearly done. Still no broadband.

Now, Qwest is pushing a plan in Congress to tax your broadband access and hand it the money, promising broadband in rural areas.

It's amazing anyone would believe such hollow promises, given the history. Color Democrat Byron Dorgan and Republican Gordon Smith (both represent areas covered by Qwest) as believers. The National Journal reports the two Senators are working together on just a Qwest-subsidy bill.

Here's a quote from the National Journal article:

Aides to Smith said the bill would make money in the Universal Service Fund available so telecommunications providers could build out broadband facilities. "It would be built into the same structure, and might end up as a stand-alone fund, within the current system next to the high-cost fund," an aide said.

Here's why this is not only theft, but stupid.

Continue reading "Qwest Seeks Yet More Subsidies"

I was giving more thought to a recent item, based on Joi Ito's brilliant piece on The Internets, and it occurred to me that the fight for "One Internet" has, in many ways, already been lost.

(The term Balkanize, or Balkanization, is often used in English to refer to this splitting up, which often (as in the 1990s) is accompanied by enormous violence. This picture of the Balkans as they are today is from Theodora.com.)

Think about it. How often do you use a Web site outside your own country? If you're an American, the answer is not very often. This is true for most people.

A lot more follows.

Continue reading "The Web is Already Balkanized"

Americans pay more for less broadband service than citizens of any other industrial country, and our take-up rate for fast Internet service is approaching Third World levels.

The reason? Lack of competition. Phone and cable networks, created under government control, have been made the private monopolies of corporate interests whose lobbyists dominate all capitals against the public interest.

Does new FCC chairman Kevin Martin see any of this? No. Just the opposite, in fact.

The Supreme Court affirmed the FCC's decision to refrain from regulating cable companies' provision of broadband services. This was an important victory for broadband providers and consumers. Cable companies will continue to have incentives to invest in broadband networks without fear of having to provide their rivals access at unfair discounts. The decision also paves the way for the FCC to place telephone companies on equal footing with cable providers. We can now move forward and remove the legacy regulation that reduces telephone companies' incentives to provide broadband.

This is Orwell's FCC. Monopoly is called competition. Martin claims there is intense competition from Wireless ISPs and satellite providers, when in fact those companies are being driven out of the market. The vast majority of consumers and businesses today have just two choices for broadband -- their local phone monopoly and local cable monopoly, who together enjoy a duopoly and monopoly profits that lets them write-down their 30-year property in a world best served by three-year write-offs.

There's more spin after the break.

Continue reading "Orwell's FCC Chair"

The Supreme Court has decided that cable networks, created under government franchises, under monopoly conditions, are entirely the property of their corporate owners who don't have to wholesale. (That's the BrandX rocket ship -- they lost the case. What follows is directed to them as much as anyone else.)

Some ISPs bemoaned this bitterly. In the near term it means most of us have two choices for broadband service, the local Bell and the local Cable Head-End, both known for poor service, high prices, and loaded with equipment it will take decades to write off.

Smart folks, however, should be celebrating.

Continue reading "The OTHER Supreme Court Decision"

Glenn Fleishman shared a piece he freelanced to The New York Times whose point is, simply, that even free WiFi needs a business model.

The story is about how some coffee houses are turning off the WiFi because they don't like the fact that their shops become offices. People shut up around WiFi. They bring in their PCs, turn on, and tune out the world around them. They may buy a coffee (increasingly they don't) but that's all you're going to get out of them.

Coffee shops and restaurants have beren the leaders in the WiFi "hotspot" movement based on the assumption they will be good for business, that people who WiFi also eat and drink.

Turns out we don't. Not that much, anyway. And we don't leave the table, either.

All of which leaves these shops without a valid business model. Would those using free WiFi object too much if they grabbed a piece of your browser's real estate and forced ads on you while you worked? How about if they put in a WiFi tip jar? I'm open to suggestions here.

Continue reading "Even Free WiFi Needs a Business Model"

When evolution accelerates size becomes a disadvantage.

It's true in nature, and it's true in technology as well.

The Bells (and Comcast) are the big bottlenecks in our technology universe. With Moore's Law sweeping through the telecomm landscape they are competitive liabilities in our economic ecosystem.

There is no malice in saying this. The Bells can't help being pointy-headed bosses. They are bureaucrats. Their loyalty is to the inside of their system, not to the customer. In a stable environment the ability to retain such people is a boon. In an unstable one it's disaster.

More proof comes today from Techdirt. It's a so-called BellSouthWiMax trial. But it isn't WiMax. It isn't new technology. It's an excuse to keep charging $110/month for DSL ($60 for the phone line) when the phone component is (with VOIP) unnecessary.

Continue reading "Dana's Law of Bellheads"

The 1990s were all about the Internet. (The picture is from a great site called i-Learnt, for teachers interested in technology.)

This decade is all about gadgets.

Digital cameras, musical phones, PSPs, iPods -- these are the things that define our time. While they can be connected to networks their functions are mainly those of clients.

In some ways it's a "back to the future" time for technology. We haven't had such a client-driven decade since the 1970s, when it was all about the PC.

In some ways this was inevitable. The major network trend is wireless, so we need a new class of unwired clients.

But in some ways this was not inevitable. If we had more robust local connectivities than the present 1.5 Mbps downloads (that's the normal local speed limit) we would have many more opportunities to create networked applications.

Continue reading "The Gadget Era"

For my ZDNet blog this morning I interviewed Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project asking how the Internet should be governed.

The real problem is that most users, especially most Americans, don't believe it should be governed at all.

But it is governed.

The Internet is governed by the U.S. government, through ICANN, so anything the U.S. wants goes, and everyone else can go scratch. If the U.S. wants to violate the privacy of foreigners it does so. If it wants servers shut down -- even in other countries -- they're shut down. And all the "taxes" earned from site registration goes to those favored by the U.S. security apparatus.

In the 1990s there was a bit of whispering about this. But now those whispers have become a roar, because this government's obsessions with its own security (at the expense of everyone else's) and "intellectual property" (a phrase that does not appear in its Constitution) are becoming too much to bear.

That's why the ITU and the UN are sniffing around the issues involved in taking control of the root DNS away from ICANN. The coup would occur by these groups simply rolling their own, turning them on, and having member states point to them, instead of those offered by ICANN.

At first you wouldn't notice. But very shortly, as ITU and U.S. policies began to diverge there would be two Internets. Americans wouldn't be able to reach ITU pointers not recognized by ICANN roots, and vice versa for everyone else.

In a way it's already happening.

Continue reading "Should the Internet be Governed?"

A corporate blog may reveal more than you want to without revealing anything at all. (That's PR Blogger Klaus Eck.)

In order to succeed a blog must be spontaneous, fun, news-oriented and irreverent. If it sounds like a corporate communication it will be treated as such, and either be ignored or laughed-at.

There is a risk the blogger may reveal more than you want known, about corporate strategy or what you're really up to. And, let's face it, most corporations are sausage factories, on the order of Ricky Gervais' The Office or Scott Adams' Dilbert.

How can you avoid this? Some good advice follows:

Continue reading "Seven Rules for Corporate Blogs"

You probably don't know this but Canada is in a world of hurt right now. And it's about to get worse.

The hurt is of self-inflicted. The governing Liberal Party is caught up in scandal , and the opposition is very regional - a Bush-like party based in the middle provinces, seperatists in Quebec and socialists in British Columbia.

But the big problem isn't political. It's regulatory.

Continue reading "Oy, Canada"

One thing I got my first crack at over the weekend was the actual practice of Wi-Fi-in'. (The picture comes from a Free WiFi hotspot list site.)

While I have had WiFi in my home for years now I only recently got a laptop that can truly take advantage of it on the road. I brought it to Nashville with me.

Wi-Fi'-in means opening up the box, booting up, and hoping for an unsecured 802.11 connection you can log into. It's best done in a city, preferably close to a University campus. But don't expect to do this on the campus itself -- most college systems these days are secured, at least by passwords.

It was amazing to me how lost and alone I felt when I couldn't find a free spot around me. My hotel advertised the service, but during the day the radio waves couldn't reach my room. (This is a fact of life with radio -- the bands are all more crowded during the day.) As I noted the campus where I was hanging on Friday had their access password-protected, and I'm not into breaking-and-surfing (yet).

But all was not lost. I was about to learn a powerful lesson.

Continue reading "Wi-Fi-in'"

The secret's out.

Intel is re-interpreting Moore's Law. Not repealing it. Not rejecting it.

They're reinterpreting it. That's the significance of the change incoming CEO Paul Otellini (right) is making.

Before Moore's Law was like Samuel Gomper's famous quote about what labor wanted. More. More circuits, more speed, more cycles, more bits. More.

This led to mistakes like the Itanium, which Intel is still living down.

As of today Intel's new direction is better. Better doesn't always mean more. In the case of microprocessors it can mean putting more computers on each chip (multi-core) or running with lower power. In terms of communications it can mean a host of attributes, from security to coverage to throughput.

Continue reading "Intel's New Direction"

The strength of an economy, like that of a society, depends on social mobility. That means the poor can rise to wealth. It also means the wealthy can end up poor. (This old cartoon, from what folks like to call THE Ohio State University, pre-dates Wal-Mart by generations.)

A recent online conversation with Vijay Gill brought this home to me. The topic was actually our recent piece on The Myth of Scarcity. I liked it, posted it to Dave Farber's list, and Vijay responded quite thoughtfully, his point being that telecommunications is hard, some parts are scarce, and real technical knowledge is even scarcer. Maintaining total connectivity in the last mile without protecting the monopoly is harder than I make it sound.

This set me thinking in two directions at once.

Continue reading "Social Mobility"

The bidding war between Verizon and Qwest for MCI is based on a myth of scarcity. That is, both think they can make the deal pay by squeezing customers for the scarce resources represented by the MCI network.

Moores Law of Fiber rendered that inoperative many years ago. There is no shortage of fiber backbone capacity. And there are ample replacements for Plain Old Telephone Service -- not just cable but wireless.

The myth on which this deal is based is, simply, untrue.

Yet the myth persists, and not just in the telecommunications business.

Continue reading "The Myth of Scarcity"

I have not written much about Voice Over IP in this space because I'm not an expert in it. (Yes, I hear you say, this never stopped you before.)

Actually I didn't think I had anything original to add to the conversation. I still don't. But I want to point you to someone who does.

That someone is Tom Evslin (left). Evslin recently completed a wonderful series on the economics, politics, past and future of VOIP, on his blog, which I heartily recommend to anyone interested in this area.

Evslin calls this year a "flipping point" driven bythe mass distribution of VOIP software. It's not really free although, once you have your set-up, each call carries no incremental cost. The market battle between Skype and Vonage are driven by Metcalfe's Law, control of end points. Evslin offers the best explanation I've yet seen of Skype and its business model, which is rapidly evolving into an alternative phone network.

I have one suggestion.

Continue reading "Last Word on VOIP"

The political battle over WiFi shapes up as a classic match between private interests and the commons.

But it is in fact a battle over real estate. (Thus, the balloon, which is the logo of a very innovative real estate brokerage.)

Verizon pulled a bait-and-switch on New York phone booths. It installed 802.11 equipment based on the promise of free WiFi service on adjoining streets, then pulled them all back into its paid network.

Politically this makes no sense. In real estate terms it makes perfect sense.

The challenge to this looks technological, but it's really political. You can see this challenge by simply turning on your WiFi equipped laptop.

Continue reading "WiFi Ground War"

Back in the 1990s a lot of Americans wasted a lot of bandwidth worrying about the Digital Divide.

Americans were wealthy. We could afford PCs and fast networks. Those poor black and brown people were being left behind by the future. There were even proposals that Americans tax themselves so that poor people could get broadband faster.

Now, a decade later, the digital divide is back.

And this time Americans are on the other side of it.

Our broadband networks now stand 13th in the world, behind those of our trade rivals. Chinese, Japanese and Koreans are being offered speeds and prices we can only dream of. Asian cellular networks are years ahead of those here, and mobile broadband is common. In the most remote parts of Africa, cellphones are being turned into makeshift phone kiosks, or simply rented on a per-call basis, so folks can stay in touch with markets and the growing world economy.

Meanwhile, a decade of growing monopolism in this country means broadband take-up is now below the rates elsewhere. Cellular networks are two years behind those in Asia. You pay more to get less bandwidth than people in most of the world, and the situation is getting worse.

Continue reading "The New Digital Divide"

In The Lost Point, I wrote that Google risked being outmanuevered because it didn't pay proper attention to Blogger.

Today Duncan Riley of The Blog Herald goes further. He says the game is already over, that Microsoft won, that the field is consolidating into the three big portal players so Movable Type needs to sell out to Yahoo, quick.

Riley is right as far as he goes.

But if you click below, we'll go a bit further.

Continue reading "Two Blogging Markets"

In politics a committed minority usually wins. (The lobbyist image originally appeared in New York's Gotham Gazzette, but I found it at Italy's e-laser.)

That's because, on most issues, there is no majority view. Most people don't care.

Learning an issue, and becoming committed to it, teaches you the source code of politics.

If your organization is tightly-knit, if your issues are driven by corporate interests, then your politics is closed source. On issues that mainly interest businesses this is determinative. Lobbyists and financial contributions fight and often come to settlements that aren't half bad. Traditionally most issues before regulators, from the EPA and FTC to the FDA and FCC, have been closed-source arguments.

If your organization is loosely knit, and if your issues are driven by personal feeling, then your politics is open source. Open source politics defines social issues, and the numbers involved in turn drive American politics as a whole. Politicians can win with only committed minorities on their side, if those minorities stand united.

What happens when closed source and open source politics collide? It depends on how much real interest those on the open source end can manage.

This collision is now apparent in telecommunications.

Continue reading "The Open Source Political Challenge"

The success of Google has been based on the fact that technology drives its train. Technical success is the most-sought value.

This is becoming a problem.

In many of the new businesses Google has launched, technical values (while important) are not going to be the sole drivers of success. In blogging, in RSS, in Google News, in Google Desktop, in Google Local, and in other areas, other skills are required.

Business skills. Marketing schools. Journalism skills. Political skills. Artistic skills.

Leonardo DaVinci (celebrated above) could not get a job at Google today. In a well-rounded company, his genius would find a place.

The need for these various skills will only increase with time. Google must find a way to recruit these skills, and to reward these skills, without giving the people with these skills control of the company.

This will not be easy.

Continue reading "The Crisis at Google (and how to solve it)"

There was a gratifying reaction to my calling out Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg the other day.

But here's a question no one asks, and getting in tune with Seidenberg's arrogance actually keeps us from asking this.

What's he buying in MCI? For $6.7 billion it's not much.

Then again, maybe it's everything.

Continue reading "Verizon Buying the Internet Core"

The hole is the whole U.S.

Intel plans on mass producing WiMax chips and going into rapid deployment, offering end-user speeds far in excess of what U.S. phone outfits provide with DSL.

The problem is that's the speed limit for most backhauls. Go to most WiFi hotspots, or most home networks, and DSL is the backhaul platform. We're talking 1.5 Mbps, max.

Continue reading "The Hole In Intel's WiMax Strategy"

In a remarkable interview with Todd Wallack published this weekend in the San Francisco Chronicle, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg (left) reveals the arrogance and contempt for competition inherent in the Bell System.

Municipal WiFi? "One of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard," he said. "It sounds like a good thing, but the trouble is someone will have to design it, someone will have to upgrade it, someone will have to maintain it and someone will have to run it."

Exactly. Someone else.

Continue reading "Shut Up And Pay, Peasant"

A Cachelogic study claims two-thirds of Internet traffic is now P2P, by implication the trading of copyrighted files. (That's a Cachelogic product there to the left.)

But is this just another Marty Rimm study?

Rimm, you may or may not remember, wrote a paper at Georgetown Law in 1995 claiming 85% of Web traffic was dirty pictures. This was later disproved, but the damage was done and Congress passed the ill-fated Communications Decency Act.

Mike Godwin, the former EFF counsel who fought the Rimm study and is now senior counsel at Public Knowledge, remains skeptical, noting that the Cachelogic study hasn't gone through peer review. He also notes that, since Cachelogic sells systems to control P2P traffic, it has a natural bias.

The Cachelogic claims may have logic behind them, however. Many ISPs do report that over half their traffic is on ports commonly used by P2P applications. Brett Glass of Lariat.Net, near the University of Wyoming, says the claim seems accurate, noting that unless ISPs cut-back capacity to those ports (a process called P2P Mitigation), the applications quickly discover the fat pipe and divert everyone's traffic to it, filling it at the cost of thousands per month.

And that is at the heart of the problem.

Continue reading "The Real P2P Threat"

Evidence is increasing of a backlash against mobile phones and the behavior of those who over-use them. (The image comes from a page on celliquette from Indianchild.com.)

• Increasing numbers of people are actually faking calls, either to embarrass people, impress them, or just make them go away.
• The most popular ringtone? It's the sound of a ringing phone says MatrixM, which has no reason to lie about this since they sell ringtones.
• The heavily-hyped IDC mobility study indicates nearly 20% of mobile consumers consider themselves "minimalists," with basic needs, no desire for frills, and a great need for comfort and simplicity.

What is the meaning of all this?

Continue reading "Mobile Phone Backlash"

Lenin named his small movement the Bolsheviks, a word meaning majority. He called his majority opponents Mensheviks, a word meaning minority.

The point is that if one side is large and undisciplined while the other side is smaller but tightly disciplined, the smaller group can win a political struggle.

That seems to be the case with municipal wifi. It's an undeniable good everyone wants. It's relatively cheap to install and maintain. It should be a no-brainer.

But it's losing to telephone monopolies because of lax discipline.

I've gotten a taste of that this week in criticisms of my recent pieces on Philly's WiFi plan.

Continue reading "WiFi Movement in Disarray"

Glenn Fleischman and I disagree so seldom, we both get confused when it happens.

It happened this week when I wrote predicting the failure of Philly's WiFi plan. Glenn says the taxpayers are protected and it all looks good to him. I, on the other hand, have seen Eagles fans.

Long story short I thought it would help if I described what might be a better plan for citywide WiFi. Apologies to those of you who have read this before.

The short answer is WiMax. The long version follows the break.

Continue reading "The Right Way to CityWide WiFi"

I am a big supporter of free WiFi. But Philadelphia's project will go down in history as a failure.

Here's why:

• Costs are already starting to spiral. The build was expected to cost $10 million. Now it's at least $15 million.
• Corruption is a cost of doing business. Someone's already going to jail over graft on the Airport WiFi system. You think no one's going to take a dime here they don't deserve?
• This is paid access. This is not going to benefit the poor people who supported this project. Philly is actually building a WiFi cloud that ISPs and others will re-sell.
• Verizon will sabotage it. As we saw with CLECs in the late 1990s there are lots of ways an incumbent carrier can sabotage a competitor, simply by stalling cooperation. Verizon has every incentive to see this fail, and they're going to make sure it does.

Those are the obvious problems. But wait, there's more:

Continue reading "Why Philly WiFi Will Fail"

If your company runs all its Internet traffic through an internal server, and that server runs Microsoft Windows, then you're vulnerable to a new type of hack known as DNS Cache Poisoning. (The illustration here comes from a Brazilian blog, marketinghacker.br.)

The alert went out about a month ago. The idea has been around for a decade, but it's now being adopted by sophisticated criminal gangs.

Here's how it works.

Criminals break into a Windows server caching DNS requests for an Intranet, then insert instructions redirecting users to poisoned pages. The 12-digit IP address chosen by the criminal is thus linked to a chosen Internet address, and requests for Google.Com (for instance) could go to a site that downloads spyware or key-logging software in the background.

What can be done about it?

Continue reading "DNS Poisoning Threatens Intranets"

Over the years I've been critical of Vint Cerf, one of the original gearheads credited with TCP/IP.

(One look at the hairline, of course, and one must admit he's a Truly Handsome Man. The picture is from Computerhistory.org, a page describing his early work.)

When Cert looks into the future today, he gets it. He understands where we should be going, and perhaps more importantly where we should not be going, in regards to the Internet.

He shared some of that wisdom Wednesday at a dinner called Freedom to Connect.

Following are some of the high points:

Continue reading "We Love Vint Cerf"

Now that you’ve read my latest dismissive screed against the government, the question may have occurred to you.

What might a proper telecommunications policy consist of? (Very pretty flower, I know. Here's where I got it. The picture is called Simplicity