The Cisco Borg in your TV Regardless of your feelings toward Cisco – whether you’ve been absorbed into the Borg or are preserving your precarious freedom on the outside – the company’s CTO in Australia, Kevin Bloch, at least offers that rare combination of enviable technical competence and media-accessibility. So it was that at Cisco Live, an event …
Why exactly does a carrier need to add value? If they are carrying something that the people at each end consider is worth being carried, then surely they just charge a fair price for their service.
I have a water pipe running into my house. I get water out of it. I am happy to pay for that water. The Water Company don't seem to feel a need to 'add value' and sell me orange squash to mix with my water or shower gel or garden sprinklers. They haven't decided to offer a choice of pre-heated hot, cold or mineral water direct from the pipe. Why can't telecoms carriers just provide a good, fair-priced service?
Pen-y-gors. That's a bad analogy. If the water company could deliver you the orange juice or a detergent over the same pipes - they'd do it in a heartbeat. But they can't. They would need a separate set of pipes or 'tubes' to your house. And people understand that, they can visualize the complexity of all these pipes and find it retarded (and costing lots and lots of money). Whereas with the Internets it is hard for a regular Joe to realize that the Internet cannot be visualized in any materialistic fashion and anyone attempting to do so fails miserably. I.e. describing the 'future' technology today with the terminology invented in the 'past' is futile. Nobody gets it. Except for the carriers who exploit the uneducated public and force this crap down the illiterate consumers' throats.
"the water company doesn't feel the need to add value".
True, but misguided. They're not interested in adding value but they are interested in maximizing revenue. This speciality, known as Yield Management, is a relatively recent discipline and explains why your phone and utility bills are so incomprehensible (and why buying a train or airline ticket is like playing the lottery). It also explains why you seem to be both up to your ears in rainwater and in a perpetual drought at the same time -- Yield Management is a polite name for "supply chain manipulation"; the only way to make something valuable is to make it scarce.
So the Aussies have gobs of bandwidth. First task will be to break it into tiers and users into groups so you can start organizing pricing models. Part of this will be news stories -- 'excessive downloading' / 'bandwidth hogs' -- planted by the PR people. Part will be political, lobbying efforts.
Most people still believe there's such a thing as a "free market". Its about as real as the Tooth Fairy.
@ Pen-y-gors - if the water company could figure out a way to do QOS, you can bet your bottom dollar they would. They have quite figured out how to make a switch that'll operate under those conditions though.
I do understand the point, though, and I agree to an extent. All I want from my ISP is bandwidth. Lots and lots of bandwidth. Why? Because I currently use crappy FTA TV, and this week the wind is playing up, and my set top box has lost about half its channels. And what I CAN see looks like crap. Far better to have something delivered over the wire, even if I have to pay for it, no problem.
So I want to be able to look at YouTube, etc. I dont care about any other "offering", I just want the bandwidth. Anything I want, I'm more than capable of getting myself, without needing to see anything from telco's who just repackage existing crap and make you pay double or triple for the privilege.
Until telcos can actually manage their core competency of bandwidth, they should be prevented from other activities. For example, I would like an accurate billing cycle, on time delivery of connections and services, plus a more reasonable price.
After that I will believe they could deliver value add.
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