""The Long and Winding Road"" wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > right up NRF's alley. Certainly for those considering their futures, > something worth considering as part of the mix. > > http://cookreport.com/11.10.shtml > > Can't afford the un-snipped version right now, but since I work for a telco, > and I recognize the issues described, and have read all the top corporate > executive e-mails that are doled out to us worker bees, I enjoyed the > counter arguments presented here.
There are two parts to this report that I think bear mentioning. One is the future of VoIP. The other is the value (or lack thereof) of present broadband rollouts. VoIP is certainly transforming the way that the PSTN will operate, if slowly (very very slowly). Note, I didn't say voice over the Internet, but rather voice over IP. I believe, for numerous reasons, telcos will choose not to merge their phone services to the Internet, but will rather build out an IP network through which they will deliver services. Stick a telephony feature server on top of a functioning IP network (again, not the Internet, but a private IP network), and you now have a phone system. But that further speaks to the commoditization of IP skills in general and R/S skills specifically. IP networks will simply become a utility, like electric power. How many electric power engineers does a typical company have? Unless you're the electric company, probably zero - electricity is just something that reliably comes out of the wall socket and you use it to plug in your refrigerator. The value-add (ergo the jobs) will go to the people who understand the services that can be layered on top. That's not to say that there will be no jobs for people who know R/S (and only R/S), only that there will be less of them and they will be less pay for them. I do not see a bright future for R/S skills as the IP network becomes more and more commoditized. About broadband - it is absolutely true that the telcos have basically provided something that consumers do not want. Yet I disagree with the idea that the telcos simply need to provide a more symmetric offering to entice consumers. In my experience, consumers do not want broadband regardless of whether it is assymetric or symmetric or whatever. The 2 problems with broadband? Price and reliability. Let's face it, dial is reliable, whereas broadband can and does goes down for weeks at a time (happened to me a bunch of times). Furthermore, the Hart/Winston study showed that most people think that $40-50 a month is too much money to pay. No wonder that despite the fact that broadband is now available at over 80% of households, the take rate for broadband is less than 15% where it is available. Here is the Hart/Winston study. Yes, it's a year old, but not a whole lot has changed in a year. The most damning quote: "Forty-eight percent have no interest regardless of price and another 21 percent are willing to pay at most $20 per month..." http://www.comptel.org/press/nov29_2001_voices.html The biggest problem with broadband? Simple. There is no mass-market app that actually requires broadband. Most people are perfectly happy with dial. After all, what do they do on the Internet - surf a few pages, send a few emails, do some instant messaging - all low-impact apps. Most regular people (who are mostly nontechnical) simply don't see why they should pay more and put up with a less reliable technology in order to do the things they do a little faster. And again, it's not because they don't know what it means to have a fast connection. A lot of these people work in offices that have good connections, and yet they still don't want it for themselves. Essentially all of the technical people (the geeks) who want broadband have already gotten it, the trick now is to somehow convince all the nontechnical people that broadband is worth it. I hope somebody will finally invent something that will actually convince the masses that broadband is good, for otherwise the telco depression will go on and on. > > -- > TANSTAAFL > "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=59245&t=59245 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
