Telephone over Cable? TV over Phoneline? Internet over Powerline?
Are you confused yet? Don’t fret because BigBrainBoy will explain it all with just two words: DUMB PIPE.
There is a massive war taking place just outside your door. You may not even be aware of it and yet it dwarfs the cola wars in its scope and intensity. For many years people have been fighting to bring services into homes and businesses. Telecommunications companies fought to bring in copper wires for phone service, cable companies fought to bring coax and so on and so forth. But now nearly each of these “lines” including power lines can provide Internet connectivity. Does it matter to you if you use satellite or cable to use eBay? Of course not.
SBC, the No. 2 U.S. telecommunications company, plans to spend about $5 billion over the next three years to build and connect customers to a high-speed data network designed to handle video, voice and Internet access over one line.
Where this gets really complicated is that once you have access to the net you can use all sorts of third party services. Don’t like your local phone company? Just dump ‘em and use Vonage instead. If you’re a cable company you are beginning to drool because now you have a legitimate reason to get customers to dump phone lines. Telecoms haven’t missed the party either. They realize that they can stream video over their internet connections eliminating any reason to have cable installed in the home. Even the power companies are getting in on the act.
What does this all mean? All this competition inevitably leads to one conclusion: as each service provider trample over each other to provide you with broadband net access they render themselves more irrelevant. Should you get DSL via SBC or cable via Adelphia? It doesn’t matter because you are no longer going to be dependent on them for services, they just become a big, DUMB PIPE. Well, five to ten years down the line that is…
