An off-the-record chat with a cableco

I had an interesting talk over the break with the voice product manager for a big cableco. I won't name him or his company because our conversation was at a social function, I wasn't taking notes, and it was not all clear that he was talking for attribution. Still, it was an enlightening chat. He understands that the way his company will prevail over the many competitors in his market is by enhancing the bare pipe with applications. But putting those applications in the network itself only replicates the failed technical and business model that telcos follow; there are very good reasons that IDSN and AT&T TrueVoice (to name but two) took decades to roll out before they failed. Applications need to be in endpoint devices, not in network hubs. For this fellow, that means his cableco will need to get into the gadget business, providing (and maybe selling) add-on boxes to consumers that add functions to simple connectivity. Which functions? He doesn't know yet, but I expect he has some clues that he wasn't sharing. Stay tuned.

For more information about the problem with network-centric applications:
- read this blog from David S. Isenberg