Technology Futures

The FCC released another ruling on VoIP. The Federal Communications Commission has barred states from imposing telecom regulations on Voice over IP telephony providers.

This is additional good news for businesses and consumers who are saving money by using VoIP services (estimated to be well over 4 million customers). State and local taxes on telephone services with no local infrastructure or presence is simply taxation without representation in another form, and revenue-hungry governments ought to keep their hands off VoIP. Taxing things like that just makes the state or locality less competitive globally and retards economic development.

Unfortunately, the FCC has still not ruled on whether VoIP is an information service or a telephone service. If it is considered a telephone service, VoIP would be subject to the no longer relevant telephone regulation of the last century. But so far, the FCC rulings on VoIP have all been in the right direction.

I had the privilege of attending what I think was a historic and potentially revolutionary meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Tuesday. The provincial government had convened an all day conversation about the broadband needs of rural communities, and how to best get affordable broadband connections to those communities.

It was Garth Graham, one of the real pioneers of the community technology movement, who grabbed me after lunch and pointed out that as far as he knew, it was the first time ever that four different groups of people met in the same room to talk about rural broadband problems. Represented at the meeting were:

• Provincial government leaders, who had convened the meeting and wanted to explore ways to use the telecom buying power of the provincial government to get better broadband services into rural communities.
• Large and small telecom access and service providers, including the incumbent telecom providers Bell and Telus.
• Community network managers and leaders; in British Columbia, community networks play a key role in providing Internet access in rural parts of the country, and collectively they have thousands of customers.
• Community leaders, who were there to share their needs, goals, and aspirations, and to learn about what they can do to get affordable broadband to their communities more quickly.

It was a remarkable meeting, with open, frank, and stimulating dialogue from all four groups. The fact that it happened, that so many people attended (over 50 people), and that there was such honest speaking, listening, and understanding, suggests that we have truly turned a corner in beginning to identify and actually implement community telecom solutions that have a chance of meeting both public needs (the common good) and private needs (increasing shareholder value).

The group agreed that more meetings were needed to hash out details, but there was remarkable consensus that the problem is largely one of policy, administration, and management, and that this is not a technology problem, in the sense that it is NOT a matter of just picking wireless, or fiber, or Gigabit Ethernet, or so on. All parties agreed that communities and regions need some new and yet to be determined entity to help with telecommunications issues (infrastructure, access, services, policy, regulation).

British Columbia has long been a leader in this area, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to witness history in the making. If British Columbia is able to provide some working examples of new ways for public and private partners to work together to make the telecom pie bigger and more affordable, it truly will be revolutionary.

There is the old joke that goes like this:

"There are two kinds of people in the world--those that divide people into two groups, and those that don't."

At the risk of self parody, there are two kinds of people in the world (and I'm broadly overgeneralizing, of course)--those that use eBay and those that don't.

For those that don't, the eBay phenomenon is a bit of mystery. From a certain distance, EBay is cluttered with junk, trivia, excess, and silliness. But it also is a terrific business transaction mechanism, for both formal and informal business.

I just bought a part for my breadmaker. The manufacturer has been out of business for four years, and parts are no longer available through "normal" channels--that is to say, the Manufacturing Economy manufacturer--distributor--dealer supply chain.

But I found the part I needed for $9 (new cost was $15 when it was available) from a guy in Nebraska whose machine had burned up. Instead of throwing it in the landfill, he's selling usable parts from it and making a few extra bucks. It's not only reducing the amount of waste going into landfills (parts of his machine and all of mine), he's profiting from it, and I'm able to keep a perfectly good machine working.

It's amazing when you think about it. A scant ten years ago, the notion of linking a buyer for a very obscure machine part in Virginia with a seller in Nebraska was inconceivable. Today, we take it for granted.

Many small businesses are now using eBay as a strategic part of their business, putting both normal stock and overstocks there for sale. It's a cheap and easy mail order strategy that has virtually no downside.

Does your region's economic development strategy include workshops to help businesspeople learn how to use eBay? I bet not, and business growth opportunities are being missed.

I wrote yesterday about Apple's excellent and free videoconferencing software. Last night, I saw a Microsoft ad touting the advantages of their LiveMeeting product. It's interesting to look at the two very different approaches to the same market space.

Apple has chosen to build value into the basic operating system by providing the software for free. It's functionality is basic, but it works very well, and the next upgrade will suppposedly support videoconferencing with multiple site (the equivalent of a conference call). However, there is no support for document sharing, which would really enhance the value of the service. There are several third party products for the Macintosh would do provide some document sharing and whiteboard functions.

Microsoft's LiveMeeting is a fee-based service that provides some meeting management tools, document sharing, and the ability to include several sites, but there is no videoconferencing. You apparently have to use traditional telephone conference calls to provide the audio portion of the meeting. I say "apparently" because I could not find that information on the site without watching a thirty minute presentation online.

LiveMeeting is a slick product that offers a lot of useful services, but it's really a broadcast medium--which would be quite useful in many situations. The document sharing and whiteboarding won't scale up (on any platform) beyond a few people. Microsoft seems to be aiming for the corporate market, where you might want to make a company presentation to hundreds of people at once in several locations.

Apple is more focused on relationships. In the Knowledge Economy, who you know is more important than what you know, and the ability to maintain and support face to face meetings is going to be increasingly important. From our current book of the month on social networks:

"This is not so much about pushing more information through a group but about developing relationships that can be rapidly sought out when needed."

The other difference between the two models is that Apple, by making their software part of the operating system (and free) is trying to empower their customers to use it freely for whatever purpose they choose, whenever they choose. Microsoft wants to charge you every time you have a meeting. Admittedly, the products are somewhat different, so you can't make too much of my comparison, but I do think the two companies have a very different philosophy toward their customers.