tbc0's posterous

I was inspired by email from TM Forum today. I think membership is free (please correct me if I'm mistaken), but you have to register to read it: #65068868. Let me summarize for my Twitter and Facebook friends. The editor Anita Karvé starts by acknowledging two ways to get expanded TV options. There's the newer satellite TV option (I'm with DIRECTV), and then she talks about "the long history of cable" and says they are "frantically trying to roll out new services quickly." So true. But the other alternative that can't yet be counted out is whoever ends up owning our old telephone landlines.

My landline phone company (Qwest) was bought by CenturyLink. Their roots are in telephones. They entered the mobile phone business in 1983 and exited in 2002. They're focused on wired service, and this year they began dabbling in "entertainment services." I look forward to benefitting from the competition with satellite and cable, because all I really want is a single "fat pipe" into and out of my house for Over The Top (OTT) services on the Internet.

Both of the other businesses risk thinking about domestic data delivery as a broadcast problem. Telephone companies, on the other hand, have always understood that houses want to both send and receive data. Cable has shown ability in making the wire run both ways. Satellite has no future with OTT.

There's another wire and pipe to think about: How will energy delivery fit into the future with two-way data transport? Electric companies are in a position to buy back power from those with wind generators today. Imagine a future with safe, local energy production. Maybe pebble-bed nuclear reactors. Probably something that isn't radioactive at all. Natural gas seems more similar to a satellite one-way delivery business. And the U.S. natural gas boom simply allows such organizations to get complacent. Electric companies are hungry, though. Their infrastructure is aging, and you can google to see the movement toward a "smart grid."

Ignoring energy for now, I won't be satisfied until I can pay a single company for all my domestic data needs over one wire – telephone, Internet, and video. Why should we need anything besides the Internet? I want a reliable, high-speed network connection for two reasons. I still want to make phone calls (including video phone on the rare occasions when I care), and I want to watch all my video the same way – television shows, movies, and any other new art forms that evolve in my lifetime. In my neighborhood, it's either Comcast of CenturyLink. I'll let you know who eventually gets all my business.

And then there's wireless. LTE (sometimes called 4G) could change the landscape. We'll see. Why can't we live in a world where the WiFi hotspots in our homes are seamlessly part of the wireless network that everyone shares? That would free up mobile towers to be in places where WiFi is not practical. Join that conversation on the blog of my favorite industry insider, Tony Poulos.