Stardust Global Ventures

A few days ago I posted The Flawed Delusion of Telco 2.0 in an effort to make a point. The point’s really a simple one. We desperately need a paradigm shift in what used to be the telecommunications industry. That industry is dead. Dial tone is an artifact ot the past, and so is the idea of a telco.

We limit ourselves by thinking in terms of telco. It sets artificial barriers in our mindset and binds us to the past.

My good friend, Rich Tehrani agrees. Here’s his comment from that post.

Ken, this is an excellent analysis and I agree with much of it. The mindset argument makes a great deal of sense as well as the concept of polar opposites which represent traditional telcos and social media companies. But in the end is the nomenclature that important or is it a state of mind we need to be concerned with?

I consider Skype to be a telco 2.0 company because it does embrace social media and telephony. Do you agree?

Doesn’t the 2.0 at the end of the term telco allow telecom to transcend the chasm to social media and what’s next? To me it does but I understand how the term telco is limiting.

I think I felt the same way as you the first time I heard the term IP Centrex… They may as well have called it rocket-powered horse and buggy transportation.

Rich makes a couple of powerful points that I feel we all must embrace, so I’m going to reinforce them. First he mentions the “concept of polar opposites which represent traditional telcos and social media companies.” What a perfect observation. Social media companies really do look to do exactly the opposite of what the telcos did. They’re a huge disruptor because they change how we communicate with others. They don’t change the technology of communications; instead social media makes communications a multi-modal experience.

I do agree that Skype is a Telco 2.0 company. However, I’m not sure Rich or a large percentage of my colleagues will agree that could be the signature on Skype’s death warrant. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they are dead or dying. Skype has done a great job of not stopping at Telco 2.0 and working to further embrace social media and other networking avenues. I think it’s how Skype is crossing the chasm from Telco 2.0 to the next generation. I think they’ll be one of the survivors. They may even prove to be a thought leader once they escape some of their current mindset. I think even Skype thinks too much in terms of the telco paradigm, artificially limiting their own possibilities. They think too small sometimes.

Rocket powered horse and buggy is indeed what Centrex was. It’s what ISDN was in the US. And DSL. We cling to the old models too tightly. It’s time to let go and leapfrog into the next generation.

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