From the Desk of��John Barker

It's Magic

Opinion By John Barker, European Correspondent, tossa@pobox.com

MAUI, Hawaii - Yesterday morning, bright and early, I addressed a breakfast meeting of the Rotary Club, up country here. Hey, so it wasn't the largest gathering on earth, but the sun was shining and the folks sure appreciated it. I talked about the impact of new technology. I quoted Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Is that not one of Arthur C's greatest profundities? The truth of it surrounds us every day.

The bemused Rotarians watched while I pointed to my laptop computer, having all the power of a supercomputer of yesteryear, but with the ability to deliver cinema pictures and sound. Not only that, when I connect it by a copper wire to the telephone system it gives me the ability to have a telephone conversation with anyone else in the world, at virtually no cost. That's magic. What is even more magical is that I can remove the telephone connection, point my tiny cellular phone at the computer and continue to connect to the outside world, without any physical connection, not even a power cord. Now that's really magic.

MAGIC is the term coined by DoCoMo to characterize i-mode and its vision of the future: Mobile multimedia, for Anyone, anywhere, anytime, with Global mobility support, with an Integrated wireless solution, and Customized personal service.

Corny as hell, but it captures the spirit. The big telcos should be afraid, very afraid. Wireless IP-driven telecommunication is the future, and the sooner they realize it the better. Every day brings news of fresh layoffs. WorldCom's shedding of 6,000 of its workers in the U.S. is but the latest example.

The suspicion is that the telcos just haven't got it. They are looking increasingly like the dinosaurs that once stalked the earth, king of all they surveyed. The dinosaurs owned the land and the sea, but were decimated by a meteor from the sky. Cable companies and ancient telcos beware.

No greater example of the dinosaur-like nature of the ancient telcos is their attitude toward billing. Back in England I had to wait three months to receive my bill from BT. It came with a printout of all the telephone calls I made in that quarter. It was an historical document, which I lightly glanced at and put aside. Some weeks later I received a final reminder. I then had to write a check, put it in an envelope, find a stamp and walk to the post office to post it.

Imagine how much money BT wastes, loaning me all that money for so long. Was I grateful? Not at all. I migrated like a shot to voice-over-IP vendors that demand my money up front. They require that I pre-load my account with $25 in exchange for ridiculously cheap telephone calls of indeterminate quality. It is going to take forever to spend that princely sum. But there are a million people like me, and suddenly the new telco is sitting on $25 million of our money. That's magic for them. The magic for me is that I can see on the screen how much money I have spent and who I rang.

The biggest selling mobile phones this Christmas were of the prepaid variety. Did the parents of teenagers object to paying up front for a measured amount of call time? No they did not!

The telcos are stuck with billing systems that are archaic and totally resistant to change. To make matters worse, they must now overlay on those groaning systems the fresh demands of IP-related services. In Europe, the billing companies are telling the telcos it's going to cost millions to install a billing system, oh, and it'll take about eight months to go live. A few companies are promising some salvation. One of them is Inoware Corporation here in Hawaii (http://www.inovaware.com). But overall the prognosis is bleak.

Remember the joke about the Irishman who was asked directions to a far off place and replied, 'I wouldn't start from here'? The telcos are in a bind, stuck with antediluvian systems that are resistant to change. They need radical change to move the money from the back end to the front end. They need a little bit of magic.

John Barker can be reached at tossa@pobox.com

COPYRIGHT 2001 Phillips Publishing International, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group