Brightcove will serve video from commercial producers. Facebridge will let users distribute their own videos. 2006 will be the year that Skype turns millions of Skypers into podcasters, vloggers, and videographers. Who at Skype is working on vid distribution alliances? The long tail of edge created content will dominate in time but there is still good money in Skype as a TV and movie player for the next few years.

Rich Tehrani has a timely riff on mashing up Service Oriented Architecture with VoIP. Bringing voice into enterprise app development.

Another Niklas-is-cool profile. Muesli for breakfast! Niklas is still hard at work with Skype: “My ambition is to make Skype into the world’s largest online communication company. That’s the driver. Financial gain is secondary.”

Google tests phone-enabling AdWords. Long-established technology, but never deployed at global scale. Dear eBay, Skype could design this in one day, prototype in three days, cut deals for the backend in one week, be serving US customers before Christmas. By eBay calling both parties, they (a) preserve caller/called anonymity, (b) match calls to the auction/sale, (c) improve the sale of lucrative but challenging product categories, and (d) charge sellers a small fee to more-than-cover costs. The faq.

cnskyper's Q-Face plug-in. Delightful creative art for your Skype profile.

Dan Gillmor in FT: Rise up against US oppressors. A defense of Internet application providers like Skype against SBC/AT&T and their congressional henchmen.

A Skype Equivalent Without "Big Brother"? (Slashdot). The meme continues to spread that an American Skype will be compromised worldwide by US police, military, and intelligence.

While Internet phone services are catching on rapidly, quality and reliability are still suspect (BusinessWeek). As prices fall, sound and consistency become competitive differentiators.

BT will offer free mobile phone service (TheBusinessOnline). BT’s new service will combine its existing Openzone wi-fi hotspots with a patchwork of new wi-max networks to compete with mobile operators and Skype.

Thanks to Rick Hultz and Jirong Zhou 周继荣 for the tips.

I’m a bit short of time, so I’ll keep my comments brief. But I have to echo James about the just-announced first phase of the Amsterdam municipal fibre network. They are creating an open “layer 1” fiber-optical network, with a diversified ownership model, low cost of deployment, and no public subsidy. This has more significance than meets the eye at first look, since muni network announcements are ten a penny these days.

I’ll chop out the tedious logic (and the effort of constructing an argument) and jump straight to the conclusions:

• The natural unit of purchase of connectivity is not necesarily the household. I see it polarising upwards around the municipal subdivision, and downwards around the devices tethered to a given access network. Application-level price discrimination disappears at one extreme, and is embedded in the form factor of the access device at the other. In response to James’s musing on the privatized market structure, I would only add that the failure was to make it easy for users to co-ordinate in their purchase decisions. We manage it for garbage collection and roof maintenance, but somehow struggle when it comes to telecom.

• The only escape routes from the paradox of the best network are (i) out-distribute the other guy by having a network that reaches places and offers capacity that the others cannot match. Verizon Wireless is following this in the USA, for example, offering speed and coverage the others can’t rival; (ii) move to a new ownership structure that better aligns user and network owner interests. OPLANs are an example, as are vertically integrated muni nets, mesh nets, user-built nets, etc; (iii) Get a politicaly-mandated monopoly/duopoly. This is the Baby Bell approach. Sustainability of this strategy remains in doubt.

• Telcos that divide connectivity from service, by design or through regulation, are in a better position to survive. I think BT will still be around in 30 years, and they’ll bless the day that the regulator forced their access division into being, and wish they hadn’t voluntarily gone further. But they’ve got to get leaner and meaner to compete against upstarts without legacy pension promises, union rules and wannabe media company distractions. Dig deep into your engineering, project management and finance talent and you’ll live to see another day.

• You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. It only takes one Napster to make people see that the music and the disc were separable. It only takes one Amsterdam to succeed to blow away the “it doesn’t work” argument. Bit haulage and application service are equally separable and economically viable independently.

If you’re ever invited to a funeral for a tired and expired telco, I suggest bringing some tulips to lay on the grave. Just don’t grin too much, folk will get suspicious.

via Telepocalypse