Late in life, big telecom's mood turned sour. It spent endless hours writing angry letters to members of Congress. But the world left it in the dust. People didn't care about basic phone service; they wanted mobility and entertainment. In 2006, telecom attempted a final heroic effort to revive itself as an entertainment player, wiring local neighborhoods with expensive fiber. This only set off a price war with cable and satellite. The "triple play" of voice, data and video was a debacle, even worse than the 3G mess the wireless operators created when they wasted millions betting that people would pay through the nose for mobile data.
In the end, big telecom died a slow, agonizing death. Customers flocked to alternatives, and a new era of software-based telecom services commenced as voice became a Web application. In hindsight, what telecom should have done was fire the old guard of product managers and hire the smartest people it could find in the software industry.
Death is often sad, but the saddest thing of all is to die and not be missed. Rest in peace.
David Willis is a vice president of Meta Group's Technology Research Services. Write to him at [email protected].
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