Convergence Conversation

The biggest news this week is of course that... the Pythons now have a legal channel on Youtube! We've been watching Monty Python videos illegally ever since Youtube existed (well, not me, I am the proud owner of a Complete Monty Python Flying Circus 16-ton Megaset!) but no longer! There are only 24 vids up in the Channel yet, but more will come and also some behind the scenes stuff, old pythons reminiscing, etc.

In honour of this groundbreaking news, and since I'm just back from Italy, and since I promised Lori I'd point her to this one, here's one of my favourite Monty Python sketches, the Italian Lesson (still illegal for now I'm afraid...)

I'll write more seriously about the Italian trip next week. More...

I already posted about the APDC conference panel I spoke at in Lisbon last week. Meanwhile, a telecom related video has been pointed out to me which illustrates perhaps even better the power that consumers can have these days when they get their act together:

I'm told that the attitude to NZ Telecom after this video spread around like wildfire changed radically. Especially from the government. Couple of lessons in there:

• there is a point beyond which screwing up your customers becomes counter-productive. That point is often not as far out as execs think it is.
• never become so arrogant that you think boasting about screwing up your customers is something you an afford to do.

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This came from the eminent Vincent Dekker this morning. Quoted in extenso:

For those who feared (like I did) that the Dutch were loosing their pragmatism...
 
I have a story tomorrow morning in the Dutch daily Trouw that KPN and Reggefiber plan to invest 6 to 7 billion euros for the roll out of FTTH in The Netherlands. According to KPN they plan to do it in the next 5 to 7 years. Reggefiber says 5 years is really too optimistic. I guess Reggefiber is right...

We have some 7 million homes to pass. So it would be about 1000 euro per home passed. But homes in the countryside will be too expensive to do ftth and will get Wimax or another wireless alternative.

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Last week, I was invited to speak at the APDC annual conference in Lisbon. I love the city and although it was a pretty hectic day, it's always fun to be there, especially when it's sunny. The topic of the panel I was sitting on was Power to the People, something more philosophical and futuristic than what I normally do.

I used this video as part of my talk, see if you can spot the connection...

(Spoiler: video was self-censored by French media, this is a news clip from the Belgian news and was viewed over 13 million times on Youtube)

It was an interesting event, over three days, with a whole slew of prestigious speakers which goes to show, if indeed it was needed, that Portugal really is one of the most interesting telecom markets in Europe. More...

Last week the Regulatory gratin (as we say in French) was gathered in Madrid for a conference on NGA as I mentioned in my previous posts. I had the great opportunity to meet with Tony Shortall (ex-commission, now independant with Telage) and reconnect with Grant Forsyth (whom I interviewed in the Stavänger Podcast). We had a very interesting three-way discussion on Infrastructure Competition. Post-conversation pondering brought back this great quote to my mind:

 

(One year of free Zirconium membership to the first who tells me where it's from.)

And indeed, I don't think Infrastructure Competition means, or rather will come to mean what many regulators think it means (or would like it to mean). More...

Back in January last year, Yankee Group CEO Emily Green and I had a discussion about Net Neutrality. One of the aspects of the discussion that I remember from back then was how framing the semantic context of a debate affects the debate itself. Emily's example was  "pro-life", a superb concept branding, because it's really hard for opponents to say they're "anti-life". But "pro-choice" is a very clever response because it places the devate on a different level and it avoids going into the anti- territory.

With "net neutrality", whoever coined the terminology also framed the debate. More...

My post on Will Page's Long Tail presentation at the Telco 2.0 event last week has created debate and emulation around the blogosphere. Better minds than mine have picked up the thread as can be read on Chris Anderson's own blog and on Giga OM.

Telco 2.0 today published a follow-up interview of Will Page which you can find here. In it I get a right dressing down (although anonymously). Seems I wasn't paying attention (or understanding nothing about the music business, which I'll gladly confess to).

I guess my whole argument in that original post was that if the data set was iTunes - as I was told by some participants at the conference, but maybe I should have been more cautious about that - I'm not sure it's at all convincing as a "market". More...

I can't promise a gallic mustache, but I'm undergoing a short trip to Portugal and Spain later this week and I would be very pleased to meet with some of you readers!

On November 13th, I will be speaking at the 2008 Annual conference of the APDC (the Portuguese Telecoms Association). The panel is challenging as well as philosophical and it's entitled Power to the People. You can find more details here (if you speak portuguese). I was planning to arrive on Nov. 12th and hit the town in the evening, maybe checking out some of the casas de fado in Alfama. If anyone is interested in joining me (even if it means doing something less folkloric), let me know!

On November 14th, I will be speaking at the Next Generation Access Workshop in Madrid on the fiber business model, especially the revenue angle. More...

I reported last month how Orange announced that their fiber roll-out in France was a year behind schedule. Nastier commentators than myself would suggest that for a project that really kicked off a year ago, that's a bit worrying... Regardless, it's a fact that the French incumbent is not visible on this market and doesn't give many outward signs of wanting to be more visible, to customers and industry players alike.

Admittedly, these are not the best of times to announce that you will be investing large amounts of money to bring your access network into the 21st century. And indeed, while Free seems to be chugging along in connecting Paris (though not connecting many customers at this stage, to say the least) Neuf/SFR also seems also very quiet on these issues. More...

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to attend a little bit of the Telco 2.0 event in London. James talks about it in a little more detail here. I was only there for a half day (and apparently missed an awesome presentation by the CTO of Amazon...) and while there was a lot of interesting content being presented and debated (in the specific Telco 2.0 Mindshare approach to promote interactive audience participation) I wanted to react on a specific presentation that I found both very interesting and deeply flawed. I will be fairly blunt in this post: since Page attempted a direct (and often quite bilious) refutation of Anderson's work, I'm pretty sure he'll be open to direct criticism himself. More...