Bold prediction on the future state of Telcos

Esme Vos, of MuniWireless, makes a bold but realistic prediction on the future of Telcos as wholesale providers, and details why AT&T’s and BellSouth’s attempt to double dip just isn’t going to happen:

The telcos’ desire to eat out of two pots – charging customers for access to the network and content providers for access to those customers – is nothing more than fantasy perpetuated by nervous managers to calm down nervous investors, who suspect that, indeed, the Age of Big Telecom has faded into history like bowler hats and crinolines.

There are several reasons why telcos cannot eat out of two pots and why they will end up as wholesale providers:

(1) there is now a business model that allows companies such as Google and the people who partner with them (municipalities, ISPs, content providers) to offer free Internet access, free voice calls and even free entertainment programs;

(2) there are other parties offering high speed broadband (cable companies, municipalities, private providers) and these are often more innovative and closer to the consumer;

(3) the telcos underestimate the contempt that most people feel for them and politicians will not back an industry that is so universally loathed;

(4) the open network model has been proven in Europe and Asia to lead to higher rates of broadband penetration, lower prices and more bandwidth; and

(5) high tech companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Apple simply won’t let them.