RatcliffeBlog - Mitch Thinking Out Loud

Dedication to the old eats...

Dedication to the old eats away at the new

NTT Communications, the Japanese telecom giant, is bundling nationwide 802.11 connectivity with landline services, to preserve its voice market share. This is further proof that WLAN services are going to be linked from the bottom up, with major carriers trying to find inroads to control access through persistent identity services that provide seamless access to WLAN hot spots.

NTT Com senior executive vice president Shuji Tomita said, "We do not expect relatively large revenue [from WLAN hotspot service alone], but NTT Communications is also providing ADSL wireline access, and the combination of wireline and wireless is very important. We would like to provide portability of access through the wireless and wireline network. Eventually, we would like to provide roaming access through partners."

Read that as "we'll partner with WLAN hotspot providers who want to pay for the hardware, we'll even partner with our customers with wireless LANs in their home, so we can reach their neighbors." Hence:

"'In order to reduce investment, we are promoting roaming services with other WLAN service providers to enlarge our coverage. We have already started a trial roaming service with several providers,'" said Tomita.... NTT Com will also provide special software to corporate and consumer clients to enable roaming and secure access."

Basically, this is repetition of the same mistake made on the Net -- giving away your biggest value add sets consumer tolerance to pay very low. In the market that is emerging, where the carrier will give away broadband services to preserve voice revenues, content becomes the only source of value anyone can exploit. Generally, the telcos will focus on "big media" content, but the really inexpensive and Net-minded way to go is to give people tools for communicating and let them create most of the content on the network.