Skip to main content

It’s Just Convergence

I read articles like this and this and it makes me crazy that I am not doing more with what I know about telecom and the internet. I have worked on the very opposite side of where you are right now, way past this web page and the ISP you subscribe to, through all the routers and networks, the data centers – all the way back to the engineers who develop and drive the web as you see it happening. Nearly every Tuesday for the past eight years, I’ve sat on calls with a former Lucent engineer-turned-start-up-CEO-turned-acquired-CEO and learned about what was next for the IP and telecom networks, and more importantly, how it’s all going to work.

So, when I see headlines about Joost being bundled in the televisions of the future or that mobile carriers are fearful of VoIP, I’m not surprised. It’s sort of like looking at your watch as you see the train arriving on time to the station. Rupert Murdoch talking about media zipping over the device of choice, all the entertainment companies moving into the industry, even the DRM issues – all predictable when looking at the evolution taking place at the internet’s back-end. View it from there and you can actually kind of gauge what will happen with some accuracy. I’ve been doing it since I started my first internet business.

Internet video is an example. It could be seen coming a good six months before it actually hit. Not because of YouTube’s popularity, but because of broadband speeds getting faster, compression technology getting better and networks converging together were creating the right climate for it to happen. Just like predicting a storm over Toronto, it’s almost as clear and can be as on track.

And, it’s actually very easy to understand. Traditional telephone, television, radio, mobile/cell phones and the internet were at one time all individual pipelines feeding the world its communications. These things are all converging into a single channel, the IP network, and it’s in turn shaking up more than a half dozen old, established industries. This is because it’s widening and leveling the fields that they play in. It’s the natural progression of disruption.

Entertainment, media, internet and advertising are all in a tailspin of change from it, because it’s not just breaking down the old strongholds and control in those industries, but because it’s also throwing them together as competitors in a single sandbox. Proven, fixed and very tightly managed processes that have controlled industries for decades are being broken down, to where the average Joe can now create a company to compete and win against a media giant, or become celebrity famous without ever speaking to an agent or publicist.

The same goes on and on (and on) for dozens of other things. Expect to see more Joost-like companies come into the works. See cell phones as personal media devices, video content becoming more like your television shows, and advertisers finding new creative ways to reach everybody. Your mobile phone and house phone will be universal. Nothing is going to be single device dependent. Don’t give up all of your control to the users – the future isn’t going to be about creating what you want to watch but where and when. And, definitely get familiar with the long tail because as MySpace and YouTube gobble the masses, it’s going to be a freeding frenzy within the niches.

When things go down at the carrier level, it’s rarely seemed to be a question of “if” but “when”, and at the end of the day, that’s what’s driving everything else that’s happening. Watch the web from here and I think you’ll get a real glimpse of what’s next. After all, smart enterpreneurs look for the wave coming in and paddle to it, not try to jump in after it breaks.

Editors' Recommendations

Andrew Beehler
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Andrew Beehler has been with Digital Trends since 2009 and works with agencies and direct clients. Prior to joining Digital…
SpaceX plans to beam its Starlink internet to vehicles, not just homes
Starlink Mission

SpaceX wants to beam internet from its Starlink satellites to vehicles on Earth.

The revelation came via a recent SpaceX filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting permission to install its internet terminals in moving vehicles — not just people’s homes.

Read more
Moore’s law is reaching its limits. Could graphene circuits help?
wrinkled graphene moores law blue circuit board

How do urban planners and building developers cope as more and more people move to cities? There are a few things they might do. To begin with, they could physically make the city larger, widening its borders to cover surrounding land so as to accommodate more houses. They might also build houses closer together, squeezing more single- and double-story buildings onto each street. At a certain point, however, there’s really only one option: You build upward by creating tower blocks that can house hundreds on a patch of land that would otherwise fit only a tiny fraction of that number.

This, in essence, is a similar problem to the one faced by chip designers. Moore’s law states that, every couple of years, the number of components that can be inexpensively crammed onto an integrated circuit doubles. The power of Moore’s law is undeniable. In 1971, for example, Intel released the 4004, the world’s first commercially available microprocessor, packing 2,300 transistors onto a single chip. By comparison, in 2021, Apple’s A14 processor boasts a mind-boggling 11.4 billion transistors. To put that in perspective, if the top speeds of cars had followed a similar trajectory, modern vehicles would be driving at faster than the speed of light.

Read more
Game over: Google to shutter its in-house Stadia game development studio
google stadia review rs 2

Google is shuttering its internal game development studio for Stadia, the company’s cloud-based gaming platform.

In a message posted on Monday, February 1, the web giant cited high costs as one of the reasons for its decision, adding that the move will allow it to focus on enhancing Stadia for third-party developers and building its business partnerships.

Read more