August 10, 2002
Bubble bursts, massive telcom casualties. Story at 5.
Bob "I don't need DNS for dummies, I need DNS for Bob" Frankston has penned a wonderful critique of an Economist article on the subject of the Telecom crash. As he mentions, the article "...(in particular, Too many debts, too few calls) draws no distinction between the business of providing commodity Internet connectivity with the business of providing telecommunications-based services. Of course The Economist is not alone in this fundamental error but "Crash" story is a useful foil for addressing this misunderstanding."
The part that rang truest with me are his statements concerning the Internet Bubble. "Much of the foolish speculation stemmed from the misunderstanding that considers telecom a viable industry. The history of computing is littered with vast over-promises. But the value delivered by the 1% of the capability that is actually provided has been large enough to drive the economy." I haven't seen this said better yet.
I would only (hesitantly) add that - (which he goes into elsewhere from different angles) - the supportive capability of the telecommunications infrastructure is extremely limited and cannot effectively compete with the supportive capability offered by the Internet. The range of applications that the telco infrastructure supports is completely limited to those that the telco's would like you to use - and that they control. The Internet allows you to choose which applications you would like to us. Don't believe me? Try and upgrade the caller-id functionality in your phone. I fully believe that the telco's didn't quite get this and instead of trying to figure out where they could add value to the Internet economy, they chose to attempt to capture it and put it under their control. This plan required vast expenditures that they simply could not support putting them in the dire straits that we see today.
The Internet bubble only destroyed telcom's insofar as it inflated the perception of what the Internet actually was and forced the telcom's to increase the size of scope of their plans (and investments) to match what they thought was necessary to control the Internet. Had they instead focused on bringing value to the 1% of the Internet's promise that was actually important (and valued!), the world(com) might be a different place.
Radio would be useful to ICANN participants...
Brett makes a lot of great points (and pointers) in this snippet over at icann.Blog concerning the s/n ratio of discussion lists and why blogs are particularly helpful at eliminating that phenom. I couldn't agree with the analyses put forth - blog don't allow goofballs to disrupt the discourse. He also mentions that perhaps "it's time to get ICANN its own Radio community server."
I've been talking to Tim about this in a roundabout way lately. Its not easy for the various constituencies, councils, task forces, teams and individuals that make up the process to share information. The technical and social barriers have created a situation whereby it is often to expensive (on number of levels, not just economic) for information to be share within ICANN's various substructures. Not only would Radio help Tim out as Secretary of the RC, but also likely with his consultancy. And, as they say, where there's one, there's more. This might make for an interesting experiment - and I would welcome the resulting S/N ratio.
Verisign complies with contract. Next up, universal peace.
Cnet is reporting that "VeriSign playing by the rules. The domain name company appears to be complying with rules that require it to share its database with other companies that sell Web addresses, according to an auditor's report."
Umm...okay. I guess that closes that issue off then <insert wry cynical comment here>.