Broadband Agnostics

Sure, you need a big broadband pipe to deliver triple- or quad-play services. But all of the noise about bandwidth misses the point: Broadband is not a zero-sum game. Any and all available broadband technologies will work and will be put in play.

Here’s why: Customers are agnostics about broadband! They don’t care about the technology. They just want it to work. They want the voice, data, or video services, whenever and wherever they are.

When broadband connections to the COs reach critical mass, wireline and wireless carriers alike will replace their existing circuit switches with packet systems under a new network architecture called IP multimedia subsystem or IMS.

With IMS, the routing of the call is separated from features and services that customers buy. Sort of like the App Store that Apple offers to its iPhone customers. It is this menu of new features and services riding on the broadband connection that customers really care about, and are willing to buy.

So the challenge for all broadband purveyors, wired and wireless, is to make it ubiquitous, make it feature-rich, make it reliable, and, oh yeah, keep it affordable. Now that’s how to make a business out of broadband.

John M. Celentano is President of Skyline Marketing Group, a Baltimore, MD-based telecom market analysis and strategy consulting firm. He is a featured panelist in this week’s Telephony’s Inside Telecom Live webcast titled, “The Next Broadband Business Models”