Competition from all corners

Since the City of Chicago passed a law making it illegal to drive while talking on a hand-held mobile phone, there has been no serious flood of arrests, but there has been a boom in sales of hands-free devices. Now, OnStar is heavily marketing its wireless voice service here, encouraging its existing customers to sign up for wireless minutes, seeking to attract new buyers of the service with yet another feature.

Office Depot is now offering small business a wireless service that it is reselling, taking some of the pain out of the process.

These are only two obvious examples of non-telecom players getting into the telecom business, and doing it in a way that makes sense for customers. The emergence of Internet players, such as Google and eBay, in the voice world also signals new points of entry and new ways of reaching customers.

We're rapidly approaching the point at which voice becomes the marketing equivalent of those AOL diskettes of the mid-90s--something given away for free to draw in a customer.

It's against this backdrop that Congress and the Federal Communications Commission are purportedly trying to reshape regulation of telecom, but it's hard to imagine how they are going to stay out in front of trends such as these. It may soon become impossible to guess where the next voice replacement is coming from.

E-mail me at cwilson3@primediabusiness.com.