Get the call right

My beloved New York Jets finally got a call in December. For those who missed this football miracle, Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde scored a winning touchdown late in a crucial game against the New England Patriots. Television replays conclusively revealed that Vinny never got the ball into the end zone, but the NFL's discontinuation of the use of instant replay meant the ruling stood and the Jets were declared victorsand are in the playoffs, another and bigger miracle. The Patriots may have to wait until next year, all because of this one call.

This event and a series of other seriously blown calls has everyone agreeing that this is the worst officiated season in NFL history. League owners voted down a proposal to reinstate instant replay for post-season play this year, but they have agreed that to maintain the integrity of the game they must figure out a way to get the call right.

One of my predictions for the new year is that instant replay will be used in the NFL next year. Paying fans are demanding a fair contest determined by the actions of the athletes rather than the rulings of officials, and technology exists for getting the call right without being too intrusive on the ebb and flow of the competition.

My other prediction is that 1999 will be The Year of the Customer in the telecom industry. This is not quite a "lock," but you have to like the odds. The reasons will be the same ones driving the NFL to change its policies. Service providers and end users alike are demanding the same thing as those criticizing the NFL: Get the call right.

Take a look at a few of the leading indicators from the past 60 days:

* The creation of a coalition of prominent carriers to form the Packet Multimedia Carrier Coalition, a group dedicated to establishing protocols designed to bridge circuit-based public switched telephone networks and emerging Internet protocol networks.

* The addition of Ascend, Cisco, Clarent, Dialogic, Natural MicroSystems and Siemens to join Lucent, ITXC and VocalTec in supporting the upcoming interoperability NOW! profile.

* The formation of the Multiservice Switching Forum, charged with developing an architecture for intra-vendor switch communications within a central office.

* An announcement that the Parlay Group-an industry consortium of BT, DGM&S Telecom, Microsoft, Nortel Networks and Siemens-has completed the first phase of an application programming interface specification that will provide a common open interface into any kind of network.

* The submission by Nortel of the IPS7 protocol to the Internet Engineering Task Force for standardization of connections of IP networks to SS7 networks.

* Ericsson's offer to compromise on 3G wireless network evolution.

Carriers want seamless infrastructure and services/applications interoperability, and they are ready, willing and able to pursue this requirement on their own when they perceive vendor intransigence. Vendors have awakened to customer unhappiness. They are picking up the pace of cooperation and translating the "standards-based, open architecture" jargon into meaningful initiatives.

Much of this activity is because customers are demanding it, yet nobody is interested in why. They are only interested in results.

In the not-too-distant future, when I get off a plane in Hong Kong from New Jersey, I will care about getting instantaneous access to my corporate intranet and personal profile, having confidence that my session is private and secure and the assurance that any information I get is up-to-date and synchronized.

I will want to know that my electronic interference has been responsive to those who have tried to contact me, and that ultimately I will get a fair rendering of my session activity and a bill that accurately reflects the activity and the value I negotiated to engage in it. What I won't care about is any of the technology that made this possible.

Unlike the sporting world, most competition does afford us the opportunity for an instant replay, especially with a brief time out to review all the angles before we make a decision. Hence, when it isn't just a game, we need those with whom we entrust our communications to get the call right-everywhere, every time, any time, all the time.