SO CLOSE, SO FAR

Innovation was victimized when money lenders belatedly realized that a computer-generated PowerPoint presentation is not the next Microsoft. As financial markets turned off the golden spigots, they throttled a number of worthy projects that were ohsoclose to fruition. One such effort on the transformational edge from novelty to everyday telecommunications tool is voice over IP. When CLECs roamed the telecom earth and offered at least superficial competition to the mammoth incumbents, VoIP was a priority. It was the differentiator between the new, fast-paced telecom world and the way business always had been done. Vendors, eager to tap what seemed to be an endless supply of greenbacks, pursued the CLECs and their Jetsons-esque schemes with often silly proposals. Some ideas, though, carried reality's weight, and a few were genuinely useful tools that deserved a better fate than the storage shelf. But the market turned a corner into an unfriendly neighborhood populated by money takers, not money lenders — a neighborhood in which innovation is evident, but not dominant. VoIP is still a priority — at least the part that applies to the existing infrastructure of incumbent carriers. Vendors, once working overtime to match the ambitious goals of idea-filled minds, are now working to survive and appease customers on a much slower track. The clever minds, previously so full of ideas, now are occupied with the basics of food and shelter — and, too often, finding employment. No one, after all, is being hurt by the VoIP slowdown. The public cannot miss what it never had. But the public never wandered through a trade show filled with a glitzy future, only to learn that it was really Never Never Land.