Consolidation

by Jay Cuthrell
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Photo: A 5 minute self installation of AT&T Xtreme DSL circa 2005-ish.

Consumers are playing the part of a monk watching the beer bubbles coalesce into larger bubbles. Only, today those bubbles are called telecommunications providers. I wonder if we’ll wake up one morning with a massive hangover?

I remember what Tom Selleck promised 11 years ago.

You will? Well, I’m still waiting.

I suppose after MCI/Quest/SBC/AT&T/Verizon/BellSouth/etc… is done coming back together there is a chance. But as these companies slash and burn to right size, I can’t see where the heavy R&D will be coming from to make decade old promises come any closer to reality.

Sure, there are elements of the promises around today. One could argue they are even possible to some degree — but the promise was of the ubiquitous not the proof of concept.

I guess I’ll still be fighting with self check out at the grocery store for a few years more… Oooh… nice innovation…. you get the customer to do the work of a grocery store clerk. That’s a much more personal way of saying your clerk job is obsolete than by having a RFID implementation that spans all major suppliers to the retail sector.

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