The Gradual Merging Of Telco, Cable And Wireless Into Connectivity
from the it's-all-coming-together dept
For years, it’s been pretty clear to plenty of people that a few different industries have been merging. The cable industry and the telco industry are a great example. The two compete so directly these days, that it’s becoming clear that it’s really just the “connectivity” industry that we’re dealing with, and the differences between telcos and cable companies is barely worth mentioning, other than looking at their specific strategies (along with their limitations and opportunities based on their legacy infrastructure). Another area that’s been a bit of oddball as a separate industry is “wireless” or “mobile” industry. Clearly, in many cases, it’s been sort of a subset of the traditional telco industry. And, with today’s Sprint deal, it’s getting tacked on to the cable space as well. Clearly, they’re all merging into a single arena — and the impact of “wireless” won’t be just another service, but the ability to disconnect all of the previous services and make them completely mobile. That’s where the real opportunities are, and where we should expect to see plenty of innovation in the next few years — using mobility to let people do things that they simply couldn’t do when they were tethered in the past. It seems that the folks with money see that pretty clearly as well. The majority of venture capital money going into “telco” businesses this year actually went specifically into wireless businesses.
