we should talk about this

1. Defending legacy revenues – Telcos are in the business of communication. The Legacy revenues are in the communications portfolio. Voice is a category underneath that with PSTN being the platform. You can move to VoIP and still be defending legacy revenues.

2. Permission? That would being reasonable – this level of change will upset people. Permission is never granted.That isn’t a reason not to innovate (in fact its a measure of successful innovation).

3. My point (in response to your questions) is that I agree that cultural change is the biggest barrier. And all the associated points about an attacker mentality.

4. Your original post was about an industry move, not Telecom NZ specific – that’s a worthy conversation on its own as I was working on that same programme at Telecom hence my comments.

5. I am still at Telecom until end of June- this post http://szikszai.blogspot.com/2008/05/clarification-of-status.html should make it clear what my status is

“It is more to do with defending their own market.”

There in lies the problem, i stand by my point that culturally they aren’t there. I know where you (used?) to work. Can you honestly say that the team responsible for all that Voice revenue is anywhere close to giving permission (yip PERMISSION) to whatever team it is doing VoIP ? How does this gel with the “protect and grow traditional revenues” http://www.telecom.co.nz/content/0,8748,205912-204527,00.html from the investor day?

The attitude of defense is completely at odds with grow and new wave. Defenders don’t innovate, defenders won’t willingly change be nimble or open.
The attackers have nothing to loose, are fleet of foot and more culturally in tune with todays market

1. No problems with telcos working together – they do already
2. This is a major – setting it up within the existing business will probably lead to organ rejection.
3.Yep – no charging for calling can be dealt with and already is by some telcos
4. Not with existing talent
5. Existing customers would be migrated onto it
6. Will be sold – but not by traditional sales teams – that doesn’t work.

I think the strategy angle has nothing to do with entering an adjacent market with the aim of tanking it. It is more to do with defending their own market.

There are only 2 ways that this model would be more successful for telcos.

1. They leverage their existing customer base – migrate them onto free plans with off net calling charges – relatively easy

2. They open it up as far as they can making it genuinely web 2.0 capable – hard to do culturally

Window of opportunity is closing – would suggest that if this is built in standard telco style then it’s not a starter.