Just listended, somewhat belatedly, to an excellent podcast hosted by Dan Bricklin, with John Sviokla interviewing Tom Evslin on his experiences within and outside large telecommunications companies.
This podcast pretty much sums up a lot of what I have written about myself about telecommunications strategy – the delayering of vertical integration as innovation happens at different rates in the various service layers that together form the service a customer wants to buy. Tom Evslin, of course, tells this with plenty of war stories and much better language, looking into a future where we all are our own telecom access providers (and charging spammers and spimmers for the priviledge of accessing us). And, contrary to many telecommunications commentators, he has a deep understanding of the differences between telecommunications markets in Europe, Asia and the United States, not only from the viewpoint of legislation and rules, but from actual results.
Just one example of many excellent points: Towards the end of the conversation, he is asked what advise he would give the existing mobile phone companies, and answers “Companies need to decide which horizontal layer they are going to excel at [….] while they still have money left [from the vertically integrated phase].”
Expect this podcast to feature as assigned material for my next course on technology strategy.