Here’s what I said during my five minutes at the front of the room at the stealth telecom conference I was at this week:

The strong sense of the room is that the telecom incumbents are going to go Chapter 11 in the next 1.5-5 years. I’ve asked every one of the people on the panel yesterday [on this topic] and they all agree that the best thing would be for the fire to burn bright and fast. And they — we — all fear that the government will try to resuscitate the corpse, pumping money into these companies.

To prevent this, we need a new myth. Not just a story, but the framework for stories.

The current myth is that the telcos have hit a bad patch but if they go away, then we lose our dial tone. We need to present a different picture. It’s not simply that the telcos are a crumbling castle. It’s that they’re holding back a wave of innovation that will not only ensure the continuity of dial tone but will make life much better for us.

We don’t have to tell the story about the doom of the telcos. They’ll fall on their own.We should be out telling the upbeat, excited, enthusiastic story of the world that’s waiting to happen once the old edifice falls: the innovation, the global connectedness, the scalable and robust network bringing us continuous service. Otherwise, our legislators will continue to identify AT&T and dial tones and will think that the only way to ensure service, cast as a Homeland Security requirement, is to prop up AT&T.

So let’s go out and mythologize!

Categories: Uncategorized dw