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strattitarius writes "Mark Zuckerberg met with top mobile and telco executives to address concerns that Internet providers are becoming "simple pipes" as apps like WhatsApp eat into high-margin over-the-top services such as text messaging and even voice communications. Orange SA CEO Stephane Richard stated "The risk for us is being excluded from the world of services".
It would seem that the telcos are realizing that they have been behind the curve as Richard stated "A service like WhatsApp, to be honest, that's something we could've and should've come up with before". Ironically in doing so, they basically make the case that they had every chance and advantage to create these apps and monetize them just as WhatsApp and Skype have done."
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Zuckerberg Dines with European Telco Execs
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Friday February 28 2014, @08:15AM
Well of course they're stuck. SMS especially gave them a massive profit for no cost.
They now have the same problem as landline phone companies. Their added "services" are irrelevant, they exist to transfer bits of data from one place to another. Same as other utilities - you don't want added services from your electricity company.
The telcos and cablecos are trying their best to survive with things like triple-play, and there's a whole industry that supports them, but in the end they'll fail.
People don't want their electricity company to provide their fridge, or their gas company to provide a boiler.
People will want a connectivity provider. This give you an ip address and forwards packets. Other companies, with expertise in the area, then build services based on, and independent to, that connectivity.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bd on Friday February 28 2014, @08:32AM
Well, to them it certainly must look bad. While 10 years ago they were able to get money for every message sent, today, at least in Germany, a mobile contract that includes SMS, voice and mobile-internet flat-rates goes for something like 20 EUR per month.
I think they are just angry that _they_ didn't think it is possible advertisers would give them such an amount of money for the personal information of their customers back when social networks took off.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by monster on Friday February 28 2014, @11:34AM
As I have already said in this comment [dev.soylentnews.org]: They didn't want to innovate or to risk new things (and maybe fail) if that meant the risk of substracting revenue from their inflated prices. So, they stalled, were left behind, and now are crying foul. And we are expected to feel remorse. Yeah, sure.
(Score: 0) by Bill, Shooter Of Bul on Friday February 28 2014, @01:44PM
Yup, this, in spades.
They tried their way of running their own j2me app stores that sucked and charged more for a ring tone than itunes charged for the actual full song. They screwed it up, and there is no putting the genie back in the bottle or rewinding time.
Also, this fear of being turned into a dumb pipe was why every other carrier turned down the iphone. They understood exactly what giving up control over the os on a powerful device would do to them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Friday February 28 2014, @04:23PM
I for one have no sympathy for them.
If your revenue came from captive audiences and overpriced services, and not true innovation and delivering what the customer actually wants, you deserve to die. That's the *WHOLE* raison d'etre for capitalism and free markets right? Survival of the fittest?
We cherish those ideals over in the US, but we clearly do not apply them. Anytime we can take down a monopoly and destroy a piece of the old guard is a time for celebration.
What they don't understand is their complaint of being a dumb pipe falls on deaf ears. We are not better off with their monopolies and 'added services'. They will become, and absolutely should be, dump pipes.
Data is just going to become something as banal as water or electricity, but hopefully with more options for connectivity.
Common carriers and dump pipes is the only logical solution for an efficient infrastructure devoid of all the bullshit that lead to million % profit margins on SMS.
(Score: 0) by Bill, Shooter Of Bul on Friday February 28 2014, @06:53PM
They look at that 19 billion valuation on whatsapp, and weep uncontrollably.
(Score: 1) by citizenr on Friday February 28 2014, @12:47PM
>I think they are just angry that _they_ didn't think it is possible advertisers would give them such an amount of money for the
>personal information of their customers back when social networks took off.
Telefónica (fifth largest provider in the world) has been collecting (and trading) this information since forever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzS83BGdWco [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by Gryle on Friday February 28 2014, @11:08AM
Not necessarily, depends on the service. I have the option to get Internet through the local utility at a better price and higher speed than Comcast. I'm guessing Comcast hates this to no end because I get a snailmail advert from them at least once a week trying to convince me to switch.
Ignorance can be remedied. Stupid seems to be a permanent condition.
(Score: 0) by rogueippacket on Friday February 28 2014, @01:31PM
Unfortunately, there is exactly no profit to be had from providing dumb pipes beyond a regional scale. Not to mention the fact that your local utility puts the lines in the ground once and then just maintains them - those gas and transmission lines don't change very often, and customers don't expect 10-100x more capacity every decade either.
I completely agree most telcos suffer from inflated egos coupled with a poor understanding of what their customers actually want, but those added services (home phone, IPTV, alarm systems, etc.) for the masses are what subsidize the cost and growth of the networks we want. It may only cost a thousand bucks to bring gigabit fiber to your home, but until the telcos and content providers figure out how to play in the same sandbox without calling each other bad names, there's no point - you'll only get those gigabit speeds to nearest CO, not the content you want.
Not to mention the various regulatory agencies crying foul whenever the two try to merge...
(Score: 1) by fliptop on Friday February 28 2014, @08:42PM
I have to disagree, my Dad worked for BG&E [bge.com] for 42 years and we always bought our appliances from their store at the mall. In fact, he felt their decision to close their appliance stores [baltimoresun.com] was unfortunate. Quote from the linked article:
"Discounting created lower margins, [and] expenses were increasing," Munn said. "We were getting squeezed on margins even though our customers were faithful."
They had been selling appliances since 1904, btw.
If you have second thoughts about booking a trip to an Indian casino, is it a reservation reservation reservation?
(Score: 1) by glyph on Saturday March 01 2014, @01:16AM
Your dad still had the choice. Most national telcos sell phones retail, and that's fine. We have the choice to buy elsewhere. Back in the day most telcos SUPPLIED the phone, and you were forbidden from connecting anything else to their network. Technology was stagnant for decades. We don't want to return to those days, but you can bet carriers do.