Atlanta - Carriers still haven't figured out how to correctly estimate demand for data services, says Joseph Nacchio, CEO of telecom upstart Qwest.
And that leaves plenty of room for newcomers to carve out new markets serving the exploding demand for IP-based services, Nacchio said in a keynote at NetWorld+Interop today.
Left on the side will be the "dead and lame ducks of the industry'' - but only after regulators wake up and stop issuing rulings that favor "reconsolidation (of carriers) under the old rules of oligopoly and duopoly,'' he said.
Nacchio painted a future of unlimited bandwidth - he said the "last mile" issue will be solved somehow - as Moore's Law finally comes to telecommunications via fat fiber pipes and terabit switches.
"It's almost impossible to get away from information, even if we want to,'' he said.
Nacchio said he was convinced of the 'Net's ultimate importance last year, when he offered to take his 17-year-old son out to look for and buy a car and his son answered "why would you want to do that?'' because all the information he needed was available online.
In the future, marketers will provide increasingly customized and personalized services, moving "from a shotgun to a laser,'' he said.
"Image communications is going to be the way people communicate in the next millenium,'' he said, adding he sees a market for "image warehousing,'' through which consumers store important images and documents on a secure server on the network, much as they use safe-deposit boxes for important documents today.
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