Supernova: Innovation in Established Companies

Posted on June 22, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized |

I missed most of the first panel on this topic, but Eric Shepcaro from AT&T is on stage with Kevin Werbach in a one-on-one interview.

I think it’s interesting that Shepcaro begins his talk by talking about how the Internet was predicted to be the death of the telco but “we’re still here and doing very well”. Interesting because in spite of this great innovation none of the telcos have done anything truly innovative to leverage.

Basically he is saying the network is at the center of everything and their business is about services around the network, which I presume means THEIR services as opposed to services from anyone else.

I was waiting for him to bring up iptv, he just did as evidence that they are friendly to partners in their ecosystem.

Kevin just asked how Skype and the fact that they don’t need all the infrastructure that AT&T pitches as their value creator. Shepcaro responded that customers want bundles, and then for whatever reason he threw out the need for a security service. He acknowledged that customers ask about Skype, business customers specifically. Ah, now he throws in the customer acquisition costs

Kevin asked if the cost of basic voice connectivity is essentially going to zero. Shepcaro acknowledges that it is going down but not to zero. Again, he talks about an “interactive communications experience” which I guess is a codeword for bundle. He ducked the question in my opinion.

Net neutrality. “The concept of net neutrality is well misunderstood” Shepcaro responds. He also commits that AT&T isn’t going to get in the way of anyone doing what they want to do on the internet. He threw out the analogy of “I can choose to get a package in a week or pay a premium to get it in a day”, which is really outrageous because on the internet I am getting the package “in a day” right now and not paying a premium for it.

This interview is turning into a version of a live press release. This guy really isn’t interested in discussing the issues being presented, he is primarily defending AT&T by talking about how great they are. Just once I’d like to hear him say they could do better on something other than “we’re misunderstood”.

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