“The land line is dead.” “Home line revenues are tanking.” “All I need is my mobile.” We’ve all heard the headlines and declarations. And they’re true, for the most part.
But
hold on a sec. Imagine for a moment there had never been the land line,
and mobiles were first to market. In this make-believe world (Western
world, that is) it’s conceivable, if not ironic, that innovation would
be spawning to actually add voice related appliances or services to the
home. Rather than towards killing them.
Let me explain.
Recently I attended the Broadsoft Connections event. Broadsoft is the leading platform provider for Hosted VoIP services. And while the energy and focus on site was
squarely in the direction of business services and applications, there
was more talk – and innovation – around the consumer home phone than I
expected. Some on the floor even had the audacity to suggest we are
underestimating the value of the home communications service market. (Notice, I am not so discreetly suspending use of the term ‘land line’ for the purpose of my story.)
You
see for all the death certificates, and quarterly efforts to put
lipstick on the land line come earnings days on Wall Street, perhaps
there is a future. Just under a different name.
In my imaginary
story where the mobile came first, we’d be surely stumping about a
disruptive set of services (and corresponding hardware devices) that –
hold on – we could sell for use in the home.
The services would leverage our pervasive broadband connections, we
would tell prospective VC’s. Not to mention the enormous addressable
market that came with. Imagine the adoption rate of a device that would
allow for voice calls to anywhere in the world and impromptu video
calls with family – all without the use of a cell phone.
And
imagine one step further the access this would allow to thousands of
apps (nod to Broadsoft) created especially for home use – those that
did anything from open front doors, to creating family alerts, to
scheduling, and much more. All enabled by intuitive touch screens, of
course, with users now unencumbered by the smallness of the average
mobile phone.
The dining room table, the pitch would continue,
would no longer have to share itself with a laptop, there ostensibly to
help the family communicate. And the channels to market would be
obvious and eager, we would preach to those on Sand Hill Road.
As for the mobile companies? Well they’d be ok with it all because of their Ribbit Mobile or
Google Voice-like services offered to unify these new home services
with existing mobile services. Hell, they might even bundle it in
themselves. No, perhaps now the story has gone too far.
Enough
make-believe for today. Yes the land line is in fact becoming less
relevant. But stop for a moment and assess the forces colliding in
front of us: universal access to broadband, video communications,
collaboration, pervasive touch screen technology and unending
creativity in ‘app’ development.
The opportunity for home
communications services is potentially more relevant than ever, if it
weren’t for the legacy of the land line….
