Friday, January 14, 2005

Information is King, Right?

I pose that question, somewhat facetiously, based on a crippling thought that we in the US, and ostensibly even Western Europe, are just so far behind in communications that we're really not well poised to lead in information. RedHerring has an excellent article this month on telecoms activity in Asia:
Asian players are spending billions of dollars a year on state-of-the-art broadband and wireless services. Reliance has already built a pan-India multimedia network spanning more than 80,000 kilometers, allowing customers at its Internet cafes to do video conferencing to up to 22 different cities simultaneously for a modest price. And nearly every mobile phone it sells–including its cheapest models–can download TV and entertainment news clips, something Western operators are only starting to introduce on the most expensive phones.
By lagging in development of broadband (wireline, wireless, and otherwise) and value-added communications services (collaboration, presence, video, data, etc), aren't we setting ourselves up for failure? Am I missing the point here or something, but this seems to be a very dangerous situation (from a global capital markets & world power perspective).

posted by Charles @ Friday, January 14, 2005