Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3)

Sun May 18 18:50:29 UTC 2014

On May 16, 2014, at 1:06 PM, Michael Thomas <mike at mtcc.com> wrote:

> Scott Helms wrote:
>> Mike,
>> In my experience you're not alone, just in a really tiny group.  As I said I have direct eyeballs on ~500k devices and the ability to see another 10 million anytime I want and the percentage of people who cap their upstream in both of those sample groups for more than 15 minutes (over the last 3 years) is about 0.2%.  Interestingly if a customer does it once they have about a 70% chance of doing it regularly.
> 
> Well, given Sling, Dropbox, iCloud, pervasive video calls (you have heard about webrtc, yes?
> 24/7 babycams!), youtube, etc, etc, I won't be a "tiny group" for long.
> 
> Mike

Yes… Scott is making what I consider a classic mistake. Attempting to define the future in terms of the limitations that users have adapted to from the past. Eventually, users do realize that the limitations are no longer necessary and then they won’t accept them.

Unfortunately, this takes far longer than is desirable.

Fortunately, this gives proactive and innovative service providers the opportunity to adapt the technology and remove those limitations before the users care.

Unfortunately, it also gives other service providers the opportunity to try and hold users back even after they care.

IIRC, there are awards in both categories.

Owen