It’s increasingly become apparent that carriers are becoming less powerful in their relationships with the companies offering services over their networks (although the carriers have been pretty slow to recognize it). There was a time when the carriers controlled everything, but always-on IP connections have been slowly changing the balance of power in the industry. Now companies like Google and Apple are setting the pace of innovation – which, frankly, the carriers were never very good at anyway. Also, application developers are becoming the reason that people use the carriers networks and the carriers are starting to recognize that fact, even considering offering bulk discounts and revenue-sharing agreements. We at Opticom believe that this is still part of a seismic shift in the industry that is leading to a fresh burst of innovation, but also to a world where you buy carrier services from Google and Apple rather than Verizon and AT&T.
Stay tuned.