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Michael Powell: VoIP Part of Personalization TrendBy TED GLANZER
TMCnet Communications and Broadband Columnist
Former Federal Communications Chairman Michael Powell recently asked his 11-year-old son a question that would have been unthinkable for a parent 10 years ago.
He asked his son why he doesn't watch more television.
Powell said Wednesday to the audience during his keynote speech at the IT EXPO in Los Angeles that he couldn't remember his son asking if he could watch a certain program at a specific time, like the elder Powell had in his youth.
Powell's son's response? "Television doesn't do anything."
Such is the nature of the market for the new personalized communications revolution, according to Powell.
"He wants control, participation and to be engaged," Powell said.
Indeed, the next-generation is a multi-tasking, everything-on crowd that is interacting and mobile, said Powell.
"They are fearless and they are uncompromising," Powell related. "Those are your target customers and they are coming quickly."
To prove his point, Powell related the story of telling his 16-year-old son to stop using P2P portals to download music and to start using iTunes. His son was indignant.
"'Music should be free,'" Powell recalled his teenager's response. "As though he was some revolutionary like Che Guevara."
A short time later, Powell was surprised to see $39.99 on his cell phone bill from ring tones that his son bought for $2.99 apiece. Noting the irony, Powell said that his son was unwilling to pay 99 cents for a high-quality, full-length song, but was perfectly happy to spend $2.99 for a low-quality snippet of that same song for a ring tone.
"It's personalization," Powell said. "It's going to sound like me, I want it to be mine."
It is that same personalization that enabled a blogger to bring down Dan Rather, Powell said. Personalization has created the ability for citizens to be creators and innovators.
It is personalization that will make VoIP the voice application for the future.
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Ted Glanzer is assistant editor for TMCnet. For more articles by Ted Glanzer, please visit:
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