Mike O’Connor

I just posted a story over at the St Paul Broadband Committee site about my belief that a lot of the municipal WiFi networks don’t seem to be grounded in financial reality.

Here’s a link to the article and here’s a link to the muni-WiFi financial model I built to go with it.

Here’s the deal — let’s get these models out of the hands of the VooDoo consulting expert type people and into the hands of the people. “Open source financial modeling” if you will. Let’s beat on this model — or write a new one if this one is hopeless — and get to the point where we ALL understand the economics that underpin these projects.

That way, we can either rejoice in bridging the digital divide, solving the problems of the world and putting a chicken in every pot (as advocates claim) or we can avoid the mess that comes with yet another technology project that over-promises and under-delivers.

What say you? Let’s have at it.

I’ve been grouchy about Qwest in the past, sometimes even way beyond grouchy into the “troublemaker” category.

But today it was reported that they are the only RBOC holdout in the NSA’s program to build a database of every dang call made in the USA.

Kudos to Qwest for holding those call records back. Stick to your guns, folks.

The latest project to keep me away from this blog is bringing up the registry for CORP.COM domain names.

This is a project that Edmon Chung and I started back in 2002 when Edmon was the hotrod young entepreneur in charge of Neteka. He did such a great job that they got acquired by Afilias not long after we started our project.

What with Edmon distracted by the acquisition, and me distracted with a series of really interesting InstantCxO engagements, the Corp.com Registry sorta went on the back burner for a few years. But the time seemed right to both of us last year and the project is galloping toward an April launch.

2nd level domains like CORP.COM have been steadily gaining favor over the last few years, which is another reason why it seems like the time might be right to kick things off. Afilias is game, Edmon is game, I’m game, we have our first registrar in NamesBeyond. So off we go.

I'm off to give a speech to the assembled regional telecommunications lawyers gang this morning — my topic is the regulatory issues in VoIP. Good thing there are folks like Jeff Pulver out there doing a great job of blogging this issue — there's an amazing amount of stuff going on in this arena with new twists every day. Read his stuff to stay up to date.

Here's the outline of my speech.

How should we classify VoIP?

- A voice service?
- A mobile service?
- A data service?

Which way should we be consistent as regulators?

- By technology?
- By service?
- By layer?

Which things do we want to break?

- Universal Service?
- Access charges?
- Long-distance rates?
- LATAs?
- POTS?
- The Internet?
- CALEA?
- Numbering?
- Disability access?
- 911?

Whose ox do we want to gore?

- LECs and CLECs?
- LD Carriers?
- VoIP over Internet providers (eg. Vonage)?
- ISPs?

What is our goal?

- Promote new technology adoption and investment?
- Preserve existing investments/infrastructure?
- Assure quality and standardization?
- Level the playing field?
- Assure non-discrimination and access?
- Promote competition and lower prices?

Who does the regulating?

- International - ITU?
- National - FCC?
- State - PUC?
- City – Cable Commissions?
- Nobody?

Ooo, now this one’s interesting… Here’s a writup in The Register talking about how some clever folks have figured out how to fiddle with caller-ID strings in the VOIP world — in both directions (inbound and outbound). Here’s a link to the article.

Hardly a “harmless prank” this could have some pretty nasty implications for stalking and identity-theft reasons. Read on for a few thought-provoking quotes…

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How ’bout them apples? This could cause the financial-services crowd a fair amount of heartburn. But what about the implications for people who are tangled up with a stalker? Here’s another quote:
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I’m also really interested in the regulatory impacts of VOIP, and this promises to generate a lot of pain on that front as well. Once again, here’s what The Register has to say:
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Stay tuned, this will be coming up again. Fersure…

Ralph Jenson and I built us a pretty-darn-close-to-perfect copy of Vonage back a couple years ago and were within a whisker of kicking it off here in the Twin Cities. Unfortunately, Vonage came to town a year earlier than we thought they would and blew us out of the water. But I've been tracking VOIP stuff ever since.

These days the most interesting thing to me is the regulatory rasslin' that's going to be going on, so this will mostly be policy-wonk stuff. Heck, I've got to give a speech about VOIP regulatory impacts in a few weeks. That research alone should fill up several good blog entries.