Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Edgar Allan Poe's lesson for Telcos

OfcomWatch also have some reflections on the future of the big telcos, which could have come straight from David Isenberg, arising from James Enck's presentation at the "Marcus Evans conference on Strategic Pricing for Telecom Content and Services in London."

"I saw the program, and noticed that there didn't appear to be much in the way of disruptive stuff on the agenda. I got the sense that it was going to be largely business as usual, and this was just the inspiration I needed. I could have talked about a variety of issues (believe me, I wanted to), but in the end decided to try to hit the audience (and organizers) where they live, and devote my entire presentation to Skype...

One slide of my introduction contained a quote from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death". For those who haven't read it, basically the idea is that a decadent regime is hiding behind thick castle walls from a plague which is devastating everyone outside, diverting itself by having a masqued ball. Just keep dancing and we'll be fine. An interloper appears, and the king demands that he be unmasked, but the intruder (whether he is merely a carrier of the disease, or embodies some karmic revenge, is unclear) turns out to be the harbinger of doom, already among them. Okay, my use of it was partially tongue-in-cheek, but I had a serious point to make: your assassin is probably already inside the castle walls and you may not even know it."

No comments: