A Skype Only Home

Seven years ago when we bought and remodeled a home in the Berkeley hills we had to strip every wire connecting our structure to the world -- power, telephone, and cable. We had to pay the power company and the phone company to come by and do the disconnect, but not Comcast. When I asked the Comcast technician how much it would cost for the disconnect he said, "oh, disconnecting is free -- we soak you when you are ready to reconnect!" And with a smile he was off.

I smiled too at the time because we don't have or want television in our home and we were perfectly happy getting our Internet connection from the phone company. So I had no intention of every calling Comcast again. But a few weekends ago a truck coming up our street hit our telephone line and ripped it out of the house. After calling AT&T and finding out that it would be a few days before they could send a crew out to reconnect we decided to call Comcast and ask how fast they could come out. Both companies said they would send technicians in three days (the Comcast truck would come the day after AT&T came) so we decided to go ahead and have them both come out and connect.

And boy are we glad! AT&T still hasn't sent a crew to reconnect our house!! So for the past few weeks we have been using Comcast for our Internet connection and we've been using Skype for our phone. We just bought a WiFi Skype phone and it is terrific. This week we called AT&T and cancelled our account.

Yes we know about the 911 issue. But if AT&T can't (or won't) connect our house, what are we supposed to do? And anyway I think I'd rather have Skype getting our money than AT&T. It was quite eye opening to see how much cheaper it is once you also consider free voice mail, free caller ID, cheaper International calls... nope, we don't miss AT&T at all.

Geoffrey Moore on Innovation: Video

At the end of last month, on October 27th and 28th in London, TCG helped the Symbian Foundation host a conference on the future of mobile. Almost 3,000 people attended this dynamic event, held at the Earl's Court exhibition center. On the second day of the event Geoffrey Moore spoke to the audience about what Symbian should be doing and how Nokia and the other members should be participating in and benefiting from the Symbian Foundation. The slides and a video of his presentation are now available. Geoff makes an excellent set of observations useful for every company about the role of innovation in your business and what you need to be doing to compete:

Geoff Moore at SEE

View more presentations from tshelton.

Geoffrey Moore at Symbian Exchange and Exposition from Ted Shelton on Vimeo.