Will Tiered Pricing Lead to “ProxyNets†and Destroy The Universe? http://bit.ly/c35alS INstead of more revenue, no customers for Telcos?
A very interesting take on how increasing cost for data on mobile devices could ultimately lead to an almost complete drop in revenue to the Telcos because networking would be all peer-to-peer, what Shelly Palmer is calling ProxyNets.
You can think of this network as a self-assembling, self-healing, invitation-only social media sharing network on steroids. It won’t need the Internet or any phone network because it will simply connect to whatever device invites it to connect; hence the idea of a Proxy Network or ProxyNet. I really wanted to call it a “Subnet†because it’s a network that exists under the radar. But, subnet is a term of art in the network world and it has a very specific and very different definition.
Any way, the end of the world comes in the following form. People download the ProxyNet apps and they start to form personal networks that almost mirror their social media networks. This happens automatically. Want to think about it in a contemporary way, think about Foursquare or Twitter. If a ProxyNet app simply connected to your friends’ devices when you were in proximity to them, you would not need the Internet or a phone company data network. The WiFi radios in the devices would do it all.
If this were the case, it would be easy to imagine five hundred students in a Junior High School whose smart phones and laptops are all connected to each other, but not connected to the Internet. The students would decide to share everything 1) ’cause they could. 2) ’cause it’s free. You can’t get into the network unless you’re invited. You can’t shut down the network because it doesn’t really exist. You can’t get the identity of anyone on the network because they are hidden by proxy (in the true network sense).