8 Lessons from a Decade - Networking Technologies 1999 - 2009

I have been catching up on the BBC Electric Dreams series over the holidays, and was taken by the summary of the 80's as "technology with lots of promise that was very hard to actually make work" and the 90's as technology that "did what it said on the tin, but didn't integrate with anything else".

So what about the Noughties? Looking back over 10 years of networking technology evolution is useful to put things into perspective. As it is fashionable to make lists I have done so, but have eschewed the usual 10 Points. I have (unilaterally) decided that lists are only valid if they use a number on the Fibonacci Sequence, so here are the 8 Largest Trends from the Noughties:

1. Bandwidth will carry on expanding

We started in 1999 with 56 kbps modems, a whopping 128 if you bought ISDN (I know I did). In 1999 you get a fairly standard 2-3 Mbps on most UK xDSL nets, about half that on mobile ones. A few people are accessing some contended piece of 50 Mbps. OECD countries with state intervention in the market (eg France and Scandinavia) are further ahead and the mean bandwidth is higher. In Korea (major state intervention) you get 100 Mbps.

(Given we have had a c 30x increase in 10 years, projecting that forward implies a mean of c 60 Mbps by 2019, and that will give a lead in to my Future Projections post tomorrow)


2. Talking to each other remains the Killer App

Despite all the prognostications of great e-commerce in the late 90's on fixed and mobile services, the killer app every time you looked at a new platform was enabling people to talk to each other. Email groupware and SMS were the examples in 1999. In 2009, Twitter (essentially an asynch chat-group platform) showed the same for social networks to the extent that all others had to adapt their models to map to it.


3. Our "Social Networks" evolve onto whatever the best platform of the moment is

An inevitable progression of 2 - talking to each other - the next need is a "market" to find people you want to talk to. Today we call this Social media. In 1999 email groupware and chatrooms were where the action was, today with better bandwidth and Web 2.0 enabled tools we have Social Networks which rely on more bandwidth and newer comms technoilogies (aka Twitter et al)

4. All useful technology and applications commoditise over a 3-5 year cycle.....

In 1999 getting an internet connection and a LAN was non trivial, setting up wifi was for geek hobbyists and Pringles fans only, and although VoIP was technically possible it required you to buy and bodge a whole lot of stuff (yes Paduans, we had VoIP in 1999 but you had to buy $200 of additional gear to to get the Transmission/Reception on your computer). The reason Skype took off in 2004 was because of good cheap bandwidth and laptops having mikes and speakers and the conversion software, not because the guys were tech geniuses per se. There is a time for everything....

5. .....but People are Still People

The technology changes, we talk and interact with each other in new ways, but what we do remains the same. The human condition is to hatch, match and despatch and between this never-ending circle of life we try and scrabble onto higher planes of Maslowian existence, and try and keep ourselves entertained in our downtimes. From 1999 to 2009 there have been continual attempts to improve access to music, movies, material tat and potential mates. What is absolutely predictable is that any service that facilitates these basic needs better will succeed. What is also absolutely predictable is usually the large corporates that have all the assets to win will not take the initiatives (think mobile operators and music for example). What is harder to predict is which new one will succeed in the Darwinian moshpit

6. Hype (and dodgy economic theories) spring eternal in the human breast

In 1999 there were tablets, ever faster PCs, new mobiles, "must have" games, software programs and other consumer geegaws being hyped to the gills by rich Tech Giants. Scroll forward to Techmeme on any day in 2009 and you will see the same, mainly by the same people (with Google being the one new entrant - see point 6). In 1999 the "new economics" of the Internet was all the rage and was busy fuelling the dotcom boom. There were high priests of the New Tech Age then as now. Anyone churlish enough to be a "New Age Economics Denier" was castigated, lambasted and told they "didn't get it". By 2002 the sceptics had been proved largely right as the dotcom bubble deflated to complete limpness. But by 2004 the New "New Economics" of the Internet was on the rise again with Wikinomics (allowing me to calculate that New Economic memes have a c 2 year refraction time) and by 2009 in full swing with "Free" etc etc.

This time the overall economy popped early so we have the fascinating view of the theories being overtaken by the contra-reality even as they come out. The corollary of course is that every time a New Economic Theory contradicts Old Economics, it will eventually be proven wrong, but many peopel wil lose an d make money in the next turn of the screwed.

This is not to say that the basics of networks economics are wrong - they are not - but much of what is sold around them are pure snake oil, and a good test is the oldest "if it sounds too good to be true, its is". Caveat Emptor applies in 2009 as much as it did in 1999.


7. There is a Google or two in every Decade

In every decade a dominant New Media New Entrant emerges. They tend to be West Coast US companies. In the 80's it was Microsoft, in the 90's it was arguably AOL (and maybe Yahoo), in the Noughties it was Google. Ten years later they are still around as large corporate entities but are no longer the Innovators of the emerging "new" New Media. They are always up and running already, the issue is spotting which has legs. Facebook and Twitter are two to watch though I suspect they are early run - ins, others that interest me are Hulu, the Huffington Post and the Non-bank Banks (I will comment on this more tomorrow).


8. Planet Mobile will always overestimate benefits and underestimate time to get them

In 1999 the "You can use your mobile so you can select a great restaurant nearby for you and your friends" business case was in full cry. It was used to sell everything from m-commerce to location based services. Fast forward 10 years and nothing much has changed, except for one thing - the rogue entrant that re-sets the game for the next round has emerged (Apple and the iPhone). The Rogue uses the technology available to build the "obvious gaping hole" system that the incumbents for various commercial reasons refuse to build. Going back in history, Apple always enters a poorly structured game with a well defined complete - and closed - solution, capturing about 15 - 20% of the more profitable market while the rest is then duked over, and the lower economics usually means 1 dominant player emerges (Microsoft).

Does this mean that Planet Mobile is now about to enter its (much heralded) decade of hegemony? Tune in tomorrow, but as a short answer the operating rules of the last 10 years - divide benefits by 2 and multiply time to get them by 2 - still apply.

In summary then - the Noughties were the era that Metcalfe's Law took hold, and the network economics thereof drove a higher level of integration and "plug and play" evolution. But what the technology was used for, and the tracks it evolved along, were big picture largely predictable as the tracks are pre-laid and people's needs stay the same.

So what does that imply for 2010 - 2020? Tune in tomorrow to find out