Customer Owned Networks vs. Telcos...

Shirky: Customer-owned Networks and ZapMail To understand what's going to happen to the telephone companies this year thanks to WiFi (otherwise known as 802.11b) and Voice over IP (VoIP) you only need to know one story: ZapMail.

The business Fred Smith imagined being in -- build a network that's cheap to run but charge customers as it if were expensive -- is the business the telephone companies are in today.

Another interesting article by Clay Shirky about the growth of Wi-Fi and Voice Over IP and how the proliferation of these technologies is challenging the business models of phone companies....