Last November, I published a report as part of Yankee Group's syndicated research service examining the case for video-telephony. In this report I stated that telcos should be quick to embrace what is potentially a killer app' for FTTH adoption and do it smartly, or they would (again) be disintermediated by faster (and smarter) players.
Considering the news today it looks like this may have been prophetic. Skype has just announced that they are working on embedding the service on a slew of HDTV models to enable video-conferencing from the living room.
Is this going to be a high quiality experience? Probably not. But it will be a tougher sale for telcos to convince customers that their service is better, as opposed to convincing them that their service is unique.
I'm still formulating my new year blog post, but let me anticipate a bit by saying that it looks like 2010 might very well be the year the word 'disintermediated' is painted in big red letters on the telco's forehead...
