The telecommunications distribution shift from heavy metal to FiWi delivery means that active equipment vendors have both opportunity and threat – success will come to those vendors who back the next gen infrastructure operators… and failure will result in irrelevance and rapid extinction thereafter

The question is who will these telcos of the 21st century turn out to be?

The do-nothing option that would result in the 20th Century players seamlessly migrating their fixed access monopolies from copper to fibre/wireless (FiWi) – which is all very reassuring, business as usual and predictable – is far far away from a shoo-in.

The difficulty with paradigm shifts is the flux of uncertainty (in other circumstances called the fog of war) that surrounds the movement from the existing distribution

And the flux intensity is inversely proportional to the duration of the transformation from old gen copper to next gen FiWi – the faster the transition the more opportunity there is for any community prepared and agile enough to outmaneuver the super-tanker incumbents of today and realise that you too can do it for yourself!

Food for thought…