The search for the “killer application” has been haunting the Internet business since the beginning of the broadband era (probably earlier but things intensified as soon as infrastructure enabled the variety of choice). All ISPs are searching for the killer app, that will differentiate them from the competition. The prefered choice so far for ISPs was to bundle their standard services with IP telephony and/or video content purchased from media groups.
What ISPs are going after is not simply “a” killer app. They are looking for a killer app from which they can make money. This is important to undeline, because the discussions about it so far do not sufficiently acknowledge the fact that the true killer apps in the Internet were never truly profitable. For example, e-mail is definately THE killer-app. Web service is also another one. Getting closer to the present instant messaging also can qualify as a killer-app. Is twitter, facebook, youtube killer apps? Not really, but how about if you combine them all together? Then you have social networking services (social media is another term used), and here’s yet another killer-app.
What do all these have in common?
- Wide acceptance: they are used by all Internet users, and they are not so hard to configure and use.
- Pioneered by third parties: they were not invented nor initially implemented by the ISP industry
- No profits: they do not generate any real profits (at least from what we are aware so far).
- They all use minimum network resources (which make them broadly available), and require a minimum level of quality (e-mail delivery is not real-time, web service and instant messaging essentially transfers simple text files and messages, and social networking sites suffer from relatively long periods of unavailability). Probably voice and low quality video incorporated in instant messaging is the most demanding funcionality of today’s killer apps.
So, is there a future for the ISPs? I think there is and the solution is linked to the specific reasons that prevents advanced services to take off:
- Advanced services require high quality of service which can not be provided by ISPs due to the best effort attributes of today’s internet protocol suite, and the user’s opposition to traffic discrimination (net neutrality debate).
- Infrastructure investments that could enable better quality of service are avoided because ISPs can’t find means to benefit from the enhanced surplus of the service providers that use ISPs’ infrastructure for service delivery.
What if ISPs could empower their users with the ability to choose which service they want at which quality level. Think about a portal where content and service providers subscribe and make available their services and users who choose which service provider to use under which quality terms for a specific time period. In this way each user can have his/her prefered level of quality for the service of his/her choice.
This definately requires more thought: It is a VPN-per-request service between the user and the service provider and can guarantee bandwidth, latency, even encryption if desired. Does it have all the properties characterizing a killer app? Yes it does: It can be available to all, easy to configure and use, meaningful (users get something they request), and targets the entire ISP’s subscriber base. Finally, it can also generate profits from both the users and the providers – in ways that depend on the business model selected.
Current internet technology can support that kind of service. Besides international VPN services has been offered to business customers for years. What is required is tight IT integration with the telecommunications infrastructure, ability to provide efficient response for the requests (thus making the “per-request” attribute meaningful), a simple and clear pricing plan, and (possibly) coordination with tier-2 and tier-1 providers to extend the VPN to the other end. This is nothing too exotic really. This type of coordination is already working for voice services. ISPs subsribe to upstream providers’ standard, bronze and silver plans for call termination, depending on their prefered quality of service and can propagate these plans to their subscribers too.
