Telcos said testing plan to offer PCs to businesses

Telecommunications providers on four continents are testing a plan to provide so-called virtual desktop computing to their business customers.

People familiar with the outlines of the pilot program say the idea is to offer Internet access to companies via dumb terminals connected through the so-called cloud. The tests are said to involve companies in the United States, Europe, Australia, and China.

The testing period is slated to run through the middle of the year. If it works out to participants' satisfaction, the pitch to customers will be why it makes more sense in an economic recession to outsource their computing infrastructure to the telcos, according to the sources. The hope is that more companies now have an extra incentive to turn over the costs and complexity to outsiders. Any savings they realize could thus get redirected for more valuable purposes.

Although details of the plan are said to vary according to the provider, the basic idea would be to build a system where a user's login information would be recognized on a terminal, essentially creating a virtual desktop that could be accessed anywhere within the network.

In a way, it's a reprise of the late '90s idea of a thin client hawked unsuccessfully by Oracle's Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems. More than a decade later, broadband is faster and less expensive and the concomitant growing interest in cloud computing may convince more companies to give this a serious look.

But however interesting the idea, it still faces obstacles, not the least being concerns over the management of network security. At the same time, corporate inertia is a fact of life as companies often like to do the same thing because, well, that's the way they've been doing it.

There's an even earlier, though inexact, precedent. The breakup of Ma Bell in 1984 spawned seven regional bell operating systems. Some of them, like Nynex and Pacific Telesis, for a time operated retail outlets that sold personal computers. Of course, this was back in the early development of telephony and management wanted to convince serious numbers of customers to buy bundled offers of computer and telecommunications services. It didn't work out that way and the experiment was subsequently abandoned after a few years.

Faced with stepped-up margin pressures on their traditional businesses, however, the telcos do have an incentive to push into new businesses. Indeed, AT&T already offers Netbooks to some customers for $50 if they sign up for an Internet service plan.

"The bottom line is that telcos have commoditized bits on their pipes, so there is no customer loyalty and very little value-add," said a person involved in the testing. "What this does is offer a viable option that would let everyone one a PC and have access from anywhere."

[marvin25]

This is not surprising as the telecoms are required to spend billions of dollars to upgrade their systems not the last mile. They need something where they can make a better margin then just data stream which is all they have from the content providers. They also have to worry about companies moving to rural America where they have better broadband then the cities. This is provided by one ISP that is not cable or telecoms and doesn't use them for connection to the Internet. This means they try anything to keep them where they are and also make some more money. Right now they are losing all their business in rural America to this one ISP and they have make up for it some way.

[MTGrizzly]

I seem to remember way back in the old days, the PC was meant to free users from the autocratic control of a centralized computing model. Remember dumb terminals? Remember the disaster that was/were thin clients? [I used SGI's thin client, nice LCD screen, otherwise, what a mess.]

This is just another attempt to remove control from the desktops and put it back at the top. It disempowers individual users and empowers the telcos. Think about it, once the telco's have your data and have you dependent on their 'cloud computing' solutions, they can charge whatever they want. I mean what are you going to do about it? Has anyone ever seen a telco reduce prices? It doesn't happen.

Customer support on these 'dumb terminals' will be a nightmare. The Telco's will want to sell everything in a single package. This offer will be accepted by many, non-tech savvy customers who will do anything to not have to hire or pay in house tech support. Can you imagine having a problem with the dumb terminal in your business, that costs you money, and being told a tech will come by and fix it next Thursday between 1:00?4:00 PM? Then to be told they have to order something that will take weeks to arrive?

No offense to anyone who works for a telco, but large corporations cannot understand the problems small businesses have with IT. The telcos are used to dealing with things on a macro scale. This won't work for some storekeeper that has two employees and depends on a computer to make a living.

Oh, and what happened to all those 'thin client' solutions? Oh, yeah, you can buy them on eBay for about half-a-cent on the dollar...

[bdennis410]

Here's the bottom line; AnyThing, AnyTime, AnyWhere. (AAA)
What would be really interesting is if the telcos and cable AND wireless ( the "next" Internet), could design the AAA device and have hundreds of millions of displays of all types and sizes available whereever consumers and business go. Just log on and ..everything!
As far as a business model that has real legs, imagine true "Cloud Commuting."