Paul Kapustka's Blog

In his Monday morning keynote that opened the Fall 2006 VON communications policy summit, Wu noted that most of the Internet's innovation over the past five years has come from the network's edges and ends -- and that the current "network neutrality" debate is, in fact, a question about whether the networks will continue to be open enough to allow such innovation to continue without permission from the service providers who rule the network's core.

"The edge-core war" will be one of the main industry debates for the next five years, predicted Wu, who noted that five years ago, most people were asking when the large telecom service providers would unleash IP innovations.

"Turns out that they didn't," Wu said. Instead, "names like Vonage and Skype came out of nowhere."

Given the large numbers of participants at the Internet's edge -- versus the small group of players at the network's core -- Wu expects innovation to continue to emerge first from the edges and ends, provided that those companies or inventors don't have to cut special deals to ensure speedy access for their applications and customers.

"There are a lot more possibilities of innovation coming from the edge, like two dudes from Sweden deciding to use peer-to-peer technology for VoIP," Wu said. "What will be interesting to watch going forward is whether startups like YouTube can get independent funding, or whether the need to have a partnership with an AT&T or some other joint venture to get financing."