Q: What will replace the phone system?

A: You'll pick up the handset on your Internet Protocol phone, and make a call, simple as that. What you won't need is a vast conglomeration of mainframe computer switches to do it, and you won't need to differentiate the service from your internet service.

Take caller ID as an example. The phone company charges you say, eight dollars a month to deliver ten bits of information: the number that's calling you. The only reason they can get away with it is that they have an antique monopoly. What does it cost you to know who sent you an e-mail? Nothing. What does the internet provider charge you to find out? Nothing. On an internet phone, the caller ID revenue goes to zero. THAT'S the future the telcos have to deal with.

Q: What about the Internet bubble? If the Internet is taking over telecommunications, how come all those dot coms went down?

A: Distinguish between dot coms (companies that own websites) and Internet technology. We're talking about what happens once the Internet protocol is used for all telecommunications, including voice. It brings the cost of telecom vastly below current telco rates. The Internet bubble inflated because people speculatedin website companies like theglobe.com, drkoop.com, and pets.com. That's just tulip mania updated to the year 2000. And remember, the amounts lost in the Internet bubble, by comparison with the telecom debacle, were tiny.

Q: If internet protocol telephony will rule, then why did companies like Global Crossing and 360 Networks go belly up?

A: Besides simple speculation excess, those companies were premised on the end use of their fiber getting to homes and businesses and driving demand much faster than it did. The obsolete telco industry still controls the last mile, and until that control is less absolute, too much backbone capacity equals bankruptcy. But, rest assured, the business model of the
last mile is due to change dramatically.

Q: When the telcos fail, won't a lot of highly skilled employees suffer?

A: Yes, there will be unemployment among highly skilled network engineers. But necessity is the mother of invention, and these people, freed from the old tech base and the old business model will become much more productive sources of networked value than they were when they were shackled to the old circuit-switched technology and old, vertically-integrated business plan.

If there is to be government assistance, let it be aimed at providing ways for unemployed, talented, highly trained network engineers to continue to create wealth, national advantage and benefit for humanity by doing research and exploratory development on even newer network technologies and architectures. Remember, the Internet began with a $150 million DARPA project, and even today many Internet pioneers can write a check for that on available funds. Many important discoveries remain undiscovered - the nation's communications engineers could make them.