Remember the video door phone
from the futuristic TV cartoon, the Jetsons? I have spent seven years in
the telecommunications market. I used to sign customers to
seven-year contracts for phone lines. Hey, what's gonna change with phone
lines in the next seven years? Today, I don't even sell phone lines. I
sell Flex Reach circuits that deliver T1 Internet and up to 46 phone paths over
4 wires. And soon, I may not even sell traditional phones any more.
Donald Trump is about to unleash the video door phone on America during
"The Celebrity Apprentice" Spring 2009, and it may spell the end for
the telephone as we know it.
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| video door phone |
The widely quoted study by
Albert Mehrabian gave us the factoid that 93% of communication is non-verbal,
meaning that the words carried 7%, the tone carried 38%, and the face carried
53%. This is good news for mankind and video door
phone suppliers. While this study has been criticized, the owner
of my telecom company provided a perfect example. While responding to my
video phone discussion, his voice said things like "Really?"
Not very confrontational. But his face displayed extreme skepticism, so
had I not been in the room, I would not have understood his reaction.
The video phone adds the
dimension of "being there", and enhances understanding. The March 22,
2009 episode of "The Apprentice" will feature a video phone from the
company ACN. Donald Trump has experienced for himself how much more
effective the video door phone
is as a form of business communications. In his world, effective
communication can improve decisions that may have consequences that carry
million dollar price tags.
Beyond the world of
business, people will find that the video phone keeps them closer to those they
love. The mobile world of the 80's and 90's marked the beginning of the networked
family, where people from a family scattered across the country and across the
globe in search of employment opportunity and lifestyle, relying on modern
communications to keep in touch. My own brother and sister are in
separate states, and we rarely visit each other. The video phone is a
chance to reconnect with each other in a more personal way.
In my state of Michigan,
many senior employees are losing their jobs. Gone are the days of
seniority, where those who have been there the longest would be the last to
lose their jobs. Now they are often first out of the door, as the company
tries to shed their pricey salaries. These older workers have kids in high
school and college, and often they are unwilling to uproot the family and move. The
solution for many is for the breadwinner to move to another state to find
employment, and visit with the family by commuting. The video phone is
highly preferable to normal communications for these workers, because they miss
their families so much.
The largely white-European
America is a thing of the past. Today, we have immigration from Mexico,
but we also have significant immigration from Europe, former soviet block
countries, and Asian countries. Let's face it, we need young workers
to pay for the graying of the baby boom. These new workers often leave
families behind in their country, so the video phone gives them a way to
connect with the families that are so far away.
The technology for the video door phone
has been around for ages, but video phones never sold. They were too
expensive, too big, and the picture was too poor. Today, many homes
routinely have Internet connections that are fast enough to support great video
quality. The bandwidth of connections will continue to increase for the
foreseeable future. The combination of this bandwidth and the marketing
power of Donald Trump may rocket the video phone from obscurity into one of the
top-selling items for the new year.
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