According to Greentech Media in their article titled, Green Tech at Midyear: What’s Hot, What’s Not, the union of utilities and service providers is happening and possibly even inevitable. They’ve coined the term “utili-telcos” for the entity that will provide combined services of voice, video, Internet, mobile, electricity and gas. Here is the excerpt from their #8 list of items.
For the past few years, communications giants like Comcast and AT&T have begun to build internal units that will one day manage energy in homes or offices. Some of the early efforts have begun to trickle out. Central Indiana Power merged with a local telco to provide communications services and power and gas. Verizon, meanwhile, unfurled an initiative in February to provide cloud computing to utilities.
At the other end of the spectrum, utilities are going to start to recruit more heavily from telcos and retailers in an effort to build customer-friendly faces and support desks, sources tell us.
I wonder who those “sources” are. Nevertheless, this is an area to keep a close eye on as it has very disruptive possibilities.
Life, Connected by Ozzie Diaz 