Admittedly, the U.S. telco industry is having a hard time catching up with the more advanced countries like Japan and South Korea. There are so many factors to blame - complacency, lack of radical innovation, government policies, etc.

Lee S Dryburgh, the organizer of Emerging Communications (eComm) conference, is urging the industry to wake up. Apparently, the core products of telco - telephony and SMS - are in peril.

The cost of voice transmission will reach near-zero although this is not the only telephony service killer. Voice will become just another mode within a multi-modal offering. The multi-modal offering (be it device/client/site) will itself be integrated with content sharing, commerce, search, discovery and possibly most prized of all-"relationships" (what we call "contacts" today). It makes no sense then to imagine much of future for standalone discrete audio streams known as telephone calls, rather voice will become a supplement. SMS will be replaced by instant messaging long term.

To borrow the words of charles dickens, it is the best times and the worst of times for this industry. How the leading and emerging players respond to these opportunities/threats will dictate the outcome of the game.