Fred Wilson Is Dreaming

Whether or not people want to be the seat next to the big, fat, sweaty guy talking on his phone (or VOIP via headset) on the LA to NYC flight, we certainly want to be able to take a critically important business or family call 30,000 feet over Kansas City, and who cares if the people around us on the plane don't like it?

Fred Wilson is expressing the 'doubt in advance of etiquette' we have seem with so many communication media in the past. There will soon be a 'no calls' section on the airplanes, although you may have to pay extra -- and definitely to sign up early -- to get a seat there.

[from The "No Voice" Internet]

[Comments in square brackets are mine.]

I was an early investor in VOIP in the late 90s and am a big fan of services like Skype that allow people to make calls over their internet connections. We use a VOIP service in our home and have bypassed the traditional phone network for the most part.

[But that's at home, where we are the only ones talking.]

But there are certain places where I don't think phone calls make a lot of sense. I certainly would not want someone sitting next to me on a cross country flight to be making business calls the whole way. I also would not want to ride in a NYC subway car filled with people talking on their phones. And though I don't commute via train, I am sure that those that do don't want people talking on phones on their morning and evening commute.

[Except if it was me who had to commute on the train for hours everyday, and it was incredibly convenient since I could act like I was working instead of in church or a library.]

But one of the great things about the internet is that it's gotten incredibly easy to communicate without using your voice. Our family talks constantly via blackberry's messenger service but we rarely talk to each other on our mobile phones during the day. People travelling via air, train, or subway can use tools like IM, twitter, and web to sms to "talk" while in transit. And that's a great thing.

[But it is slow, and requires texting on phones, which is 100X more difficult than talking.]

I very much want to have broadband internet on all flights, all subways, all forms of mass transit. But I don't want voice on them. I want the "no voice" internet in these places.

[Because you want peace and quiet when you are not personally on the phone talking.]

Sorry, Fred. You are going to lose on this one. The payoff is bigger than you can imagine, so it will happen. The airlines with be able to make money both way: from the people that want to talk through their phones on planes, and the folks that want to sit where it is quiet.

My bet is that Fred will personally pay both ways: he will pay for a quiet seat, and then pay for the VOIP/cell phone connectivity so he can walk to the back, in the noisy part, and talk on the phone when it's urgent.