Telecom boss updates on Geekzone 'crowdsourced' broadband gateway/modem project

UPDATE June 9: Telecom's experiment with crowdsourcing a gateway/modem design with Geekzone closes tomorrow.

Geekzone members have been suggesting features for a new gadget (for connecting to and managing a copper or fibre home broadband connection), then voting on them (see the suggestions and the two rounds of voting here). 

I caught up with Telecom Retail CEO Chris Quin mid-week, and asked him how the project was going from his perspective.

"If we incorporated all the features the modem would be this big," he said, spreading his arms full width, "and cost a million dollars."

He noted one Geekzone wishlist feature - rack mounting - ran counter to the desire of most Telecom customers for a small, discreet modem that can be easily hidden away.

Still, while acknowledging many were not practical for middle New Zealand households, he liked a lot of the Geekzone ideas, and rated the the project a success.

Not one, but two or three
It's possible that not one but two or three gateway/modem products could emerge from the Telecom-initiated project, Mr Quin said (the initial plan was for one - and before the end of the year, if it got the green light).

One could be aimed at power users, another more at the mainstream market.

Wishlist
If you browse through the Geekzone discussion threads, you'll soon see a lot of the suggestions centre on data caps - certainly a hot-button topic as power users (and I would say mainstream users) download more video, game, chat, and take advantage of cloud services and burgeoning online services (one terabyte for Yahoo Flickr photos? Yowsa!).

Data cap themed suggestions include a graphical display on the front of the modem that shows you how much of your monthly allocation is left, the ability to track how much data is used by different members of a household or flat and the related ability to set up different levels of wi-fi access (so a houseguest could be allocated one account or, say, one account only allows wireless access around the house, not to the internet at large).

Mr Quin noted all of those suggestions and seemed to be giving them soom serious mulling. I wonder though to what degree Telecom would want to accentuate the negative of data caps - however useful a some kind of "fuel gauge" display on the front of a modem.

Other suggestions include a built-in femtocell (mini cellsite) capability, a slot for a USB modem to cover landline outages, and integrated support for VoIP (making phone calls over the internet).

The latter doesn't have a chance in heck, for political and commercial reasons (Telecom doesn't want to speed the demise of its cash cow home line business) but it will be intriguing to see what other features make the cut.

Telecom, Geekzone to collaborate on 'crowdsourced' gateway/modem
May 27: This just in from Geekzone's Mauricio Freitas: members of his tech discussion site are going to collaborate with Telecom on the development of a new gateway/modem (the hardware gadget that connects your home or small business to copper DSL/or fibre broadband).

Chris Thompson, Telecom’s Head of Consumer Marketing says the crowd-sourcing project is the natural progression for a productive community relationship which has been fostered over a number of years with Geekzone.

“Early adopters, or ‘power-users’ offer great insights to the demands that our wider customer base will be making in the future," he says.

The project will last for two weeks. During the first week of the collaboration process, the community will be encouraged to share their ideas and technical specs, before then ratifying them in a voting process the following week. Selected members whose suggested features are chosen to appear on the final product will be invited to participate in the prototype testing of the units as well as rewarded with one of the end-product modem at the completion of the project.

The modem should go into production by the end of the year.

Follow through?
I'm sure the Geekzoners will pile on good ideas.

Telecom - who Mauricio says initiated the project - will in turn provide constant feedback. They'll also be a plus a +1 button to rank submissions.

It's an interesting crowdsourcing initiative - and one whose success will depend on whether Telecom follows through on suggestions.

I hope they do. The Geekzoners are obviously operating on a different technical plane from middle New Zealand - but they could still make a lot of tweaks that see things running more smoothly for everyone.

To a degree, Telecom will be in it for the PR, and to piggyback on Geekzone's credibility, but still this is not a bad way to develop a product.

Read this Telecom! Read this!
Me, I've already got a suggestion: assuming there's built-in wi-fi, how about an on/off switch on the front so you don't have to unplug to reset?

ckeall@nbr.co.nz

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