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Back in 1994, if you stopped someone in the street and asked them whether they used the internet, chances are you'd just get a blank stare in response.

Music companies sold shirt-loads of CDs and movie companies kept delivering reels of film and video tapes to theatres and your neighbourhood video store, safe in the knowledge that their profits were safe from end-user piracy.

Telecom only faced competition in the toll market -- its cash cow, the local loop and the contract it had with nearly 100% of all home-owners and businesses was safely locked up in a virtual monopoly.

But my oh my how things have changed in nine short years.

Now everyone who is anyone has an email address and uses the Net regularly.

The academics and geeks are still there but they've moved up a rung on the ladder -- after all, when *everyone* has an email address, the techno-literati should always go one-better and the very least they should have is a blog.

Smart businesses are embracing the Net, forsaking faxes for emails, building websites instead of brochures, and shifting much of their support burden from the telephone to cheaper online systems.

Hell, the power, flexibility and now ubiquity of the Net has even created a whole new genre of business -- the online traders.

There are some businesses, such as Google, Kazaa, ISPs, etc, that simply didn't (and couldn't) exist prior to the Net's arrival.

And then there are those businesses that are stuck in the past -- seemingly happy to grasp at straws as the Net continues to erode their customer-base and sales.

Yeah, that's right, I'm talking about the recording industry, to a lesser degree, the movie industry, and surprisingly -- Telecom.

It's not news that the recording industry continues to resist the need to embrace the Internet and the huge power it has as a tool for marketing and fulfillment. They still believe that the main weapon in retaining sales and profits is an army of lawyers and a stream of threats against the very people they supposedly value as customers.

I also read today that the movie industry is adopting a new strategy that allows them to track pirated movies found online back to their source. But aren't they cutting off their nose to spite their face?

Surely one of the big drawcards of going to a theatre to watch a movie is that you're guaranteed of a quality visual experience. Having that ruined by "very large reddish brown spots" flashing up every now and then looks set to drive people away if you ask me.

But what about Telecom? Is the Net their saviour or nemesis?

Well, if this story is to be believed, the provision of broadband services might constitute an act of shooting themselves in the foot.

If Skype was to take off like Napster did, could we see huge numbers of people abandoning their dial-up voice lines for a wireless connection and P2P voice over IP (VOIP) services?

Remember, Woosh (previously Walker Wireless) are mumbling about adding a VOIP service to their offering. Could Telecom's crazy desire to squeeze every last cent out of its DSL monopoly is effectively forcing people to other carriers who will eventually allow customers to cut their Telecom ties forever?

Surely it would be better to virtually give away DSL -- make it a loss-leader if needs be (there's many hundreds of millions of dollars in profits that can be used to fund this for a couple of years) so that competitors like Woosh can't get a leg-in.

The way things are going, I fully expect New Zealand to have one of the lowest broadband DSL uptakes in the world but one of the highest wireless uptakes.

If we look just another 9 years ahead, will the current jewel in Telecom's crown have become just a pile of rotting copper in the ground? Will we be a wireless nation?

Of course the common thread linking the recording industry, movie industry and Telecom together is a steadfast refusal to change their business model to suit an evolving market and new technologies.

What happens when companies do this? Well does anyone remember carbon paper or mechanical adding machines?

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