Alec Saunders SquawkBox

I'm full of admiration for Jeff Pulver.  Time and time again he puts his money where his mouth is.  This time he has offered to seed finance innovative new communications startups.  After speaking on an IPTComm panel last week, and gently taking the panelists to task for failure to innovate, he spent the weekend thinking about the problems, and decided that it was time to make some investments.

Good for you Jeff!

I've noticed a couple of glitches on the new blog design, so have restored the old look for now.  In particular, some users of IE 7 have links that seem to be disabled.  Stay tuned.

The NY Times has a broad piece this morning about the demise of SunRocket, and what should / should not have been done to safeguard customers phone service. Until last week, the prospect of a telephone company collapsing and leaving customers high and dry was unthinkable.  Not anymore. 

There will be calls for regulation, no doubt.  What would you regulate, though? Financial stability?

What’s really needed is the equivalent of the banking industry’s deposit insurance, and consumers need to be educated to not buy service from a company that doesn’t carry the insurance.