My whitepaper on blockchain and telecom is now available to the public!

Exactly one year ago today, I submitted an article proposal to the Blockchain Research Institute. I had no reason to expect an acceptance — the Canadian think tank was run by Don Tapscott, author of the best-selling book Blockchain Revolution, and the biggest credit on my byline at the time was a Medium article on Quantum Thinking that got retweeted a few times — but for whatever reason, accept my proposal they did.

I went on to write that article on the intersection of blockchain and the telecom industry, another on the blockchain technology stack, and I’ve just started a to-be-released article in collaboration with the Don himself. The BRI role has helped me land similar writing gigs with top-tier blockchain projects like CoinList, and as I look back now, I feel incredibly lucky that Hilary Carter, their Director of Research, took a flier on this unproven MBA student.

Today, I’m excited to share that first paper — check out the link below.

“Distributed Connectivity: The Blockchain-Enabled Future of Telecommunications” is now (finally!) available for public enjoyment, as is d.rect, the company I started to address the trends discussed within.

The thesis of Distributed Connectivity is simple: the telecom world is distributing, and fast.

This may sound surprising, as well it should: the industry is currently executing the largest head-fake of all time through inorganic revenue growth, as exemplified by AT&T/Time Warner and T-Mobile/Sprint. This activity represents a massive movement towards centralization, one large enough to compel every anti-trust lawyer this side of the Milky Way to weigh in.

Disguised by this inorganic centralization, however, is an equally monumental, but organic, shift towards decentralization. As 5G rolls out, networks will atomize; millimeter-wave spectrum is too high-frequency for traditional towers, necessitating network densification and a proliferation of smaller, distributed network access points. Network Function Virtualization and Software-Defined Networking tell a similar story, distributing network control and even paving the way for self-sovereign networks. Network-connected devices are similarly multiplying with smart phones and homes, vehicles and fridges, and MVNOs, OTT video/messaging, and even weather-balloon Internet are threatening to distribute industry power.

The most powerful telecom players in 2040 will be those that are the best at managing a distributed network, so a hearty investment in blockchain — a technology specifically developed for coordinating decentralized systems of value — would be a wise move for the discerning CEO of a multi-billion-dollar telecom enterprise.

Unsurprisingly, operators are indeed investing in blockchain. The specific examples in my BRI paper are outdated — as they were just weeks after publishing (thanks, blockchain-time) — but the broader use cases I outline are worth review by anyone interested in enterprise blockchain applications. I cover distributed network management, inter-carrier collaboration, transaction services, micropayments, disintermediated international roaming, consolidated digital identity, and securing the Internet of Things, before concluding with some risks/limitations, associated mitigation strategies, and recommendations.

One topic that I wish I would have raised in the paper is the importance of collaboration to effective distributed-networking management — since publishing, I’ve seen many companies, including (but not limited to) telcos, build proprietary blockchain solutions. While internal R&D is a great idea, “proprietary” and “blockchain” don’t play nicely together. Corporations should know that the only solutions worth their time and money are those that they plan to share. That may again sound heretical, but time will show the importance of collaboration in developing blockchain technologies — a lesson that the banking and automotive industries have already learned.

Ultimately, it was my goal with this paper to usher the telecom industry into a new era. It will feel foreign to leaders of a legacy-monopolistic industry, but learning how to navigate now appears to be a necessity. In a distributed world, telecom executives will celebrate their wise investments in blockchain — or show my paper to their direct reports to ask why they didn’t see such trends coming.

If you’re interested in learning more, contact me through my company website.