The Impact of the P2P Paradigm on the New Media Industries

In Europe 2006 was the year of Voice-over-IP (VoIP). Almost all telecom providers started to offer VoIP products in combination with a phone flat rate. However, the VoIP technology was mature since 1999. Why was the success of VoIP so many years delayed? Can the enormous success of Skype be a major reason? In this paper we try to answer which influence the peer-to-peer paradigm as technology has on established business models of the new media industries. As new media industries we understand the media and telecom industries as well as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), because these industries start to merge by offering the same products and services to their customers. In three case studies we look at the telecom industry, at the media industry, and at ISPs. For each case study we first identify a reliable set of base figures. This is an important but non-trivial task, as often figures published by companies include abstractions which influence the figures in favor of the company. Having achieved reliable base figures we model the impact of the peer-to-peer paradigm on a specific industry and try to forecast the major trends of the next one to three years.