NXTcomm: Sun’s McNealy: Carriers Feel Inferior to Internet Players

Sun Microsystems Inc. Chairman Scott McNealy was funny and charming during his keynote at NXTcomm. But his most interesting comments came this afternoon during a small, invite-only lunch at which he said that carriers need to overcome their fear and give the over-the-top players a run for their money by becoming destination sites on the Internet.

“They all have inferiority complexes,” said McNealy of the telcos. “They don’t feel they can run with the Internet deer.”

But, in fact, McNealy said, telcos are beautifully positioned to become destination sites given their gold mine of customer data, access to information about their customers’ location and circles of friends and business associates, and “unbelievable brand.”

“So they should just dominate,” he said.

Yet, they don’t offer social networking, things like mapping, attractive productivity applications, he said. “Why?”

McNealy, said it’s not too late; telcos still can dominate by doing things like hard-wiring keys in the mobile devices they offer with links directly to their services – whether those services are e-mail, mapping or whatever.

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