Remember that scene in the The Graduate, where the older guy whispers in Dustin Hoffman’s ear? He’s revealing where future riches lie. What he says is: “Plastics.” Not a bad steer in 1967.

Today, the word in your ear is – wait for it – interconnect. Wikipedia claims that interconnect is the “physical linking of a carrier’s network with equipment or facilities not belonging to that network.” Oh yawn, right?

In fact – as a raft of CTIA Wireless and VoiceCon-linked announcements from Cisco, GSMA, Telcordia and others underscore – our industry’s current and future revenues critically depend on supply-side ‘interconnect’ mechanisms that go far beyond physical network infrastructure.

Although superficially fragmented, the crowded landscape below needs to merge fast to monetize the much-touted benefits of hyper-connectivity.

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There was a wolfish grin on the man’s face, and I swear he licked his chops.  “Oh yes, there’s going be a lot of money, really quite a lot, in presence brokering,” he said.

It was a conversation that I had at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I’ve been mulling it over ever since.

If you’re a fan of Charles Dickens, you’ll remember Mr Micawber, a character from David Copperfield. Despite a spell in debtor’s prison, Mr Micawber remained the eternal optimist. His catchphrase: “Something will turn up.”

Presence brokering is another manifestation of a global pursuit for monetizable assets. Telecom operators are rummaging through their asset base to see how the pieces might fit. Put together a subscriber database, geo-location information and some comms applications and hey presto!

The thinking goes that quite a lot of network horsepower will be needed to figure out where a subscriber – let’s call her Miss Jones – is at a given time, how and when to reach her (maybe with a targeted ad), and how to share her personal information with various contacts. Because Miss Jones might want to discuss her bra size with her friends, but not with her clients. Or is it the other way around?

Irrespective, exchanging rich presence information across global networks requires technical brilliance. But who will collect the value in such transactions? And as the telcos seek new client types, what’s the likely backlash from Facebook’s recent actions: A blanket attempt to assert ownership and distribution rights on any content and personal info you have uploaded – whether or not you are still a Facebook member?

If you’ve worked in aerospace, you’ll have heard of TCAS, the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System. It’s what planes use not to crash into each other. Let’s make a bet that instead of presence brokering, the real killer app – for us privacy-loving citizens at least – will be presence avoidance brokering.  Caveat emptor.