Mereja

Category: Telecom

  • Apple Brings 3G VoIP to the iPhone

    While the world was watching Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveil the iPad, voice-over-IP programs that use AT&T’s 3G network were finally being released for the iPhone. Yesterday iCall sent out a release saying Apple had updated the iPhone software development kit to allow VoIP over AT&T’s cellular network, and tout that it has a working product. Today fring said it has a working VoIP over 3G application on the iPhone. Om checked out Skype and Nimbuzz, but those apps haven’t yet been updated, as you can see from Om’s screenshot.

    The tech world has been waiting for the ability to make VoIP calls over the AT&T 3G network ever since after the Federal Communication Commission closed it inquiry into the blocking of the Google Voice application on the iPhone. As a result of the agency’s questioning, it was revealed that AT&T in fact prohibited VoIP on its network, but also that Apple was responsible for blocking Google Voice.

    So in October, AT&T said it would allow VoIP over its 3G network. While some doubt that VoIP on the iPhone will be a great experience, some just want to see it happen. For them, yesterday may live in their memory not for the launch of the iPad but because now they can now use VoIP on their beloved iPhones anywhere they have a connection. For more, check out the coverage at The Apple Blog.

  • AT&T: We Really Do Suck in SF & NYC

    Updated: AT&T this morning said its earnings rose 25 percent in the fourth quarter thanks to its wireless business, and told consumers, if not investors, what they wanted to hear by detailing plans to spend $18-$19 billion in capital expenditures, with a $2 billion increase aimed at the wireless network and backhaul. The carrier, which has the dubious honor of being the exclusive provider of the iPhone, has been the target of much ire on the part of its customers due to the poor performance of its network, especially in major cities.

    Yet in Apple’s own earnings call on Monday an executive at the iPhone maker said AT&T had shown it its plans for improving its network, and that Apple was pleased. It must have been, as yesterday Apple said that AT&T would once again provide a data plan for its latest gadget, a tablet called the iPad. For a detailed look at AT&T’s past network improvements and how the iPad may affect its network, check out out our GigaOM Pro item from yesterday (subscription required).

    So far, network performance hasn’t been up to par, and AT&T included charts today in its earnings presentation detailing how far off the mark service is in Manhattan and San Francisco. Additionally AT&T released stats showing that in December 2008 more than one out of every 100 calls was dropped. Now almost one out of every 100 calls is dropped, but such calls are still heavily concentrated in a few major cities (or wherever a bunch of people with iPhones gather). Update: However an AT&T executive stressed on the earnings call, that according to third party data, its dropped call rate of 1.32% is only two tenths of one percent behind the national leader.

    Fixing the problem will require more capital expenditures, and AT&T said it will spend $2 billion more in wireless network upgrades and backhaul to connect its towers and base stations to the Internet (although not all of that will be fiber). It’s also adding more radio network controllers or swapping old ones out in certain areas to better use the spectrum, and is still deploying its HSPA 7.2 upgrades to deliver faster speeds and more capacity.

    Such measure, plus the efforts AT&T made last year, will help, but carriers need to start looking at how to manage their networks holistically now that these large data-consuming devices are coming onto them. So while AT&T is bandaging its wounded network, and could succeed, carriers around the world need to think about how to manage data so they avoid such injuries in the first place.

  • WIND Mobile cares about their services vs. Bell Mobility cares about my money

    Wonderful to see WIND Mobile really care about customers AND will DO SOMETHING about the problems reported by customers.

    In great contrast, the problems I reported to Bell Mobility over and over (e.g. dropped calls) have routinely been ignored. And worst, 9 out of 10 times, they don’t even care enough to call to followup on a problem report.

    I am ready and eager to dump Bell Mobility. With WIND Mobile, I know at least if I have problems, they will try to fix it. Whereas with Bell, they won’t give a “beep” about my problems and dropped calls.

    Posted in Business, Calgary, Canada, Telecom

  • Defensive stocks offer best offense in 2010

    The old adage "the best defense is a good offense" is wise advice for investors in 2010, says Simona Paravana, global investment strategist, HSBC Global Asset Management.

    "When we look at sector valuations at the global level, one of the themes that really stands out is the fact that more defensive sectors, such as telecom, healthcare and utilities, are really at the top of the chart on the "cheapness" scale," she said in an interview Monday.

    Historically, defensive names – particularly healthcare, says Ms. Paravani – trade at a premium to the market, largely based on their ability to offer earnings stability. 

    At the end of December, however, all three sectors traded at a forward earnings multiple of between 12x to 13x. By comparison, consumer discretionaries were trading at roughly 18x and industrials at 16x. Meanwhile, the MSCI World versus consensus 2010 earnings was 14x at year end.
     
    Over the next twelve months, she expects new leadership from these defensive sectors, at the relative cost of cyclicals which have hogged the spotlight over the past twelve months. 

    Rather than viewing asset allocation as a choice between equities versus fixed income, Ms. Paravani see more potential playing within asset classes. For stocks, that means a more defensive stance moving forward.

    David Pett

  • Eric Clapton feeling wonderful tonight with T-Mobile smartphone

    T-Mobile has unveiled the phone you’ve been waiting for: the Eric Clapton myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition smartphone. What, you like the iPhone? If you’re a diehard Clapton fan, you’ll much prefer the myTouch, created in partnership with the legendary musician and Fender guitarist. Supported by Google’s Android platform, the phone comes preloaded with Clapton classics like "Layla," "My Father’s Eyes," "Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart" and "Wonderful Tonight." Clapton even stars in the commercial. As an added bonus, T-Mobile has also preloaded songs from Wyclef Jean, Avril Lavigne and Brad Paisley. The collection of musicians sure is eclectic, but you can’t blame T-Mobile for trying to target practically every music genre. It’s a cutthroat time for cell-phone providers.

    —Posted by Elena Malykhina

  • Startups, If You Can Make Verizon’s LTE Network Awesome, There’s $1.3B to Be Had

    There are 1.3 billion venture dollars available for startups that want to play a role in the fourth-generation Long Term Evolution wireless network being deployed this year by Verizon, so I talked to Daniel Deeney, a partner at a venture firm that’s investing some of those dollars, to see what types of companies have a shot at the dough. Deeney is with New Venture Partners, a telecommunications-focused firm that invests primarily in corporate spin-outs and is about to make its first investment under the Verizon LTE program.

    The program, called the 4G Venture Forum, was created back in October. Participating venture funds, which also include Charles River Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures, will sit down with Verizon executives each quarter to figure out which startups the wireless carrier is interested in and decide if they represent an investment opportunity.

    Deeney said he’s looking at everything from ways to improve capacity and speeds on the LTE network to technologies that allow devices to use bandwidth effectively or make the network smarter. In other words, he’s focused not so much on apps (although he’s interested in those that help enterprises take advantage of LTE connectivity) as on the deep infrastructure that will enable a robust mobile broadband network, one that can support updates from household appliances to peer-to-peer file sharing.

    Daniel Deeney

    Those kinds of nitty-gritty technology equipment companies can eat up a lot of capital, something most venture firms are especially leery of right now. But Deeney says the fact that many of the startups only need to build gear that works on standards-based IP equipment rather than the proprietary older 2G and 3G network gear will help them keep costs down. However, he also acknowledged that since existing 3G networks are here to stay, in some parts of the network, going all-IP wouldn’t make sense. My hunch is that a lot of the equipment investments will involve gear that can sit on the edge of the network, or technology such as better antennas inside devices.

    For example, the first investment he’s hoping to announce within the next month is in a Dallas-based stealth equipment startup that helps boost capacity  at the edge of the network. Aside from hardware, software that helps track network or device activity and respond to problems proactively is another area of interest.

    Carriers currently have equipment that can measure the type of traffic flowing across the core of the network, but Denney is looking at software that can aggregate traffic from the cell sites at the edge and make suggestions to load balance to improve the capacity quickly, or even in real time. In theory such software may mean fewer dropped calls as people move in and out of various parts of the network.

    Using that analytic software to help plan future network buildouts is also of interest to Deeney. Companies that provide software on the devices themselves that can help optimize the way the devices communicate with the network or even schedule tasks in ways that don’t use as much bandwidth could also expect interest from the 4G Venture Forum. For startups, the lure of Verizon as a customer, as well as investment dollars from a contracting industry, is strong. For consumers, the 4G Venture Forum could deliver a better mobile broadband experience.

    Image courtesy of Flickr user swanksalot

  • Some economics of cable content bundling

    Lynne Kiesling

    Jim Surowiecki has a New Yorker column on cable bundling that does a good job of explaining some of the reasons why bundling benefits all interested parties in the transaction — the cable provider, the content provider, and the consumer. His analysis provides several examples of comparing a policy with the most likely counterfactual, as in this discussion of a la carte pricing:

    So consumer advocates have been pushing for a system of so-called “à la carte” programming, expecting that this would drive down prices for consumers.

    In fact, it probably wouldn’t. The simple argument for unbundling is: “If I pay sixty dollars for a hundred channels, I’d pay a fraction of that for sixteen channels.” But that’s not how à-la-carte pricing would work. Instead, the prices for individual channels would soar, and the providers, who wouldn’t be facing any more competition than before, would tweak prices, perhaps on a customer-by-customer basis, to maintain their revenue.

    He then points out two consumer-focused reasons why the demand for a la carte options has never been sufficient to bring them to market. First, it’s very common for people to prefer bundles because they reduce transactions costs and search costs; second, bundles create option value for consumers (I don’t care about watching that channel right now, but I might in the future, so there’s a value to having it).

    The appeal of bundling is partly that it reduces transaction costs: instead of having to figure out how much each part of a package is worth to you, you can make a blanket judgment. Bundling eliminates the problem of fretting about small expenditures, which may be one reason that flat-rate pricing is very common in the vacation industry (cruise ships, all-inclusive travel packages, and so on). It also offers what economists call option value: you may never watch those sixty other channels, but the fact that you could if you wanted to is worth something. Many consumers also perceive bundles as bargains; getting a bunch of things for one price feels like a deal, even when it’s not.

    But in this era of disintermediation and ease of streaming TV and video, isn’t that likely to push consumers to want more a la carte options? Sure, and that’s why he argues that it is in the interest of cable providers and content providers to avoid the short-term profit-motivated bickering over fees (such as that between Scripps/HGTV-Feed Network and Cablevision) so they can maintain the long-term benefit of consumers who are interested in bundled goods.

  • Cox Wireless plays gotcha with rival carriers in Doner campaign

    Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s influence seems clear in this latest ad from Doner for Cox Wireless. In particular, it reminds me of the Whopper Freakout. But while Burger King was punking its own customers in those ads, here Cox takes aim at the Other Leading Brand, here called "Your Wireless." In the ads, purported real customers visit a mall kiosk, where a sales rep spells out her company’s plan in an unusually frank manner, noting that the $19 a month plan will actually be more like "$69-ish" after you add in all the hidden fees. "The reason we charge $19 is so we can make a ton of money in overages," she says at one point, illustrating that sometimes transparency isn’t such a great thing. The ads pave the way for an "unbelievably fair" offer from Cox coming in March. Bashing competitors, is, of course, nothing new in the wireless segment. In fact, it’s the norm. The danger is that viewers at home will forget who’s bashing whom and just tune out.

    —Posted by Todd Wasserman

  • Skype Steals Even More Minutes From Phone Companies

    When a crappy economy meets VoIP, cheaper IP telecommunications win, according to research out today from TeleGeography showing that Skype is taking market share from the international calling market. TeleGeography found that the projected growth of international telephone traffic was almost halved in 2009 — to a mere 8 percent — while Skype’s growth accelerated by 51 percent.

    TeleGeography also notes that over the past 25 years, international call volume from telephones has grown at a compounded annual rate of 15 percent. In the past two years, however, international telephone traffic growth has slowed to only 8 percent on an annual basis, growing to an estimated 406 billion minutes in 2009 from 376 billion minutes in 2008.

    Skype’s on-net international traffic (between two Skype users) is projected to grow 63 percent in 2009, to 54 billion minutes. In comparison, the Skype-to-Skype traffic grew 51 percent in 2008.

    This increase is the effect of a sharp increase in the number of Skype users. At the end of 2008, Skype had 405 million registered users. Since then the company has passed the 525 million user-mark. At any given time there are more than 20 million people making calls using logged onto the Skype service, the company claims. Those calls are free as opposed to services where one Skype user calls a landline, which are still cheaper than rates provided by the telecommunications companies.

    Skype is still the largest long distance phone company in the world. And as VoIP grows both on the computer and on mobile devices, thanks to an ever-increasing number of VoIP apps for mobile phones, international carriers are going to find yet another source of profits eroded.

  • An Aid Worker’s First-Hand Account of Haiti’s Enormous Technical Challenges [Haiti]

    Pierre Petry is a World Food Program senior ICT specialist. He’s currently positioned in Haiti, and has passed along his first-hand experiences trying to help a country with virtually no telecom infrastructure left in the aftermath of the recent earthquake.

    I was in Cap-Haitien sub office located in the north of the country giving the “GVLP Driver Training” when we felt the earthquake for about 15 seconds. Everybody rushed outside the old building.

    Some minutes later, we learned that Port-au-Prince was badly hit by an earthquake. We tried to contact the WFP country office by FoodSat phone, mobile phone and landlines without any success. Finally we got in touch with the HF radio on 3.xxx Mhz.

    The Port-au-Prince VSAT is out of order, the landlines and GSM phones are dead. Port-au-Prince (PaP) Country Office can not be reached anymore even by e-mail or LotusNotes as the FoodSat is probably damaged.

    The following day I travelled from Cap-Haitien to PaP, but the WFP security officer denied me and my driver access to the capital. So we drove back to Gonaives sub-office.

    Fortunately in Gonaives I found an unused iDirect BitSat. It was used for the Inter Agency cybercafe in 2008 during the “Ike cyclone” emergency. It was installed in the MINUSTAH base. With the help of local staff we took down the antenna and the router, loaded the equipment on an old M6 truck and got the security clearance for PaP. Now we are ready to go tomorrow morning to PaP with an MINUSTAH military escort.

    —Provided by the United Nations Foundation

    You can help out those affected by the Haiti earthquake at Unicef here







  • One month of WIND Mobile: how is your experience?

    Here is an excerpt from Kate O’Brien at Mobile Syrup “One month of WIND Mobile: how is your experience?” (emphasis added),

    Today marks the 1-month (4-weeks) of having WIND Mobile active in the Canadian market. The new entrant had a number of challenges starting up and with all their enthusiasm bolted into the hearts of Canadians. When we sat down with Chairman Tony Lacavera last week he stated they have signed up over 5,000 subscribers… so by now they are probably over the 12,000 – 15,000 mark.

    One of the best traits that new entrant Wind is doing well is standing by their tag line of “The Power of Conversation”.

    […] For those Wind customers who have signed up, how are you liking the everything and what is your experience like?

    See my previous video interviews with WIND Mobile CEO Ken Campbell and CCO Chris Robbins at the Calgary launch on Dec 18th, 2009. Borrowing a page from Kate’s post, please share your WIND Mobile experience?

    Note: I trust people are honest and only leave comments if you are a WIND customer. If you are a Bell, Telus, or Rogers employee trying to badmouth WIND, I remind what it does to your karma and the reason why your customer services are considered poor by Canadians.

    Posted in Business, Calgary, Canada, Telecom, Toronto

  • Google Nexus One BoM cost $174.15 (Build of Materials cost estimated by iSuppli)

    Check out this iSuppli’s Build of Materials estimate of the Google Nexus One.

    [HT Techmeme]

    Posted in Business, Google, Telecom, World

  • Mathew Ingram leaves G&M to join GigaOM

    Om Malik and Mathew Ingram talks about the decision.

    I think this is a great lost for G&M and wonderful gain for GigaOM. I guess I can now link to Mathew’s stuff without worrying if it will be hidden behind G&M’s paid wall a few days later.

    Posted in blogging, Canada, Telecom, Toronto

  • Google Nexus One Teardown

    iFixit has a good Google Nexus One Teardown with beautiful pictures. Enjoy.

    [HT mashable]

    Posted in Canada, Google, Photography, Science & Technology, Telecom, united states

  • WIND Mobile & Nexus One

    WIND Mobile’s Chris Robins has confirmed,

    1. “Yep, [Nexus One] works on AWS”, and
    2. WIND is “chatting with them”, and
    3. very importantly (to me), WIND recognizes “Wow! Lots of interest in the Nexus”

    Posted in Canada, Telecom

  • Engadget’s Google Nexus One review

    Engadget's Google Nexus One review

    Engadget’s Google Nexus One review. I wonder will this phone work on WIND Mobile’s network?

    Posted in Canada, gadget, Google, Science & Technology, Telecom, united states, World

  • Holy Sales Growth! Huawei Says Sales Grew Almost 29%

    Huawei's solar-powered base station

    In case anyone is doubting that the shakeout in the telecommunications world will continue even as demand for broadband (and bandwidth) skyrockets, consider Huawei’s reported 2009 revenue of $21.5 billion and contract sales of more than $30 billion. The Chinese telecommunications equipment vendor told Light Reading that it grew contract sales by almost 29 percent and saw revenue growth of 17.5 percent, during a year when most of its competitors have been reporting lowered sales.

    Huawei is on a tear, although it expects its contract sales growth to slow in 2010 to about 20 percent, reaching $30 billion. Its competitors, meanwhile, have been cutting their work forces and trying to figure out ways to bolster non-equipment aspects of their businesses as the tectonic shifts in the telecommunications industry ripple through the ecosystem.

    Nokia Siemens Network is cutting employees while Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson are trying to derive other forms of revenue from services plays. Meanwhile, Nortel’s assets are in the final stages of getting sold off and Motorola’s equipment arm is touting its WiMAX gear while desperately hoping for some big LTE wins.

  • The Boston Deals You Missed During the Holidays: Cash for Kala Pharma, Funds for ViewFinity, Silver for SCVNGR, & More

    Ryan McBride wrote:

    Feeling a bit out of the loop on the New England tech and life sciences news? Don’t fret. We’ve compiled the Boston-area deals you may have missed during the last couple of weeks of 2009. There were enough of them to indicate that tech lawyers and execs were quite busy over the break.

    —Waltham, MA-based software firm ViewFinity found $8.6 million in Series B funding, according to an SEC filing. The firm, which makes SaaS software for support and management of desktops, laptops, and other computing devices, says on its website that its investors are Chicago-based JK&B Capital and Giza Venture Capital, of Israel and Singapore. The exact investors in the second-round financing were not listed in the regulatory filing.

    —EnglishCentral reported in an SEC filing that it scooped up new funding in a $3.5 million equity round. I checked out the demo of the firm’s video-based system for learning English online, and it looked like a potentially effective way to pick up the language. Though the participants in the round were not named in the filing, the Lexington, MA-based startup revealed back in October that its backers include Atlas Venture and Google Ventures.

    —Eye Gate Pharma, of Waltham, brought in $11 million of a planned $22.7 million financing round, according to a regulatory filing. The company, which said back in March 2008 that it had raised $31 million, is developing a drug delivery device that uses electrical currents to put drugs deep into the eye without needles. Company CEO Stephen From told investors back in October that he was raising money to fund a late-stage clinical trial of the firm’s lead drug, a reformulated corticosteroid, for dry eye syndrome

    —The state of Massachusetts revealed two days before Christmas all of the Bay State biotechs that had recently been awarded $25 million in tax breaks as an incentive to create more than 900 jobs in the commonwealth over the next year. Not surprisingly, some …Next Page »

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  • Nuance Pockets SpinVox for Measly $102.5M

    Christina Domecq, SpinVox CEO

    Nuance Communications finally pocketed SpinVox for a paltry $102.5 million, ending weeks of speculation about the fate of the troubled startup. The news marks a dramatic downturn for the company, which last year raised $100 million from a host of investors at a $500 million valuation.

    SpinVox — which may have been pressed to sell thanks to its current struggle to repay a $48.8 million loan — boasts a fairly impressive list of customers including Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless, Vodafone Spain and Skype, and the company’s algorithms and language databases probably hold some value. So the deal appears to be a bargain for Nuance, which gets some large carrier customers and new languages with the acquisition. These should help as Nuance takes on both Google and Microsoft as voice recognition continues to expand into the mainstream thanks to mobile phones. For the investors who backed the startup so strongly, though, it’s a costly resolution to SpinVox’s troubled run.

  • What’s Left of Nortel Today?

    Ciena today announced that it had jumped all of the regulatory hurdles in its $769 million buy for the metro Ethernet assets of Canadian telecommunications company Nortel, bringing the company’s year-long dismemberment through the bankruptcy courts closer to the end. According to a Nortel spokeswoman, the company has some patents and its joint venture with LG Electronics left.

    The LG joint venture was created in 2005 and offers IP phones and unified communications equipment. Nortel put its portion of the JV on the block in May. The scope of the remaining patents, which include some potentially valuable LTE patents, is unclear. But as we end the year it’s worth taking a look at one of the first victims of what we believe will be an ongoing consolidation of the telecommunications equipment industry. Nortel’s demise brings to a close more than 100 years of operations for the company, which started out in 1895 as Northern Electric and Manufacturing supplying telephones (and later gramophones!) to Canadians.

    Jan. 14: Nortel files for bankruptcy with $4.5 billion in debt.

    Feb. 20: It becomes clear that Nortel will sell itself in pieces rather than emerge from bankruptcy as a whole company.

    Feb. 25: Nortel cuts 3,200 employees, bringing its workforce down to 25,000.

    March 31: Radware buys Nortel’s application delivery business for $18 million. Nortel bought that business in 2000 for $7 billion.

    July 28: Nortel gets court approval to sell its CDMA business and LTE Access assets to Ericsson for $1.13 billion after some drama involving a bid by Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry. Nokia Siemens Network was also a potential bidder. The deal is completed on Nov. 13.

    August 10: Nortel’s CEO Mike Zafirovski quits.

    Nov. 23: Ciena beats out Nokia Siemens Networks for Nortel’s metro Ethernet assets with a bid of $769 million.

    Nov. 25: Ericsson and Kapsch emerge as successful joint bidders for Nortel’s global GSM/GSM-R business, and on Dec. 2 received court approval to pay $103 million in cash for the assets.

    Dec. 8: Nortel completes the sale of some of its Carrier Networks business associated with the development of next generation packet core network components to Hitachi for $10 million.

    Dec. 18: Nortel completes the sale of its global Enterprise Solutions business, as well as its government equipment business and DiamondWare subsidiary, to Avaya for $900 million.

    Dec. 23: Nortel agrees to sell its Carrier VoIP business to privately held Genband for $282 million.

    Image courtesy of Ashwin Kumar’s Flickr stream.