January 03, 2008
Mobile Video Coming to a disk near you
- I read an article by Lee Gomes about Flash Drives getting to the point where Video on mobile is going to be hot this year.
The type of memory found in digital camera’s is getting so inexpensive its making video possible for digital cameras. Lee Gomes explains “... people, especially younger ones, watch movies on their PCs, something no one would have believed just a few years ago, but they will watch them in a matchbook-size display.
And its not just a distinction in the viewing. The digital cameras, for instance, now have enough memory to capture significant amounts of video, making them competitive with camcorders.
I am thinking we will see Flash Drives readers be incorporated into PVRs and set tops?
Here is an idea. YouTube meets Netflixs. Providing a distribution service of mailing flash memory.
Background:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119923244752860941.html
Posted by carl at 03:38 AM | Comments (0)
December 18, 2007
Dan Hesse is now the CEO of Sprint
Congrats to Dan Hesse, now CEO of Sprint. Dan led off Fall VON showing how Embarq was doing the quadruple play. To me the significant point was the landline company that was divested was still looking like a fully integrated service.
Per the Wall Street Journal “Mr. Hesse, who has served as CEO of Embarq Corp., a local phone company that spun out of Sprint last year, is a telecom veteran who is well known to Sprint's board and has strong wireless experience.”
The WSJ continues “Now it will fall to Mr. Hesse to finally wring synergies out of the 2005 merger of Sprint and Nextel – a deal that has proved a huge disappointment thus far – and lift the company out of the industry's doldrums.”
At Spring VON Ali Tabassi will be speaking regarding the WiMax roll out. While the WSJ in previous reports declared the WiMax business dead but the truth is Sprint sees it as a strategic asset they are still looking to deploy.
Hesse, may be charged with finding the monies buy consolidating the less than perfect merger of Sprint Nextel into a cohesive company.
Dan Hesse
http://www.vontv.net/default.cfm?vid=9083&clip=2
http://pulcom.ning.com/group/fallvonIPS/forum/topic/show?id=897424%3ATopic%3A4145
Ali Tabassi
http://www.tvworldwide.com/showclip.cfm?id=9173&clip=2
http://pulcom.ning.com/group/fallvonIPS/forum/topic/show?id=897424%3ATopic%3A4169
Posted by carl at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2007
Video Luddites talk amongst ourselves
Okay, Lets get it straight.
I am not a vidiot. I don't like TV, barely watch American Idol. In short when it comes to Video I am a Luddite. However, I do appreciate good writing and Aaron Sorkin is great. So when NBC pulled my favorite show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip I was miffed. But I waited to see what they would do with it. What they have done is put everything but the kitchen sink on. Okay so I was hoping they would move it to Bravo or somewhere else.
Now for the third time I saw the primeire episode of "Thank G-d You're here!" and I am questioning the intelligence of program directors.
So now here comes Softbank buying up the broadcasers (see the WSJ and CBS committing to a web strategy and I get it. To the point. But the real issue is this is still a screwed up broadcast industry with no ability to make the change a dialogue.
Its just a waste of time. The real story is here with the DOD. The amount of traffic that is keeping the soldiers connected to home.
Its the communication that makes the content valuable out of context its just visual noise.
Posted by carl at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2007
Fixed Mobile Success?
Ericsson Reported that they had a 27% rise in revenue according to the Wall Street Journal.
This contrasts with the Alcatel - Lucent merger pains that has had issues gaining market share.
However, Qualcomm according to the journal also had comparable growth.
The Ericsson earnings pointed to strong growth on the infrastructure side. So that indicates some markets are nearing full scale deployments.
I am impressed that Ericsson has done so well. I am curious how many people have Sony - Ericsson phones or Qualcomm. The people I see are using more PDA type phones, so I have a limited experience.
Kind Regards,
carl
Posted by carl at 07:47 AM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2007
Dear Yahoo, I can help
The Wall Street journal reported Yahoo! earnings dropped by 14%
Yahoo! talked about the relationship with the newspapers. But the issue is that the newspapers are a dying breed on their own.
The real goal has to be using them for your advantage beyond career builder.
If all politics is local, Yahoo! with their federation of newspapers needs to have a pow wow about making the look and feel of the newspaper industry websites integrate with Yahoo!.
Yahoo needs to become the new API.
I have more ideas about this if they want me I am available for a house call.
Posted by carl at 05:44 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2007
I could have told you it was coming - Sprint Nextel
I feel for Gary Forsee who is the subject of scrutiny according to the WSJ Article. The marriage of Nextel and Sprint has never been easy for me to understand given my limited knowledge of Nextel's network. Also the structure they operated was very distributed and made it hard to grasp how Sprint was going to integrate them.
Ray Smith made Bell Atlantic a cohesive whole by taking the budget and making it impossible for the locals to spend a dime. I hated it.
Being a local, I had customer's miffed that I could not deliver new services because the capital budget was unavailable. But in the long run the company ran smoother.
Mr. Forsee when he accepted the resignation of my former Bell Atlantic boss Len Lauer had to find a new COO. I wish him luck.
I would volunteer, but I don't think the stock market would believe my value.
Posted by carl at 07:32 AM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2007
Just an observation
Reading Barron's article on the thirty best CEO's. Five we could liberally associate with our space. None specifically as telecom.
Makes for an interesting perspective on upper management.
Here the folks from our space in corporate alphabetical order.
Steve Jobs of Apple comes first which is only fitting since he stole the thunder of CEA singlehandedly making his show the show. Still not sure how to take the freedom of Mac's and reconcile them to restriction of the iPhone. But greater minds than mine.... They certainly know how to spell GUI over there.
Echostar's Charlie Ergen gets credit for being right in the hunt of services and is partnered with att. If applications are independent of transport and ultimately you are a wireless customer, why not forget the legacy and move to a more mobile model. Most importantly, pay close attention to how Dish Network pays attention to the Video on the Net content.
Rupert Murdoch at Newscorp has made the entertainment industry more entertaining. And with his ebb and flow of Myspace and Brightstar, a separate category of watching should be made on Newscorp alone.
Satoru Iwata from Nintendohas an interesting presentation about how they see games being the basis. Hard to fight with success, particularly when the have the Wii thing going. Pay close attention to the software side of things.
Samsung's Jong-Yong Yun is an MIT graduate. When you look at the capital that the company has you realize that its a force that needs to be watched.
Posted by carl at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
March 18, 2007
Tellme Why?
Holy cow!
Microsoft has a major coop!
I thought Tellme would stay a standalone as a result. Now the question is what will Microsoft do with them. It should be interesting. Here is the Wall Street Journal Article
Posted by carl at 09:18 AM
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I read the story about Alltel being in the market in the Alltel. The sale is currently projected to be $22B which I dont happen to have. But Why the usual suspects? I doubt Vonage can be the minnow that swallows a whale. So many other choices seem to me to be better than the roll ups. Would an infusion from an investor be a better choice? How about Skype or MediaFlo? Cousin Scott. call me anytime. I will be happy to help.
Posted by carl at 12:26 AM
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From the Wall street Journal article of Verizon. As I stated in my discussion about att's footprint, I am not sure how valuable the foot print is anymore and I think the sale to fairpoint is a good move by Verizon. The company's landline business continues to deteriorate, however, falling 7.6% to 45.1 million domestic fixed-access lines. The losses were offset by 409,000 new high-speed Internet connections. The company continues to see broader adoption of its fiber-based product, FiOS. Costs for the fiber upgrade are expected to peak in the first quarter at 11 cents a share. So focusing on serving the cash cow areas with new core technology is the strategy.
Posted by carl at 11:11 AM
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okay follow the trend line... eBay's Skype Lots of reports of good news some growth stories with eBay including the knowledge that Skype is serving 8M concurrent users of its 134 M registered companies. The report also states that they have 400+ devices and 350+ software applications embedding Skype. att Our friends at att said they expect growth of 17% with their Internet and Wireless offerings, but pointed to savings in synergies with BellSouth as the trend impacting the bottom line the most. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Perhaps being territory based is no longer the model. The numbers make Skype credible on a subscriber to subscriber basis. If you compare the amount of revenue that Skype has recieved to date (approx 100M) then its not even close). If the trend line on the revenue comes up, it maybe a sign that virtualization time has come for the incumbents.
Posted by carl at 11:13 AM
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According to the WSJ, EMC declared strong earnings and its easy to see why. My father, got them an appointment at "the Labs" where they were told that the advent of the telephone had increased the amount of paper people were using and that trend had not changed. Now we are seeing a new era of storage. Where the files that are being stored, Voice and Video dont lend themselves to paper. I am bullish on the storage part of the world as well.
Posted by carl at 08:43 AM
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I am annoyed at Steve Smith and Jeff for having me waste the time to got to Steve's Blah Blah Blah iPhone piece. Shame on me. The Wall Street Journal today reflected the controversy over the iPhone, but I am not sure they did it justice. It's actually real simple. The real world contains 6.5 Billion people of which a small percentage 300 Million (in the US) will be able to buy 10 Million iPhones from att. Its a controlled launch of a product in a market where 3GPP and GSM are still waiting to be implemented. Dear Mr. Jobs, if you want to come and play in telecom we are excited to have you here. But how about building for the world's open standards and working backwards to the US rather than the other way around. Better yet ignore everything but GPRS and let the industry treat the iPhone as a Mac Mini for the hip. I think the most logical discussion on Apples iphone is here in Business 2.0's blog. So here is a question. If Apple wants to no longer be about computers are those assets up for sale?
Posted by carl at 08:25 AM
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Per Gartner (via the WSJ) 63% of mobile phones sold in North America in 2007 will have Global Positions Systems [GPS]. Doing a back of the napkin SWAG on FCC reports that means that over a third of the market (over 70M US phones) are ready for GPS applications. But who is in this third of the market. The industry seems to indicate the answer is the youth. Sprint’s has a service called Family Locator which is closer to my needs. But the majority of these applications are for a younger market like the spread of services on Helio and Rave Wireless. Other services such as Socialight may or may not hit me demographically. I am very friendly with Ed Pimentel who has built the application Googaya. Underneath Googaya are some interesting tools for someone who wants to build more than a front end into other peoples solutions. I guess my fear is abuse. If I am okay seeing “People Like Me”, I wonder if other people I am seeing like me, or like me too much, or.... You get the idea. Its cool technology but I am not sure I trust everyone who is going to use it. If I have my concerns, you can bet there are plenty of people like me. ;<)
Posted by carl at 09:51 AM
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It's the official day of celebrating Martin Luther King, and I am working on my blog for the sake of continuity. Given that Martin Luther King, was a man trying to show that skin color was a poor criteria for carrier judgement. This article about the man that taught Apple's founder to phreak it has a delicious iRony Here is the story about Cap'n Crunch Draper. More iRony. Apple is born when Cap'n Crunch teaches them to make phreaker boards and takes the computer name off when it announces a closed iPhone. I am cutting and pasting myself and Schuyler’s comments on IM [16:46] schuylerdeerman: So, do you like the iPhone? [16:49] alwaysoncarl: Mac Mini I like the apple software alot better than outlook lots of ways to organize myself that i wanted to use but i only owned a mac desktop and apple has not had a pda since merlin if you think of this as a merlin rebirth its cool. But phones are .....POTS You cant expect sex from a phone. The nokia, the samsung, motorola, LG devices they all are pretty boring [as phones] and cool as devices. So the bloggers on Jobs case because he did not make voice sexy. Truth is he did a nice job. Slick interface, easy to understand. From that stand point its a joy. I just wish the cd-rom / dvd could have fit But it could have be so much more... Dear Steve Seriously Steve, the iPhone does not deserve the name if you don't enable the end user to play with it. Remember your Roots! Buy a Whistle.
Posted by carl at 09:52 AM
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Sometimes the world just whoops me upside the head and says "Deal with it!" Again the Wall Street Journal has rocked my world with this article on Samsung. Samsung has new technology for their cellphones that will allow broadcasters to send TV signals to the cellphones via the local broadcasting network. In other words not via cellular or GPRS type solutions. This is the traditional (non cable way of delivering) TV. Never mind Negroponte! What a flip! We went from the Internet being the transport media of choice; back to the TV broadcasters. And now they have the opportunity to give us thirty channels directly to our phones. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, the phones do not have an issue with speed (faster than a speeding bullet). Of course they will support Video on the Net and Mobile TV strategies as well. But it begs the question what would I do to make compelling content? Local Traffic and Weather specifically for phones? Broadcast my regular channels? And given that the service is based on the chipset of the phone how interactive can the advertising strategy be? Can one Local Network buy all thirty channels. This is a very interesting development and along with Qualcomm's MediaFLO MobileTV solution; is much more intriguing then video pirated from a set top and distributed on YouTube. What would you do with this technology? Thats what I want to know.
Posted by carl at 05:05 PM
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This is a Net Neutrality story, but you have look deep to break the story. Per the Wall Street Journal the article reads....”Internet services in Hong Kong operated at 70% to 80% of their capacity on the first, full working day of 2007 after earthquakes disrupted Web access in Asia last week.” As so often happens to me I ask the question? Is that the usage statistic or the capacity of backbone? So I read further.... “Y.K. Ha, Hong Kong's acting director-general of telecommunications, said six of seven undersea fiber-optic cable systems in the Luzon Strait linking the city to the global Internet had been damaged by the quake, and repair ships were likely to fix one of these within weeks.” So with 12% of the cable capacity available; the capacity only diminishes by 30%! I am further confused... “Disruptions could have been worse had local service providers not managed to free up capacity by rerouting traffic through Singapore, China and even Western Europe, Mr. Ha said.” Using what facilities? “The quake ... snapped undersea cables off Taiwan. This cut telecommunications across the region and left companies scrambling to reroute traffic through satellites and cables that weren't damaged. Mr. Ha said the complex repairs would take longer than first anticipated, partly because repair ships are in limited supply and they are being sought by other places whose Internet service was also disrupted, including Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and China.” Interesting. Why is this article about the Internet? Mr Ha, provides the Aha! “[Mr. Ha] played down the economic impact in Hong Kong, saying most of its big companies had taken contingency measures. Now I get it! With only 1 cable of 7 left the choice was made to keep the traditional telecom facilities up... And still (even with network planning neglect) the Internet is functioning at 70%. I would like to think that at some point the choice is to protect the Internet with the same prioritization as the rest of the telecom traffic, but the history is that the Internet was built because the choice of prioritization was not available to the end points. Here is where the real story of the Internet’s need for net neutrality is required. When selecting between the Internet and other telecom services we will suffer from the tragedy of the commons. Or in the immortal words of Jonathan Swift "In all distresses of our friends, we first consult our private ends"
Posted by carl at 05:32 AM
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The Wall Street Journal today features an article on att's acquistion of BellSouth and the use of Cingular to create a unified communication strategy. When the companies were not merged att treated wireless services as a seperate company. In the discussion of the new att that includes the wireless world. The discussion focused on corporate customers getting the benefit of a unified service, consumers getting advertising and even a fixed mobile convergence strategy. In the US this will be an interesting lesson. First of all Verizon has had the same issue with Vodafone as the partner on the Verizon Wireless side. Buying bundles has not been a strategy that Sprint found successful, and it is for that reason that we know have the spin off Embarq. CallWave has a nice application that I believe does a better job keeping customers loyal. The service is a call screening application for your wireline or wireless phone. As a converged strategy, I believe it fits the criteria of both unified communication and fixed mobile convergence. Its simple call forwarding with a media server and its almost as elegant as Skype. If they were open to giving the industry an API for it I believe they would gain an order of magnitude of customers. And who knows maybe Ed Whitacre will be mentioning them in the next article.
Posted by carl at 09:24 AM
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If you get a chance to look at the Wall Street Journal today they are highlighting “Web Video Wars” on the front of the marketplace section with the title “Big TV’s Broadband Blitz”. A very distressing point to quote is “This series explores the implications of the Web video boom for all the major players - TV networks, film studios, Internet portals and consumer electronics.” Please note Telecom or Internet Access Providers are shut out from this viewpoint. Is this a valid view? Is this proof that the Internet has separated facilities from the applications? At Boston on Sept. 11-14, 2006 we will have both points of view well represented with the Video On the Net conference, focused on the same audience as the Wall Street Journal, and Fall 2006 VON focused the IPTV/Cable industry. Are these two camps looking for the same pot of gold? What is the value proposition that makes the win / win scenario? We know that when technology changes as fast as it does with the Internet it’s easy to focus on a tree and miss the forest, but our goal is to give the full view to you. *To register for Video On the Net, please click here. *To register for Fall 2006 VON, please click here. I hope you join us in Boston!
Posted by carl at 10:26 AM
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Whenever I am around people at VON, I am always questioning who is a Bellhead and who is Nethead. One way to discover this is to listen to the discussion about the region of the United States served by BellSouth. If you are a nethead that area is considered to have a hole. Getting from Florida to the midwest maybe easy as a drive on Interstate 75 but Internet 75 is just not there. The result is that traffic has a tendency to go to Texas or New York and then along the coast lines. Given that I met with Level3 before its name was announced in the chicago area the fact that the TelCove map is missing Chicago may not be a big issue. It does sure like most of the hole is filled in.
Posted by carl at 01:23 PM
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I love the Wall Street Journal and one day I maybe to link to the articles I read in it. On 5/2/06 on page A12 bottom right is a little statement that says the Financial Times reported that Apple may a deal with Vivendi Universal, Warner Music Group, EMI Group, Sony and Bertelsmann on maintaining the price of 99 cents per download. According to the Finacial Times the pressure was on for more flexible pricing. I am not sure if Apple was being market driven for its pricing model or not. I do know that most of my preferences in music are so unpopular I pay the premium for the infrequent use of downloads. It will be interesting to see if Napster and some of the others turn around and start a price war.
Posted by carl at 12:46 PM
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March 06, 2007
Alltel for Sale
Wouldn't Qwest, Comcast or other cable companies be better choices?
What about the Yahoo! and Googles of the world? How about Sinclair?
January 29, 2007
Reshaping the footprint of Verizon
January 25, 2007
Happy Days are here again?
January 23, 2007
If you build it; they will save
When I was younger, our neighbors worked for Mead and were concerned that the digital age was going to deliver on the paperless society.January 18, 2007
For the last time (Please G-d) the iPhone
January 16, 2007
Social Networking - People Like Mobile [PLM]?
Look at the technology from Loopt, available from Boost Mobile. I can tell from their web site that it is not looking for People Like Me [PLM]. This is a location based service to find friends that has over 100,000 users (per the WSJ).January 15, 2007
A Day of Character(s) and iRony
[16:47] alwaysoncarl: I think everybody is looking at it as a phone
[16:47] schuylerdeerman: *laughs*
[16:49] alwaysoncarl: think of the iphone as the upgrade to a mac mini
[16:49] schuylerdeerman: *nods*
A unix box on a phone and vice versa. If this system allows developers into like a mac mini....
We should all learn eclipse and get going on taking advantage of this box phone
Please let asterisks be in your phone
A pbx on you cell would have all sorts of neat opporutin
You could make it so you can watch your voice mail and IVR interact, make a game to see if you can force telemarketers into an endless loop. And have the IVR menu on the iPhone show where the person is in the que. Only to hear “Go away I don’t want to talk to you.?January 05, 2007
Never mind the Camera Phone here comes TV
Is Clear Channel ready to acquire more?
January 03, 2007
Tragedy of the Common's Internet
"It's not as bad as we thought. We understand that most of the operations are quite normal," he said. "We don't expect the large corporations to experience any difficulties."
But small and medium-size businesses that rely on the public Internet "may experience some delays or some congestion," Mr. Ha said, as might home users during office hours. IDD calls, mobile phones, faxes and text-messaging services were back to normal, he added.January 02, 2007
att Rediscovers Convergence
As att converges, sprint divests and verizon looks to become whole, I ask the question what makes a converged service valuable?
August 01, 2006
Web Video Wars (Part 1)
May 03, 2006
TelCove acquired by Level 3: Filling the Hole in the South
Ebay to Apple Customers like to get deals.