Industry News

[smtm]

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=131805
Embarq to Test Telco TV Service

[jjz34]

Well if there is a connection to Rim here, and there better be a connection between Rim and Embarq, the second paragraph of that article certainly doesn't make it sound like a big deal. Maybe Embarg is trying to throw their competition off the scent.

[destiny1]

Here is an older article talking about Embarq's view toward's wireline services. Wireline is more important to them than they are letting on.

May 19, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

LV deemed crucial as Embarq embarks

Chief executive officer says company plans to become more than wire-line operation

By JENNIFER ROBISON
REVIEW-JOURNAL (http://www.reviewjournal.com/about/print/rjstaff.html)
New telephone company Embarq Corp. is facing an age-old problem: How to expand market share when evolving technology challenges your business model.
Embarq is a spinoff of Sprint Nextel Corp., launched on Thursday as Sprint shed its traditional land-line phone business to concentrate on wireless service.
Advertisement
http://ads.stephensmedia.com/image.ng/size=250x250&channel=business
For Embarq's local land-line users, little will change, save for the new logo on their monthly statements. But Embarq's executives hope to usher in a new growth period at the utility -- and they say Las Vegas is essential to that expansion.
"Las Vegas is our single-most important market in the country. It's our largest market in terms of customers and revenue," said Dan Hesse, chairman and chief executive officer of Embarq and a former president and chief executive officer of AT&T Wireless Services. "It's a great test bed for us."
Before you discount the idea of a land line-based phone company snaring new market share in the age of cell phones and voice-over-Internet protocol, understand that Embarq's executives intend to transform the business into more than a conventional wire-line operation.
On June 5, Embarq will launch a voice-mail program that will give customers a single in-box for both cell-phone and land-line calls. Consumers will be able to check messages online, scrolling directly to the most important voice mails in their queue. Embarq is also testing a cell phone that uses mobile-phone networks outside and switches to Wi-Fi in the office. Users will avoid gobbling up cell-phone minutes while at work, and can leave the office while on conference calls without dropping the conversation.
Embarq also sells Internet service via a digital-subscriber-line division, and the company has an ongoing Wi-Fi trial with emergency first-responders in Henderson.
"Parts of our business are declining, but our goal is to more than make up for those declines by growing in other sectors and integrating new technologies in more useful ways," Hesse said.
Yet, Embarq isn't giving up on land lines.
Hesse sees a need for wire lines that can carry an increasing volume of business data. Wireless providers will also need to continue to lease wire lines from Embarq to help transmit their customers' calls. Also, he predicted, the "vast majority" of consumers and businesses will continue to have both wireless and land-line phones for the foreseeable future.
Roger Entner, a telecommunications analyst with Massachusetts technology consultant Ovum, said the wire-line industry remains profitable.
"Embarq financed the whole growth strategy of the Sprint we know today. It paid for (entry into) wireless and Internet," Entner said. "Embarq today, even though it is losing lines, is still a cash cow. The way the business is structured, customers pay $30 to $40 a month for service, and it costs the company significantly less to provide that service."
In Southern Nevada, Embarq's land-line business is especially healthy.
The Las Vegas market adds about 70,000 new residents a year, and that has buffered Embarq from the slides it's experiencing in land-line customers nationwide. Some media reports have pegged those losses at 5 percent a year. In Las Vegas, however, Embarq isn't experiencing significant line loss, Hesse said.
"Our line numbers look good in Las Vegas," he said.
Hesse added that Embarq also benefits from Southern Nevada's fresh infrastructure.
"Las Vegas is a very progressive market and a very competitive market, so it's a market we really need to be on top of," said Hesse, who's visited Las Vegas half a dozen times since he joined Embarq in June. "Las Vegas is growing out all the time with new neighborhoods, so we're always putting in our most advanced fiber and routers. We have a very modern network in Las Vegas by necessity."
Entner agreed that Embarq benefits from Southern Nevada's continuing development.
"You have the opportunity to make the whole city a telecommunications nirvana from end to end," Entner said.
Embarq's fresh start didn't have the warmest welcome on Wall Street.
On Thursday, in their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, shares in Embarq opened at $45.40 but then fell to $43.75 in afternoon trading. The company's ticker symbol is EQ.
Hesse attributed the price drop to a changing investor base. Sprint Nextel stockholders aren't too keen on owning shares in a land-line business that they might consider obsolete, he said. Hesse added that Embarq's financial advisers have counseled company executives to expect downward pressure on the stock's price for a few months, at least until investors who prefer "a more stable, higher-dividend kind of stock" discover Embarq.

[McCloud]

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=131805
Embarq to Test Telco TV Service

We plan to do a small facilities-based video trial in a single market next year. We have no current plans to deploy this new technology more widely, and we envision satellite TV as a key element of our bundled offerings in most of our markets for many years to come," an Embarq statement reads.

I don't particularly like the" Small facilities based" trial or the "next year" parts. Actually most of it is a little disappointing, however, you never know and plans change. Actually, you wouldn't expect them to come out with a statement like ""we expect to revolutionalize the telco tv offerings with a new technology from Rim"

Ernie

[destiny1]

We plan to do a small facilities-based video trial in a single market next year. We have no current plans to deploy this new technology more widely, and we envision satellite TV as a key element of our bundled offerings in most of our markets for many years to come," an Embarq statement reads.

I don't particularly like the" Small facilities based" trial or the "next year" parts. Actually most of it is a little disappointing, however, you never know and plans change. Actually, you wouldn't expect them to come out with a statement like ""we expect to revolutionalize the telco tv offerings with a new technology from Rim"

Ernie

Hmmm, and the Feds aren't going the cut the discount rate either! Sounds like they are attempting to steer attention away from the trial to me. This is inconsistent with the reality of what's happening in markets like Las Vegas. Remember Embarq is largely a wireline business. Because leveraging their wireline assets is key to success, saying they will depend on satellite for video broadband access makes no sense.

In their Las Vegas market, because of distance and degraded infrastructure issues, many customers have no high speed access at all. Satellite will not allow interactive video or gaming, (generally <6 mbs download only). Everyone knows having the ability to upload as well as download is a huge part of the internet experience. Embarq is marketing itself as an innovative wireline carrier. If video customers have only one-way communication at much slower speeds than the competition, where is the value-added? Secondly, the costs for deploying satellite will be higher than a simply CupriaTM chipset upgrade to the copper loop already in place. Thirdly, satellite pipes are not as big as can be achieved by deploying Cupria chipsets. I don't believe this line for a minute. I don’t think Embarq does either.

D1 ;)

[Stoppmann]

We plan to do a small facilities-based video trial in a single market next year. We have no current plans to deploy this new technology more widely, and we envision satellite TV as a key element of our bundled offerings in most of our markets for many years to come," an Embarq statement reads.

I don't particularly like the" Small facilities based" trial or the "next year" parts. Actually most of it is a little disappointing, however, you never know and plans change. Actually, you wouldn't expect them to come out with a statement like ""we expect to revolutionalize the telco tv offerings with a new technology from Rim"

Ernie

Here is another viewpoint.

Embarq said when RSMI announced their relationship with Embarq that "Embarq is investigating multiple technologies in support of future wireline multimedia services," explained Steve Carter, Director of Network Services for Embarq. "This initiative with Rim Semi will help to determine if Embarq can leverage a new technology to give our customers new services across our wireline network”

Embarq is making a distinction between tranmission service and new product sevices

http://www.rimsemi.com/press/20060911.html

The use of the word "technology" is so generic. We shouldn't assume that the new technology only means Cupria. In the statement above, Embarq is investigating multiple technologies. I would think it multiple technologies would include the transmission technoloy which would include Cupria. But there is also a host of "technologies" that is associated with delivering TV to the home. All of these technologies have to work together in order to provide the end user with a meaningful experienc. I believe that TV service package is different than transmission service.

These headlines state that Embarq will try a "TV service package" in a small facilities-based video trial in a single market next year. When they say they have no plans deploy this new service technology, this statment can be made without referring to Cupria

The headlines don't state that they are testing a new transmission technology that will provide a last mile solution, although it could be implied. In fact, Embarq won't provide any details on the technology that will transmit the TV service package.

Anyway, all IMHO.

[McCloud]

Here is another viewpoint.

Embarq said when RSMI announced their relationship with Embarq that "Embarq is investigating multiple technologies in support of future wireline multimedia services," explained Steve Carter, Director of Network Services for Embarq. "This initiative with Rim Semi will help to determine if Embarq can leverage a new technology to give our customers new services across our wireline network”

Embarq is making a distinction between tranmission service and new product sevices

http://www.rimsemi.com/press/20060911.html

The use of the word "technology" is so generic. We shouldn't assume that the new technology only means Cupria. In the statement above, Embarq is investigating multiple technologies. I would think it multiple technologies would include the transmission technoloy which would include Cupria. But there is also a host of "technologies" that is associated with delivering TV to the home. All of these technologies have to work together in order to provide the end user with a meaningful experienc. I believe that TV service package is different than transmission service.

These headlines state that Embarq will try a "TV service package" in a small facilities-based video trial in a single market next year. When they say they have no plans deploy this new service technology, this statment can be made without referring to Cupria

The headlines don't state that they are testing a new transmission technology that will provide a last mile solution, although it could be implied. In fact, Embarq won't provide any details on the technology that will transmit the TV service package.

Anyway, all IMHO.

Actually then Embarg could deploy Cupria sooner, just for the broadband and then test next year for tv service package.

Ernie

[Stoppmann]

Actually then Embarg could deploy Cupria sooner, just for the broadband and then test next year for tv service package.

Ernie

I would think so, as long as Cupria can transmit at speeds and distances as advertised.

Brad published a PL in February 2007.

http://www.rimsemi.com/letters/022807.html

“There is nothing wrong with IPTV that Cupria™ cannot fix.”

There seems to be tranmission problems and software problems Cupria is designed to fix the trasmission problem. But "the telcos also struggle with software problems. There is a vast layer of protocols, computer systems and people who run the network. It is not as automated as most people think. While Cupria™ does not directly solve most of the software problems, it can help by simplifying the overall network. A Cupria™-equipped network simply has fewer nodes and less complexity. It is designed to fit within the telcos existing topology which is well understood and supported."

[doughjo]

AT&T Introduces U-verse in Sacramento Area
Monday August 20, 12:01 am ET
Customers Have a New Choice in Television
High Definition Programming and Other Compelling Features Make AT&T U-verse TV 'Cooler Than Cable'


SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- A new world of communications and entertainment is now available to thousands of residents in the Sacramento, Stockton, and Modesto areas. AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T - News) has announced the launch of AT&T U-verse(SM) in parts of local communities, including the city of Sacramento, Sacramento County, Carmichael, Fair Oaks, Folsom, Gold River, Lincoln, Modesto, Rancho Cordova, Rocklin and Stockton.
ADVERTISEMENT


AT&T U-verse uses AT&T's new fiber-rich network to offer cutting-edge television and high speed Internet services. AT&T is the only national provider to offer a 100 percent Internet Protocol (IP)-based television service, making U-verse TV "cooler than cable" and one of the most robust and feature-rich services available today.

AT&T U-verse offers customers a combination of next-generation digital television -- including access to more than 26 High Definition (HD) channels -- and high speed Internet access. The award-winning AT&T U-verse TV includes cutting-edge features that are unmatched in the market, and the new U-verse enabled AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet builds on AT&T's position as the nation's leading provider of broadband DSL.

AT&T will continue to increase U-verse availability throughout the area on an ongoing basis.

"We're thrilled to bring AT&T U-verse to even more Californians," said Loretta Walker, AT&T vice president and general manager for the Sacramento area. "Our current California customers have told us that they enjoy the features, value and choice that U-verse TV offers, and we know the Sacramento Valley will love it too."

The expansion of AT&T U-verse services in California follows progressive legislation passed by the California Legislature and signed in September 2006 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Beginning today, where available, AT&T U-verse TV will offer Sacramento Valley customers:


-- A compelling variety of TV packages with more than 320 channels to
choose from, including digital music, local, movie and sports
programming, as well as a premium Spanish-language package. Most
programming packages include up to three HD-capable receivers -- one
with a digital video recorder (DVR) that allows customers to pause,
rewind, replay and record live TV -- at no extra charge. (Customers may
add more receivers for $5 each a month.)
-- More HD programming than the local cable provider. HD technology
produces images more than twice as detailed as standard analog TV and
delivers rich, realistic video and multi-channel, movie-theater-quality
sound. AT&T U-verse TV offers customers access to a lineup of more than
26 HD channels, available in both 720p and 1080i formats, along with HD
DVR capability. Access to HD service is $10 a month with any U-verse TV
package.
-- AT&T Yahoo! Web and Mobile Remote Access to DVR, which allows U-verse
TV and Internet customers to schedule recordings from any Web-connected
PC or compatible AT&T mobile phone (wireless service charges apply)
using their AT&T Yahoo! account. These features are unique to AT&T
among local video providers.
-- The ability to record up to four programs at once using a DVR receiver.
This capability is another exclusive feature unmatched in the
marketplace.
-- Built-in Picture-in-Picture functionality that allows subscribers to
"channel surf" on any television without leaving the program they're
watching.
-- Fast channel-changing, reducing the delay experienced with other
digital video services.
-- A growing Video on Demand (VOD) library with one-touch access to movies
and events.
-- The ability to search for programs using the title or an actor's name
to receive real-time, relevant results from upcoming linear or VOD
programs.
-- Easy-to-use parental controls to block live programs, recorded programs
or videos by specific channel or ratings.
-- Specially designed U-verse receivers, manufactured by Motorola, all of
which are HD-capable and include universal remote controls that provide
backlit buttons and one-touch access to VOD and other features.


AT&T plans to add more channels and interactive applications in the future.

Customers can choose from multiple combinations of TV and Internet packages to customize their entertainment experience. In addition to U100, U200 and the popular U300 and U400 packages, AT&T also offers U-family, a market-leading family-friendly programming option. Current AT&T U-verse TV offers start at $44 a month, depending on the selected programming and Internet packages (other monthly charges apply).

Now through Sept. 30, new customers can join AT&T U-verse and receive their choice of TV service for the first full month or one year of The Movie Package when they choose the U200 package or above, or customers who order a qualifying package online can receive both offers. Thereafter, customers will continue to receive regular recurring monthly discounts on their U-verse package when they subscribe to a bundle of TV and Internet services. AT&T is also offering new customers a 30-day money-back guarantee and free professional installation by an AT&T technician.

Three packages of AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet U-verse Enabled are featured for AT&T U-verse customers:


-- Elite: Downstream up to 6.0 Mbps, upstream up to 1.0 Mbps.
-- Pro: Downstream up to 3.0 Mbps, upstream up to 1.0 Mbps.
-- Express: Downstream up to 1.5 Mbps, upstream up to 1.0 Mbps.


All high speed Internet packages offered as part of AT&T U-verse include wireless home-networking at no additional charge, giving users the freedom to access online photos, streaming video, games and other information using a wireless-enabled laptop or other device. Subscribers also receive virtually unlimited e-mail storage and powerful anti-virus and anti-spam software.

The deployment of next-generation video services reflects AT&T's strategy to become customers' preferred communications and entertainment provider and to deliver a video solution that provides greater value, flexibility and simplicity than competitors' offerings. AT&T U-verse TV represents a critical new service in the company's video portfolio, which includes AT&T Homezone(SM) service and satellite broadcast offerings. AT&T U-verse TV also underscores the company's strategy to deliver integrated services to the three screens that consumers value most: the TV, the PC and the wireless phone.

Customers seeking additional information on AT&T U-verse -- or to find out if it's available in their area -- can visit http://uverse.att.com.

Note: This AT&T release and other news announcements are available as part of an RSS feed at http://www.att.com/rss.

About AT&T

[destiny1]

Based on the advertised payload (6 mbs), AT&T is certainly not using CupriaTM tech yet. And they are very likely not using VDSL 2 (compression, more likely). But it is encouraging to note as the "only national provider to offer a 100 percent Internet Protocol (IP)-based television service," AT&T will certainly be evaluating CupriaTM tech at some point. Since we have good reason to believe Alcatel is onboard, that process may have already begun.
D1;)

[destiny1]

Embarq offers $5,000 reward copper theft arrests

Wed Aug 22, 2007 12:35pm EThttp://i.today.reuters.com/images/spacer.gif

Technology News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. rural telecommunications carrier Embarq Corp is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone stealing its copper cables in Las Vegas amid a global crime spree targeting increasingly valuable metals.
Embarq said on Wednesday that copper cable theft has become a growing problem, particularly in Las Vegas, its largest market, where thieves have snipped away part of its aerial lines.
"Copper theft is going on in any town across the nation. But we thought we'd start here because of the high number of incidents," said Embarq spokesman Charles Fleckenstein.
The company, a spin-off from Sprint Nextel Corp, has already spent $400,000 so far this year to repair severed cable lines in Las Vegas, he said.


More than 60 people have been arrested in Las Vegas so far this year for stealing copper. Officials believe the stolen metal is sold as scrap to recycling centers.
The price of copper has more than doubled over the past two years as rapid industrialization in China and other emerging economies spurred demand and triggered similar crimes around the world.
Embarq has said severed cable lines could cut off emergency communications, putting entire communities at risk. Fleckenstein said dozens of people in the United States have been electrocuted in an attempt to cut through wires.

[destiny1]

Ikanos Lowers 3Q Sales Outlook (http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070827/ikanos_outlook.html?.v=1)AP (Mon 5:26pm)

[destiny1]

TV's in the living room as big as ever!
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2007-08-28T101511Z_01_L2850180_RTRUKOC_0_US-ELECTRONICS-FAIR.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2

[jjz34]

Ikanos Lowers 3Q Sales Outlook (http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070827/ikanos_outlook.html?.v=1)AP (Mon 5:26pm)

Well ikanos may be lowering expectations, but they still project 26 million per quarter and their stock is above $6!!
I will be happier than a pig in slop if Rim finally gets to 6 bucks. We are at 6 cents!! A piece of cotton candy is worth 6 cents. I can't wait to read the filing due out September 14th.

[deeba]

Looks like Europe is being the much more aggressive in their adoption of IPTV than any of the other countries around the world.

Do a google news search on "iptv". There is a ton of News about IPTV world-wide. It is quite interesting.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=iptv&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n&sa=N&start=0

deeba:cool:


http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/28/business/tv.php?page=1




European phone companies push ahead on Internet television

By Kevin J. O'Brien

Tuesday, August 28, 2007
BERLIN: Several European phone companies this week plan to announce major expansions of Internet protocol television, or IPTV, led by Deutsche Telekom, which is spending €3 billion and so far has wired 15 million German households, or roughly 4 in 10, for broadband TV.

The moves will put Europe, which some analysts say already leads the globe in Internet TV, further ahead of the United States and Asia in this field. But despite the flurry of interest in digital video, skeptics say that it is not clear that IPTV has a future as a stand-alone business for telephone companies.

With IPTV, subscribers pay a monthly fee of €30 to €60, or $41 to $82, to receive digitized broadcasts sent via the phone companies' networks to their television sets and personal computers. These are part of so-called triple-play TV packages that also typically include flat-rate Internet surfing and domestic, fixed-line voice calls. The TV lineup usually comprises a standard set of 50 broadcast channels plus 60 or more premium channels, some not available elsewhere.

"IPTV's decisive advantage is its ability to link programming with interactive services," said Timotheus Höttges, a Deutsche Telekom board member with responsibility for IPTV. "Consumer viewing habits as a result are going to fundamentally change."

Companies like Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia and Vodafone are using the Internationale Funkausstellung, the largest consumer electronics convention in Europe, which opens Friday, to present their IPTV expansions. More than 200,000 people are expected to attend show, which lasts five days.

"Europe is now the most aggressive market for IPTV," said Steve Rago, an analyst for iSuppli, a research firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, that covered the electronics industry. "Even countries like Lithuania and Slovakia are introducing IPTV."

About half of the IPTV consumers in Western Europe are in France, according to the consulting firm International Data Corp., which says there are 2.3 million paid subscribers to IPTV in Europe, less than 5 percent of households. By 2011, IDC expects the service to reach about 10 percent of households.

ISuppli estimates that phone operators this year will spend $9 billion globally - $3 billion in Europe - building video-ready VDSL and ADSL2+ broadband networks. VDSL sends data at up to 50 megabits per second and ADSL2+ at 16 megabits. The phone operators, faced with dwindling voice traffic, are looking to IPTV to fill the gap.

"I can't think of a single country in Europe where operators are not introducing IPTV," said Tiann Schutte, vice president for multimedia at the French company Alcatel-Lucent, a maker of IPTV components. "The marketplace is expected to grow aggressively over the next decade."

Some experts, however, question whether telephone companies will eventually reap the same payoff as equipment makers from IPTV, which faces a challenge luring TV viewers from established terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasters. The technology, launched in Europe in 2001 by the Italian company FastWeb, began appearing widely in 2004.

In France, four operators - France Télécom, Free, Neuf Cegetel and Telecom Italia's Alice - and two resellers, Darty, a French retailer, and Tele2 of Sweden, are competing for IPTV business. Bouygues Telecom, a unit of Bouygues, is also planning IPTV service. France became the IPTV leader in Europe because the country lacked dominant satellite and cable broadcasters, said Jill Finger Gibson, IDC's research director in London.

Jean-Christophe Dessange, leader of European IPTV development at Cisco, which sells IPTV equipment, said French broadcasters and operators agreed early on a way to split revenue, with telecom operators owning the set-top boxes made by Cisco, Thomson, Philips, Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent and others, and generating revenue from premium channels.

French broadcaster Canal+, however, controls the billing of IPTV customers and derives revenue from its standard package of about 50 channels. Most French triple-play packages of TV, Internet and voice calling begin at €30.

"The French were successful because the broadcasters and operators didn't each demand too big a share of the pie," Dessange said. "They realized they both had a self-interest in making IPTV work, namely to help them each retain customers and possibly add new ones."

In Germany, where terrestrial digital and cable broadcasts are available in most households, only 40,000 people currently subscribe to IPTV, according to GFU, organizer of the IFA convention. The technology also faces potential political hurdles. The European Commission is suing the German government, which still owns 31 percent of Deutsche Telekom, for barring competitors from Deutsche Telekom's new VDSL broadband network.

In Britain, satellite broadcaster BSkyB and cable monopoly Virgin Media dominate the pay TV market. BT's IPTV service, BT Vision, began operations in December.

"It's still very much an open question whether IPTV will catch on," said James Crawshaw, an analyst in London at Heavy Reading, a research firm tracking IPTV. "Operators were very enthusiastic a couple years ago. Then they started to question what the return was. None have been able to create a standalone business from IPTV."

Crawshaw and other analysts said French operators were not generating significant, if any, profit from IPTV but are using the technology to retain or attract new Internet and phone customers.

But many hope to. Arcor, a unit of Vodafone that is Germany's second-largest fixed-line network, spent €278 million in the fiscal year that ended March 31 on improvements, mostly to upgrade its broadband to ADSL2+. The company plans to launch Arcor TV in Germany's 12 largest cities this fall and expand to 250 cities by the middle of 2008. The triple-play service will include 50 free-to-air and 60 pay TV channels.

Bernd Wirnitzer, Arcor's IPTV director, said the skepticism surrounding IPTV's commercial potential, like the initial euphoria that accompanied its start a few years ago, was exaggerated.

"The technology will allow us to combine voice, Internet and TV in ways that aren't possible when you buy them from separate providers," Wirnitzer said. "And customers will also have the benefit of paying just a single bill instead of three."

To be successful, phone operators will have to give consumers a reason to change long-held viewing habits, said Carsten Rossenhövel, managing director of the European Advanced Networking Test Center, a company in Berlin that tests IPTV components for operators and equipment makers.

"From a technical standpoint, these systems are ready to go," Rossenhövel said. "The real challenge for service providers will be to convince consumers to switch to IPTV."

[deeba]

This article is from today's WSJ. It talks of IPTV, but it does not mention HD IPTV.


deeba:cool:



Hanaro's New Growth Channel: TV
Wired South Korea
Opts for Downloads,
More Viewer Control
By EVAN RAMSTAD
August 30, 2007; Page B4

SEOUL, South Korea -- As telecommunications firms around the world try to boost revenue by shifting Internet users to high-speed broadband, a question arises: How do you keep growing after that? In South Korea, where broadband is already ubiquitous, one company is finding a way by providing on-demand video programs and movies to televisions rather than computers.

Hanaro Telecom, South Korea's No. 2 telecom firm behind Korea Telecom Corp., has signed 500,000 customers to its Hana TV service in its first year of availability. Executives expect that will double by early next year. "We now have a growth engine that will augment our broadband business," says Park Byung-moo, Hanaro Telecom's chief executive.

For about $10 a month, customers can choose from more than 20,000 programs, a figure that grows with each day's new shows, from Korea's TV broadcasters and numerous international content providers. Thousands more programs, chiefly movies but also education and other features, are available for varying pay-per-view fees.

Such a service is another big step in the shift of viewers taking control of their TV watching, an evolution that began with videotape recorders in the 1970s and has been characterized more recently by hard-disk TiVo and iPod machines. Hana TV is different because viewers don't have to record anything themselves.

For instance, a person who missed the main nightly newcasts, which air at 9 p.m. on South Korea's big networks, can order one of them via Hana TV at 10 p.m. There is a longer delay for entertainment shows; prime-time programs aren't available until the next morning.


With Hana TV, viewers don't have to record anything themselves.
The service uses so-called Internet protocol television, or IPTV, technology that a few dozen phone companies around the world are using to compete with cable-TV operators via TV broadcasts streamed over Internet lines. PCCW Ltd. of Hong Kong has about 800,000 subscribers to its IPTV service, more than the city's cable-TV provider, and systems in France, Spain, Belgium and Italy are also growing rapidly. In the U.S., AT&T Inc. has announced it will spend $6 billion to deploy IPTV via broadband lines, though it is still in the early stage.

South Korea is considered one of the most wired countries in the world because high-speed data access has been available virtually everywhere for more than five years. But the government, which is in the midst of reforming its bureaucracy and rules in telecommunications, doesn't allow telecom and Internet-service companies to directly compete with cable and satellite-TV systems. Other governments are also moving at different rates on IPTV.

That presented a growth problem for Hanaro and its bigger rival, Korea Telecom, since both firms had saturated the market with their broadband offerings. Hanaro's growth stalled about three years ago, and it started posting losses in 2005 as it scrapped with KT over broadband pricing.

The turning point came when Hanaro executives realized that even if regulators allowed them to offer streaming-video channels, they would find themselves in another "me-too" competition where price is the key differentiator. "The biggest strength on IPTV is interactivity. If you just focus on linear broadcasting, you are just using a very small part of its capability," Mr. Park says. "If you focus on interactivity, video on demand or whatever it is, you can develop a lot of services that differentiate from cable and satellite TV."

As a result, executives decided they would launch Hana TV as a download service rather than wait for regulators to rewrite the rules for streaming broadcasts.

"This was not something that was a replacement for cable or satellite. We had to contemplate whether customers would be willing to add another video service," said Dominic Gomez, chief operating officer for Hanaro. "The safe bet for us would be to wait for the regulations to change. We opted to pursue this," Mr. Gomez said.

The results so far are encouraging. To date, Hanaro says the average customer is downloading about 160 hours of programming a month. About 35% buy at least one pay-per-view program a month, and the average pay-per-view buyer buys three a month, rates that are considered high in the TV industry. In the second quarter, the company reported an 8% jump in revenue and a marginal $2 million profit, its first in two years.

Hanaro Telecom is also starting to attract advertisers to the service. It operates a home-shopping service on the system and recently hired sales people to sign up sponsors for certain types of downloaded programs.

[destiny1]

It looks like the Asian market is looking for at least 25 mbs with 100mbs desirable.


Consumers driving bandwidth demand
By Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia
Wednesday, August 29 2007 05:27 PM

SINGAPORE--Rising consumer demand for online services is one of the chief factors driving investment in broadband infrastructure today. Speaking at Frost & Sullivan's Next Generation Networks Asia 2007 summit held here Tuesday, Sharat Sinha, director of Cisco Systems' service provider business in Asia-Pacific, said during the panel discussion: "In the mid-'90s, enterprises led technology demand... Today, it's the consumers (http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/internet/0,39044877,62030635,00.htm)."


Sinha cited the growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking features of the Internet, and how adoption levels are being fueled by user demand, not management decision.
However, growth in Internet usage and bandwidth-hungry applications are putting pressure on networks.
Wilfried Schrupp, head of sales of broadband access, Asia-Pacific, Nokia Siemens Networks, said during a presentation that bandwidth needs are increasing constantly, and countries need to recognize that (http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/communications/0,39044835,39362100,00.htm).
Typical Internet applications require 25 Mpbs per user at the minimum, excluding bandwidth-intensive needs such as video-sharing, Schrupp said.
According to a Nokia Siemens Networks 2006 survey, which provided an insight into a consumer's bandwidth usage in a single session, where applications run simultaneously, the smallest bandwidth eater was VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which took up 0.1 Mbps. Internet surfing required 5-10 Mbps, while IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) demanded a whopping 20-30 Mbps from the session.
In total, Schrupp said, users need some 25-100 Mbps of bandwidth to utilize next-generation applications--and this number is not about to go down.

[McCloud]

Regarding the wars described you could also conclude that the competition would not be above trying to manipulate and badmouth companies such as Rim. It is a more reasonable scenario than the MMs. Just trying to find an explanation for the die hard naysayers that have incessantly populated Rim's message boards.

[deeba]

I wonder where IPTV fits into this battle of the control of the TV's menu system. Two-way TV or interactive TV is a natural for IPTV and the telco's.

deeba:cool:


www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri_fcc_0831aug31,0,5644094.story

chicagotribune.com

U.S. may intervene in TV dispute
Programming guide will be key to profits
Dow Jones Newswires

August 31, 2007

WASHINGTON

The federal government might be forced to intervene in a long-running dispute between cable companies and the consumer electronics industry over how Americans will someday use their television sets to buy movies, shop and access other services.

The two sides have been at an impasse for nearly four years, and the stalemate continues despite several rounds of negotiations between individual companies and the two industries' powerful Washington lobbyists.

"We have absolutely no agreement with cable right now," said Julie Kearney, senior director at the Consumer Electronics Association. "As far as we are concerned there is still a huge gulf between our position and what cable envisions."

On one hand are the large cable providers such as Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and privately owned Cox Communications Inc. They are pitted against household electronics names such as Sony Corp., Pioneer Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd.

Both cable providers and television-makers believe that controlling the digital programming guide, effectively a TV's menu system, is key to guiding the viewer toward products and services they can buy. And both refuse to give up that control.

Policymakers at the Federal Communications Commission have voiced exasperation at the lack of a deal and have suggested they might get involved. Last week marked the end of a public-comment period regarding what role the FCC should play in the matter. Both sides delivered comment letters that largely reiterated existing positions.

"I think the solution we put forward provides the commission with a set of rules that would lead to effective deployment of two-way televisions," said Dan Brenner, senior vice president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

The fight isn't really about today's television, but rather about its future. Both cable providers and television-makers anticipate that TV will grow in importance as more services become available to consumers through their remote controls.

These services could include digital photo albums, e-mail, paying bills, voting during reality television shows, localized weather forecasts and sports scores, targeted advertising and downloading of digital music. Other services in the works include the ability to buy movies on the same night they are released to theaters, and being able to access premium programming before it is broadcast more widely on cable.

These services, and others yet to be created, could be large revenue sources for cable firms and TV-makers in the future.

The cable industry has developed a standard that it says will form the technological platform upon which new products and services are rolled out to consumers for years to come.

Brenner said it will allow makers of televisions and other consumer electronics to have confidence that when they sell a television in New York the consumer could then move to Los Angeles and still be able to access the same interactive services via their TV.

But in order to get access to the standard, called the open-cable application platform, television-makers must agree to cede control over the digital programming guide on the sets they bring to market.

The consumer electronics industry, for its part, is developing a platform, called digital cable ready plus, which it says would compete in an open market with cable's technology.

[destiny1]

Very informative book preview on the origins and milestones experienced in the development of modern telecommuncations. Though hindsight is clear today, many commonly accepted innovations we take for granted today, were resisted by incumbent telcos like AT&T. Oh, BTW, as you read this remember the old Bell Labs is Telcordia today.

http://books.google.com/books?id=3mAKoDsvGK0C&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=telecom+infrastructure+upgrade&source=web&ots=KWzMbAxEkp&sig=UGegXzKVBt7X9ChIIa1jfOnL-0k#PPA67,M1

D1;)

[destiny1]

This is an interesting article on Intel's goal of establishing Wimax globally. Some tout it as a last mile solution. Intel and Kyocera are focused on Wimax becoming the wireless technology of choice. With an 18 billion dollar price tag for infrastructure build out however, network developers are unlikely to fork over the cash unless there is clear consumer demand, which today, there certainly is not.

As with fiber deployment, cost remains one of the primary challenges to Wimax deployment. With fiber, after almost 10 years of hype, there is still only 1% U.S deployment. Today, Verizon deploys fiber to the home (FTTH) only where it is cost effective. That is generally in upper class neighborhoods and rural areas outside the reach of DSL. So it will be with Wimax. Who will pay 2-3 times current rates for wireless access? It certainly cannot compete with wireline (DSL, cable, or fiber) in low cost and quality (QoS). No wireless technology can.

I suppose we'll just have to wait for Rim Semi engineers to extend the reach of IPSL-based chipsets. At the rate new develops are occurring, fiber will be unnecessary for the large majority of copper loops. 80% of U.S. homes have copper loops of 16kft or less. Rim Semi has already published 35 mbps @ 8,000kft and there is rumor there are more breakthroughs.

With IPSL technology installed, all the customer will need is an inexpensive home WiFi connection. With this setup, the most rural customer can enjoy high speed broadband, wirelessly.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_36/b4048401.htm?chan=search

D1;)

[destiny1]

To get some perspective on time frames associated with microprocessor development, here is a short history of microcomputers.

Note: Intel produced its first microprocessor in 1979. It took another 14 years before the first Pentium chip was released. Few will argue its impact.
http://www.glencoe.com/norton/norton4e/history.html

D1;)

[deeba]

I ran across this yesterday. The Top 2000 Companies in the World.

According to Forbes as of March 2007.

"What are the biggest companies in the world? Try to answer this question
with a single metric (like sales) and you wind up with a lopsided list
(one cluttered with retailers). We use four measures -- sales, market
value, assets and profits -- to produce a composite measure of bigness. We
also scorecard these companies to produce Global High Performers, an elite
list of fast-growing big companies that set the pace for their respective
industries."

Link to main page:

http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/...obal_land.html

Sorted by industry, Semiconductors start on page 16 followed by Software,
Technology Hardware & Equipment and Telecommunications Services:

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/18/...ndName_16.html

Largest Telecom Services: AT&T #29 of 2000
Largest Tech Hardware & Equip: HP #55
Largest Semiconductor: Samsung #63

Also on the front page of article, toward the upper right side, is a link to a map for the Largest 2000 by country.

deeba:cool:

[destiny1]

While it is a bit early for the DSL Forum to be tackling the IPSL specs, this PR demonstrates the importance IPSL technology will play worldwide.

http://www.dslforum.org/dslnews/pdfs/pr_nashville091207.pdf

D1;)

[Stoppmann]

Got this from DSL Prime:

"Broadcom has 37% of the ADSL port shipments market in Q1, TI + Infineon 34%, and Conexant 24%, Steve Rago of iSuppli calculates. No one else has more than 3%. In VDSL, Rago puts Ikanos at 59%, Infineon at 27% and Conexant at 12%"

http://www.dslprime.com/News_Articles/news_articles.htm

[destiny1]

Just released from FierceIPTV!
Watch for these guys as future Rim Semi IPSL MOU targets.

Biggest indie telco makes IPTV move

September 18, 2007

CenturyTel and Mountain Telephone and announced IPTV moves in the last week. Mountain Telephone, a 17,000-member co-op in West Liberty, Ky., is laying a fiber ring to prepare for an IPTV offering based on a Fujitsu platform. CenturyTel, based in Monroe, La., said it would be launching IPTV this month in the Columbia, Mo., market after announcing a $750 million stock repurchase (http://www.fiercewireless.com/press-releases/centurytel-announces-750-million-stock-repurchase-program-and-regular-quarterly-cash-).
Telecompetitor reports that CenturyTel would be the biggest indie telco to launch IPTV. (The article is no longer on the site.) At 2Q, the ILEC reported having 2.2 million access lines and 500,000 broadband subscribers.
CenturtyTel's move into TV bridges a gap between the behemoths--AT&T and Verizon--and the 100 or so smaller telcos doing IPTV. It could very well signal that the bugs in IP set-tops and middleware have been sufficiently worked out
For More:
- The Columbia Tribune carries the CenturyTel news here (http://www.columbiatribune.com/2007/Sep/20070904News051.asp)
Related Article:
Kentucky telco does IPTV Report (http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/kentucky-telco-does-iptv/2007-09-14)

[destiny1]

Interesting update on muni WiFi deployment. There continues to be ongoing regulatory and cost/benefit concerns.
http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=132807

[deeba]

From today's USA Today. Appears that Wi-Fi is not all that it was cracked up to be.


deeba:cool:



Cities turning off plans for Wi-Fi

By Judy Keen, USA TODAY

CHICAGO — Plans to blanket cities across the nation with low-cost or free wireless Internet access are being delayed or abandoned because they are proving to be too costly and complicated.
Houston, San Francisco, Chicago and other cities are putting proposed Wi-Fi networks on hold.

"Wi-Fi woes everywhere you turn," says Russell Hancock of Silicon Valley Network, a troubled Wi-Fi project for 40 towns in California's high-tech corridor.

Wi-Fi allows laptop users to work anywhere, making some jobs portable. It also is essential to mobile devices, including iPhones, enabling such emerging technology to perform complex online tasks fast.

Chicago couldn't reach agreement with service providers after offering free use of street lamps for radio transmitters in exchange for a network built, owned and operated by providers at no cost to the city.

"All these big city projects were doomed to failure because they were too complicated," says Glenn Fleishman of Wi-Fi Networking News. Service providers, he says, want city governments to sign up as long-term customers to offset costs. Wi-Fi can help police, firefighters and inspectors access information quickly.

Some cities, including San Francisco, hoped to provide free service for most users offset by ad revenue. Others, such as Springfield, Ill., wanted to give free service to low-income residents and charge everyone else competitive rates. Minneapolis charges about $20 a month.

"It's too soon to say" what Chicago will do next, chief information officer Hardik Bhatt says. The city decided that decreasing consumer demand and competition mean Wi-Fi might not succeed without a big city investment.

EarthLink, one company negotiating with Chicago, is scaling back its Wi-Fi business. "We will not devote any new capital to the old municipal Wi-Fi model that has us taking all the risk," CEO Rolla Huff said last month. "That model is simply unworkable." EarthLink's announcement also derailed citywide Wi-Fi in San Francisco and Houston.

Elsewhere:

•Cincinnati shelved its plan last week for a citywide network because the market is too unstable.

•The Silicon Valley plan for free Wi-Fi is at risk after providers decided local governments must be "anchor tenants" for the service.

•Springfield, Ill., is looking for another partner after AT&T dropped Wi-Fi plans last month.

•St. Louis is trying to figure out how to power Wi-Fi transmitters on 1,700 street lights when they're not illuminated without spending millions of dollars.

There are successes. Minneapolis is installing its system in phases. By next year, Oakland County, Mich., plans to offer Wi-Fi to 400,000 customers. "Everybody needs the Internet," Deputy County Executive Phil Bertolini says, "and we want it available to everyone."

[destiny1]

FYI,
The VP of Worldwide Sales, SHAMLOU NICK N (http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001377722) just sold his entire remaining position of Ikanos stock. Surely this can't be good.

http://www.secfilings.com/filings/1219210/14313024/0001181431-07-058680/4/Ikanos-Communications-files-SEC-form-4-September-24-2007.aspx

D1;)

[destiny1]

A member sent this article. It highlights the ever increasing demand for bandwidth.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/1189319217320020.xml&coll=7

D1;)

[destiny1]

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
E-mail Story (javascript:void(0);) Print (javascript:void(0);) http://license.icopyright.net/images/icopy-w.gif Reprints (http://license.icopyright.net/3.7319?icx_url=http://www.telecomweb.com/tnd/25327.html) Feedback (http://www.telecomweb.com/resources/feedback.html)
AT&T Snags Initial Networx Order
http://www.telecomweb.com/Assets/Image/nbr_mast.gif


http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450 (http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450) AT&T has picked up what could amount to a $1 billion order to build a next-generation enterprise network for the U.S. Treasury.
The award is the first of what eventually will be dozens of billions of dollars spent by the U.S. government under the Networx Universal contract, the largest single telecom order in the history of the world, shared by teams led by AT&T, Verizon (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Verizon) and Qwest (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Qwest) (TelecomWeb news break, March 29).
Under the Treasury order, AT&T and members of its team are to build and transition the Treasury to a next-gen enterprise network known as the Treasury Network (TNet). Technically, the award is for $270 million but, with various add-ons and options, it's expected to hit $1 billion. What the Treasury has ordered is a fully managed network service, coupled with service-level agreements and performance incentives to deliver secure voice, data and video communications.
"Treasury is the first agency to have completed a fair opportunity decision on the Networx Universal contract and expect they will be the first agency to begin ordering service," said Karl Krumbholz, director/Network Services Programs at the General Services Administration, when announcing the award.
The Networx contract actually represents a reiteration of a $1 billion, 10-year contract Treasury had awarded AT&T in December 2004. That award was the following year, following protests upheld by the GSA. Initially, it had been thought Treasury would re-bid the contract itself but, as it now turns out, it's now under the Networx umbrella.
AT&T Government Solutions is the lead member of a team it put together in 2005 to bid for Networx Universal (TelecomWeb news break, Aug. 11, 2005) that includes IT systems integrator/aggregator GTSI Corp (GTSI), Bechtel, Northrop Grumman Information Technology, EDS, SRA International, Cingular Wireless and international carrier Global Crossing.
Although not stated, it's assumed both the Qwest (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Qwest) and Verizon (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Verizon) teams also bid for the Treasury contract. Under Networx, the concept is that the three will compete against each other for government business.
At present, the three are so far competing on only one other known work order under Networx. Homeland Security in June issued a so-called "task order" for what will be the OneNet intranet for sensitive but unclassified information. The understanding is that all three teams will get a piece of that business, with one chosen as the primary contractor and the other two getting secondary pieces of the work.

[deeba]

The top European IPTV players as of December 2006.


deeba:cool:




http://www.e-mediainstitute.com/top10europeaniptvplayers_en.content

[destiny1]

This story has plenty of implication for the Rim Semi/Extreme Copper/AT&T connection. The enterprise ethernet space utilizing VOIP/IP and TDM based tech is right up their alley.

Monday, October 1, 2007
AT&T Plunges Into Enterprise Conferencing Market
http://www.telecomweb.com/Assets/Image/nbr_mast.gif


http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450 (http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450) AT&T is paying $121 million for privately held Interwise, a global provider of voice, Web and video conferencing services to businesses. The former Ma Bell will meld the new acquisition into AT&T Global Business Services, the unit it's targeted at enterprise-class customers worldwide.
The acquisition, which is expected to close before the end of the year, pits AT&T Global Business Services directly against a lineup of industry goliaths: IBM, Adobe, Google and -- most of all -- Cisco Systems, which bought rival WebEx Communications for some $3.2 billion in cash earlier this year (TelecomWeb news break, March 16). WebEx, with a claimed 64-percent market share, is the 600-pound gorilla in the market, which is clearly reflected in the difference between the amounts paid by AT&T and Cisco.
In theory, Interwise is a U.S. company with headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. In fact, it is an Israeli company, where its key R&D operations still reside. The company employs about 150 people in its operations in the United States, Europe and Asia, all of whom are expected to remain with AT&T.
"Our enhanced capabilities will enable businesses around the globe to use conferencing as more than just a substitute for face-to-face meetings. The IP-collaboration solutions offered by Interwise will help customers increase the impact of their efforts by allowing employees to work on joint projects simultaneously with colleagues and partners, share information regardless of their location or device and make better business decisions," says AT&T Global Business Services Group President Ronald E. Spears.
The technology and products AT&T is buying are converged, IP-based conferencing solutions for enterprises. Its integrated voice, Web and video conferencing system integrates VoIP- and TDM-based audio in a product aimed primarily at large, global enterprises. In addition to offering on-premise and fully hosted conferencing, Interwise offers a hybrid solution that promises enterprises will receive the cost and security benefits of on-site software with the rapid startup, geographic reach and capacity protection of its hosted service.
The AT&T acquisition of Interwise is the latest in what looks like a gold rush to cash in on Web conferencing. Cisco's acquisition of WebEx was the biggest, followed barely a month later, in April, with Google buying Web-conferencing technology from Marratech. Then, in August, IBM bought WebDialogs. Adobe, meanwhile, entered the market when it picked up Web-conferencing technology as part of its 2005 acquisition of Macromedia.
http://www.telecomweb.com/tnd/25373.html

[destiny1]

Item 1.01.
Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement On September 28, 2007, Ikanos Communications, Inc. (“Ikanos” or the “Company”) entered into a Separation and Release Agreement with Yehoshua Rom, the Company’s former Vice President of Central Engineering. On October 1, 2007, Ikanos entered into a Separation and Release Agreement and a Consulting Agreement with Daniel K. Alter, the Company’s former Corporate Development Officer. Copies of these agreements are filed as Exhibits 10.1 and 10.2 to this report.

Item 2.05.Costs Associated with Exit or Disposal Activities and Item 2.06. Material Impairments On September 28, 2007, Ikanos initiated a restructuring plan with associated charges estimated to range between $3.6 and $4.0 million. The restructuring plan involved reducing the workforce, including four members of senior management, by approximately 5% and outsourcing the back-end physical semiconductor design research and development process. The estimated restructuring charges will consist of approximately $2.8 to $3.0 million in contract termination costs and asset impairments and $0.8 to $1.0 million in severance costs. The restructuring plan is necessary to realign expenditures with current operational needs and is expected to be completed by December 31, 2007. As a result of these actions, the Company expects to reduce operating expenses in 2008 by $3.5 million, including approximately $0.5 million in stock compensation expense.

Item 8.01.Other Events On October 1, 2007, Ikanos issued a press release announcing an executive restructuring and a plan to outsource its back-end physical semiconductor design. A copy of this press release is furnished as Exhibit 99.1 to this report.

[Stoppmann]

Looks like Ikanos is imploding

[jjz34]

Ikanos may be imploding but they are up 31 cents today and that 31 cents is six times our current shareprice. But here I am being patient in OCTOBER now.

[cem727]

I'm with you, jjz. It is silly to be giddy about Ikanos imploding when we sit at a nickle. Until we start generating revenue and the share price increases, RIM is a nothing company. And yes, I do think revenue will come. I'm just sick of being told to be patient every month.

[doughjo]

jjz34 and cem
I agree with you guys 100%

[jjz34]

Yep! I have every confidence in Brad and Ray and the company. Things are taking longer than hoped. But I, as of yet, see no direct, indirect or even remote evidence that Rim is having any impact on Ikanos or that Ikanos is slipping because of what Rim has coming down the pike. So right now, it's kind of like the pittsburgh pirates throwing stones at the padres for missing the playoffs. I also understand there is at least some relevance since Ikanos has been deemed one of our competitors and their signs of "trouble" may reflect that they may be losing their grip, but until we see ourselves actually in the game (orders), what's the point?

[destiny1]

http://static.fiercemarkets.com/public/newsletter/fierceiptv/logo.gif (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,uw3d,1blo,53px,8gd3,977q,6wtk)

October 2, 2007
Sign up for free:
www.fierceiptv.com (http://www.fierceiptv.com)

http://static.fiercemarkets.com/public/newsletter/assets/editorscorner_big.gif
http://static.fiercemarkets.com/public/newsletter/fiercevoip/deborah_headshot.gifLast week, FierceIPTV related the experiences of four telephone company executives involved in launching IPTV operations. (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,uw3d,1blo,e7z7,a8hz,977q,6wtk) Today, the conversation turns to obstacles, frustrations and goals:
"When someone's phone service doesn't work, you'll hear about it. If their TV sets aren't working, you've got a problem," said Phil Erli, executive vice president of Ringgold Telephone Co. of Ringgold, Ga. "The other thing, is what it does … our company has evolved more in the last four years than in any other time."
Bill DeMuth is chief technology officer of Surewest in Sacramento, Calif., the biggest of the four telcos. DeMuth credited competition for driving the deployment. "We're fortunate we have giants to compete with. It's been good for us years ahead to get into that competitive mode. It brings out completely different talents."
Some of those different talents had to be developed for program negotiations. Networks considered crucial to a basic multichannel pay package don't come cheap, and even broadcasters are starting to seek cash for carriage. It's one thing for Comcast, with something like 21 million subscribers, to negotiate with program executives like the fabled Lindsay Gardner, formerly of Fox. It's a whole different ball of wax for operations with 1,000 TV subscribers.
"We're hitting all our numbers, except we're missing our programming numbers, which have been skyrocketing," said Keith Galitz, president of Canby Telecom, in Canby, Ore. "Their idea of good-faith negotiations is different than what I do."
Erli said indie telcos need to negotiate as a group, which is in part what of IP-Prime (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,uw3d,1blo,s5u,9zq0,977q,6wtk) provides. "I have a real concern about the availability and affordability of content," he said. "Looking at HD content with local affiliates, it's like getting guns stuck to your ribs."
West Kentucky Rural Telephone south of St. Louis is among the first telcos to deploy IP-Prime, a cooperative effort of two telco lobbies and SES Americom, the media satellite firm in Princeton, N.J. Trevor Bonstetter, CEO of West Kentucky, said collective bargaining was one of the advantages of the service. "The independent company's way of survival is to join forces and use it's buying power like it's never done before. That's how it's going to take place," he said. "Until we can get to the point where the content is more affordable, it's going to be tough."
Getting programming is one thing. Getting it to people's television is another. IPTV technology is relatively new and untried. DeMuth said AT&T's entry into IPTV helped boost MPEG-2/4 set-top development. Galitz has made no secret of Canby's problems with Myrio middleware. "It's taken over a year to get to their current release," he said. "We had a moratorium on set-tops where we couldn't sell for six months. None of us feel we've got a solid middleware solution out there."
MPEG-2 IPTV platforms launched just three or four years ago are at a disadvantage because they don't do HD, and most of these executives consider HD necessary to compete. "The biggest challenge we all face is trying to match what cable offers," Erli said. "We're offering MPEG-2 over copper. For the higher end consumer who wants HD, I'm not even considered. The only thing we have to compete with is price, and most of us aren't able to compete with these big companies on price. Even with the bundle, consumers are expecting a discount."
"I agree," Galitz said. "I wish I had Bill's company, where I already had the fiber in the ground. We're trying to find balance with fiber and investment. … When we launched in October '05, we thought we'd have five years before HD was a must. Now, you walk into a Wal-Mart or a Costco, and all there is are HDTVs."
All agreed HD capability is the next step in their IPTV development. "We're in a very competitive marketplace," Erli said. "But I'm not finding any phone companies out there that are growing their wireline business. As tough as IPTV's been, you don't have a lot of choice." --Deborah (http://us.f558.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=dmcadams@fiercemarkets.com)

[cem727]

Destiny,

Let's hope that Ringgold is the catalyst (equipted with RIM'S curria chip) that brings these indie telephone companies together and makes them a force in the IPTV arena that will turn the head of the likes of an AT&T.

[deeba]

IPTV Market Drivers: The Evolution of Video

Featuring Mark Cannata, Vice President, Marketing. Personalized video is driving advanced services such as IP Television (IPTV), this enables users to tailor their video experience to their own preferences. The podcast address the growth of IPTV and video services in global markets and sheds light on the challenges ahead.

http://inspirethenewlife.com/videogallery/index.cfm?id=4D554B43-9856-9048-9A1076AF008FD446


deeba:cool:

[destiny1]

IPTV Deployments More Than Double In a Year as Broadband Continues to Achieve Strong Growth




North America continues to dominate global broadband market with 16% of world subscribers Broadband Reaches 313 Million Subscribers BERLIN, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ --

The DSL Forum today announced new broadband and IPTV statistics at the Broadband World Forum Europe inBerlin. The statistics, prepared for the DSL Forum by industry analyst Point Topic, show that the number of people using IPTV services increased by 179 per cent in the 12 months to 30 June 2007. On the broadband access side, DSL continues to dominate with almost 66 per cent of subscribers using this technology. Over eight million people are now connected to IPTV services. Europe added over three million subscribers in the 12 months to 30 June 2007, making it the strongest market both in terms of growth (231 per cent in 12 months) and total subscriber numbers (almost five million by 30 June 2007). IPTV subscriber growth worldwide, first half year 2005, 2006 and 2007

Region H1 2005 H1 2006 H1 2007 Europe 521,000 1,505,000 4,984,000 Asia Pacific 612,000 987,000 2,176,000 Americas 267,000 409,000 1,069,000 Other users 70,000 50,000 0(1) Total Worldwide 1,470,000 2,950,000 8,229,000Source: Data provided for the DSL Forum by Point Topic(http://www.point-topic.com (http://www.point-topic.com))

"Top markets like France (2,550,000 customers) and Hong Kong (938,000 customers) show that IPTV can be deployed rapidly to large numbers of subscribers, if the market conditions are right," said Point Topic Senior Analyst John Bosnell. "On the demand side, competitive and clear bundle pricing and content deals will help to attract customers to IPTV services, while on the supply side, making IPTV easier to install and develop will help to deliver IPTV services to a wider subscriber base." Bosnell continues, "Developing and agreeing standards will help to simplify the delivery process and drive higher take-up in other markets too."IPTV is an important focus for the DSL Forum: the Forum's BroadbandSuite focuses on areas critical to the successful deployment of IPTV services and current work addresses transport improvements around VDSL2, policy control framework and network performance improvements, as well as home networking optimization, including IPTV remote management and Set Top Box (STB) initiation advancements.

DSL continues to dominate Broadband Growth DSL remains the most popular access technology, with over 200 million of the world's 313 million broadband subscribers connecting via DSL. The global market share of broadband technologies remains largely unchanged from December 2006, with almost 22 per cent of subscribers using cable, and just over 10 per cent using FTTx. Key broadband access technologies at 30 June 2007 For a detailed breakdown of statistics, please contact louise@bcspr.co.uk Source: Data provided for the DSL Forum by Point Topic (http://www.point-topic.com (http://www.point-topic.com/)) Snapshot of Regional Broadband Growth to 30 June 2007 Region Population Households Western Europe 398,310,547 165,697,652 North America 330,619,497 127,003,000 South and East Asia 2,664,913,577 635,489,000 Asia-Pacific 646,062,076 184,400,400 Latin America 473,693,999 123,582,000 Eastern Europe 313,774,369 115,125,202 Middle East and Africa 413,055,261 80,795,000 Other 501,220,834 132,324,400 2006Q2 2007Q2 Region Total %HH Total Western Europe 67,461,875 40.71 % 86,531,238 52.22 % North America 58,732,969 46.25 % 71,623,711 56.40 % South and East Asia 48,874,874 7.69 % 64,985,787 10.23 % Asia-Pacific 50,267,391 27.26 % 54,316,955 29.46 % Latin America 10,775,964 8.72 % 15,642,526 12.66 % Eastern Europe 8,242,896 7.16 % 13,114,948 11.39 % Middle East and Africa 4,873,442 6.03 % 7,427,406 9.19 % Other 3,700 0.00 % 10,000 0.01 % Western Europe continues to have the most broadband users, with 72 million of the 86 million broadband subscribers using DSL. The Eastern Europe DSL market, while small (less than 14 million), is the region with the strongest growth (over 60 per cent in the 12 months to 30 June 2007). The USA has the most broadband subscribers (over 63 million), but China tops the DSL subscriber list with over 44 million of its 59 million broadband users connected via DSL. 15 countries now have over three million DSL subscribers, and 29 have over one million subscribers, with Portugal passing the one million mark in the second quarter of 2007. A breakdown of broadband access technologies in the top 10 countries by number of broadband subscribers at 30 June 2007 Q2 2006 Q2 2007 Country Total DSL FTTx Cable Modem Wireless USA 51,571,483 27,615,996 1,743,620 32,951,100 1,087,600 China 45,061,000 44,757,000 14,154,040 620,000 Japan 27,175,800 13,788,000 9,682,000 3,649,100 132,100 Germany 12,474,366 16,893,700 35,150 655,338 70,600 UK 11,631,608 11,282,088 1,400 3,201,900 35,600 South Korea 12,770,911 4,878,857 4,457,914 5,103,804 3,498 France 11,078,248 13,550,000 30,600 690,000 Italy 7,856,917 9,577,000 270,000 105,000 Canada 7,151,486 3,903,683 4,272,872 Spain 5,847,244 5,898,900 5,701 1,560,371 Country Total Growth USA 63,408,156 22.95 % China 59,531,040 32.11 % Japan 27,251,200 0.28 % Germany 17,654,788 41.53 % UK 14,520,988 24.84 % South Korea 14,444,073 13.10 % France 14,270,600 28.82 % Italy 9,957,650 26.74 % Canada 8,176,555 14.33 % Spain 7,464,972 27.67 % Source: Data provided for the DSL Forum by Point Topic(http://www.point-topic.com (http://www.point-topic.com/)) "Today's figures highlight that services such as IPTV, which have held the promise of increased revenues and reduced subscriber churn for a number of years, are finally becoming a reality for millions of people," said Robin Mersh, chief operating officer at the DSL Forum."The figures also illustrate that DSL remains a vital tool in thesuccessful delivery of bandwidth-hungry bundled services. The DSL Forum continues to play a critical role in aiding the mass global deployment of IPTV through our development of specifications that not only facilitate increased speed and bandwidth offered by DSL technologies, but also ensure standardised approach to network management and the interoperability of customer premise equipment, regardless of access technology."NOTES TO EDITORS Robin Mersh, Chief Operating Officer at the DSL Forum, will beavailable to discuss the latest statistics, the current IPTV market drivers and the Forum's ongoing and future work, such as recent IPTV standards and their impact on the digital home and the next generation access network. Robin will also participate in the workshop 'Digital Home: Evolving the Home Networking Environment', which takes place 10.00 am, on Monday 8th October at the Broadband World Forum Europe.. For session logistics, please visit: http://www.iec.org/events/2007/bbwf/conference/workshop_2.html.To arrange a meeting please contact Louise Hatton or Natalie Saville on +44 (0)115 948 6901 or email louise@bcspr.co.uk or natalie@bcspr.co.uk. The Broadband World Forum Europe is taking place at the EstrelConvention Centre, Berlin, Germany, between Monday 8th and Thursday 11th October 2007.For more information about today's statistics, please visithttp://point-topic.com/home/press/dslanalysis.asp.ABOUT THE DSL FORUM:The DSL Forum is a global organization committed to rapidly creatingspecifications for service providers and vendors that accelerate thedeployment of broadband networks, ensure successful deviceinteroperability, and facilitate efficient delivery and management ofadvanced IP services to the customer. By forging agreements on commontechnical requirements and embracing new applications, the Forum works to streamline processes, define specifications, and share best practices that set the stage for effective deployments and explosive global DSL growth. Established in 1994, the DSL Forum is an international industry consortium of over 200 leading service providers, equipment manufacturers and other interested parties. Please visit http://www.dslforum.org (http://www.dslforum.org/) for more information.(1) In 2005-2006 the 'Other users' category was estimated on the basis of trial information and supplier shipments; in 2007 this category has become unnecessary as official reporting has increased. MEDIA CONTACT: Louise Hatton BCS Public Relations +44 (0)115 948 6901 louise@bcspr.co.uk

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-08-2007/0004677362&EDATE=

[deeba]

Appears that all in not well for a nationwide WiMax network. This is from today's Chicago Tribune.

deeba:cool:


www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-thu_sprintoct11,0,7672440.story


Sprint turmoil clouds WiMax
New CEO may balk at $5 billion plan

By Jon Van
Tribune staff reporter

October 11, 2007

Executive turmoil at Sprint Nextel Corp. could put the brakes on the building of a new national mobile broadband network designed to provide wireless Internet access everywhere, analysts said Wednesday, although Chicago's lead role in the plan is unlikely to be affected.

Sprint is seeking new leadership after its chairman and chief executive, Gary Forsee, bowed out this week under pressure from investors unhappy with the company's performance. Besides seeking to turn around Sprint's traditional cell phone business, the new chief will undoubtedly scrutinize Sprint's plans to spend $5 billion building a WiMax wireless network.

Schaumburg-based Motorola Inc., a major WiMax backer and supplier, is building Sprint's network in Chicago, due to be in commercial operation here next spring. While no one expects Sprint to walk away from WiMax outright, analysts said investor pressure could cause the firm's new leader to look at slowing down the buildout to conserve cash.

Other alternatives would be to spin off the WiMax unit as a separate company, sell it outright or take in new partners in the buildout to bolster its cash position.

WiMax is already considered to be a risky but potentially winning bet for Sprint, and any uncertainties introduced into current plans could cause problems for Motorola, Intel Corp., Nortel Networks Corp. and dozens of other firms backing WiMax.

"It's absolutely a blow to WiMax if Sprint falters," said Fred Boxa, a telecom consultant with IBB Consulting Group based in Princeton Junction, N.J. "Sprint is a driving force pushing WiMax forward."

WiMax is a wireless standard for transmitting broadband signals to and from computers, cell phones, cameras or other gadgets over long distances at speeds that are faster and at costs significantly lower than what is available today from cell phone carriers.

Two weeks ago at WiMax World, a trade show in Chicago, Sprint and Motorola were stars, demonstrating a working network operating in a portion of downtown that foreshadows the commercial network being built here.

Examples of WiMax's potential usage include getting high-speed Internet access while riding in a vehicle and connecting devices such as cameras and hand-held game players to high-speed networks so they can transmit and receive digital information.

Sprint hopes to team with Clearwire, a smaller carrier, to build a national WiMax network over the next two years, getting a jump on bigger carriers such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless. Any delays could see Sprint's hoped-for advantage of being first to market evaporate.

Just this week, AT&T made a deal to buy extra spectrum in several large markets, and next January the Federal Communications Commission will auction off spectrum that may be used in 2009 for mobile high-speed communications.

While WiMax technology's ability to perform and Sprint's position as the first to market are both advantages, there is still a big question as to how much consumer demand exists in North America for new high-speed connectivity, said Dave Novosel, an analyst for Gimme Credit, a financial analysis service.

"It's not clear that this is a must-have for people and a home run for Sprint," said Novosel. "Any new CEO is going to have to look at this."

While Sprint's position on WiMax has a huge impact on the technology's future in North America, early acceptance in Asia, South America and other markets with less-developed infrastructure assure Motorola, Intel and others they will have a market for their products.

"No question that Sprint has been the first name associated with WiMax," said Scott Wickware, a Nortel executive, "but there are hundreds of other carriers around the world that aren't household names that have committed to WiMax. We're bullish on WiMax with or without Sprint."

Even if a new Sprint chief wanted to back away from WiMax, that could prove difficult because of contractual obligations, said Bill Densmore, a telecom analyst at FitchRatings.

"I'd be surprised to see someone come in and completely change directions," he said. "They have obligations to handset vendors who've been promised a certain number of potential customers will have access to these networks. I don't know how much wiggle room they'd have to back off from that."

Sprint already has set up its WiMax development unit, Xohm, as separate from its traditional cell phone business, noted Daryl Schoolar, an analyst with In-Stat, a market research firm.

"They might spin that off as a separate company to satisfy Wall Street," he said. "Investors are shortsighted, focusing on the next quarter. Sprint could spin off Xohm, sell it to a third party or invite in other investors.

"Or it might just go ahead as planned with building the new network."

----------

jvan@tribune.com

[destiny1]

Microsoft is tauting this new enterprise software convergence product as the next great thing for data transmission, including VOIP, video conferencing and convergence of mobile, desk top and Web browser applications. The common denominator is all this convergence is BANDWIDTH. To converge all these applications into a single solution will require huge amounts of payload to the desktop. Look for Extreme Copper to announce deals in this arena soon. Remember the most common pipe into most corporate settings is still copper. The high bandwidth required for corporate ethernet to run this software is just what IPSL inside Cupria is all about.


Tuesday, October 16, 2007
E-mail Story (http://javascript<b></b>:void(0);) Print (http://javascript<b></b>:void(0);) http://license.icopyright.net/images/icopy-w.gif Reprints (http://license.icopyright.net/3.7319?icx_url=http://www.telecomweb.com/tnd/25502.html) Feedback (http://www.telecomweb.com/resources/feedback.html)
Microsoft Unleashes Unified Communications Power Play
http://www.telecomweb.com/Assets/Image/nbr_mast.gif


http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450 (http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450)
With all the subtlety of a 2,000-strong marching band, Microsoft today formally released its long-expected Unified Communications (UC) software family.
The number 2,000 represents the number of "partners" Microsoft says it's signed up so far for its foray into enterprise communications, of whom 50 showed up for the launch festivities in Redmond, Wash., with new products to tout.
The event essentially was a marketing exercise - there's been no secret about pretty much all of the technical details of Microsoft's UC software. Microsoft's been telling anyone who would listen all about it for better than a year now, having unveiled its UC road map and partnership strategy long ago (TelecomWeb news break, June 26, 2006). Indeed, beta copies of the UC software have been in the hands of thousands of testers for months now. Among those, every single employee of Intel has been using it.
Which left Microsoft, after "officially" releasing five key pieces of its UC product line today, mainly with the job of touting UC. For that task, the company called on its Founder and now-Chairman and Evangelist-in-Chief Bill Gates, and Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, from which the UC offerings are coming.
"This is the complete transformation of the business of the traditional PBX," Gates said of the advent of UC. "Hardware is not holding us back at all...software innovation is being brought to the business phone...now is the time when communications will be revolutionized."
Raikes, for his part, promised Microsoft's offering will "transform business communications as fundamentally as e-mail did in the 1990s."
The two then went on to "unveil" Microsoft's UC lineup:
-- Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007: Software that delivers VoIP, video, instant messaging, conferencing and presence within applications already in wide use, including Microsoft Office system applications as well as within upcoming versions of Microsoft Dynamics ERP products and the Microsoft CRM release due later this year.
-- Microsoft Office Communicator 2007: Client software for phone, instant messaging and video communications that works across the PC, mobile phone and Web browser.
-- Microsoft Office Live Meeting: The next version of Microsoft's conferencing service, enabling workers to conduct meetings, to share documents, to utilize video and to record discussions from virtually any computer.
-- Microsoft RoundTable: A $3,000 conferencing phone with a 360-degree camera that captures a panoramic view of meeting participants, tracks the speaker and records meetings.
-- A service pack update of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, the company's e-mail, voice mail, calendaring and unified messaging platform.
In a series of demonstrations, the two went on to show the capabilities of the new offerings, leaving an overwhelming impression that one of the key Microsoft messages is the critical use of presence technology in UC.
Raikes went on to insist Microsoft will hardly be the only beneficiary of sales of its new UC offerings. Rather, he said, for every dollar that flows into Microsoft's coffers, the company expects to see $3 spent on offerings from the thousands of companies that have signed up as partners.
And indeed, as the morning wore on, the announcement began flooding in from all and sundry. What follows is a sampling of some of the first few, some noted by Microsoft itself and others arriving via the e-mail of which Raikes spoke:
-- Nortel Networks confirmed pending availability of five software-based solutions and applications to enhance Office Communications Server as part of the "Innovative Communications Alliance" between the two companies.
-- Ericsson announced the Ericsson Enterprise Mobility Gateway, which will be built on VoIP call management in Office Communications Server to bring office communications to any mobile device, thus reducing mobile costs and maximizing existing investments.
-- Mitel Networks Corp. unveiled plans to develop a software-based solution that leverages Office Communications Server's VoIP call-management capabilities to meet the specialized telephony needs of small and medium-sized businesses in vertical markets.
-- SAP said it's building UC capability into the Duet joint offering from it and Microsoft, which provides access to SAP processes and data through Microsoft Office applications.
-- BT Global Services is adding Office Communications Server 2007 to its Unified Communications and Collaboration portfolio, which already is based on Microsoft servers.
-- HP Services, without going into as much detail as did BT, likewise sang the praises of Office Communications Server 2007.
-- Dell hawked what it termed a "modular" series of products using Microsoft's new UC offerings, calling them "validated solutions," and adding it's also signed with Nortel "to deliver the telephony, VoIP components and services integral to UC."
-- A group of seven manufacturers announced global availability of 15 new Microsoft UC-qualified phones and devices.
-- Tandberg detailed its plans to build a video- and Web-conferencing solution based on Microsoft's UC software.
Microsoft also took the wraps off a new certification program called Unified Communications Open Interoperability, aimed at qualifying telephony systems as being compatible with its software. Initially eight gateways from five vendors have been certified as "Qualified Gateways" for Office Communications Server 2007. That list includes: Cisco's models 2851 and 3845 Integrated Services Routers; AudioCode's Mediant 1000 and 2000; Dialogic's models 2000 and 4000 gateways; the Quintum Tenor DX; and the Aculab ApplianX Gateway.
Still to come under the Unified Communications Open Interoperability program, Microsoft said, is qualification of IP PBXes. "Our IP PBX Partners are currently developing solutions for integrating Office Communications Server 2007 with Direct SIP, Dual Forking, and Dual Forking with Remote Call Control." Microsoft said in an explanation of why there aren't any certified IP PBXs available right now.

[Stoppmann]

What deals should we anticipate that Extreme Copper will announce?

[destiny1]

What deals should we anticipate that Extreme Copper will announce?

Since Extreme Copper is a equipment manufacturer, their direct customers are primarily telcos, who can deploy ethernet solutions in large and small enterprise (corporation) accounts, college campuses, municipalities, and hotels.

If you watch the news, the major telcos (like Embarq, Verizon and AT&T) are all focusing on providing large enterprise broadband solutions. This press release from Microsoft confirms this trend. Microsoft would not have developed and released a software package with such huge amount bandwidth requirements without knowing the pipes would be big enough to handle the load.

D1

[destiny1]

Here is what's being offered on the content side of the house. Is there any question multi-stream HD into each home will be required?

This week's FierceIPTV is brought to you by SES Americom.

http://static.fiercemarkets.com/public/ads/SESAmericom/blast_banner_4.jpg (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,v794,1blo,8pna,fezv,977q,6wtk)

It's Prime Time for Telcos.
IP-PRIME, the premier IPTV content aggregation and transport provider, is now commercially available to complete your triple play offering.
IP-PRIME is a potent service which enables telcos of all sizes to offer over 285 video channels, including 25 HD channels, and 100+ digital audio channels -- all available today. Your telco could be delivering service to subscribers in time for the Holidays.
IP-PRIME offers a comprehensive turnkey solution saving you millions of dollars in up front capital expenditures, incorporating highest quality MPEG-4 video, multiple middleware and STB solutions, a secure encrypted architecture optimized for efficient DSL-based IPTV delivery -- all transported via SES AMERICOM's reliable satellite fleet. Alternatively, if you supply the middleware, IP-PRIME can drop off the signal at your central office head-end.
IP-PRIME combines video expertise, patent-pending technology, aggregated content, centralized management, best-in-breed technical partners and carrier-class delivery into one powerful package that can immediately elevate your service and accelerate the growth of your video business.
Let IP-PRIME frame your vision for a whole new era of customer service.
For more information, please call (1) 609-987-4183 or visit www.ip-prime.tv (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,v794,1blo,8pna,fezv,977q,6wtk).
See us at Telco TV in Atlanta, booth 821.

[destiny1]

Less you doubt the significance of yesterday's announcement by Microsoft, here is another announcement by AT&T that focuces on this huge enterprise space. 1 gigabyte on demand. The telcos are looking to provide the biggest pipes possible into large businesses.

Look at it like a plumber who is outfitting new water supplies to homes and the demand for water is ever- increasing. This is the effect high speed data flow demand is having on business.

In this case relatively few businesses have the luxury of fiber to the building which will allow a pipe this big. Most will have to use plain old copper. That is where corporate ethernet solutions and Rim Semi's Cupria chipsets will be deployed. Again, Extreme Copper is the first company to build a pure IP play using the IPSL based Cupria chipsets.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
AT&T Offers 1 GB/s 'Bandwidth On Demand'
http://www.telecomweb.com/Assets/Image/nbr_mast.gif


http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450 (http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450)
AT&T's business arm has launched a 1 Gb/s bandwidth on demand offering, as part of its year-old optical mesh offering, for its enterprise and wholesale customers.
The Optical Mesh Services offering lets customers reallocate bandwidth as needed by increasing or decreasing network capacity in what AT&T calls "near real time." It also lets enterprise customers build and self-administer their own SONET networks using the AT&T BusinessDirect customer portal.
AT&T said that the new 1 Gb/s speed is available at 275 locations around the country linked by what it calls its Intelligent Optical Network - a self-healing network with claimed five nines reliability.
"A dynamic Layer 1 service helps companies trying to solve the dilemma of build versus buy, as well as those seeking network flexibility to plan for the unanticipated," AT&T quoted Gartner research director Ted Chamberlin, touting its new offering. "An on-demand optical solution with as much needed bandwidth is a compelling solution for mission-critical business applications with zero tolerance for downtime, as well as for business continuity."
"Enterprises depend on their communications network to drive sales and to meet the needs of customers," added Sanford Brown, vice president of AT&T Connectivity and Metro Network Services. "Flexible networks that can be 'tuned' to instantly meet changing bandwidth requirements are essential to our customers' bottom line. Faster transport speeds will enable even more control and flexibility over how they choose to route network traffic and increase or decrease the amount of bandwidth needed at any given time."
In other AT&T news, the carrier said that it has landed a new four-year managed network services agreement, worth more than $70 million, from Allianz of America (AZOA), parent company of Fireman's Fund Insurance Company and Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.
The deal, which accelerates AZOA's plan to use a converged IP network infrastructure, was said to include just about every managed service that AT&T has to offer, including local area network, Multiprotocol Label Switching wide area network, Internet Protocol telephony, security, Internet, remote access and mobility management network services.

[destiny1]

Ringgold Telephone

Established, 1912
Ringgold, Georgia
www.rtctel.com (http://www.rtctel.com/)

Ringgold Telephone was founded by the local pharmacist, who established it with a total of eight telephones. Ringgold now maintains 13,000 access lines, and was among the first telcos to launch IPTV with interactive services. It did so in January, 2003 and now reports about 2,000 customers. Ringgold is particularly notable for having a studio where it produces nine shows.

[Stoppmann]

Hands-on Review: Vudu Set-Top Box

Five thousand movies on your TV, instantly: that's the promise of Vudu, a TV set-top box that uses the power of peer-to-peer networking to deliver near-DVD quality videos to your living room at the click of a button, no PC required. I've had about a week to test-drive the Vudu; did it fulfill my dreams of home-theater nirvana? Read on.

First announced back in April, the Vudu ($400) is a relatively unobtrusive, four-pound box containing a 250GB hard drive (enough for 100 hours of standard-def movies; a pair of USB ports will soon allow for additional storage) and an Ethernet port (a broadband Net connection is required). While most Net-connected set-top boxes take upwards of 20-plus minutes to download a two-hour standard-def movie, the Vudu starts playing immediately. How? The box comes pre-loaded with the first 30 seconds of the most popular movies (the snippets download in the background onto unused portions of the hard drive), and thanks to peer-to-peer networking (think Napster 1.0—minus the piracy thing, of course), each working Vudu box shares the load in terms of downloading any given movie.

Setup was pretty straightforward; I just plugged my HDMI and Toslink digital audio connections into the back of the Vudu. Component, S-Video, and composite video hookups are also available, along with analog RCA audio inputs. (Click here for my beginners' guide to video connections.) Next, I plugged in an Ethernet cable connected to my home network, along with a short antenna for the remote. Finally, I powered up the box; after a few short setup screens, the Vudu was up and running.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/7269

[destiny1]

IPTV and DSL predominate world Broadband growth!
http://www.dslforum.org/dslnews/pdfs/pr_bwfeurope100807.pdf

D1;)

[deeba]

IPTV and DSL predominate world Broadband growth!
http://www.dslforum.org/dslnews/pdfs/pr_bwfeurope100807.pdf

D1;)


This report proves what Brad has been saying all along about the huge growth in DSL worldwide. And how much greater that growth can be with a technology that greatly enhances DSL delivery.

What Rim needs is DSL Forum, and others like them, to start giving Cupria and IPSL some publicity and backing, like them joining the SIG.

Spreading the word about Cupria, and what it will do for the telco's from the these organizations, will get the market's attention.

DJ:cool:

[destiny1]

This report proves what Brad has been saying all along about the huge growth in DSL worldwide. And how much greater that growth can be with a technology that greatly enhances DSL delivery.

What Rim needs is DSL Forum, and others like them, to start giving Cupria and IPSL some publicity and backing, like them joining the SIG.

Spreading the word about Cupria, and what it will do for the telco's from the these organizations, will get the market's attention.

DJ:cool:

Deeba
In times past, both Brad and Bill Narin have stated the goal regarding the IPSL-SIG is to create such interest that larger and larger telcos and equipment companies join its ranks. Once large enough, the organization will likely be swallowed up by one of the established standards bodies, such as the DSL forum or ITU.

Based on the initial meeting, we know Embarq and now eSilicon along with the smaller announced ILECs are involved. This next IPSL-SIG is in Europe. That implies France Telecom and likely Deutsche Telecom will become members. Telecoms will likely bring their equipment makers to the table. That opens the door for Huawei to join the IPSL-SIG. You can see that as the organization grows, once it gets a quorum of major players, it’s a natural fit for standards body adoption. The key will be to watch the IPSL –SIG announcements. As major players join, the closer the IPSL SIG is to becoming part of a major standard’s organizations.

D1 ;)

[destiny1]

Very interesting article from Verizon. Note the UPLOAD speeds. Rim Semi IPSL cna have variable upload/download ratios depending on customer demand. They can range from 98% / 2% for at-home applications (almost all download) to 50/50 for enterprise applications. And remember we're talking about 35 mbps at 8,000 feet. Did someone say "fiber avoidance?"
D1;)
Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Verizon (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Verizon) Gets 20/20 Broadband Vision
http://www.telecomweb.com/Assets/Image/nbr_mast.gif

http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450 (http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/telecomweb.com/;sz=180x150;ord=021450)
Verizon (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Verizon) has launched symmetrical 20 Mb/s broadband over its vaunted FiOS fiber to the home (FTTH) network, the first-ever such service from a major provider and one that the company bragged "blows cable away." The offering is being touted primarily as a consumer service, but Verizon also threw in a healthy dose of business-related uses for the service, and said that it will soon launch a similar offering for the small business market.
Initially the service is being offered in those parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut reached by FiOS, at $64.99 per month. The plan, Verizon said, is to "soon" begin offering what it termed "similar" service in all 13 states where it has rolled out FiOS.
Verizon didn't disclose any details of its planned business version of 20/20 FiOS. However TelecomWeb notes that according to the most recent studies from RVA Market Research an unusually high percentage - 27 percent - of those with FTTH do at least some of their work from home (Broadband Business Forecast, Oct. 16). In essence that makes a fast residential broadband service also an enterprise service. In addition, RVA said, an estimated 10 percent of those with FTTH are running home businesses.
For now, though, the target isn't business - it's the consumer and cable broadband. "Verizon's new 20/20 FiOS service blows cable away. Their upload speeds don't even come close," said Verizon Broadband Solutions Vice President Susan Retta. Verizon's previous top upstream speed was 5 Mb/s.
The Verizon executive did not cite details of what current competitive cable offerings look like. However a quick check shows that Verizon's chief rival Cablevision offers services with 15 Mb/s downstream and 2 Mb/s upstream at $44.95 per month - for those who also buy its cable TV. Another $14.95 buys 30 Mb/s downstream, where that is available, and 5 Mb/s upstream. Comcast, meanwhile, charges $67.95 for 8 Mb/s downstream and 768 Kb/s upstream - less for those who buy TV and/or VoIP from it as well.
"For more than a decade, the Internet has been defined by how quickly you can download content," Retta said. "Our 20/20 FiOS service changes everything by creating an entirely new category of U.S. broadband where 'fast' means fast in both directions. FiOS customers don't have to wait for a new technology standard that's years away to fully participate in today's interactive Web. Our new FiOS service will encourage applications developers to create even more ways for consumers to benefit from immense upstream connectivity."
Verizon went on to rattle off a list of things a consumer might do with 20 Mb/s upload speeds, such as upload high definition home movies in a fraction of time it would take with most broadband connections. It also listed some business uses, such as telemedicine, teleconferencing and online work collaboration. Telecommuters will "need fast, reliable two-way communication," said Retta, in a briefing on the new service. "Video-conferencing will be common place. Online collaboration with workers across the nation, across the globe (means) they'll need the ability to communicate extremely large files in an upload manner."
"A 500 MB file, such as 400 digital photos or a medical imaging data set, could upload in less than four minutes, compared with about 90 minutes over a 768 kb/s connection," Verizon calculated an example of what 20 Mb/s can do. It would take only about 90 seconds to upload a 250 MB file of 200 photos, compared with about 47 minutes over a 768 Kb/s upstream connection, Verizon said.
The price of symmetrical FiOS service includes an Internet security suite and 1 GB of network-based backup. For a fee (of course) Verizon is offering additional backup of up to 50 GB.
Verizon didn't estimate what effect 20/20 FiOS might have on its battle to win customers for its FiOS TV service, which like its broadband is competing head-on with cable. At this point, Verizon said, it has signed up 500,000 subscribers to FiOS TV. That's about half of the million or so who have subscribed to FiOS broadband, but barely an eighth of the 3.9 million homes which could get FiOS TV if they wanted. The assumption is that anything that increases the number of FiOS broadband subscribers will likewise increase the number getting FiOS TV, which Verizon touts as "all digital" but which industry experts all know is not IPTV (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=IPTV) yet, but rather a hybrid RF-based system.

[destiny1]

Do not discount the importance of Verizon's interest in successful IPTV deployment. Though Verizon is noted for fiber to the home deployment, the majority of their over 42 million wirelines will remain copper.
http://www.dslforum.org/dslnews/pdfs/pr_nashville091207.pdf

D1;)

[deeba]

Verizon 3Q results show a most interesting item that is a real eye opener.

This is compliments of another RSMI shareholder.

deeba:cool:

FiOS deployment cost 9 cents per share in the quarter.

"Verizon's broadband fiber-to-the-premises network, which delivers FiOS
Internet and FiOS TV services to customers, passed 8.5 million premises by the end of the quarter. Third-quarter EPS dilution from FiOS deployment and customer-acquisition costs was 9 cents."

Interesting thing.....2.9B shares.....$261,000,000 is the FiOS deployment cost for just the third quarter. At that burn rate, the year is $1B in FiOS deployment costs.

Importance? No cost avoidance going on with VZ.........

[destiny1]

Good find Deeb,
There's a lot of talk of how the cost of fiber deployment has decreased. The facts prove otherwise. I'll use this in the upcoming Rim Semi Prospectus.

D1;)

[destiny1]

Who is going to pay for the infrastructure buildout? Expect more cancellations.
http://www.telecomweb.com/tnd/25589.html
D1;)

[destiny1]

Here is a very interesting article regarding Bill Gate's prediction of Microsoft's new software platform transforming business telephony. Again, the foundation of this solution is tremendous bandwidth flow into businesses of all sizes. I for one hope he is correct. Rim Semi is expecting big things out of Cupria'sTM corporate Ethernet solution.

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=559&tag=nl.e101 (http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=559&tag=nl.e101)

D1;)

[destiny1]

These are the biggest fish of them all!
http://www.naukri.com/gpw/zte/index.htm

http://www.convergedigest.com/iptv/iptvarticle.asp?ID=17773

D1;)

[paulv]

I ran across this article..thought it was interesting. I think it would be really nice to see rim respond to this with a technology that works.

PV

http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20071030/D8SJPEP00.html

[destiny1]

Interesting article. Here's one along the same lines.
Bill extending Internet tax ban goes to Bush

Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:19pm EDT

House panel backs Internet tax ban extension (http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1035449220071010)
Move to extend Internet tax ban stalls in Senate (http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN2845311520070928)
Paulson and Gutierrez urge permanent Internet tax ban (http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN2623843520070926)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives approved legislation on Tuesday extending a moratorium on state Internet access taxes for seven years, sending the bill to the president to sign into law.
The state tax ban has been in place since 1998 and is scheduled to expire on November 1.
Internet service providers say the price of Internet access could rise by as much as 17 percent if the moratorium on state taxes was allowed to expire.
The House approved by 402-0 the bill, which includes a longer moratorium extension than the four-year extension the chamber earlier endorsed. The latest version of the House legislation is identical to that already approved by the Senate, so the bill next goes to President George W. Bush, who is expected to sign it into law.
Verizon and other companies expressed relief that Congress acted before the deadline.
"Broadband access is now a crucial driver of America's economy, and this moratorium extension will ensure continued investment and growth in the broadband marketplace," said Peter Davidson, a Verizon senior vice president.
Some lawmakers, including many Republican senators, had sought a permanent ban on Internet taxes to spur more investment by broadband service providers.
Sen. John Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican who wrote the seven-year extension compromise, said he still hopes to permanently end the tax.
"I will continue to fight for a permanent ban on access taxes, but this is a strong step forward. Taxing the Internet is wrong for consumers and wrong for the economy," Sununu said in a statement after the House vote.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN3017595320071030?feedType=nl&feedName=ustechnology


The legislature and our President are focused on enabling nationwide broadband access.

It appears technological advances are adopted more quickly overseas than in the U.S.

While in the Navy, our ship pulled into Hong Kong for a week in 1991 near the end of the 1st Persian Gulf War. It seemed everyone had tiny cell phones. The executives had them as did the school kids, the affluent and those riding buses. The contrast with the U.S. was apparent. At time only the affluent and business executives could afford $1500 car phones! It was quite a few years before cell phones became common in the U.S. Much of it had to do with cost, access, and regulatory issues. It appears now however our government is fully behind the wireline broadband initiative.

When you look at the numbers, DSL is still the broadband deployment method of choice worldwide. Worldwide DSL still has nearly 66% of the market. It remains the most cost effective broadband deployment choice offering telcos the highest rate of return on their investment. A technology which leverages the telco’s greatest asset, the copper loop, IMO will always win in the long run.

Is Rim offering too little too late? I’ll ask Brad tomorrow.

D1;)

[destiny1]

I ran across this article..thought it was interesting. I think it would be really nice to see rim respond to this with a technology that works.

PV

http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20071030/D8SJPEP00.html

The lack of major telecom investment in broadband is another major point brought out in this article. IMO, telcos haven't invested in infrastructure upgrade as heavily as they should because solutions to date have not promised a good return on investment. Ultimately the telcos are saying, unless you can develop broadband technology that leverages incumbent assets, the cost is too high! That is why many technologies (fiber- FTTH), maybe Wimax) make technological sense but are destined to niche markets because they don't make good business sense. Return on investment ultimately drives technology adoption.

D1;)

[Stoppmann]

50 Meg Downstream “12,000 Feet”

8 asymmetrical pair bonded

Aktino's Hossan Salib is hooking up 25-50 megabit service to customers as much as 12,000 feet from the telephone exchange. Aktino's system doubles the downstream speed of their symmetric system, appropriate for applications including copper fed remote DSLAMs and mobile phone sites serving large volumes of data. The upstream is reduced to 10-20 megabits.

One actual installation tested at 50+ meg down, 15 meg up, while the symmetric speeds would have been 25 megabits in each direction. VDSL2 allows changing the PSD mask to utilize more of the frequencies available for downstream. Asymmetry reduces the noise in the circuit, allowing higher speeds. For Aktino, this is only a software upgrade to their system.

http://www.dslprime.com/News_Articles/news_articles.htm

[deeba]

This article is from today's WSJ. There is a graph you can see if you click on this link that shows "Total Broadband Subscribers per 100 Inhabitants" as of December 2006.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/article_print/SB119388040866078585-lMyQjAxMDE3OTAzMTgwODEwWj.html


deeba:cool:






States Step In to Close Broadband Gap
By COREY BOLES
November 1, 2007; Page B3

WASHINGTON -- Tired of waiting for the federal government to act on President Bush's promise to make high-speed Internet connections available to every home, a number of states have taken on the task themselves. Kentucky has been so successful -- the state says 95% of its households can now buy broadband service if they want -- that federal lawmakers and regulators want to replicate its program nationwide.

Rep. Zack Space (D., Ohio) recently introduced legislation to provide grants for states to follow Kentucky's lead, and a Senate version of the bill has passed the Commerce Committee. In October, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a bill sponsored by Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) that would compel the Federal Communications Commission to pinpoint where broadband service is available -- and where it isn't.

In his campaign for nationwide broadband service, Mr. Space has formed the Connecting Appalachia Broadband Task Force, a group of various officials, local leaders and telecom industry representatives to bring broadband to rural Appalachia. "The FCC needs to do more. Our government as a whole needs to recognize the importance of broadband Internet access," he says. "We should be treating broadband with as much importance as we did the electrification of the country in the 1930s."

Why the urgency? Mr. Space worries that the U.S. hasn't kept pace with other developed countries, and that rural districts like his will lose jobs. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's most recent ranking of countries' progress in broadband deployment put the U.S. in 15th place out of 30 countries as of December 2006, down from 10th place a year earlier.

That leaves the U.S. far from the goal Mr. Bush set in April 2004, promising "broadband technology to every corner of our country by the year 2007."

Kevin Martin, the Republican chairman of the FCC, discounts the OECD ranking, arguing that it doesn't account for population density and other factors. But he acknowledges the FCC needs to do more, and points to recent changes to encourage investment in broadband networks. Earlier this year, the FCC classified broadband as an information rather than telecommunications service, exempting providers from layers of red tape.

This week, the FCC took steps to get a clearer picture of the gaps in broadband availability. The commission will be asking companies for the number of broadband subscribers in each ZIP Code -- eventually using the nine-digit code -- and it wants to collect more-precise data on transmission speeds.

Local and national initiatives are also catching attention. Wireless Philadelphia, working with EarthLink Inc., has established a citywide Wi-Fi network, though Chicago, San Francisco and other cities have dropped similar efforts. Also, services are springing up to provide Internet connections via satellite, but the costs are relatively high.

The Kentucky program, run by not-for-profit Connect Kentucky, relies on detailed research on communications networks, targeted public spending and cooperation with private-sector providers of broadband Internet service like telephone and cable companies. In all, Connect Kentucky spent $7 million of federal and state money, and broadband providers invested about $700 million to upgrade their networks. Now, 44% of the state's population, much of it rural, subscribes to broadband services, up from 22% three years ago.

The program has grown into a national not-for-profit group called Connected Nation. "We've used this model to demonstrate that a state that can be ranked last in so many technology indicators can see a turnaround in a relatively short period of time," says Brian Mefford, executive director of Connected Nation. Mr. Mefford says half of the states have sought information about the program.


West Virginia and Tennessee have kicked off similar efforts with the help of Connected Nation. "We have not seen the federal government take a strong role in this," says West Virginia Secretary of Commerce Kelley Goes. Ms. Goes and other officials are now working with Verizon Communications Inc. and other Internet providers to determine where broadband access is available.

That can be tricky. While Internet providers keep detailed maps of their networks, they aren't required to share the information with regulators, and won't do so voluntarily for fear of tipping their hand to competitors.

And the FCC measures broadband deployment by ZIP Code, so if one subscriber in a ZIP Code has broadband access, the zone is considered covered. Without a precise count, consumer groups and lawmakers say it is impossible to determine the best way to close the gaps, which occur mostly in less-populated and poorer areas.

Consumer advocates have their eye on another FCC program, the $7 billion Universal Service Fund that subsidizes the cost of rural telephone service. For several months, the FCC has been wrestling with rule changes that could free up some of the money for high-speed Internet. Mr. Martin has proposed some changes to the fund, but wouldn't allow it to be used to offset the cost of broadband in rural areas.

[deeba]

Here is a conference titled the "Future of Television".

Future of Television is a 2-day executive conference presented by Digital Media Wire, NYU's Stern School of Business and the Consumer Electronics Association. An annual conference, this year’s event will be held on November 8-9, 2007 and brings together key decision-makers from cable and broadcast networks, cable and satellite operators, high-tech and advertising to focus on the future of television.


http://www.televisionconference.com/index.shtml


deeba:cool:

[destiny1]

Conexant Bails Out Of Wireless Broadband
http://www.telecomweb.com/Assets/Image/nbr_mast.gif

Communications chip house Conexant Systems has called an immediate halt to all development work in its standalone wireless local area network (LAN) product line, and it axed yet another 140 workers after reporting another quarter deep in the red.
Conexant says it will continue to make and sell its wireless LAN chips to existing customers "with current solutions," but there won't be any new ones forthcoming. The wireless LAN chip product line was understood to be up for sale, but the company says shutting it down wasn't dependent on selling it. However, it will continue work on its DSL gateways that include wireless connectivity, and those on the wireless LAN development team who weren't laid off will be transferred to the company's Broadband Access organization.
Those layoffs come barely a month after the company had finished a larger 500-person staff cut. "Including the wireless networking actions announced today, we have reduced our worldwide workforce by approximately 20 percent over the past five weeks," commented President and CEO Daniel Artusi. The Conexant CEO is a new recruit, barely three months on the job and brought in specifically to craft a turnaround (Broadband Business Forecast, July 24).
Conexant expects to save $5 million per quarter as a result of its exit from the wireless LAN market and from the 140-person layoff. That's even more than the $4.8 million per quarter it had estimated it would save with the larger layoffs announced earlier. No explanation was given for that difference, but the company notes that both layoffs were worldwide and affected workers in the United States, India and China, so the difference in savings may represent a difference in the mix of the location of affected workers.
The decision to axe the wireless broadband line follows similar decisions to halt work on new network processors, packet-processing chips and its investment in broadband over powerline (BPL (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=BPL)) chips based on the HomePlug standard. Some of those lines also are available for purchase, said Artusi on a conference call, reporting the company was having talks with potential buyers of "some selected assets in some of these businesses." The company still has an extensive communications chip line, including semiconductors for DSL, set-top boxes, video, VoIP and passive optical networking (PON).
"We will continue working to narrow our product-development focus in order to improve our engineering execution and our ability to deliver innovative, cost-effective solutions to customers on schedule," he added. "At this point, our most important company priority is to return to breakeven financial performance as quickly as possible."
In its most recent quarter ended Sept. 28, the fourth in its fiscal year, Conexant reported sales of $183.9 million and losses of $234.8 million (48 cents per share). That's not quite as bad as it sounds because, in the quarter, the company recorded a non-cash impairment charge of $192.5 million to reduce the carrying value of goodwill; intangible assets; and property, plant, and equipment associated with its broadband media processing and wireless networking product lines. Conexant also took special charges of $26.4 million primarily related to a litigation settlement and restructuring. Subtracting those items leaves only $15.9 million in red ink, an improved result that compares with sales of $179.6 million and losses of $35.2 million (7 cents per share) in the immediately preceding quarter and sales of $245.9 million and a loss of $21.1 million (4 cents per share) in the same quarter last year.
Thus, in theory, with the round of staff and product line cuts, the company has cut two-thirds of its current losses. Believing in that theory, investors today started returning to Conexant, boosting prices this morning a modest 6 percent or so to $1.31, which still is much less than the company's 52-week high of $2.36. Of course, it's only a thin shadow of the $132.50 per share Conexant reached back in the madness of 2000.

[Stoppmann]

A discovery that paves the way for DSL networks up 100 times the speed of current ADSL and ADSL2+ networks has won a Melbournian researcher the University of Melbourne's top academic prize.

Dr John Papandriopoulos' discovery would increase broadband speed without multi-billion dollar investments in cabling infrastructure.

Based on his research, he says the new technology could deliver between 100 and 250 megabits per second - compared to current Australian DSL which ranges from one megabit to 20 megabits per second.

He has patented the technology in Australia and the US and will today be presented with a Chancellor's Prize for Excellence in the PhD.

Dr Papandriopoulos developed two methods, which he has patented as SCALE and SCAPE, as part of his PhD in the university's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com.au/news/article.asp?DocID=6100910

[destiny1]

D. Telekom's CEO has no time to rest on his laurels

Mon Nov 5, 2007 10:42am EST

By Nicola Leske
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - When Rene Obermann took on mission impossible last year -- overhauling Deutsche Telekom as chief executive -- few in the financial industry thought he could make a difference.
A year later analysts and investors say that he is on track to cutting costs and growing the international mobile business of Deutsche Telekom, but his work is far from done.
The 44-year-old self-made manager, faced with fierce labor opposition and strikes, pushed through lower wages and longer working hours for 55,000 staff. He divested loss-making assets in France and Spain and acquired new businesses in mobile communications, the company's growth driver.
"Obermann has taken a courageous approach," DIT fund manager Heinrich Ey said. "He stood firm in the face of headwinds from the unions, for example."
But the passionate runner will have no time to catch his breath. Investors are impatient to see gains in the share price, which has been hovering between 13 and 14 euros.
Obermann himself has linked his fortune to an improvement in share price and given himself a time frame of about two years for the stock to trade in line with the competition.
"Otherwise my mission would have failed," he has said in an interview with German news magazine Der Spiegel.
By comparison, Spain's Telefonica (TEF.MC: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=TEF.MC), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=TEF.MC), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=TEF.MC)) share price has risen 43.7 percent since the start of the year to 23 euros, while France Telecom (FTE.PA: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=FTE.PA), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=FTE.PA), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=FTE.PA)) stock has gained 22.4 percent to 25 euros.
Deutsche Telekom trades at around 16 times 2008 earnings, according to Reuters Estimates, below a sector average of 21 times.
MORE JOB CUTS
Investors would cheer if Obermann gives a 2008 outlook when Deutsche Telekom publishes third-quarter results on Thursday, analysts said.
This year Deutsche Telekom has targeted a core profit of 19 billion euros ($27.47 billion) and analysts estimate the telecoms group will slightly surpass that figure next year.
Despite some gains in market share, the former state monopoly is still grappling with an ongoing loss of customers in its fixed-line business and has only just begun to compensate that loss with new services such as DSL broadband.
"Deutsche Telekom continues to suffer the most competitive domestic market and we reiterate our peer perform -- evidence of a turnaround is required before we could turn positive," Jonathan Dann at Bear Stearns said.
Damien Chew at ING added: "Despite good news from elsewhere in the sector, we believe it is too early to call a turnaround in Deutsche Telekom's domestic business."
Like France Telecom, the German heavyweight is primarily a restructuring story, analysts at Sal. Oppenheim said.
Europe's biggest telecoms group by sales has a work force of 250,000 worldwide, the bulk of it in Germany. About a third of its staff in Germany have lifetime contracts.
"We believe the group still has scope for further job cuts," Oddo Securities said, adding however that plans for more restructuring are not likely to be unveiled until next year.
Obermann, who cut short his education to set up his own telecoms company in 1986, has a reputation as a hard-line, goal-oriented manager. He has said that overhauling Telekom will continue but has not been specific on job cuts.
Investors are also keen to get details on its acquisition strategy and news about further asset disposals such as Media & Broadcast, a part of the business service unit T-Systems.
A Reuters poll of 20 analysts estimated third-quarter sales would improve slightly to 15.7 billion euros. Adjusted core profit is seen on average down 3 percent at 4.9 billion euros.
For the Reuters earnings poll click on (ID:nL05124080: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=ID:nL05124080), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=ID:nL05124080), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=ID:nL05124080))

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL054072320071105?feedType=nl&feedName=ustechnology&sp=true

[destiny1]

1. China Telcom
2. China Netcom
China Telecom is the world's largest telecom (3-4 x the size of AT&T) and is headquartered in Shanghai. Guess where Rim Semi is looking to have the spring IPSL-SIG meeting?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/28d9ded6-8747-11dc-a3ff-0000779fd2ac.html
http://www.chinatelecom-h.com/eng/corpinfo/overview.htm
D1;)

[destiny1]

If wireless is able to provide speeds and quality anywhere near Wimax, because of the huge costs involved in developing the Wimax infrastructure, I don't see Wimax ever really taking off.

D1;)

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

WiMAX (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=WiMAX) Killer? 100 MB/s LTE Mobile Wireless Passes Key Test
http://www.telecomweb.com/Assets/Image/nbr_mast.gif

The wireless industry is on track to launch the world's first 100 Mb/s mobile broadband service within the next 24 to 36 months - and it won't be the stuff being called "mobile WiMAX (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=WiMAX)."
Initial trials of Long Term Evolution/System Architecture Evolution (LTE/SAE) - the 4G mobile broadband technology expected eventually to be used by both AT&T Wireless and Verizon (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Verizon) Wireless - have been successful, and tests now go into the interoperability stage, the LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI) said this morning.
(For those who want the numbers in brief before reading on, LTE promises: instantaneous downlink peak data rate of 100 Mb/s within a 20-meghertz downlink spectrum allocation (5 bps/Hz); the data rate will be maintained while moving at speeds as fast as 500 kilometers per hour, depending on frequency band; 100 Mb/s throughput maintained with cells reaching as far as 5 kilometers, with slight degradation up to 30 kilometers and possible coverage of as much as 100 kilometers.)
The six-month-old LSTI, in a statement released at Nokia headquarters in Espoo, Finland, reported what it termed "the successful delivery of the first in a series of test results aimed at proving the potential and benefits of LTE," which is being standardized by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Nokia is one of the prime movers in the effort, thus the use of its services to make the announcement.
Others in the LSTI effort read like a mobile industry who's who. In addition to Nokia, the LSTI was founded by Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, France Telecom/Orange, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Joining more recently have been China Mobile, Huawei, LG Electronics, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Signalion, Telecom Italia and ZTE. And that's just a sub-set of the membership of 3GPP, which has a total of 331 members. Even Sprint-Nextel is a member, despite its decision to use the rival mobile WiMAX for its 4G network. That's hardly a surprise - when (and if) mobile WiMAX crashes and burns, at least Sprint-Nextel will have a fallback position.
"Initial results have confirmed that the technology will deliver high levels of data throughput both for stationary and mobile devices," the LSTI statement said. "In more detail, the group has confirmed that the LTE physical layer performance targets in terms of stationary and on-the-move peak data rates can be met." The LSTI continued by being very specific: "3GPP LTE is specified to enable downlink/uplink peak data rates above 100/50 Mbps in initial deployment configurations."
The tests were done using an agreed set of common transmission profiles, test procedures and analysis methods. The joint tests, according to the group, were done using prototype single and multi-antenna radio systems in both laboratory and urban field environments.
The successful tests were the first of the three main test phases in the LSTI effort:
"proof of concept," "interoperability" and "trial." Joint testing and the reporting of ongoing results will continue until the end of 2009, the LSTI added. Initial LTE system deployments are now planned for "the 2010 timeframe," it continued. "These early results show great promise for 3GPP LTE technology, and are a tangible early validation of the reality of 3GPP LTE systems and services. The collective and cooperative performance test work accomplished to date by this pioneering group is a testimony to the group's leadership and determination to accelerate the availability of commercial and interoperable LTE systems."
LTE is a direct competitor to technology based on the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard - the stuff being dubbed mobile WiMAX - and several other potential high-speed wireless broadband technologies. Ericsson, in a white paper released in September comparing HSDPA/LTE and mobile WiMAX (available at http://www.ericsson.com/technology/whitepapers/hspa_and_mobile_wimax.pdf (http://www.ericsson.com/technology/whitepapers/hspa_and_mobile_wimax.pdf) ), estimated that, in 2012, it will have a 70-percent market share. It awarded a 20 percent market share to the rival CDMA EV-DO.

[destiny1]

Not sure what's going on at Ikanos, SHAMLOU NICK N (http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001377722), the VP of Worldwide sales sold his remaining position today.

D1

[destiny1]

Bottom line: It just cost too much! More will be explained in the interview with Brad.

D1
Clearwire posts wider loss, ends Sprint WiMax pact

Fri Nov 9, 2007 6:21am EST
Related News
Sprint ends Clearwire pact, reviewing WiMax plans (http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN0828927120071109)





NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Clearwire Corp. (CLWR.O: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=CLWR.O), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=CLWR.O), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=CLWR.O)) on Friday posted a wider quarterly loss and said it was terminating an earlier pact with Sprint Nextel (S.N: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=S.N), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=S.N), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=S.N)) relating to WiMax, an emerging technology they are both using.


The wireless service provider founded by mobile pioneer Craig McCaw said its third-quarter loss widened to $328.6 million, or $2.01 per share, from $59.8 million, or 61 cents per share, a year earlier.
Revenue rose to $41.3 million from $26.9 million.
Clearwire said that while it had ended its July agreement with Sprint, which is looking for a new chief executive, the companies are still in discussions. The pact was key for the expansion of both providers' WiMax services. (Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

[destiny1]

Remember this article in the months to come. There is a lot of shifting of landscape going on in the China telecom equipment sector. Alcatel, Huawei and ZTE are 1-3 in revenue. This company however is pushing hard to become number #1 in the IPTV sector Rim Semi operates in.

China Netcom Selects ZTE for IPTV in Beijing
http://www.convergedigest.com/images/blanksquare.gifChina Netcom selected ZTE as an equipment supplier for an IPTV trial in Beijing. The new network will serve 50,000 IPTV subscribers by provisioning video services including video on demand (VoD), broadcasting, time-shifted television (TSTV), private video recorder (PVR ) and near video on demand (NVoD) as well as value-added services such as interactive games, information services, instant communications, online albums and e-learning. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The China Netcom IPTV project follows ZTE’s three previous IPTV contract wins from China Telecom and confirms ZTE as China’s largest IPTV systems provider.

ZTE said this contract will make one of the largest providers of IPTV infrastructure in the world.

China currently has over 30 million broadband subscribers, with more than 50% annual growth, making it potentially the world’s largest IPTV market.
http://www.zte.com.cn (http://www.zte.com.cn/)
27-Mar-06

[destiny1]

This is the largest and fastest growing telecom in the world.... BTW, China is almost all DSL. They have over 223 million access lines.

D1;)

China Telecom Reaches 33.89 Million Broadband Users
http://www.convergedigest.com/images/blanksquare.gifChina Telecom added more than 500,000 DSL access lines in September, giving it an installed base of nearly 34 million. For 2007, China Telecom has now added some 5,570,000 broadband access lines.

[destiny1]

Verizon will still need IPSL technology for its remaining DSL customers. Less than half of its customers are ever slated for FTTH.
http://www.broadbandtrends.com/News_Articles/Articles_2007/November_2007/Telephony_11052007.htm

D1;)

[destiny1]

Consumers set to switch on to IPTV by end of the decade

Reading, UK - Wednesday, 31 October 2007


Canalys forecasts there will be 39.6 million IPTV subscribers worldwide by the end of 2010
EMEA will remain the largest region for IPTV, although its dominance will be reduced
Rapid growth in North America is expected – 12.1 million subscribers by the end of 2010
The huge potential in the Asia Pacific region will be restricted by regulatory issues
Infrastructure investment is needed to boost developing markets New forecasts from leading analyst firm Canalys indicate the IPTV market will see rapid growth over the next three years, driven by telecom operators’ desire to boost ARPU (average revenue per user) and counter the growing threat from competing triple-play providers. Worldwide IPTV subscriber levels will increase more than tenfold by the end of the decade, growing from fewer than 4 million in 2006 to almost 40 million in 2010.
EMEA accounted for two-thirds of global IPTV subscribers at the end of 2006, and will remain the largest market through to 2010, when the region will account for 38% of the worldwide total. “France is the European IPTV trailblazer, boasting 1.3 million subscribers at the end of 2006,” said Canalys vice president Alessandra Fitzpatrick. “Good, early uptake has been driven by a number of factors, notably low broadband prices, the prevalence of bundling low-cost IPTV service with broadband/telephony packages and limited competition from cable operators.”
But the favourable market conditions that have helped IPTV thrive in France are not evident in all markets. In most, high levels of competition from existing services will make it difficult for IPTV providers to compete unless they can differentiate their services, either by providing better quality of service or by maintaining lower subscription fees. “IPTV providers will have to compete on price in the short term. As a result, deploying TV services may not prove to be a significant revenue generation opportunity, although establishing a position in this emerging sector will be crucial for service providers seeking to protect their positions as prime providers of communication services,” Fitzpatrick added.
With Verizon growing rapidly and AT&T moving beyond the infrastructure development phase, Canalys expects to see strong IPTV subscriber growth in North America. Being home to just 9% of the worldwide subscriber base at the end of 2006, the region will rise to represent 31% of all subscribers by 2010. “The Asia Pacific region also offers huge potential, but the regulatory environment is restricting development,” Fitzpatrick commented. “The IPTV markets in China, Japan and South Korea are heavily constrained at present, although the 2008 Beijing Olympics may prompt Chinese authorities to accelerate plans.”
Canalys forecasts more than 11 million subscribers across the Asia Pacific region by the end of the decade, although this figure could easily be surpassed should regulatory obstacles be overcome. In less developed regions, IPTV services will be restricted to a large degree by shortcomings in deployed infrastructure and low levels of disposable income. While network investment is high, especially in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, much of this investment will not bear fruit within the forecast period. There is potential for strong uptake beyond 2010, but this will be dependent on factors such as pricing, regulation and content availability.
“IPTV can be viewed primarily as a defensive strategic move by service providers at present. While telcos have aspirations of creating new, profitable revenue streams, the key short-term driver of market development is improving customer loyalty and reducing churn levels,” Fitzpatrick continued. “IPTV will be a financial loss leader for many providers over the next five years when the costs involved with rolling out and evolving services are factored in, but if telecom operators are to retain their position as primary providers of consumer communication services, this may be a price they need to pay. It is difficult to see how the majority of IPTV providers will be able to generate significant profit from services in the near term, especially when the need to be price competitive is considered.”
IPTV has already become a significant fourth platform for digital TV in many markets, and its importance across the broadcast sector will increase over the next three years. In Western Europe, for example, Canalys expects IPTV to account for 11% of digital TV households by the end of the decade, up from just 3% at the end of 2006. In EMEA and North America, established cable and satellite operators will offer stern competition. Convincing existing pay-TV subscribers to switch provider will not be easy, with most existing IPTV services offering little beyond what is already provided by cable and satellite. Greater differentiation will be needed if IPTV is to take a greater share of the digital TV market. Having compelling content will be crucial, and this means building exclusive partnerships with content providers and aggregators. To fully exploit the potential of IPTV, service providers will quickly have to develop and introduce advanced services that set their offerings apart from those already available. This means significant investment in intelligent network infrastructure is needed. A window of opportunity exists for IPTV service providers, but in the fast-moving broadcast market, the window will not be open for long.
Note: Canalys defines IPTV as a digital TV service delivering broadcast-quality digital TV and interactive services over xDSL, FTTH or cable networks using IP via a set-top box to the main TV in the home; this includes hybrid IPTV solutions, such as those offered by BT in the UK, but excludes web TV services delivered to a PC.
About the IPTV Analysis Worldwide service
The market estimates and forecasts in this release come from the Canalys IPTV Analysis Worldwide continuous advisory service. Through regular reports, database releases and direct analyst contact, Canalys sizes the IPTV market and examines and advises on the issues facing service providers, hardware vendors, software, content and services companies active in the IPTV sector. It looks at the key market trends globally, service provider business models, opportunities for hardware and software vendors, and end-user behaviour. More information... (http://www.canalys.com/services/continuous/ita.htm)
Analyst photos
Photographs of the analyst(s) quoted in this release are available in the biography (http://www.canalys.com/staff/index.htm) section and may be re-used by the press to accompany a relevant article.
About Canalys
Canalys specialises in delivering high quality market data, analysis and advice to the world’s leading technology vendors. It is recognised as a key provider of continuous advisory services and confidential custom projects for marketing managers and strategists within blue-chip IT, telecoms, navigation and consumer electronics companies. It has unrivalled expertise in European routes to market for all kinds of high technology products and services in the consumer, SMB and large enterprise segments, and provides worldwide market data and trends analysis.

[destiny1]

Broadband Analysis: (http://point-topic.com/home/press/dslAnalysis.asp)
Global IP telephony revenues increase almost fourfold


The annual global revenues from retail IP telephony* services grew from $1,834 million in 2005 to $6908 million in 2006. Western Europe alone, which has the largest number of IP subscribers, produced $2639 million in revenue.
The Asia-Pacific region with almost the same number of subscribers (about 14.5 million) generated $1750 million, estimates analyst company Point Topic. North America, third in terms of IP user subscribers (8.6 million) produced $2411.7 million in revenue.Source: Point Topic
Monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) for VoIP subscribers was highest in North America at $20. Western Europe and South and East Asia were comparable at $15while in both the Asia-Pacific and Latin America it was estimated at $10 USD.
"The more VoIP is offered as a part of a bundle of services, the higher the average monthly VoIP revenue is,” says John Bosnell, Senior Analyst at Point Topic.



The main targets for IP telephony are heavy telephone users and consumers from markets where the service can offer a significant price advantage. The single bill convenience of having one supplier for broadband telephony and digital TV is another selling point.
Point Topic projects that in the medium term an IP telephony service will be expected by consumers from their broadband operators in the same way a TV and broadband bundle is expected from cable operators. As the price differential is eroded by competition, additional features will come on stream including the option of multiple lines with no call blocking, the simplicity of a single access line, and, in the long term, the possibility of completely free on-net calls.
Residential customers may also start to enjoy some of the benefits of corporate VoIP services. Their IP telephony service will be integrated with their home network, offering them the equivalent of the Private Branch exchange (PABX), access to computer databases for setting up and logging calls and the benefits of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology for applications such as handling multimedia calls.
“In the longer term it is likely that IP telephony will start to dominate the residential telephony market as is already beginning to happen in the corporate sector,” says Bosnell.

*Point Topic defines IP telephony as a service that emulates the voice service provided by the ordinary telephone network as fully as possible over internet protocol (IP) connections. IP telephony is one of a whole range of services that use voice over IP (VoIP) technology in some form.
This analysis is taken from the Broadband Money Makers (http://point-topic.com/home/bmm/default.asp) report IP Telephony

[destiny1]

As I've stated on several occasions, Calix is a primary access equipment supplier for Embarq as well as a number of other tier 2 and tier 3 carriers. This licensing of Microsoft's middleware would enable Calix to sell access equipment to Embarq (and Alcatel) who are looking to deploy Microsoft's IPTV MediaroomTM.

Middleware is a necessary software network component that both manages and insures interoperability between networks in handling IPTV content.

Since we know Embarq is also testing CupriaTM chipsets, its stands to reason Rim Semi, Embarq, Microsoft, and Calix are all parts of this puzzle.

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=telcotv&doc_id=137332 (http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=telcotv&doc_id=137332)

D1;)

[destiny1]

EarthLink May Sell Its Municipal Wi-Fi Unit

EarthLink CEO Rolla Huff says the company has decided against making "significant further investments" in municipal Wi-Fi systems.
By W. David Gardner (wdavidg@earthlink.net)
InformationWeek (http://www.informationweek.com/;jsessionid=A1FAPXXMJ31MQQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN)
November 19, 2007 01:08 PM
With municipal Wi-Fihttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/mag-glass_10x10.gif (http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=203103175#) networks fizzling across the nation, EarthLink will stop making major investments in such systems and is considering "strategic alternatives" for its municipal wireless business. That suggests that the company is open to selling the municipal unit, which is responsible for the pacesetting Wi-Fi deployment in Philadelphia and systems in other cities.
At the same time, Philadelphia City Councilman Frank Rizzo is reported to have called for a hearing to discuss difficulties with the Wi-Fi rollout. The Philadelphia Wi-Fi deployment is EarthLink's largest and, like many municipal Wi-Fi networkshttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/mag-glass_10x10.gif (http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=203103175#), has been plagued with startup problems.
EarthLink's president and CEO Rolla Huff said in a statement (http://www.earthlink.net/about/press/pr_wireless_philly/) Friday that the firm will seek to work closely with the municipalities with which it already has operations.
"After a thorough review and analysis of our municipal wireless business," said Huff. "We have decided that making significant further investments in this business could be inconsistent with our objective of maximizing shareholder value." EarthLink estimated the value of its existing municipal wireless business portfolio at about $40 million.
While Wi-Fi has been widely hailed and successful for use by individuals and small groups, attempts to deploy it over wide areas have often been met with widespread problems, including interference and poor and uneven reception. San Francisco, another hoped-for showcase Wi-Fi deployment, also created problems for EarthLink, which abandoned the project last summer. Philadelphia has had some success (http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=187200767) with the deployment, although the number of customers signing up for the service have not met goals. In recent weeks, EarthLink has been focusing on improving its investment in Helio (http://www.earthlink.net/about/press/pr_sk_helio_investment/), its joint venture with SK Telecom for wireless voice and data services. The two firms formed the partnership in 2005.

[Stoppmann]

The link provides a list of MEF members.

http://metroethernetforum.org/members.php

[deeba]

The link provides a list of MEF members.

http://metroethernetforum.org/members.php

That is quite the listing of companies involved with this forum.


deeba

[deeba]

From today's WSJ.

deeba


Web War III?

By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

November 21, 2007
Google is worried about what you'll see on your tiny cell phone screen someday -- it might not be Google! The much awaited Android software package was the search giant's way of trying to establish in the mobile wireless world the enviable position it enjoys in the fixed Internet world.

Maybe instead of looking ahead to wireless, it should be looking over its shoulder and worrying more about what you'll see on your giant HDTV. Get ready for a free-for-all around the idea of convergence of, loosely, TV and the Internet. Players angling for advantage are too many to count, from Microsoft to Babelgum. But we wouldn't overlook the telephone companies, Verizon and AT&T, who just happen to be Google's nemeses in the wireless world war too.

Verizon's Ivan Seidenberg is finally getting a few nods for his expensive approach, laying fiber right into millions of homes. This would enable -- if households need it -- 100 megabit speeds for dense, interactive media.

AT&T has taken a cheaper approach, rolling fiber into neighborhoods but relying on the existing copper for "last mile." Your existing phone line is capable of carrying more and more data thanks to new compression technologies.

When they're done, the telcos will have not just the preferred platform for delivering high-def, on-demand and interactive services. They'll have several advantages over their would-be rivals, whether Google or Microsoft or the cable companies. One is their history as phone companies, in the form of systems for billing and tracking individual customers in their usage.

A second is their choice of technology: Unlike cable or satellite, true Internet TV means delivering individualized TV streams to each user on demand, rather than broadcasting the entire spectrum of channels to the user's set-top box.

Why is this important? In the normal course of service, they will be able to track which stream the user is watching and when (and, of course, users will no longer be bound by program schedules). Not only will the telcos be better able to implement the necessary network "intelligence" to help you sort out the digital cornucopia. Information about what you watch is also information about what advertising you're likely to respond to, what products and services you might be interested in buying. (That's Google's business model, of course.)

The telcos have one more advantage -- control of the country's two biggest wireless networks, putting them in a powerful position to integrate video, music, news and messaging not just on your TV and computer, but on your cell phone too.

We offer no forecasts -- let the games begin! But the telcos are not insensate to their opportunity. AT&T has taken charge of an industry technical forum seeking to romance Hollywood with ways of effortlessly flowing its output into a telecom network, in whatever format, and massage it automatically into a format usable by a viewer no matter what device he's using, giant TV or tiny cell phone screen.

AT&T also just invested in a Disney-backed company that aims to address Hollywood's piracy concerns, and is rumored ready to make a bid for EchoStar, the satellite TV broadcaster. Verizon, for its part, has begun rolling out V Cast Mobile TV, the first broadcast-quality live TV on a cell phone, with Fox, CBS, Comedy Central and five other channels.

Skeptics say the telcos have no history dealing with media. Then again, no aspirant to a central role in the multimedia future has all the necessary skills and experience. And despite the media euphoria over Google and its stock price, it has neither the business experience nor the lobbying clout nor the logical arguments to rewrite a world in which the legatees of the old Ma Bell have such a strong position. So pull up a seat.

One thing not needed is a disingenuous new initiative from FCC Chief Kevin Martin. He says cable, which has effectively been deregulated at the federal level since 1996, has become too big, too powerful, and cable rates too inflated, so regulation is now needed.

Pick up a newspaper, Mr. Chairman. Cable stocks are taking a shellacking on signs of competitive headway by Verizon and AT&T. Comcast reported a net decline in basic cable subscribers last quarter. Disney is the company reporting surging profits, thanks to ESPN and the Disney Channel. Some monopolist the cable industry must be if Disney, a single program supplier in a world of countless competing program suppliers, has cable over a barrel year after year for higher fees.

As for cable rates, look at all the programming and services being added constantly to the menu. Calling this "inflation" is like saying it's inflation when an apple, an orange and a motorbike cost more than an apple. We repeat: Comcast and other cable operators have been losing basic subscribers as customers voluntarily upgrade in pursuit of more and more services.

Undoubtedly Mr. Martin's initiative will drag on long after he's collecting a paycheck as "of counsel" at some Washington lobbying shop, until the courts eventually shoot it down. The real menace, which certainly must suit Google, is injecting back into the debate an idea that delivery networks must be regulated to protect content providers.

As with the open access and net neutrality canards, Mr. Martin is offering a reclothed attempt to relegate network operators to the role of "dumb pipe," just as operators are spending billions to benefit their customers and shareholders by creating a "smart pipe." How many times do we need to see this movie?

[destiny1]

HD Notebook (http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0114/t.p0001.html)

Female-Friendly Survey Finds Fans Prefer HD to Stadium November 21, 2007
In a U.S. survey commissioned by HD product maker Motorola, nearly half of all American sports fans (45 percent) said they prefer to watch football on an HD screen at home or in a sports bar rather than actually attend the game in-person.

Despite the somewhat self-serving nature of the study, such findings may be most applicable to NFL contests (compared to college games), where pro game tickets, parking, food and other essential ingredients of a typical contest can easily run a family several hundred dollars on a Sunday afternoon.

The survey queried both pro and college fans, Motorola said. But for some reason, slightly more women than men were among the 1,009 surveyed, which could have led to this finding, among others: Without mentioning HD viewing as an option, only 32 percent respondents would choose to attend a college or pro football game in-person in the first place. (Go team?)

Motorola commissioned Opinion Research Corporation to conduct the survey earlier this month.

[destiny1]

SR Telecom stock hits new low in heavy trading as company seeks buyer
20/11/2007 4:51:00 PM

MONTREAL - SR Telecom Inc. (TSX:SRX) shares fell as much as 66 per cent to a new low in heavy trading on Tuesday, a day after the Montreal-based equipment vendor said it would seek court-protection from its creditors while it seeks a buyer.



THE CANADIAN PRESS

More than 16.5 million SR Telecom shares were exchanged on the Toronto Stock Exchange by mid-afternoon, making them among the most shares on the market in terms of volume.
Shortly before 2:30 p.m., the 15,000 shares traded at half a cent, down one cent or 66 per cent from the close on Monday and a new low. The shares ended the trading day at one cent, down from 1.5 cents the previous day.
At one cent per share, the total market value of SR Telecom's stock is about $7.5 million, although the company had about $27.1 million cash at the end of September and says it has enough resources to continue operations.
Trading in SR Telecom stock has been heavy recently, but in a narrow range well below its 52-week high of 27 cents. On Monday and Friday, more than 25.7 million shares traded each day at one to two cents and the stock closed unchanged at 1.5 cents each day.
SR Telecom's board decided this month to sell the company after reviewing all its options. The company obtained court protection Monday under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and said it expects to continue operating while the sale process continues.
However, the company also announced Monday it would cut 35 jobs - about half of them communications, IT and operations workers in Montreal - on top of 75 jobs cut in April.
It will be left with 205 workers, mostly in Montreal, with a few people in Paris, Philippines, Latin America and the United States.
The company makes equipment for wireless communications networks. It has decided to focus on Wi-Max technology, a potentially growing segment of the equipment market, but is open to a separate sale of its legacy business.

[deeba]

Interesting article from today's WSJ about the need for higher upload speeds.

deeba:cool:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/article_print/SB119621285234906029-lMyQjAxMDE3OTI2ODIyMTgyWj.html

Uploading Speeds Slowly Catch Up

By DIONNE SEARCEY

November 28, 2007

Uploading is getting an upgrade.

After years of cranking up the speed of downloading material from the Internet, which made it faster to surf the Web and play music and videos, Internet service providers are finally starting to boost the speed of files moving onto the Web from your personal computer.


The acceleration is being spurred by the rise of social-networking sites like Facebook and video-sharing sites like YouTube, as a growing number of people are posting their own music and video clips online. Upload speeds have long been a fraction of the speed of downloads, forcing most users to wait several minutes to upload a photo, for example, that they could download in seconds.

But in recent months, companies have been ratcheting up their upload speeds -- for consumers willing to pay a bit more. Verizon Communications Inc. announced recently that it would start offering upload speeds of 20 megabits per second -- roughly 25 times as fast as what its most popular DSL service offers -- in some markets for customers of its new fiber-based network, called FiOS.

Verizon's rivals have also been increasing their upload speeds, offering special features that allow for quicker capabilities. Comcast Corp. this year began offering subscribers a temporary "turbocharge," or boost in speed, which kicks in when it detects very large uploads. When the PowerBoost feature is activated, Comcast subscribers can receive upload speeds of up to two megabits per second.

Last year, Cablevision Systems Corp. doubled the upload speed of its most popular high-speed Internet service to two megabits per second and added a premium tier of service that offered five megabit-a-second uploads.

Verizon's new offering costs $64.99 a month, compared with the $45 a month that Verizon charges FiOS customers in some markets for slower five megabit-per-second uploads. But Verizon's service is less expensive -- and slower -- than another offering from Cablevision, which charges $200 a month for upload speeds of 50 megabits per second. That service is intended mainly for businesses and homes that use the Internet extensively.

200 Photos in 90 Seconds

At the new speeds Verizon's FiOS is offering, consumers could upload 200 photos in about 90 seconds. The same upload would take 47 minutes over Verizon's most popular DSL service, which offers uploads at 768 kilobits a second. Verizon says a three-gigabyte file, such as a one-hour family video shot with a high-definition video camera, could be uploaded in around 20 minutes, compared with more than nine hours at the slower speed. The FiOS service offers 20 megabits a second for downloads as well.


Verizon's announcement could prompt other phone and cable operators to more aggressively boost upload speeds. Until now, most cable and phone companies have only incrementally raised uploads, even as they've lifted download speeds.

Comcast's fastest upload speed, for instance, is available only to customers who take its more expensive high-speed offerings, with downloads of up to 16 megabits a second. Comcast charges $52.95 a month for that broadband service when customers subscribe to other services. Subscribers to Comcast's lower-price offerings get much slower upload speeds of either 384 or 768 kilobits a second, though they also can get a boost up to two megabits per second. AT&T Inc., likewise, offers an upload speed of only 768 kilobits a second on its fastest DSL service, paired with a downloading speed of six megabits a second. AT&T offers a faster upload, of one megabit a second, to customers in the limited areas where it sells its "U-Verse" TV service.

A Sought-After Niche

Fast uploads appeal to a niche of Web users, but cable and phone companies want to accommodate them because such users are willing to pay more for the service, says Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst of Leichtman Research Group in Durham, N.H. Among the consumers demanding faster speeds are people working at home who want to share large files with co-workers in the office.

Telecommuters also want faster uploads because the higher speed makes videoconferencing much easier.

Faster upload speeds will also please users of peer-to-peer networks, which allow users to share music, videos, software and photos. Some peer-to-peer networks are used for sharing pirated movies. Verizon, for one, acknowledges this but says it is working with Hollywood studios to look for ways to block pirating on its network.

Sluggish Networks

High-speed networks aren't always as fast as promised. Heavy network traffic and other issues can sometimes cause delays. But any speed boost at all is welcome to some customers.

Among Verizon's new customers is Scott Shapiro, a music composer for TV shows, films and games who is based in Westchester County, N.Y. He uses his Internet connection to deliver video and large audio files to his customers. He had been subscribing to Cablevision's service with five-megabit uploads, as well as the company's cable TV service. Now he says he pays less than $150 for Verizon's new service, which includes TV and phone service and is slightly less than what he paid Cablevision. (Prices for both companies vary depending on the services ordered and promotions.)

"The Internet and files are only getting larger," he says. "The faster, the better."

[destiny1]

Verizon Goes LTE

NOVEMBER 29, 2007
CDMA operator Verizon Wireless (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=5928) is to trial high-speed next generation network technology in the U.S. in 2008 in a move that aligns it with the GSM world's prefered global standard for fourth-generation (4G) wireless broadband. (See Verizon Uses LTE for 4G (http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=140146).)
The Basking Ridge, N.J.-based operator is working with its part-owner Vodafone Group plc (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=6082) (NYSE: VOD (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=VOD) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=VOD&thread_title=VOD)) on "a co-ordinated trial plan" for 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=7821) -based Long-Term Evolution technology that begins in 2008.
Trial infrastructure suppliers will be Alcatel-Lucent (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=9705) (NYSE: ALU (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=ALU) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=ALU&thread_title=ALU)), Ericsson AB (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=1879) (Nasdaq: ERIC (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=ERIC) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=ERIC&thread_title=ERIC)), Motorola Inc. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3538) (NYSE: MOT (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=MOT) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=MOT&thread_title=MOT)), Nokia Siemens Networks (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=10016) , and Nortel Networks Ltd. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3858) (NYSE/Toronto: NT (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=NT) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=NT&thread_title=NT)).
Verizon says it has been talking to LG Electronics Inc. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3074) (London: LGLD (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=LGLD) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=LGLD&thread_title=LGLD); Korea: 6657.KS) , Motorola Inc. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3538) (NYSE: MOT (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=MOT) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=MOT&thread_title=MOT)), Nokia Corp. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3847) (NYSE: NOK (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=NOK) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=NOK&thread_title=NOK)), and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=4751) (Korea: SEC (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=SEC) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=SEC&thread_title=SEC)) with regard to handsets, but that "discussions... have expanded beyond traditional suppliers" to "consumer electronics companies [that] anticipate embedded wireless functionality in their future products."
The move to LTE is the second major shift the company has made this week, having already announced it will open up its CDMA network in 2008. (See Verizon Tears Down the 'Walled Garden' (http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=139949).)
The move to the LTE standard brings the operator in line with its European minority owner and partner Vodafone, and will potentially make it easier for 4G Verizon users to roam between other operators' networks worldwide. (See Verizon, Vodafone Head for LTE (http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=134382).)
"LTE has emerged as the leading next-generation wireless technology, in part because of the weight of support from leading operators and vendors," says Unstrung Insider (http://www.unstrung.com/insider) analyst Gabriel Brown.
"By using the move to OFDMA to adopt the 3GPP standards track, Verizon Wireless can access global economies of scale. Taking this decision at an early point in the cycle will see Verizon emerge as a pioneer of LTE technology and place it at the vanguard of global wireless deployments," adds Brown.

[destiny1]

The 3GPP LTE standards are being developed to provide 3G operators with an upgrade path to all-IP mobile broadband networks.
The target baseline performance in a 2x20 MHz channel, using a terminal with two receive antennas and one transmit antenna, is a peak modem rate of 100 Mbit/s (equivalent to 5 bit/s per Hz) on the downlink and 50 Mbit/s (equivalent to 2.5 bit/s per Hz) on the uplink. Longer-term targets using more sophisticated modulation and antennas for more than 300 Mbit/s peak on the downlink and 80 Mbit/s on the uplink. (See 3G LTE: How Far? How Fast? (http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=138400))
"We expect Verizon's LTE network to be available only in 2010 or thereafter, yet the headline would impact vendors now," say analysts at CIBC World Markets (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=6873) in a research note on the Verizon Wireless decision. "The decision reflects the global transition away from CDMA and to a common, global wireless standard."
"Qualcomm Inc. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=4505) (Nasdaq: QCOM (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=QCOM) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=QCOM&thread_title=QCOM)) is the key loser, we think, as the CDMA 4G migration path is abandoned... Qualcomm has yet to license LTE... Other CDMA carriers will now need to consider their steps as the ecosystem shrinks," stated the CIBC team.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung (http://www.unstrung.com/)

[destiny1]

Telefonica Completes Telecom Italia Deal
Thursday October 25, 2:57 pm ET
By Colleen Barry, AP Business Writer

Telefonica Completes Takeover of Telecom Italia; Two Board Members Resign
MILAN, Italy (AP) -- Two Telecom Italia board members resigned Thursday, just hours after Spain's Telefonica SA and a group of Italian financial heavyweights took control of Telecom Italia SpA -- completing the long-awaited 4.1 billion euro ($5.8 billion) takeover.
The acquisition of a 23.6-percent controlling stake in Telecom Italia by Telco -- a holding company comprising Telefonica and four major Italian financial investors -- was expected to bring to an end a period of limbo at Europe's fifth-largest telecommunications company.
The purchase of the stake from the Olimpia holding company -- controlled by Pirelli Chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera, who resigned as Telecom Italia chairman last year -- had been negotiated in April but was hung up on approval by regulators in Brazil, where both Telefonica and Telecom Italia control major cellular phone operations. That approval came Tuesday night.
"Telecom Italia is one of the most important Italian companies, which finally reaches some stability in its shareholder structure," said Italy's Communications Minister Paolo Gentiloni in welcoming the Brazilian regulator's move.
Investors seemed to agree, sending Telecom Italia shares up 2.6 percent to 2.14 euros ($3.06) on the Milan Stock Exchange.
Italian media have speculated that the new shareholder structure could lead to changes in management; the current board has a one-year mandate that expires in April.
Telecom Italia said in a statement that board members Carlo Puri Negri and Claudio De Conto have resigned, effective immediately.
Earlier Thursday, Pirelli & C. SpA announced that it sold its stake of Olimpia, which controlled 18 percent of Telecom Italia, netting 3.33 billion euros ($4.76 billion) from the transaction.
Corrado Passera, chief executive of Intesa Sanpaolo SpA -- one of the four financial investors -- has declined to comment on whether Telecom Italia Chairman Pasquale Pistorio would remain on. "The shareholders will make a joint decision," he said on Wednesday. Pistorio was brought on last April with the backing of the former shareholder, Olimpia.
In a filing to the Spanish market regulator on Wednesday, Telefonica said it was paying 2.3 million euros ($3.29 million) for 42.3 percent of the holding company, Telco. This will give Telco 23.6 percent of the share capital with voting rights in Telecom Italia.
The majority 57.7 stake is controlled by the group of Italian financial investors: Intesa Sanpaolo, Assicurazioni Generali SpA, Mediobanca SpA and one of the Benetton family's holding companies, Sintonia SA.
In the last major hurdle to the deal, Brazilian regulator Anatel gave its approval conditional on the Spanish and Italian phone companies' keeping their Brazilian cell phone operations separate. Telefonica owns half of the leading Brazilian cell phone operator Vivo Participacoes and Telecom Italia owns Tim Participacoes, the No. 2 mobile operator in Latin America's largest nation.
Brazilian authorities have given the companies six months to present a plan ensuring that the cell phone operators remain separate entities.
Among the issues that need to be addressed are efforts by Italy's regulator to get the former telecom monopoly to place its fixed-line network in a separate division and guarantee equal access to all competitors, in line with EU policy. Negotiations have been going on for more than a year.

[destiny1]

Commentary
Google: Friend Or Foe For Telecom?
Keith Willetts 10.29.07, 5:24 PM ET





Apple recently showed with the iPhone, lack of historic involvement in telecom is no barrier to uptake. With around 60% share of the Internet search market, Google clearly has the critical mass of users and brand strength to make a play in telecom markets around the world. And with a market cap like Google has, the investment or acquisition capital it needs is hardly a problem. But what should it do and how should it do it?
According to Google (nasdaq: GOOG (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=GOOG) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=GOOG)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=GOOG)), its name derives from a "Googol"--a mathematical term for a one followed by 100 zeros (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%221+followed+by+100+zeroes%22). But those of us cricket fans know better--a "Googly" is a ball that spins and bounces in unpredictable directions, and you are never quite sure what it's going to do next.
In August of this year, according to ComScore, Google handled 61 billion searches--that's more than 80 for each user. If anyone has done most to drive up telecom traffic, surely it's those nice guys from Mountain View. But in this fast-converging telecom, media and Web world, it's getting harder and harder to figure out who in those industries is friend and who is foe.
One thing is for sure: As companies like Google unlock more value from online advertising and e-commerce, not much of that revenue is actually going into the pockets of the telecom players. That's because the value flies "over the top" of telecom players that extract only a fraction of it. Fixed-price telecom packages mean that their revenue is unlikely to grow at the same rate as Google's. Hardly Google's fault, and the telcos and mobile players need to figure out ways of reaching up the value chain and extracting more value from it.
But meanwhile, those "over the top" players must be eyeing a slice of the $1 trillion revenue that telecom wields. And for Google in particular, its business runs on what advertisers call "inventory"--eyeballs, to you and me. And while Google has a big slice of the fixed PC market, it's a minnow in the mobile sector, where the number of users is heading toward 3 billion worldwide--a lot of inventory to sell to advertisers. The question is, How?
Lots of rumors and false trails are bouncing around right now, but there are some hurdles to overcome. For Google to become as big as an Internet telecom player, it needs to overcome the fact that, today, Internet-based voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services don't work very reliably--that's why they have made only a limited dent in telecom revenues. The Internet is a "best efforts" service suffering all sorts of congestion, and, although you don't notice it when sending e-mail, your ear is highly sensitive to delays.
But people are cracking the problem. Despite finally having to admit it paid too much for the technology, eBay's (nasdaq: EBAY (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=EBAY) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=EBAY)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=EBAY)) Skype service shows a possible way forward. It offers a pretty good service, at much higher voice quality than a regular phone. It's far more successful than most of the services offered by numerous VoIP players because it works in a different way--its peer-to-peer technology harnesses the power of each of the computers connected to it. EBay's core business isn't very synergistic with Skype, so it's not surprising that it hasn't done much yet to monetize this massive investment.
Google, on the other hand, can monetize every additional user. To ape the Skype success (which hijacks the PC's connected to it to build a computing platform), any mobile-telecom assault would need masses of computing power supplied by the provider (mobile phones have very limited process capability). This is exactly what Google is reported to be building, the largest meshed computing platform on the planet.

See Part II

[destiny1]

According to Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=SUNW) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=SUNW)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=SUNW)) Chairman Scott McNealy (http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/personinfo/FromPersonIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedPersonId=2 23129), around 15% of all the computer servers sold in the world last year were bought by Google, which is busy building massively powerful processing and storage facilities at key nodes worldwide. Connected by the considerable amount of fiber-optic cable that Google is also investing in, that could make a formidable Internet voice delivery, as well as many other services.
But the question remains: How will Google go to market? Will Google "do an Apple" (nasdaq: AAPL (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=AAPL) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=AAPL)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=AAPL)) and launch its own phone, as has been much touted? Will it buy spectrum and launch its own mobile services? Will it harness wi-fi or WiMax? Put simply, will it be friend or foe to telecom?
Like a Googly, who knows? But if they are smart, there are a few things to consider. Unlike Apple, they don't know the first thing about consumer electronics. What would be the point of a Google Phone? It's much better for their service to be on every phone in the world rather than just those that you can get to market, so expect Google to invest in software for every handset. But not telecom infrastructure. Investing in radio spectrum, cell towers, etc., is not only cripplingly expensive but is also highly regulated and licensed, meaning that rates of return are poor. Just ask any phone company.
By far the smartest way would be to partner with existing phone companies to provide the last mile of connectivity to make an integrated Google play a reality. But why should the phone companies want to give away revenue to help Google? Maybe that explains the rumor mill in seeking to scare the telecom companies into a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy. In the U.K., the fifth-largest mobile player, a company named 3, has teamed with Skype to do just this, accepting that a monthly flat fee and limited call revenue is the best way to go.
But that won't make the big players like AT&T (nyse: T (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=T) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=T)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=T)) or Vodafone (nyse: VOD (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=VOD) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=VOD)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=VOD)) sit up and take notice. What Google brings to the party is advertising revenue that the telecom guys don't have today. So the basis of a horse trade exists. But both sides are going to be looking carefully at each other. There is no new money in this business--it's all about growing fat while someone else gets thin.
And that's what makes the telecom industry wonder if Google is friend or foe!
Keith Willetts is chairman of TM Forum (http://www.tmforum.com/)

[destiny1]

Google to Bid for 700 MHz Spectrum
Grant Gross, IDG News Service


Bottom of Form


Friday, November 30, 2007 10:00 AM PST
Google intends to bid on wireless spectrum in the 700MHz band when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission begins auctioning that resource in late January, the company announced Friday.
Google has previously expressed interest in the spectrum, which is being made available as U.S. television stations move to all-digital broadcasts by February 2009. Earlier this year, Google joined consumer and public-interest groups in calling for the FCC to impose open-access rules on part of the 62MHz of spectrum to be auctioned. In July, the FCC voted to require open-access rules, which would require the winning bidder to allow outside devices and applications on the network.
"We believe it's important to put our money where our principles are," Eric Schmidt, Google's chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "Consumers deserve more competition and innovation than they have in today's wireless world. No matter which bidder ultimately prevails, the real winners of this auction are American consumers who likely will see more choices than ever before in how they access the Internet."
Consumers will be the winners in the auction, Chris Sacca, Google's head of special initiatives, wrote on the company's public policy blog.
"This is because the eventual winner of a key portion of this spectrum will be required to give its customers the right to download any application they want on their mobile device, and the right to use any device they want on the network," Sacca wrote. "That's meaningful progress in our ongoing efforts to help transform the relatively closed wireless world to be more like the open realm of the Internet."
Google's recently acquired interest in wireless spectrum has led it in several directions. The company launched the Open Handset Alliance, an open-development platform for mobile phones, earlier this month.
Google has also supported efforts to push Congress to pass net neutrality requirements, which would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web content not approved by them. Google's interest in the spectrum came after AT&T and other large broadband providers expressed interest in recent years in getting Web-based businesses to pay more for their customers' use of the broadband networks.
Google will file an application to participate in the 700MHz auction on Monday, the company said in a news release. Google's application will not include any partners.
In July, Google promised the FCC that it would bid at least US$4.6 billion for a block of spectrum. The FCC later set a reserve price of $4.6 billion on the so-called C Block of spectrum, the 22MHz block where the commission required open access. If the reserve price isn't met, the FCC would re-auction the spectrum, presumably without the open-access rules.
"Regardless of how the auction unfolds, we think it's important to put our money where our principles are," Sacca said. "Consumers deserve more choices and more competition than they have in the wireless world today. And at a time when so many Americans don't have access to the Internet, this auction provides an unprecedented opportunity to bring the riches of the Net to more people."
Free Press, a media reform group, cheered Google's decision to bid. Combined with Verizon Wireless' announcement this week that it would open its network to outside devices and applications, the Google move will give more choices to consumers, said Ben Scott, Free Press' public policy director.
"Incumbent phone companies claimed that open access conditions would undercut competition -- but the opposite is true," Scott said in an e-mail. "Open networks mean more competition. Google's intent to bid in the 700 Mhz auction and Verizon's sudden support for open networks suggest that we may finally see the competitive wireless marketplace that consumers demand."

[destiny1]

There are some who say the demand for wired services is in the past. That belief could not be further from the truth. IMO, as bandwidth to the home coupled with new innovations imporve, we are just beginning to see
what is possible.

D1

Era of sequential quarterly growth for LCD-TV shipments ending, but sales hit record in Q4 and yearly expansion to continue
Dec 05, 2007
The good news is that global unit shipments of Liquid Crystal Display-Televisions (LCD-TVs) are expected to hit a record level in the fourth quarter. The bad news is that this record won't be matched again until the third quarter of 2008. This marks the end of the era of sequential quarterly unit shipment growth for LCD-TVs, a period of historic expansion for the market that has lasted since 2005.
LCD-TV shipments are expected to reach the 25.1 million unit mark in the fourth quarter-the product's largest quarterly unit volume to date, according to iSuppli Corp.

However, in the first quarter of 2008, LCD-TV unit shipments will decline to 19.5 million units. "The slower first- quarter shipments are the result of seasonal factors," said Riddhi Patel, principal analyst for television systems for iSuppli. "But LCD-TV shipments in the second quarter of 2008 will amount to only 21.9 million units, still down from the peak level in the fourth quarter of 2007. But once the third quarter comes around, LCD-TV unit shipments will reach a new historical quarterly high."

Further proof of the slowdown can be found in the quarterly compounded growth rates for 2007 and 2008. The compounded quarter-to-quarter growth for LCD-TV shipments for the period of 2007 through 2008 is expected to be 11.5 percent. In comparison, quarterly compounded growth in 2005 through 2006 was 22.7 percent.

While this represents a significant slowdown compared to previous years, LCD-TV shipments will continue to grow at an impressive rate during the long term.

The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for LCD-TVs for the period of 2006 through 2011 will amount to 31.9 percent. The global LCD-TV market will hit 165.3 million units in 2011, up from 41.4 million in 2006. Overall LCD-TV shipments in 2008 will amount to 98.5 million units, up from 75.7 million units in 2007.

So, despite a slowing in growth in the first half of 2008 compared to the fourth quarter of 2007, overall growth in 2008 will still be quite significant.

Revenue in the global LCD-TV market will reach $116.2 billion in 2011, increasing at a 19.4 percent CAGR from $47.8 billion in 2006.

Plasma infusion After declining for two quarters in a row, Plasma Display Panel Television (PDP-TV) shipments picked up in the third quarter of 2007, reaching 2.9 million units, up from 2.3 million units in the second quarter and up from 2.5 million units in the third quarter of 2006. Much of this growth took place in the Middle East and African regions. China also saw growth of 38 percent in PDP-TV shipments in the third quarter.

Plasma Display Panel (PDP) shipments are slowing as well. However, the market will continue to grow as PDP-TV shipments rise to 19.3 million units by 2011, up at a CAGR of 15.8 percent from 9.3 million units in 2006. Unfortunately, plasma revenue will decline to $14 billion by 2011, contracting at a negative CAGR of 2.6 percent, down from $15.9 billion in 2006.

However, deep cuts in the Average Selling Price (ASP) of these televisions are allowing PDP-TV manufacturers to remain competitive. While PDP TVs will never match the popularity of LCD-TVs, plasma isn't going away any time soon. This is because manufacturers are working to improve the quality of their panels in order to cut costs and to remain competitive with LCD-TVs in terms of picture resolution.

[deeba]

From today's WSJ. Looks like they are getting ready to make a major move with their Broadband and fixed-line business.

deeba:cool:



Telekom Malaysia Seeks $1.56 Billion

December 11, 2007; Page B3

Telekom Malaysia Bhd., which is in the process of splitting its cellular and fixed-line businesses, said it may raise an initial 5.2 billion ringgit ($1.56 billion) through a debt issue for a 10-year project to build a broadband network. Telekom Malaysia, which will hold the group's fixed-line, voice, data and broadband operations after the decoupling is completed, will need to spend 10 billion ringgit in the first four years of the project, Chief Executive Abdul Wahid Omar said.

[doughjo]

AT&T Boosts Dividend, Expanding TV Plans
Tuesday December 11, 11:35 am ET
By Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer
AT&T Boosts Dividend, Plans Buyback, Says TV Service to Be Available to 30M Customers by 2010


NEW YORK (AP) -- AT&T Inc. on Tuesday raised its dividend 12.7 percent, announced a share buyback and set a long-term target for its TV service, which is delivered over phone lines, saying it will be available to 30 million customers by 2010.
ADVERTISEMENT


Shares of the telecommunications company jumped more than 6 percent in morning trading.

At a conference with analysts in New York, AT&T touted a turnaround in its once-shrinking business of serving corporate clients, as well as strong performance from its wireless division. It expects revenue to grow around 5 percent next year.

The company said it will buy back 400 million shares, which represent about 7 percent of the company's stock, would cost $15.16 billion. AT&T said it expects to complete the repurchase by the end of 2009.

The company said the new repurchase plan supersedes an existing one announced in 2006. AT&T bought $13 billion in shares under that authorization.

AT&T's dividend will rise to 40 cents from 35.5 cents. It will be paid Feb. 1 to shareholders of record on Jan. 10. the telecommunications company said Tuesday.

AT&T shares rose $2.41, or 6.4 percent, to $40.31 in morning trading Tuesday.

UBS analyst John Hodulik said Wall Street was expecting a buyback, but the size was bit larger than expected.

"They're generating a lot of cash and have to do something with it," Hodulik said. He said management also probably looks at the company's own stock as a good value, after falling from around $42 in October.

The TV announcement by chief executive Randall Stephenson reinforces AT&T's commitment to the service, known as U-verse. Recent news reports said the San Antonio-based company was in talks to acquire satellite TV broadcaster Dish Network Corp., formerly known as EchoStar Communications Corp., which would have given AT&T ownership of a different route to reach customers. However, those talks have likely been shelved because of federal anti-collusion rules surrounding a spectrum auction that will start in January. AT&T already resells Dish service.

Stephenson told analysts the new U-verse buildout target includes customers in the Southeastern states formerly served by BellSouth Corp., which AT&T acquired late last year.

AT&T also said it aimed to have more than 1 million U-verse at the end of 2008. It had 126,000 subscribers at the end of September, the latest figures it has released.

The U-verse rollout has been delayed several times. A month ago, AT&T trimmed its coverage target for the end of next year to 17 million homes from 18 million. The delay was due to a shift in resources to the former BellSouth.

U-verse has also had some technical problems, but AT&T said customer trouble contact rates have been cut in half in 2007.

AT&T expects to spend between $4.5 billion and $5 billion on U-verse through 2008. The deployment is expected to reduce 2008 earnings by 12 to 14 cents a share.

At the analyst meeting, Ralph de la Vega, the head of AT&T's wireless division, addressed Verizon Wireless' announcement two weeks ago that it would open its network by the end of 2008 to any devices that pass a technical inspection.

De la Vega emphasized that the Global System for Mobile, or GSM, network technology that AT&T uses already means customers can connect any compatible device by inserting a Subscriber Identity Module, or SIM chip.

"AT&T is the most open carrier in the U.S.," de la Vega said. "Open access is a change only for non-GSM carriers."

Verizon Wireless' plans go farther, however, in that they plan to allow device manufacturers to buy wholesale access and deal with end customers themselves, while AT&T envisions keeping the customer relationships. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of New York-based Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain.

Google Inc. made another big splash in the wireless world in November, revealing a project to create a software package for cell phones. AT&T is not a member of Google's alliance, but de la Vega noted that company already carries phones with six different operating systems and would evaluate Google's software, called Android, on the same basis.

But in comments on the sidelines of the conference, de la Vega indicated that he had higher expectations for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, which is exclusively carried by AT&T in the U.S. Apple has said it will make it easier next year for third-party developers to make software for the phone, which is now a relatively closed platform.

"The jury is still out on Android," de la Vega said. "I think Apple has the right model."

[deeba]

Here is a very good article from EETimes that explains what is involved in making an IPTV system work, and work right, titled
"IPTV redefines packet processing requirements at the edge".

There are some charts, so I have just posted the link.


deeba:cool:


http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204600859

[Stoppmann]

From today's WSJ. Looks like they are getting ready to make a major move with their Broadband and fixed-line business.

deeba:cool:



Telekom Malaysia Seeks $1.56 Billion

December 11, 2007; Page B3

Telekom Malaysia Bhd., which is in the process of splitting its cellular and fixed-line businesses, said it may raise an initial 5.2 billion ringgit ($1.56 billion) through a debt issue for a 10-year project to build a broadband network. Telekom Malaysia, which will hold the group's fixed-line, voice, data and broadband operations after the decoupling is completed, will need to spend 10 billion ringgit in the first four years of the project, Chief Executive Abdul Wahid Omar said.

I believe that they will be building a network like Verizon with Fiber-to-the-Home.

http://www.theedgedaily.com/cms/content.jsp?id=com.tms.cms.article.Article_c200d1a 3-cb73c03a-38d46000-176c6d4f

[deeba]

From yesterday's Chicago Tribune. Rim's Cupria could make high speed internet available to everyone, and therefore bring an end to dial-up altogether and make an increase in monthly rates worthwhile to the customer.


deeba:cool:





AT&T dials up monthly cost of old-fashioned Internet access
By Jon Van, Tribune staff reporter

December 11, 2007


The old-fashioned way to get Internet access -- through a dial-up modem -- is alive and well, and for some it is about to get more expensive.

Internet users who still dial-up with AT&T to go online will find the phone giant is raising its basic monthly rate from $9.95 to $15.95.

That rate hike applies to current customers. Newcomers must pay $22.95 to get dial-up service. AT&T, which charges as little as $9.95 a month for a slower version of DSL and $19.95 for regular DSL high-speed Internet connections, may hope that its price hike for dial-up will nudge customers into DSL.

But about 10 percent of Chicago-area residents cannot get digital subscriber line service because their homes are located so far from the phone company's central office that the technology doesn't work. Those customers say the rate hike for plain dial-up service adds insult to injury.

"This is ridiculous," said Rosaline Keys of Joliet. "First they tell me that I can't have DSL, and then they tell me that dial-up is going to cost more. They should cut customers who can't get DSL a little slack. This is pretty rotten."

Customers who want high-speed Internet but aren't offered DSL have the option of mobile high-speed data from AT&T or satellite high-speed, said Chris Comes, a Chicago-based spokesman for AT&T. Each service sells for $60 a month.

"I could get high-speed from Comcast for less than that," Keys said. "I don't want to spend $40 or $50 a month for Internet. It's not worth it. But if I could get DSL for $20, I'd take it."

Dial-up Internet connections send data at up to 56,000 bits per second, which may be fine for simple functions such as e-mail or reading information from Web sites, but is far too slow to support video transmissions, which are becoming a mainstay of Web sites.

AT&T's $9.95 DSL offering moves information at up to 768,000 bits per second, and the $19.95 service offers a rate twice that fast.

Comes said that AT&T's higher dial-up rates are competitive with other Internet service providers, such as EarthLink and America Online.

But if customers shop around they can still find dial-up service from $10 a month or less, said Bill Hardekopf, who operates the Web site BillSaver.com.

"We list some services for $9.95 a month on our Web site," Hardekopf said, "and I know some offer lower rates as specials, such as $6.95 a month for the first year. AT&T is trying to force the consumer's hand. It wants them to switch to DSL or get out."

David Kolata, executive director at the Citizens Utility Board consumer advocacy group in Chicago, said that the market needs more competitors offering high-speed Internet to keep prices down.

"There isn't as much competition as we'd like," Kolata said.

AT&T does offer a high-speed service for $9.95 a month as part of a federal requirement for approval of recent mergers, but the service can only be obtained online and it is difficult to find on AT&T's Web site, Kolata said.

"Consumers who want Internet for $10 can go to our Web site, http://www.citizensutilityboard.org , where we have a direct link to the AT&T offer," he said. "That's been a very popular part of our site."

Kolata said that while about 10 percent of Chicago consumers cannot get DSL from AT&T, the exact number is unclear. CUB is collecting information in hopes of determining how many residents are unable to get the service.

[destiny1]

Broadband Analysis: (http://point-topic.com/home/press/dslAnalysis.asp)

IPTV in mid-2007: subscriber numbers and penetration rates up

11 October 2007
The number of people using IPTV services increased by 179% in the 12 months to 30 June 2007. Over 8 million people are now connected to ‘telco TV’ services, according to research from broadband analyst company Point Topic.
And for some operators, that means that a significant proportion of their broadband customer base also subscribers to television services.
Region by region

Europe

Growth was strongest in Europe, with almost 5 million IPTV subscribers by the middle of 2007. Around half of these were in France, where there has been a strong performance from the incumbent, France Telecom, in response to the early deployments of rival operators Free and Neuf. The French IPTV market is now well beyond the stage of ‘early deployment’.
All the major European incumbents now have IPTV products up and running. Telefonica in Spain added nearly 200,000 TV subscribers during the same period, and Belgacom signed up 120,000 in Belgium. Deutsche Telekom and BT have been slower to add subscribers to their telco TV services, with around 35,000 and 20,000 customers respectively.
D1;)

[Stoppmann]

A couple things about this article. AT&T is going to stop reselling DirecTV in the first quarter of 2008. Does their system have the capacity offer TV to all of their customer base? I assume they are still going to offer TV.

By the end of this year AT&T will top 1 million subscribers. By 2010they estimate that they will have 30 million customer That is alot of growth in just two years.
__________________________________________________ ____

AT&T made two big announcements this week regarding its video plans: CFO Rick Lindner said the service provider will stop reselling DirecTV television services during the first quarter of 2008, and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that by 2010 the company will have expanded its U-verse IPTV service to 30 million customer locations, including the southeast region served by its BellSouth acquisition. By the end of this year AT&T's U-Verse service will top one million subscribers, far more than the 126,000 subs it had at the end of September.

"We will expand U-verse to 30 million customer locations including the southeast region by the year 2010," Stephenson said. "We know how to scale networks. We started a little wireless business in the '80s, from scratch, and we now have 67 million subscribers. In the '90s, we started a broadband business from scratch--today it's the largest in the U.S., with 14 million subscribers. This decade it's TV. We know how to do this. It will scale just like broadband, just like wireless. Our video build will be more efficient than either our wireless or broadband builds--that's the power of IP."

AT&T also announced that it has expanded its networking capacity to 40 Gbs capacity on more than 50,000 miles of its IP/MPLS national network. The company said the build out is partly to meet the growing demand for bandwidth for online video and other IP services.

http://www.fierceiptv.com/story/t-u-verse-30m-customer-locations-2010/2007-12-18

[destiny1]

Sprint Hires Telecom Vet Dan Hesse As CEO




Hesse faces a host of challenges, including whether to proceed with Sprint's scheduled $5 billion rollout of WiMax and how to stop customers from defecting.
By W. David Gardner (wdavidg@earthlink.net)
InformationWeek (http://www.informationweek.com/;jsessionid=JFRGYCEXSHJ1KQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN)Decem ber 18, 2007 11:08 AM
As Daniel R. Hesse takes over as president and chief executive of asset-rich Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S (http://www.techweb.com/financialCenter/index.jhtml?Account=techweb&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=S)), he immediately faces a daunting list of challenges headlined by the wireless (http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204806022##)service provider's growing exodus of subscribers.
Named Tuesday to head the nation's third-largest mobile phone service provider, Hesse had been serving as CEO of Embarq, (http://www.embarq.com/) which contains the former local phone assets of Sprint. Hesse must make a decision soon on whether to proceed with Sprint's scheduled $5 billion rollout of WiMax. When he's finished with that, he has to figure out how to keep former Nextel subscribers, who have been defecting for rival services, from dropping their Sprint Nextel service.
"There is no company in the wireless industry with a stronger set of assets," Hesse said in a statement. "I believe through solid execution and commitment to our customers we can reinvigorate our operating performance and return the company to a growth trajectory. We will review every aspect of our strategy."
Hesse, 54, was a logical choice for the position. He is intimately familiar with Sprint from his year as CEO of Sprint's Local Telecommunications (http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204806022##) Division. Moreover, he wasn't involved in the disastrous aftermath of Sprint's acquisition of Nextel. He is a telecommunications pro with 23 years of experience at AT&T, where he served as head of its Wireless Services operation between 1997 and 2000.
One thing that made him particularly attractive to Sprint's board of directors was his leadership of Embarq after the unit was spun out from Sprint and after its stock began trading in May 2006. Embarq's stock quickly zoomed ahead by more than 33% during a period when Sprint's stock plunged. He was also at the helm of Embarq as it introduced a brace of innovative services and products.
Hesse and Embarq have been headquartered in Overland Park, Kan., at Sprint's ancestral headquarters, but the company has said its executive headquarters will remain in Nextel's old Reston, Va., offices. Hesse was required to move to Kansas when he took over Sprint's landline operation in 2005 (http://www.secinfo.com/d14D5a.z3xpn.htm), and he is now faced with another move.
Hesse's command of telecommunications technology will be sorely tested at Sprint. The company is forging ahead with two competing technologies -- CDMA2000 EV-DO and WiMax -- and he will be challenged to find a way to make them complementary at an affordable cost. Sprint has to stick with CDMA to keep its core user base, so the trick will be for Hesse to figure out how to utilize WiMax or how to spin it off gracefully with minimal cost damage.
WiMax was embraced by Sprint's former chief, Gary Forsee, and the effort was widely viewed as one of the reasons he was eased out of the top job.
Sprint is rolling out WiMax trials in Chicago and Washington, D.C., but its recent abandonment of a WiMax partnership with Clearwire may be a hint it is prepared to jettison the wide area wireless technology.
In a related development, Embarq said Tom A. Gerke will take over as interim CEO at Embarq. Gerke has been Embarq's general counsel. Embarq said it's searching for a permanent CEO.
Embarq director Bill Owens was named nonexecutive chairman of the board.

[destiny1]

IPTV (video content over broadband)
6 December 2007
TV over broadband became increasingly widespread during 2006 and 2007. Between 30 June 2006 and 30 June 2007, the number of IPTV subscribers increased by over 170% to more than 8 million. Much of this growth has been in Europe and Asia Pacific. But American incumbent carrier Verizon began to add significant numbers to its TV services during early 2007, although not all of these subscribers are currently supplied by IPTV (Verizon intends to migrate them to IPTV eventually).
The theory is that IPTV will enable telcos to compete with the triple and quadruple play offerings of the cable companies. But putting this theory into practice involves overcoming many financial, regulatory and technical obstacles.
Point Topic’s first report on video-on-demand (VOD), which was published in 2003, concluded that the business case for delivering video content on-demand over broadband was difficult. By early 2005, falling costs and improving networks made the proposition more convincing when bundled with the delivery of conventional TV channels. Even so there were relatively few deployments.
Of the few operators that had launched by 2005, FastWeb, PCCW and SaskTel had rolled out services with both VOD and broadcast channels. This approach of offering a cable TV-type service has generally been followed for subsequent launches.
There have been some exceptions, however. For example, in 2005, Deutsche Telekom offered a video-to-PC service, although it launched a Microsoft TV-based conventional IPTV service in H2 2006. BT’s Vision service, launched in Q4 2006, is a hybrid. It combines a DSL-supplied VOD service, with a digital terrestrial Freeview set-top box (STB) with integral PVR. Customers may opt to pay for set-up and then on a per-programme basis for on-demand content. Alternatively they may choose a flat fee subscription for unlimited download. Conventional channels are provided by the free-to-air Freeview service, although only about three quarters of UK homes can receive this service because of geographical and transmitter constraints.
Point Topic’s research highlights the complexity of the IPTV market, and the importance of local factors in shaping the market. For example, in H1 2006, only around 20% of French ISP Free’s customers paid for TV content (up from 10% a year earlier). The remainder can access many free-to-air channels via an STB. From the perspective of the broadband industry, paying customers are the most important, although even free channels can reduce customer churn. When looking at subscriber numbers, Point Topic has focused on the paying customers.
Another factor impacting IPTV deployment is network quality. Relatively long loop lengths in the US are one reason for the lack of IPTV deployments there. Verizon and AT&T are deploying broadband TV services via new-build fibre networks. In Korea, the country with the world’s most advanced broadband infrastructure, IPTV has barely started, due to a ruling by the national regulatory authority that telcos cannot distribute TV programmes via their networks. The historical split between two television and telecommunications regulators is a factor here, as it is in some other territories.
It remains true that the business case for delivering video content over broadband is not straightforward. It depends on a host of local factors, including content availability and licensing, network type and regulation, as well as the local penetration and cost of cable, satellite or digital terrestrial broadcasters. For example, the rollout of services in Taiwan was delayed by equipment supply problems.
Because of the high cost of content, profits from IPTV services are likely to be modest. It is the ability of these services to reduce churn to cable competitors that is most important for the moment. However, increasing deployment of fibre, falling equipment costs and increased acceptance of IPTV by content owners means that the viability of IPTV services is continually improving.
This profile explains the key issues, examines likely costs and revenues and lists the major suppliers and operators.
Key issues
1. The network and the customer premises equipment (CPE) are the biggest costs. Delivering video content over broadband allows telcos and ISPs to compete with cable companies. But is the legacy digital subscriber line (DSL) network capable of carrying multi-cast IP streams, or do operators need to deploy fibre to the curb or even to the home? Costing the necessary network upgrades is essential in assessing the viability of a TV and VOD service. Basic STBs cost around $100, while those with advanced features or multiple tuners cost more. Does the operator provide it free as a loss-leader, or charge a monthly rental?
2. Local market conditions are critical. Pay TV is a high-cost, low-margin mass-market business. If there are already established cable and satellite operators or digital terrestrial providers, the business case for ‘telco TV’ is harder to make, since the new operator will find it difficult to differentiate from established players.
3. Triple or quadruple play bundles are a compelling offer. Telcos and ISPs need a competitively priced bundle of voice, broadband and TV to break into markets. Even if they can offer new features like true VOD (which satellite cannot offer), inertia will mean subscriber growth is slow. Explaining triple play bundles and features to customers is complex. So, while churn is low (Free reported less than 1% churn in H1 2007), growth can be slow too. In the meantime, VoIP and mobile continue to erode fixed telephone margins.
4. This paper covers video delivered to televisions, not to PCs or mobile phones. While video streaming to PCs or file downloading are important technologies with significant potential, the television remains the mass market method for watching video content. For this reason we focus on television services. So-called ‘over-the-top’ content is however starting to blur these boundaries. Joost TV offers relatively high-quality TV content via the Web. The Apple TV box enables the user to watch video content stored in an iTunes library on their TV via wireless. So, while someone may not want to watch a 20 second ‘viral’ animation or short piece of YouTube video on their TV, they might wish to watch an 30-minute MPEG or other format video file on their TV set, because that tends to be a more comfortable place to watch video content.
5. The future of the home media server, bringing video, music, broadband and voice to the home, remains unclear. Will the hub of future home entertainment emerge from the PC market with some sort of embedded Microsoft TV software driving the system? Perhaps it will come from the STB market as a progression from some of today’s STBs that already offer modem, wireless router, voice over IP (VoIP) support and one or more TV/video tuners? Or will a games console like the Microsoft X-360 perform the same role? Korea Telecom’s MegaPass service is available via a Sony Playstation 3, as of November 2007. Or will a Slingbox-type device link different screens and handsets? Many manufacturers have a great deal at stake here. But what matters for consumers is that standards are as open and international as possible, to ensure compatibility and ‘plug and play’ ease of use.
6. Regulation is restrictive in some territories, such as Brazil, where telecoms companies may not sell broadcast TV (although they are usually allowed to offer VOD).
New profile content
The significant changes since the last edition of this profile have been market developments. Section 3.1 includes a detailed analysis of IPTV subscriber numbers in to 30 June 2007, with analysis by region and operator. It also includes revenue estimates for end-2006. Section 5.2 has revised estimates about costs. Section 5.4 has an updated section on the future development of IPTV. Section 6 collates the leading service announcements, trials and deployments worldwide to Q4 2006.
Source: Point topic http://point-topic.com/content/bmm/profiles/BMMIPTV071205.htm (http://point-topic.com/content/bmm/profiles/BMMIPTV071205.htm)

D1

[destiny1]

Here is a recent overview of the industry from the DSL Forum

http://www.dslforum.org/mktwork/download/dobrowski_telcotv_keynote.pdf

D1http://rimsemitalk.com/forum/images/icons/icon12.gif

[destiny1]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year all. Spending this week with the inlaws in cozy South Dakota. Great time to get away and refuel for what is gearing up to be a very eventful 2008.

Here is an article about the continuing big screen revolution. Remember George Orwell's 1984? We're not that far away from entire walls becoming video monitors.

http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0114/t.10403.html

D1;)

[destiny1]

Verizon Goes LTE

NOVEMBER 29, 2007
CDMA operator Verizon Wireless (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=5928) is to trial high-speed next generation network technology in the U.S. in 2008 in a move that aligns it with the GSM world's prefered global standard for fourth-generation (4G) wireless broadband. (See Verizon Uses LTE for 4G (http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=140146).)
The Basking Ridge, N.J.-based operator is working with its part-owner Vodafone Group plc (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=6082) (NYSE: VOD (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=VOD) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=VOD&thread_title=VOD)) on "a co-ordinated trial plan" for 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=7821) -based Long-Term Evolution technology that begins in 2008.
Trial infrastructure suppliers will be Alcatel-Lucent (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=9705) (NYSE: ALU (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=ALU) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=ALU&thread_title=ALU)), Ericsson AB (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=1879) (Nasdaq: ERIC (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=ERIC) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=ERIC&thread_title=ERIC)), Motorola Inc. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3538) (NYSE: MOT (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=MOT) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=MOT&thread_title=MOT)), Nokia Siemens Networks (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=10016) , and Nortel Networks Ltd. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3858) (NYSE/Toronto: NT (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=NT) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=NT&thread_title=NT)).
Verizon says it has been talking to LG Electronics Inc. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3074) (London: LGLD (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=LGLD) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=LGLD&thread_title=LGLD); Korea: 6657.KS) , Motorola Inc. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3538) (NYSE: MOT (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=MOT) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=MOT&thread_title=MOT)), Nokia Corp. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=3847) (NYSE: NOK (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=NOK) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=NOK&thread_title=NOK)), and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (http://www.unstrung.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=4751) (Korea: SEC (http://www.unstrung.com/quote.asp?Account=unstrung&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=SEC) - message board (http://www.unstrung.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=18&thread_key=SEC&thread_title=SEC)) with regard to handsets, but that "discussions... have expanded beyond traditional suppliers" to "consumer electronics companies [that] anticipate embedded wireless functionality in their future products."
The move to LTE is the second major shift the company has made this week, having already announced it will open up its CDMA network in 2008. (See Verizon Tears Down the 'Walled Garden' (http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=139949).)
The move to the LTE standard brings the operator in line with its European minority owner and partner Vodafone, and will potentially make it easier for 4G Verizon users to roam between other operators' networks worldwide. (See Verizon, Vodafone Head for LTE (http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=134382).)
"LTE has emerged as the leading next-generation wireless technology, in part because of the weight of support from leading operators and vendors," says Unstrung Insider (http://www.unstrung.com/insider) analyst Gabriel Brown.
"By using the move to OFDMA to adopt the 3GPP standards track, Verizon Wireless can access global economies of scale. Taking this decision at an early point in the cycle will see Verizon emerge as a pioneer of LTE technology and place it at the vanguard of global wireless deployments," adds Brown.

In addition, this announcement implies WiMax will not likely be Verizon's 4G technology of choice.

[deeba]

This article is from the WSJ. A big step has been made in South Korea for the delivery of IPTV by the telco's.

deeba:cool:



Internet-TV Law Is Approved

December 31, 2007

SEOUL -- South Korea's National Assembly passed a law allowing telecommunications companies to offer real-time broadcasting over their broadband networks.

The parliament passed the law on Internet Protocol TV, or IPTV, which offers real-time television programs and interactive services such as e-commerce over the Internet, according to the National Assembly's Web site.

KT Corp. and Hanarotelecom Inc., the country's two largest broadband-service operators by sales, are set to launch IPTV services as a new source of revenue amid slowing growth in traditional broadband and telephone markets.

[destiny1]

Bill Gates talks about HD and convergence as keys to the next digital decade. The digital home is primed for Rim's IPSL technology.
http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/

D1;)

[destiny1]

Here is a link talking about TSMC and its place in the marketplace. Two of its top chip firms are Qualcomm and NVIDIA. Microsoft's Xbox chips can also be added to that equation. All are fabless, like Rim Semi and generate huge volumes. Last year TSMC and NVIDIA celebrated the manufacture of their 500 millionth chip! NVIDIA currently has a market cap of about 15 billion. As Dr. Chin stated, TSMC doesn't take on companies which have potenial to generate only small volumes.

http://pcworld.about.com/od/chips/TSMC-celebrates-20-years-in-ch.htm

D1;)

[destiny1]

Below is link to a list of the world's top chip producers.

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/22620.php

D1;)

[deeba]

From the WSJ.

VZ is going to spend 18 BILLION over the next 6 years for their high-speed service for their customers????? I wonder just how many of their customers this 18 BILLION is going to take care of?

Cupria is the answer, as ATT will find out.

deeba:cool:


Fiber-Optic Battle Lines

Bet on High-Speed Network
Pays Off for Verizon, AT
Still, Cable Looks Pricey

January 4, 2008

Investors have taken their time to realize the phone companies' diet needed a lot more fiber. A plan by Verizon Communications to spend $18 billion over six years to install high-speed fiber-optic lines directly into customers' homes was initially regarded skeptically.


The phone companies furthest along in their rollouts are pummeling cable groups. Shares of Verizon and AT&T both rose more than 15% in 2007, while shares in Comcast and Charter Communications have fallen 35% and 62%, respectively. This trend isn't over.

Verizon and AT&T both offer the so-called triple play: phone, television and Internet service. While the big cable guys have about 10 million customers for their phone service, the phone companies are just getting started in video. AT&T has around 250,000 customers and Verizon about one million.

Installing fiber may be costly, but it enables the phone companies to leapfrog their cable rivals. While expensive to install, fiber is cheaper to operate because many repairs can be done off-site. Verizon claims a saving of around $900 a customer a year. More important, a fiber connection to the home offers a faster Internet service than the cable companies serve up.

Consumers are switching. And once they do, they don't tend to return. Verizon says less than 1.5% of its video customers leave each month. The early so-called subscriber-churn rate is about half that of many cable companies.

Cable companies could bump up their investment to compete. Cablevision and Comcast increased their capital-spending plans last quarter. However, the average cable company has a prodigious amount of debt. In the short term, it could be difficult for them to take on much more in order to build better networks. Despite all this, the average cable stock trades at a 30% premium to the big telephone companies, based on estimated 2008 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. This doesn't look right. Cable companies may be overvalued or phone companies undervalued -- either way they should converge over time. Playing that trend again in 2008 is likely to reward investors.

[deeba]

The U.S. will not be #1 for much longer. If China achieves just the global average of 19%, that would be 249.38 million users.

deeba:cool:


China Closes In on U.S. As Largest Web Market
By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter

January 18, 2008

China's total number of Internet users rose 53% to 210 million at the end of 2007 from 137 million at the end of 2006, the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center said. The center said the number of Internet users rose from 162 million at the end of June. China is now just five million users short of surpassing the U.S. as the world's largest Internet market, according to the center. It said about 16% of the Chinese population now has access to the Internet, compared with a global average of 19%.

[destiny1]

There has been a lot of speculation over the years that somehow Microsoft would carry CupriaTM chipsets in its Xbox set top box. Well are some recent articles which annouce that British Telecom (BT) will be the first to offer IPTV using Microsoft XBox 360 platform. As you know, BT is a primary customer for Huawei, who is likely a Rim Semi potential partner.

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=49493F1C-098F-41CB-9722-3312241D75E2

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/bt-group-first-to-roll-out-xbox-360-as-iptv-set-top-box/
D1;)

[destiny1]

Ikanos picks up Centillium’s DSL business
Spends US$12 million cash to add people, products and patents
by Jim Barthold

Wed. January 16, 2008

Ikanos is spending US$12 million to acquire Centillium Communications’ DSL business as an addition to its growing chipset focus on VDSL2 and digital home markets.The transaction, expected to close in the first quarter of 2008, includes technology and an unspecified number of Centillium employees and allows Centillium to focus on its optical and VoIP businesses.
“The resources and people they have are experts in the DSL space and the knowledge that they have applies both to ADSL and VDSL because the technology is discrete multitone modulation at the physical layer,” said Piyush Sevalia, vice president of marketing at Ikanos.
In addition to the technology, employees and intellectual property that doubles Ikanos’ patent portfolio, the chipset maker will inherit new customer relationships in Europe with the potential for future upsell.
“They have been supplying ADSL product and if we’re able to expand the relationships in the future we may be able to provide them with VDSL2 solutions,” Sevalia said.
Ikanos, he emphasized, is not taking a step backwards towards ADSL, despite Centillium’s expertise in that product area, but will continue to develop its chipset work on VDSL2 for broadband services that include IPTV.
“This is in line with our future direction to be a market leader in VDSL as well as digital home markets,” said Sevalia. “It puts some additional focus and resources on that business in the future.”
http://www.telecommagazine.com/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_3870

D1;)

[seawind]

What is the significance to Rim?

[destiny1]

Not much, but it does reveal that Centillium is divesting itself from the DSL business and Ikanos is adding a few patents (though much older technology) to its portfolio.

D1;)

[deeba]

FCC Pushes to Overhaul Subsidy Program for Rural Phones
Move Is Another Bid To Curb Surcharges; A Wireless Windfall

By AMY SCHATZ

January 28, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Alarmed at the growth of a multibillion-dollar federal phone-subsidy program, regulators are beginning an effort to curb costs and prevent consumers from paying more in fees.

As soon as today, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to open for public comment several proposals to revamp the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes phone services for low-income and rural customers. The program's budget ballooned to about $7 billion last year from $5.2 billion in 2002 as more companies sought to tap the federal revenue stream -- a transfer of money collected from consumers through surcharges on phone bills. The charge is usually found on a phone bill itemized as a "federal universal service charge."

One proposed change calls for using a reverse-auction system to pick which phone companies receive multimillion-dollar payments for providing phone service in rural areas. A separate plan would lower the amount of money wireless companies receive to offer service in rural areas.


For the first time, the FCC also will look into whether money should be set aside to subsidize broadband Internet lines.

Changing the subsidy program won't be easy. The 11-year-old program has amassed a devoted group of supporters, and previous efforts to rein in the program have mostly failed. Rural and wireless phone companies are leery of several of the proposals and there has been no consensus among federal regulators and lawmakers about how to control the growing program, which is expected to cost about $7 billion this year. If something isn't done to restrain the fund's growth, FCC officials warn, consumers will continue to see the USF fee on their phone bills continue to rise.

"We need to tackle Universal Service Fund reform now because the way the fund is designed, costs and expenditures are skyrocketing and we have a limited pool of contributors," says Robert McDowell, a Republican FCC commissioner. "It's fiscally irresponsible to continue on like this."

The bulk of the fund, however, is doled out to rural and wireless phone companies in "high-cost" rural areas. It is funded by a fee added to phone bills, which usually ends up costing consumers a few dollars a month for each type of phone service they have. The fund's size each year depends on the number of phone companies which ask for money -- and that number has been growing. The reason: More wireless carriers are asking for USF funds to offer service in rural areas.

While support for landline phone companies in rural areas has remained flat, payments to "competitive carriers" -- mostly wireless phone companies -- has ballooned, according to the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, a group of federal and state regulators which monitor the program. Payments to those companies rose to nearly $1 billion in 2006 from $15 million five years earlier, the board found.

Under current rules, wireless companies are reimbursed based on what it costs the local landline phone company to offer service. Since it generally costs less to put up cellphone towers than install copper wire or fiber-optic lines, wireless companies have been receiving something of a windfall.

"There are choices available now to consumers and we don't think there should be a policy to favor one technology over another," says Joe Farren, spokesman for CTIA, the wireless-industry trade group. "Our basic view is that, let's put a system in place that lets consumers choose the technology they want and let [financial] support follow."

The FCC is proposing to close that loophole in the program and reimburse wireless companies based on their actual costs of providing service, not the costs of their landline competitors.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is also pushing for a fundamental change in how carriers receive funding. His proposed reverse-auction system would require potential phone providers to bid against each other to offer services. The lowest bidder would win the subsidy. The approach would provide significant savings, Mr. Martin says, and curtail the current practice of providing government subsidies to multiple companies in the same market.

A proposal to selectively cap the subsidy program at its current levels won't be opened for comment, FCC officials say, because the idea doesn't have enough support among the FCC's five board members.

The idea of setting limits on the biggest fund in the program at $4.5 billion will be considered as part of a broader set of ideas suggested last year by a board of federal and state regulators. The group's recommendations covered a wide swath of options to reform the fund, including reverse auctions and creation of a new $300 million fund to help telecom providers build out broadband Internet lines to rural communities.

In recent years, the FCC has taken several actions to provide more funding for the subsidy program, even as Mr. Martin was championing measures to rein it in. In the summer of 2006, the agency began requiring Internet phone providers, including start-ups and cable companies, to begin chipping into the fund, and increased the amount that wireless phone providers -- and by consequence their customers -- have to pay the fund.

The FCC also temporarily capped the amount one of the biggest beneficiaries, wireless carrier Alltel Corp., which provides service in rural areas, could receive from the fund. The restriction was imposed as a requirement on Alltel's $27.5 billion sale to two private-equity firms last year.

[destiny1]

Very interesting article from John Chambers talking about Video driving telco infrastructure upgrades for the next decade. Note he states "every major service provider is in discussions over whether the next generation of networks will be based on Internet Protocol, comprising sharing of data, voice and wireless off common architectures and open standards." As we all know, this is exactly what Rim Semi is offering.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL2963468220080129?feedType=nl&feedName=ustechnology

D1;)

[deeba]

AT&T could certainly utilize Cupria for their U-Verse service. These excerpts from the article pretty much tells the tale of where they are at right now:

"Because of technology limitations, customers who live more than 3,000 feet from a U-verse installation will be unable to get the service."

"Connors challenged U-verse's claim of using state-of-the-art technology because AT&T's upgraded network delivers 25 megabits a second to customers......"

From yesterday's PR, Cupria can do 40 megabits a second to 5,500 feet. That would certainly make U-Verse a much more valuable product for AT&T.

deeba:cool:





www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-mon_att_0128jan28,0,2611073.story

chicagotribune.com
AT&T will start offering TV service
Video option begins Monday in suburbs
By Jon Van

TRIBUNE REPORTER

January 28, 2008

After a few false starts and missed deadlines, AT&T Inc. launches video service for residents in most Chicago suburbs Monday.

AT&T's TV service, called U-verse, will become available in parts of 175 suburbs. The rollout will be low-key to guard against unrealistic consumer expectations, AT&T executives said, but it does mark the phone giant's largest foray into television.

Customers will be solicited by direct mail and door to door, said Steven Mitchell, AT&T Illinois general manager and vice president, for video and high-speed Internet service packages that vary in price from $69 a month to $154 a month.

The area's incumbent phone company has upgraded its network in many suburbs to handle video and is still negotiating with the city of Chicago and several suburbs for permission to place outside electronics cabinets that are part of the upgrade, Mitchell said.

"We're moving as fast as we can to extend U-verse throughout the market," he said.

AT&T is hiring and training 1,100 technicians to install U-verse service and expects an average installation will take about five hours.

"We're doing a controlled rollout because we want to provide a good customer experience," said Mitchell. Under an Illinois law enacted last year, AT&T has a statewide cable TV franchise. Earlier legal disputes with municipalities, as well as technical problems, had stalled plans for AT&T to launch its TV service in 2006 or 2007.

Under state regulations, AT&T and other cable services must respond to customer requests for service within seven business days or face penalties such as providing some free service to the customer.

Entry welcomed

AT&T's entry into the TV market is welcomed by David Kolata, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board consumer advocacy group, because "consumers need more choices."

Kolata said he hopes U-verse will bring lower cable rates, although it's unclear whether AT&T's launch will affect cable pricing. AT&T executives said they plan to compete primarily on the strength of their technology, which ties computers, television sets and wireless phones together.

Indeed, the phone company is retreating from price incentives it once offered. Mitchell said customers who buy service bundles from AT&T in the future won't get the same rate discounts for adding services as had been offered. Mitchell said the quality of the U-verse technology is sufficient to entice consumers without trimming prices.

Kolata said that if AT&T's U-verse "doesn't have a good price, I suspect it won't be that popular."

12,000 installations a week

Nationally, AT&T has installed U-verse for 231,000 customers and is proceeding with about 12,000 new installations a week, said Chris Rice, AT&T chief technology officer. Because of technology limitations, customers who live more than 3,000 feet from a U-verse installation will be unable to get the service.

Mitchell said he is unable to estimate what percentage of customers in Chicago suburbs served by U-verse will be able to actually get it. Nationally, AT&T's goal in 22 states where it is the dominant phone company is to have U-verse available to half its customers by the end of 2010, said Rice.

Others may be served by AT&T's collaboration with the Dish Network satellite TV operation and its DSL Internet service. Those who cannot get DSL have the option of a satellite Internet connection, Rice said.

Illinois customers who now get AT&T's DSL and satellite TV service won't be approached for U-verse, even if they are located close enough to the service to qualify, said Mitchell.

"If they want to switch, they can," he said. "But they'll have to pay any early termination fees that apply."

Customers who can get U-verse face a promise of expanding new technology applications, said Rice. Besides video on demand, regular TV channels, high-definition and other features familiar to cable TV customers, U-verse offers games, a Yellow Pages-type business searching service and other features common to computers.

Moving content from computers to TV sets will be seamless as AT&T upgrades U-verse software, Rice said.

Last week, AT&T launched an Internet protocol voice service in Detroit as part of U-verse that will eventually be available here. Integrating voice with video and data services will enable a host of new features in the future, such as using one number for both cell phones and home phone calls and sending videos made by a cell phone to a TV set, Rice said.

U-verse already enables customers to use their cell phones to program the TV's digital recorder. Combining voice, video, Internet and wireless services is AT&T's strategy for combating Comcast Corp., the Chicago market's dominant cable operator. Comcast has been stealing traditional phone customers.

Combating Comcast

Bill Connors, Comcast Midwest division president, said his operations already face stiff competition in Chicago and AT&T's entrance doesn't change the market. Connors challenged U-verse's claim of using state-of-the-art technology because AT&T's upgraded network delivers 25 megabits a second to customers while Comcast's system delivers far more and is on target to deliver Internet speeds of 100 megabits a second by the end of the year.

In Michigan and Indianapolis, where U-verse has been offered for eight months, Comcast gains more new phone and Internet accounts than it loses to AT&T's TV service, Connors said.

[destiny1]

Very revealing testimony in front of the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy highlighting the huge discrepancy between the promised and real costs associated with fiber deployment.

http://www.digitaldivide.net/pipermail/digitaldivide/2007-June/006579.html (http://www.digitaldivide.net/pipermail/digitaldivide/2007-June/006579.html)

D1 ;)

[destiny1]

http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206100825&cid=RSSfeed_eetimes_newsRSS

D1;)

[deeba]

Cupria will certainly save these French telcom's a bunch of money and time, and make their broadband services profitable way before they would even think about it by laying fiber everywhere.

Also take note of the two differect approaches between regulators and regulations in France and the U.S.

From today's WSJ.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/article_print/SB120234998160449483-lMyQjAxMDI4MDAyNzMwNDc5Wj.html


deeba:cool:

French Rivals Wire Nation Together Telecom Firms, Under Orders, Share Building of Fiber Internet Network

By LEILA ABBOUD
February 7, 2008

When France Télécom SA hooked up an apartment complex in eastern Paris to its new high-speed broadband network recently, it did something unusual: It left the door open for its competitors.

In a small supply closet on the ground floor, France Télécom built a metal cabinet to store all the tiny fiber cables that eventually will connect to people's apartments. On one side it installed its own fiber lines, but the other side it left empty for its competitors.

"It took us almost three months to get permission from the building's owner to install this equipment," said Yves Parfait, who oversees France Télécom's fiber rollout. "But we are open to others using it."


France Telecom technicians splice fiber to connect apartments in eastern Paris. The firm will have to allow its rivals to share space in the underground duct visible in the photo.
Not that France Télécom has a choice. To ensure faster speeds and cheaper prices, the French telecommunications regulator, Arcep, is forcing the country's competing telecom operators to cooperate as they build out a new fiber Internet network.

The approach, Arcep argues, is designed to create efficiency that helps operators and, ultimately, competition that benefits consumers. Instead of allowing the three main players, France Télécom, Neuf Cegetel SA and Iliad SA, to each build separate networks, it is forcing them to share parts of the infrastructure. Regulators will try to prevent them from ripping up the same streets more than once to install cables and won't allow them to lay three separate fibers to the same house.

The approach is designed to keep the overall cost of building the fiber network down and to ensure that as many French cities and towns as possible are connected. The regulator also wants to make sure the Internet market stays as competitive as possible, by preventing one company from monopolizing a certain area or building just because it wired it first.

"It's silly for each company to lay its own fiber and dig up the streets three times. They will exhaust themselves and run out of resources," said Gabrielle Gauthey, a commissioner at Arcep.

It's a world away from the hands-off approach taken by U.S. telecom regulators. Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. are spending billions of dollars to build fiber networks, and cable companies also are upgrading their networks to be able to offer faster Internet to customers. But none will be forced to share infrastructure. Instead, U.S. regulators are counting on the market and the competition between phone and cable companies to ensure low prices and wide access.

By overseeing the construction of the fiber network, French regulators are trying to build on the success they enjoyed when they opened up the telecom market to competition in the 1990s. At the time, France Télécom was a monopoly, and France lagged far behind in Internet penetration. That all started to change in 2000 when French regulators required France Télécom to make its national network of phone lines available to its rivals.

France Télécom had to allow alternative providers like Iliad and Neuf to install their own equipment in the massive underground centers that collect thousands of phone lines. Regulators determined how much France Télécom could charge providers to rent its lines and how many days France Télécom had to fix service problems reported by competitors' customers.


Eight years later, France is one of Europe's more competitive and innovative telecom markets, with new services like Internet TV and free Internet-based calling services widely available. Broadband prices are the lowest in Europe, second only to Japan internationally, at 33 U.S. cents per megabit per second.

Taylor Reynolds, who analyzes broadband policy for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, says it is too early to tell whether the French approach to fiber build-outs will be more successful than the U.S. one. "The French model is likely to give consumers more choices and lower prices as a result," said Mr. Reynolds. "But if operators know that they have to share the networks, will they be as eager to build them? That's the real question: Is there enough of an incentive to investment?"

Arcep knows it must walk a fine line. If the regulator presses too far on forcing France Télécom to share the new fiber network, the company might drag its feet on building it.

In fact, France Télécom Chief Executive Didier Lombard has been wary of committing to a firm timetable for building a fiber network, citing the regulatory uncertainty. "I need to be able to earn a decent return for the company and our shareholders," he said. "This is a new network we will spend massively to build. We have to be able to make a profit off of it."

Ms. Gauthey of Arcep is adamant that the regulator maintain its vigilance to ensure that fiber-optic networks reach as many homes as possible at the lowest possible price. That means ensuring each telecom operator has equal access to each apartment building or house. "We don't want people to have to move apartments to switch telecom operators," she said.

To make that happen, Arcep has to get down to the nitty gritty of negotiating rights of passage through the sewers and undergound ducts where fiber cables are laid. France Télécom still owns the undergound cable-carrying ducts that run through French streets.

But the regulator has ordered it to rent out space in the ducts to competitors so they also can install cables without digging up whole city blocks. Arcep is now in the process of refereeing between the warring parties to determine a fair price for the rental.

The companies are already preparing for what they might be forced to share next.

The companies have agreed in principle to share the last bit of fiber, which reaches from a box at the bottom of the building to the person's apartment. Iliad, which markets "triple play" packages -- phone, Internet and television -- under the brand name Free, has started an experiment with France Télécom in the town of Montrouge, south of Paris, to figure out how such sharing would actually work. "We've been doing studies on the ground to see how much space there is left in the ducts," said Iliad Chief Executive Maxime Lombardini. "It's pretty time-consuming."

[deeba]

An opinion from today's WSJ.

deeba:cool:

Unleashing the 'Exaflood'

By BRET SWANSON and GEORGE GILDER

February 22, 2008

Two decades ago, Sun Microsystems prophesied: "The network is the computer." Today, BitTorrent video and 3D graphics flood the Internet, Apple iPhones tap the Net's computing power, and PC-king Microsoft pursues Net-centric Yahoo. Sun's mantra has become reality.

But as the Internet booms and moves to the center of the global economic sphere, it draws proportional attention from politicians and regulators. In Congress and at the FCC, legislators and lawyers think they can manage overflowing Net traffic and commerce better than the network companies themselves. Next week, the FCC is meeting en banc at Harvard Law School to consider two petitions that seek to ban network "traffic management." The meeting's host, Rep. Ed Markey, has renewed his pursuit of a far-reaching Internet regulatory regime known as "net neutrality."

These regulatory efforts overlook a fundamental shift: An upsurge of technological change and a rising tide of new forms of data are deeply transforming the Internet's capabilities and uses.

The first phase of the Net was the original Arpanet research project that connected a few, and then a few thousand, scientists. The second phase brought the Internet to the masses, with the advent of the World Wide Web, the graphical browser and email in the mid-1990s. Internet traffic boomed 100-fold between 1994 and 1996. In the third phase of Net evolution, network architecture and commercial business plans reflect the dominance of rich video and interactive media traffic.

The third wave is now swelling into an exaflood, or torrent, of Internet and Internet Protocol (IP) traffic. There's YouTube, IPTV, high-definition images and "cloud computing" -- in which individuals and businesses use the centralized computing resources of Google and IBM data centers, instead of the local computing resources of their own PCs or office systems. Not to mention the ubiquitous mobile camera.

To give you an idea of the scope, an exabyte (a one-quintillion byte unit of information or computer storage) is 50,000 times larger than a digitized Library of Congress. By the end of 2006, annual U.S. Internet traffic was around 10 exabytes.

As new fiber-optic wireline and 3G wireless networks from AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cox and Cogent bring us real broadband for the first time, the nature and volume of Net traffic is changing dramatically. By mid-2007, Microsoft Video Calling was generating as many bytes as the entire Internet in 1997.

Cisco's newest video-conferencing system requires 15 megabits per second in each direction. A one-hour conference call could thus produce 13.5 gigabytes, which is more than a high-definition movie. Just 75 of these Cisco conference calls would equal the entire Internet traffic of the year 1990.

Netflix, which is gradually moving from the post office to the Net, last year shipped 1.8 million DVDs every day. If converted to high definition, Netflix would have mailed 5.8 exabytes of motion pictures, or almost half the size of the entire U.S. Internet of 2007.

Building on rapid advances in Nvidia and ATI graphics processors, one 3D multiplayer game (such as Second Life or World of Warcraft) with one million users could generate more than an exabyte per year of network traffic, or almost a tenth of last year's U.S. Internet volume.

In a new Discovery Institute report, we estimate that, by 2015, U.S. IP traffic will reach an annual total of 1,000 exabytes, or one million million billion bytes. The U.S. Internet will thus be 50 times larger by 2015, equal to 50 million Libraries of Congress. This will require some $100 billion in new Internet infrastructure in the U.S. over the next five years.

We need a dramatic expansion in raw capacity, or bandwidth, and also fine-grained traffic management capabilities to ensure robust service for increasingly demanding consumers. But none of this can happen if we regulate complex network traffic engineering and experimental business plans.

All networks use some form of traffic management, whether crude or complex. As our colleague Ken Ferree notes, every industry, from grocery store "express lines" to "singles" ski-lift lines, attempts to shape and manage demand. Today's communications networks buffer, label, parse, schedule, prioritize, route, switch, modify, replicate, police and meter the bits flowing through their links and nodes. New pricing schemes that charge per byte consumed might also help to manage supply and demand on the Internet.

The petitions under consideration at the FCC and in the Markey net neutrality bill would set an entirely new course for U.S. broadband policy, marking every network bit and byte for inspection, regulation and possible litigation. Every price, partnership, advertisement and experimental business plan on the Net would have to look to Washington for permission. Many would be banned. Wall Street will not deploy the needed $100 billion in risk capital if Mr. Markey, digital traffic cop, insists on policing every intersection of the Internet.

Capacious, big-bandwidth networks will transcend many of today's specific complaints. As raw capacity expands, more and more applications and users can peacefully coexist. But inevitably, sophisticated network users with innovative applications will find creative ways to push the boundaries of capacity on certain network links, and some bits will be shuffled and queued.

The network is now a global computer made up of hardware, software and human minds. But this new, fast-changing and highly organic computer is no more easily regulated than were the circuits, storage, memory and protocols of a mainframe or PC. Leaving it to Washington agencies and committees to engineer the exaflood would be an act of unimaginable folly.

Mr. Swanson is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Global Innovation at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. Mr. Gilder is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.

[destiny1]

The Yankee Group predicts IPTV will permanently alter the telco business model.
http://www.centredaily.com/business/technology/story/433801.html

D1;)

[destiny1]

Should we all be saying "Give me a gray" rather than "Give me a bell"?
04/03/2008 08:15:00 - by Leila Makki


http://web20.telecomtv.com/images/thumbs/news/69385969_BIG.jpgYesterday was the 161st birthday of Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922), the inventor (or perhaps one of the inventors) of one of the most important devices in world history.

And, even today, more than 130 years after Bell was awarded the first US patent for the invention of the telephone, the identity of the true architect of the device is still a highly contentious and disputed topic.
The patentings of many inventions are routinely accompanied by accusations of plagiarism and fraud, and the telephone was no exception. Bell fought off more than 600 litigations over a period of 18 years, mainly from others claiming to have invented the telephone before he did.
Bell's lawyers never lost a case but the best known and most closely argued challenge came from rival inventor Elisha Gray, who was also experimenting with a form of acoustic telegraphy (using a water transmitter) at the same time as Alexander Bell.

The story of what some claim to be the world’s greatest piece of intellectual property theft in history gets even more interesting as on February 14, 1876, the date on which Gray filed a caveat (an official notice of intention to file a patent application within a year, together with a description of an invention and drawings) for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. This was exactly the same day that Bell's patent lawyer filed his application in the U.S. Patent Office – apparently without Bell's knowledge.

Patent Number 174,465 was issued to Bell on March 7, 1876. It covers "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically… by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound."
In an article dated 1886, the Washington Post newspaper reported that a former Washington patent examiner, Zenas Wilber swore in an affidavit to the effect that he had been bribed by an attorney for Alexander Graham Bell to award Bell the patent for the telephone over Elisha Gray. Furthermore, the patent examiner also claimed to have illegally shown Gray's application to Bell, in exchange for a US$100 bill.

Today, the controversy over who was first through the Patent Office door still persists with proponents for Gray continuing to dispute the veracity and legality of Bell's patent.
In a new book, "The Telephone Gambit", the historian Seth Shulman supports the claim that Bell plagiarised Gray's idea for the telephone.
The author claims to have unearthed evidence showing that on March 8, 1876, Bell tried a new contraption that used a needle in a water-and-acid solution to complete an electrical circuit. However, from reading Bell's laboratory notebooks, Schulman found out that the inventor had had been away from his lab for 12 days before he tried the water-and-acid solution – and that at the time he was visiting the Patent Office in Washington DC.

In his caveat, Gray proposed that his machine would use a water-and-acid solution, and included a sketch of his device.


http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=42766&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10 (http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=42766&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10)

[destiny1]

December 4, 2007


Worst of 2007: Broadband Expansion
Unless it’s on a list of the richest countries in the world, being ranked 20th for anything is no reason for smiles, pride or flag waving. Yet that’s the ranking that — despite numerous IPTV deployment efforts and cable system expansions and upgrades — the U.S. of A earned last year in terms of broadband penetration, down three slots from 2005, according to Point Topic Ltd.

Broad stretches of rural America, as well as low-income urban areas, still are without broadband Internet connections, with limited hope for change as well-intentioned efforts to spread the wealth are not faring well and experts are calling for big change.

“We desperately need something completely different than we’ve seen before, programs that encourage and drive broadband deployment, but that aren’t something that comes out of the FCC,” says Tom Wheeler, managing director of funding firm Core Capital Partners, who has driven public policy with telecom and cable trade associations.

All that’s needed, Wheeler contends, is for broadband components to be included in all major government initiatives whether for sweeping health care, transportation or manufacturing undertakings.

He points to Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s plan to save taxpayers some $50 billion-plus as the result of using electronic medical records, claiming other contenders have similar plans. Carrying electronic records isn’t much good without broadband, he adds.

“All such initiatives need to include some kind of broadband component where we talk about the projects requiring broadband links to be a part,” says Wheeler, the former longtime head of CTIA. “That’s the way we create a market for broadband access and get our deployment ranking up.”

Plans such as those from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that aim to help drive broadband deployment in rural areas by providing funding are flawed, says one user, and lack the business component of which Wheeler speaks.

“The process is just so long and arduous that we actually had to take out loans to cover our expenses while we waited, and waited, for our application to be approved by the USDA,” says an executive at one rural telco who asked not to be named. “I’d strongly recommend anyone else using this program plan on doing the same.”

The USDA’s program provides funding to qualified rural telcos that can help drive broadband deployment by financing network creation, enhancement and extension.

“These telcos, more often than not, need to seek independent financing which, in this market, is not that easy,” says Teresa Mastrangelo, principal analyst at BroadbandTrends.com. “The requirements for USDA RUS loans are stringent, and the process is very long.”

By contrast, Tier 1 telcos — AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. among them — are throwing billions of dollars at triple-play efforts while rival cablecos — most notably Comcast Corp. — are throwing technology (DOCSIS 3.0) at their respective broadband network upgrade and expansion undertakings. Lesser known operators are doing the same, but on a far smaller scale.

While these efforts can boost broadband speeds, they’re not necessarily aimed at bringing big pipes to those without fast connections.

“They have to go after existing broadband customers because we’ll be at 85 percent to 88 percent penetration by year-end, and there aren’t that many greenfields to go after,” says Mastrangelo. “Their reasons for triple play are to get current customers to buy more, raise their ARPU and keep them in place.”

And while satellite operators claim they can cover the additional 12 percent to 15 percent not reached by landline links, the take-rate is limited. “Technically, they could say they have the rest, but when you take a closer look you see that the services are very expensive, and you get relatively little.”

For its part, AT&T announced plans in June to spend an additional $1.4 billion this year, primarily for new builds, to deliver its U-verse triple-play package. As part of the spending boost, the telco awarded a GPON equipment contract to Ericsson.

One industry expert says the United States is no longer a broadband laggard in terms of homes passed and subscribers, but does agree the country is way behind when it comes to average speed per connection, claiming there are a number of reasons for the discrepancy.

Perhaps the largest reason is that the United States is one of the only countries where cable broadband links outpace DSL subscriptions, according to Jeff Heynen, directing analysts for broadband and IPTV at Infonetics Research. “And, since cable broadband is a shared technology, there haven’t really been technical options for expanding bandwidth beyond wideband channel bonding.”

Why has this channel bonding just hit the market? Heynen explains that it’s because cablecos previously had no incentive to spend the capital to expand bandwidth until the RBOCs got the relief they sought in 2004, which allowed them to lay fiber without having to share it.

“When that relief occurred, the cablecos expedited their RFI/P process for wideband technology,” says Heynen. So, three years later, why haven’t we seen more pre-DOCSIS 3.0 wideband deployments in response to the growth rate of Verizon’s FTTH-based FiOS offering?

Heynen claims nearly 45 percent of new FiOS subscribers previously were Verizon DSL users, adding that the telco claims the number is 22 percent, which he thinks is low.

“The cablecos are engaged in a two-front war, against satellite operators or HD video content and against RBOCs for broadband subscribers,” says Heynen. “The current capex emphasis is on expanding HD content by moving it over to switched digital video, with upgrades to support channel bonding finishing second.”

Wideband drops a little lower on the cableco capex priority list because of what Heynen calls “the tremendous pull-through effect of digital voice.” Comcast and Time Warner Cable continue to add new digital voice subscribers at a record pace. “Chances are that a significant percentage of these subscribers won’t switch back to the phone company even if they offer fiber, since they just switched to the cablecos’ service.” As a result, there’s less need to upgrade to wideband.

While Verizon has been making strides with FiOS, AT&T just now is starting to see healthy subscriber growth for its U-verse video-driven bundle, with weekly subscriber additions hitting the 8,000-10,000 mark recently, contended Heynen in mid-October.

Earlier this year, at the Cable Show in May, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts showed attendees a demo emphasizing the speed of DOCSIS 3.0, with his CTO Steve Craddock explaining that the cableco took key steps once it and others learned of the proposed timetables for DOCSIS 3.0 products to be available in 2009-2010.

But Comcast and its fellow cablecos wanted those higher-speed products — that will support 160mbps downstream and 120mbps upstream — sooner. Comcast execs, along with Texas Instruments, led the charge to form a “DOCSIS 3.0 rapid acceleration team” in hopes of moving that time frame to 2008-2009. Comcast declined to provide an update on the high-profile project, with a spokesperson claiming, “there’s nothing new to report.”

In the meantime, aggressive IPTV innovators, including SureWest Communications of Roseville, Calif., and Houston-based Optical Entertainment Network Inc., have launched super-high-speed Internet access services boasting symmetric speeds of at least 50mbps. They’re designed in part to lure the gaming demographic to their customer base as Internet games climb and followers realize they need high bandwidth to wipe out latency problems.

While the results may not always be positive, regulatory rulings can shape or reshape markets. The FCC’s decision that video franchising be decided by states, instead of on a town-by-town basis, has made it easier for the likes of AT&T and Verizon to roll out their TV services; but it remains to be seen whether these deployments actually bring broadband to those that don’t already have it.

These newer entrants, and the FCC ruling itself, both have been hit for allowing telcos to cherry-pick markets, deploying first in high-income areas, with little or no mention of addressing unserved or underserved markets with broadband.

http://broadbandtrends.com/News_Articles/Articles_2007/December_2007/xchange_12042007.htm

[McCloud]

Do we know anymore about these?

In the meantime, aggressive IPTV innovators, including SureWest Communications of Roseville, Calif., and Houston-based Optical Entertainment Network Inc., have launched super-high-speed Internet access services boasting symmetric speeds of at least 50mbps. They’re designed in part to lure the gaming demographic to their customer base as Internet games climb and followers realize they need high bandwidth to wipe out latency problems.

Ernie

[McCloud]

I found this.
SureWest's fiber optic network features high-definition TV and Internet speeds of up to 50 Mbps.

and this;
Optical Entertainment Network launches largest FTTH IPTV deployment in U.S., offering over 400 channels of content to 1.6 million homes in Houston

Therefore, nothing really new.
Ernie

[destiny1]

Older article but pertinent to Wimax vs LTE supporters.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008
WiMAX (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=WiMAX) Killer LTE Tops 300 Mb/s

The Long Term Evolution (LTE) / System Architecture Evolution (SAE) Trial Initiative (LSTI) said that it has completed a second key round of LTE tests, this time hitting a somewhat phenomenal 300 Mb/s for the technology that's considered most likely to dominate the 4G market, relegating slower wireless technologies such as those being called WiMAX (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=WiMAX) to a small niche market.
Disclosure of the latest tests is clearly timed for next week's Mobile World Congress (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Congress) in Barcelona. Indeed TelecomWeb suspects that the tests were rushed in order to have results ready for that annual event. Rumors are also swirling that Vodafone has set up a secret meeting, or perhaps series of meetings, with potential LTE vendors at the show. Assumptions are that Verizon (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Verizon) Wireless, in which Vodafone owns a 40 percent stake, will also be at the meeting sniffing out potential 4G hardware vendors. Verizon (http://www.telecomweb.com/search/?query=Verizon) last fall disclosed its choice of LTE (TelecomWeb news break, Nov. 29), in no small part in order to be compatible with Vodafone for those of its customers that are roaming. (AT&T Wireless had previously indicated that it is planning to use LTE, but it's not clear if the rumored secret meetings will be industry events, which might include AT&T, or a private Vodafone-Verizon party).
The LSTI said that its latest laboratory and early field tests on prototype LTE systems have confirmed that baseline devices can achieve download speeds exceeding 100 Mb/s, and high performance systems using 4x4 MIMO antennas can push this to beyond 300 Mb/s. LSTI added that its members "have also demonstrated substantial improvements to network response times, which are essential to give the 'always on' experience and for latency-sensitive applications such as interactive gaming and mobile television." Those members, by the way, include a wide swath of some of the most important in the wireless industry. LSTI was formally launched in May 2007 by Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Orange, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nortel, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Since then China Mobile, Huawei, LG Electronics, NTT DoCoMo, NXP, Samsung, Signalion, Telecom Italia, Qualcomm, and ZTE have joined.
One caveat on the latest tests, the LSTI disclosed, is that the result are so far only "for isolated cells with a single user."
Still, "these latest test results show that LTE development is striding confidently forward, with prototype systems comfortably meeting the performance targets set out by the 3GPP (The 3rd Generation Partnership Project ) standards," said Doug Wolff, general manager of Nortel's LTE program. "The next steps ... will be early device interoperability testing, network interoperability tests, more comprehensive performance tests as the end-to-end systems continue to mature, and finally actual field trials in operator networks."
Those field trials, as previously reported, are expected to begin next year or perhaps even as early as the end of this year. Actual LTE deployments are expected to start at the end of next year, according to some, and in 2010 by most opinions.
The latest test follows a crucial initial first round of testing by the LSTI last year that essentially confirmed the technology is well on the way to deployment (TelecomWeb News Break, Nov. 7, 2007). That was followed not long afterward by disclosure that Nokia-Siemens Networks, in its own private LTE tests, had dished up peak data rates of 160 Mb/s in what called it called "the world's first multi-user field trial in an urban environment" (TelecomWeb News Break, Dec. 20, 2007). Last month, LTE won a key vote of approval at the 3GPP (TelecomWeb News Break, Dec. 20, 2007).

[destiny1]

March 4, 2008, 9:40PM EST

Clearwire and Sprint: Squeezed Together?
Amid the credit crunch, their continued partnership may be essential for both to make their WiMax dreams come true
by Olga Kharif (http://www.businessweek.com/bios/Olga_Kharif.htm)

When Clearwire forged a partnership with Sprint Nextel last year, the deal was viewed more as a bonus than a must. Sprint Nextel was offering an extra set of hands, with money in them, to help Clearwire accomplish what it had set out to do anyway—build a nationwide high-speed wireless network based on a technology called WiMax—cheaper and faster.
In retrospect it appears that Sprint's helping hands were—and remain—vital to Clearwire's (CLWR (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=CLWR)) plans. The company's shares slid 3.3%, to 14.02, on Mar. 4 after a weak fourth-quarter report that also failed to bring word of a new deal with Sprint (S (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=S)) to replace the preliminary agreement that unraveled in November. Sprint, which has been stung by customer losses and a management shakeup, "is now fully focused on how it can take advantage of its [next-generation network] opportunity," Clearwire CEO Ben Wolff (http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=20878255&symbol=CLWR) said in a conference call with investors on Mar. 4. "We hope to be able to have something more definite to discuss with you soon."
The prospectus for Clearwire's initial public offering in March, 2007, told a far different, more independent story: "We intend to deploy our network throughout the United States and internationally in markets that we find attractive." Most investors took that to mean that with support from investors Intel (INTC (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=INTC)), Motorola (MOT (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=MOT)), Bell Canada (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=170260) and stockholders, Clearwire would and could go national—nay, international—all on its own.

A Long, Pricey Road Ahead
But now it's becoming clear that Clearwire probably didn't have the financial wherewithal to pull off a solo act when the deal with Sprint was cobbled together. "Even at the IPO there was a funding gap," says Eric Kainer, an analyst at ThinkEquity Partners (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=10168652). To build a nationwide WiMax network and get it off the ground, a company would need to spend from $8 billion to $12 billion, he figures. After all, once a network is constructed, "I don't think it would be profitable in the first few years," says Dan Locke, an analyst at consultant Pyramid Research (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=12190983).
And Clearwire is at the very beginning of this journey: It only plans to soft-launch its first market—Portland, Ore.—by midyear. The company, founded by celebrated wireless entrepreneur Craig McCaw, currently uses an older technology to deliver broadband Internet access to 400,000 customers in 16 states.
Last year, Clearwire was counting on raising additional funds through public debt offerings. But with the subprime mortgage crisis freezing up the credit markets, raising capital for its network build-out became "easier said than done," says Walter Piecyk, an analyst at Pali Research (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=32352410). "It's a difficult financial market to raise capital in for a company that's burning cash." Not counting interest, taxes, and depreciation, Clearwire lost $133.8 million in the fourth quarter, nearly double its $78.1 million loss during the same period in 2006.

Mutual Miseries
Without new funding or a partner, Clearwire would be left with nearly $1 billion in cash and liquid investments, only enough to build a smaller network spanning markets with 36 million people, or about a tenth of the country, Piecyk estimates. That would make Clearwire little more than a regional player. And companies like Intel "don't want to invest in a regional player," says Piecyk.
Sprint faces a similar predicament. It may still hope to recover from its market drubbing by building a next-generation network offering mobile broadband connections, a potential competitive advantage against its chief rivals in the cellular industry. But Sprint, which recently recorded a stunning $29.7 billion writedown (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2008/tc20080228_275456.htm) (BusinessWeek.com, 2/28/08) in the value of its assets, is losing customers and bleeding money. With just $2.25 billion in liquid assets, the company is struggling just to upgrade its existing networks. "At this point, Sprint and Clearwire would be glad for anybody to write them a check," Piecyk says. "This is [Sprint's] escape plan."
As a result of their mutual miseries, it's likely that potential corporate investors are calling the shots in any Sprint-Clearwire negotiations. Analysts say Intel, Motorola, SK Telecom (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=352642), Google (GOOG (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=GOOG)), Comcast (CMCSA (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=CMCSA)), Best Buy (BBY (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=BBY)), and even Singapore Telecom (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=112384) may be hammering out a joint venture between Sprint and Clearwire. Although the WiMax market has developed more slowly than some had hoped, the outlook remains bright enough for these investors to take a chance. ABI Research (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=10850743) forecasts that U.S. WiMax service revenues will add up to more than $10 billion by 2012.

Patience, Patience

Still, many of these would-be investors are also being squeezed by the current economic downturn. Motorola's handset business is ailing and likely in need of extra cash. And Intel, hurt by weaker memory pricing, just lowered its guidance for first-quarter profit margins.
Many analysts still consider a Clearwire-Sprint venture likely: Intel has already poured billions into developing WiMax technology and needs a nationwide WiMax network to make that investment pay off. But hammering out an agreement could take time. "You have a lot of big, very powerful companies engaged here," Kainer says. "It's like trying to get elephants to dance."
Kharif (olga_kharif@businessweek.com) is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2008/tc2008034_887553.htm (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2008/tc2008034_887553.htm)

[destiny1]

Clearwire Is on the Ropes
By Dave Mock March 4, 2008 As investors grow increasingly critical of Wall Street and its offerings, companies with business models that require high levels of debt are receiving no mercy. Clearwire's (Nasdaq: CLWR (http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/CLWR.aspx?source=icaedilnk9950012)) capital-intensive launch of its broadband wireless network has been taking on more and more skeptics as losses continue to flow.
Clearwire disappointed Wall Street in its fourth-quarter earnings today, reporting high customer defection rates and a lower revenue outlook for the coming year. Shares dropped as much as 13% in the morning before recovering this afternoon to a decline of 5%. Clearwire noted that it expected 2008 revenues of $205 million to $215 million, a growth rate of only 36% to 42%.
Clearwire mentioned a strong competitive response (http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/02/08/foolish-forecast-clearwires-unclear-future.aspx) from cable companies and others, which appears to have taken hold. Monthly churn is up to 2.4% this quarter, above the 1.9% level last year. Cable companies such as Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA (http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/CMCSA.aspx?source=icaedilnk9950012)) and Time Warner Cable, as well as telcos Verizon (NYSE: VZ (http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/VZ.aspx?source=icaedilnk9950012)) and AT&T (NYSE: T (http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/T.aspx?source=icaedilnk9950012)), certainly will not let their customers go without a fight. Verizon even recently introduced (http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/02/19/verizon-and-atampt-no-limits.aspx) new pricing plans for its wireless broadband service, aiming to snag and retain more customers.
But Clearwire is making strides in its business evolution -- 24 of its 46 domestic markets have turned positive on an adjusted EBITDA basis -- and the company believes early market financials show that the business model is scalable. Clearwire also holds cash and equivalents of more than $1 billion on the books, giving it a nice cash cushion to continue to develop new markets.
In addition, Clearwire plans to deploy a fully mobile version of the WiMAX broadband platform (http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2008/02/20/innovation-series-wimax.aspx) later this year. But all eyes are still on just who in the industry will cover Clearwire's back in WiMAX. Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S (http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/S.aspx?source=icaedilnk9950012)) isn't a surety any more, although Clearwire says it's still in active discussions with its one-time partner. WiMax fans Intel (Nasdaq: INTC (http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/INTC.aspx?source=icaedilnk9950012)) and Motorola (NYSE: MOT (http://caps.fool.com/Ticker/MOT.aspx?source=icaedilnk9950012)) have already sunk hundreds of millions in the nascent platform, but some investors are clearly betting that Clearwire is on its own at this point.
With lots of money still in the bank, we're in the early chapters of a long book for Clearwire. I expect the company to be around for the long haul, but shares will certainly be volatile going forward, just as they have been in the past.
http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/03/04/clearwire-is-on-the-ropes.aspx (http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/03/04/clearwire-is-on-the-ropes.aspx)

[destiny1]

Merrill Lynch cautiously upbeat on Tier 1 FTTH investment
But says there is a “bearish consensus” among financial analysts by Ken Wieland Thu. February 28, 2008



The high capex requirements associated with FTTH investment could help incumbents by keeping their not-so- deep-pocketed competitors at bay. In turn, this could lead to a higher ROI for the Tier 1 players.
That is the view of Jakob Bluestone, a telecom analyst in the equity research department of Merrill Lynch. Speaking at the FTTH Council Europe conference in Paris, Bluestone says he takes a “more benign view” on the risks of high FTTH capex compared with the majority of analysts in the investment community.
“There is a lot of nervousness about high capex [projects],” he says. “Telcos haven’t got a good capex track record and there is an economic slowdown with the prospect of higher inflation this year,” he says.
Despite the prospect of an economic slowdown, at least in the short term, Bluestone points out that the telecom industry is still generally more attractive to investors compared to many other industry sectors.
“It is a hugely cash-generative sector and is reasonably resilient to economic slowdowns,” he says. “The bad news [for telcos] is that is exactly why there is concern about anything that could undermine that, such as extensive fiber access rollout, which requires a lot of capital. There is a deep innate skepticism about high capex projects.”
Bluestone used his presentation, however, to challenge what he believes are commonly-held bearish assumptions among financial analysts on FTTH investment.
One of these, says Bluestone, is that IPTV will generate low returns (around 3 percent), which is off-putting for FTTH investors as it is much lower than the cost of capital. “Even if we accept that the IPTV return is low, there are still other factors to consider,” says Bluestone. “FTTH can help operators keep their customers and protect other revenue streams.”
He also thinks that analysts have overplayed the point that telcos can’t take full advantage of freeing up their real estate through fiber investment in the last mile (FTTH requires fewer local exchanges than the PSTN) as they have already sold much of their real estate assets and now use them on a leaseback basis. “It is about 50:50 among telcos who have sold and not sold their real estate,” he says.
Nor does Bluestone see any mileage in the view that Japan, with its tax benefits on investment, has an FTTH business case edge over Europe. “The tax advantages are enjoyed by all players [in Japan], so any advantage is evened out,” he says.
Despite regulatory uncertainty and ongoing technological debate surrounding FTTH in Europe, Bluestone is cautiously upbeat. “It can make sense to invest in FTTH, subject to being realistic about the returns that can be made,” he says.
http://www.telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_3993 (http://www.telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_3993)

[deeba]

From yesterday's WSJ.

deeba:cool:


AT&T Plans to Invest $1 Billion In International Network

By JOHN FLOWERS
March 5, 2008

AT&T Inc. said on Wednesday it would invest $1 billion in 2008 to boost its international network as demand for data capacity increases.

The company said the spending is one-third more than last year and double its 2006 level, with the growth being driven by a proliferation in data, voice and video traffic world-wide -- specifically demand for Internet Protocol networks and services.

"Companies world-wide are responding to the exploding need to deliver voice, data and video in real time to their end-users, no matter where they are, no matter what the device," said Ron Spears, group president of AT&T Global Business Services. "It is vital that we continue to invest in those geographies and services to meet this demand so our customers can connect their operations, partners and suppliers."

AT&T said the plan includes new subsea fiber-optic cable capacity to Japan and Asia, extension of networks and services currently available in current markets and network growth into new markets such as India, Eastern Europe and South America.

In the fourth quarter, AT&T's hosting revenues grew 19%, while enterprise IP data services rose 21% and virtual private network, which provides secure communications through the public Internet, saw a 31% revenues jump.

Demand for third-generation cellphone service, which allows various data functions such as Internet and email access, has surged in recent years as handsets increase their computing power and networks boost bandwidth to handle more products, such as videos.

[destiny1]

TSMC, others start work on $14.7 billion chip complex

Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:12am EDT


TAIPEI (Reuters) - Top contract chip maker TSMC (2330.TW: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=2330.TW), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=2330.TW), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=2330.TW)) and two other Taiwan chip makers began work on Tuesday on new plants for a T$450 billion ($14.7 billion) complex that TSMC said is part of a long-term commitment to investing in the island.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd's (TSMC) (TSM.N: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=TSM.N), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=TSM.N), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=TSM.N)) facility at the Hsinchu Science Park will include an advanced 12-inch wafer plant to make chips for computers and a wide range of consumer gadgets.
"We will have both R&D and manufacturing in the new plants," said J.H. Tzeng, a TSMC spokesman, although he declined to give his own company's investment figure.
The Hsinchu Science Park said in a statement on Tuesday that TSMC, Powerchip Semiconductor (5346.TWO: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=5346.TWO), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=5346.TWO), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=5346.TWO)) and Vanguard (5347.TWO: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=5347.TWO), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=5347.TWO), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=5347.TWO)) were investing a total T$450 billion to build new plants, creating eventual production value of T$300 billion annually.
The three companies conducted a joint ground-breaking ceremony.
On Tuesday, TSMC shares rose 2 percent, Powerchip shares fell 1.2 percent and Vanguard shares gained 0.5 percent, while the main TAIEX share index jumped 1 percent.
($1=30.58 Taiwan Dollar)

[destiny1]

From FierceIPTV
1. U.S. IPTV market to grow to $14B by 2012 (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,y5f7,1blo,f2p1,e3db,977q,6wtk)
IPTV revenues will grow rapidly to $14 billion in 2012 up from $694 million in 2007, according to a forecast report by Strategy Analytics. The revenues however will be largely driven by network deployment of the two dominant carriers, Verizon and AT&T. The report is bullish about IPTV revenue growth but concedes this will largely be powered by the rollout of the two IPTV networks FiOS and U-verse.

The report finds providers have only a limited number of "levers" to pull, and should try to think holistically in terms of an overall customer experience. "ARPU is expected to remain relatively stable throughout the forecast period, and service growth will come largely from an increased number of IPTV-passed homes, and higher take-up rates," says report author Ben Piper.
The same point is made by ABI in their Global IPTV Market report which predicts the IPTV market to grow from 13 million subscribers in 2007 to over 90 million in 2013. Report author Cesar Bachelet says U.S. growth will largely be driven by the speed of the fiber roll-outs. ABI sees sharp increases in IPTV growth in Asia as regulatory and infrastructure issues are resolved and solid European growth. Bachelet said he was predicting West and Eastern Europe to grow from 7.2 million subscribers in 2007 to over 30 million subscribers by 2013. To better understand the drivers of European IPTV growth read our special feature (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,y5f7,1blo,7rjn,8r0f,977q,6wtk).
The ABI report is in the middle of the pack in terms of global IPTV growth predictions. Most bullish is India-based RNCOS that predicts a surge in the Asian-Pacific zone will see IPTV subscribers reach 103 million in 2011. This contrasts with a report by Informa, Telecoms and Media late last year that forecast 38.4 million IPTV subscribers by 2011. At the same time, Research and Markets has predicted the global IPTV market will grow five times over the next four years to 80 million. This is consistent with a report by the MRG group in November that predicted 72.6 million subscribers by 2011.

[destiny1]

From TelecomTV

Global IPTV subscribers to hit 90 million by 2013
10/03/2008 08:57:00 - by Commsday


http://web20.telecomtv.com/images/thumbs/news/45596411_BIG.jpgIn a new report, ABI Research says that currently there are 13.5 million subscribers for IPTV services worldwide and predicts that number will grow to reach more than 90 million by the end of 2013.

Cesar Bachelet, a senior analyst at ABI commented, “The IPTV market as a whole is poised for strong growth but clearly it will be stronger in some areas than in others. We anticipate particularly substantial growth in North America and most emerging markets.”

Asia got a head start in IPTV when PCCW launched Now TV but, despite the service’s success in Hong Kong, the region still lags behind in terms of the number of IPTV subscribers – mainly as a result of seemingly intractable regulatory issues and low broadband penetration in key markets. However, ABI Research seems sure that that vigorous growth lies ahead as these issues are resolved.

In North America, until recently, only a handful of Canadian operators and smaller rural and regional operators in the US have offered IPTV services. Verizon and AT&T began to gain some ground in 2007 with their fibre deployments.

Western Europe has had IPTV available since 1999 as the market over here is comparatively well-developed especially in countries such as France.

There are also growth opportunities in big markets such as Germany and the UK where IPTV penetration rates remain stubbornly low.

The ABI report says that these (and other) growing IPTV markets offer an opportunity for vendors of products such as video servers, middleware and set-top boxes while the migration from MPEG-2 to high-definition MPEG-4 encoding and the addition of new functionality is opening-up extra opportunities with the increasing requirement for new equipment and middleware.

Cesar Bachelet adds one caveat, “Operators are getting very picky when choosing their vendors. They want one with a proven track record, a history of supporting large-scale deployments. For telcos, the road to IPTV could still be rocky, because to most, video is a brand new, very sophisticated business.” (read (http://http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=42798&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&view=news))

[McCloud]

I was looking over the market predictions in the exclusive section to see how these projections would affect them. The only thing I could tell is that higher volume and revenue numbers would be more probable. I am hoping the chip price runs higher, as the $15 price is what is being paid for regular DSL chips.

However, the most pressing issue at hand is to get the current outstanding loans covered to prevent unnecessary dilution.

Ernie

[deeba]

Does 7 Mbps qualify as ultra-fast DSL? Don't think so.

Just a bandaid to combat the current Cable offerings.

deeba:cool:


Verizon Expands 7 Megabits per Second High Speed Internet Service to 1.2 Million Additional Customers in the East

Wednesday March 12, 2008

Service Offers Great Value With Ultra-Fast Downstream Connection Speeds; Provides Prime Opportunity for Consumers to Drop Cable Modem Connections


NEW YORK, March 12 /PRNewswire/-- Some 1.2 million additional consumers in 12 Eastern states and the District of Columbia can now order the new ultra- fast Verizon High Speed Internet service, which provides an appealing alternative to cable Internet.

The new service more than doubles the speed of Verizon's current fastest offer and delivers a more robust broadband and entertainment experience. It provides qualified customers a downstream connection speed of up to 7 megabits per second (Mbps) for as low as $39.99 a month when ordered with an annual service plan.

"Our 7 megabits per second Internet service allows you to quickly download information from the Internet and provides an attractive alternative to cable modems," said Susan Retta, vice president, broadband solutions for Verizon. "This faster High Speed Internet service provides a more enjoyable online experience that supports everything from sharing remote work files, gaming and viewing video clips over Verizon's reliable network."

The following locations are part of the 7 Mbps High Speed Internet expansion: Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

In January, Verizon introduced its fastest Internet service to more than 400,000 home phone lines in the Great Lakes, Southeast, South and West Coast. Verizon expects the 7 Mbps service to be available to more than 2 million homes and small businesses in 22 states and the District of Columbia by the end of 2008.

[destiny1]

Microsoft's top visionary sees a parallel world

Thu Mar 13, 2008 8:17am EDT


http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20080313&t=2&i=3506702&w=192&r=2008-03-13T121652Z_01_N12225630_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0 (http://javascript<b></b>:launchArticleSlideshow();)
By Daisuke Wakabayashi


SEATTLE (Reuters) - Craig Mundie, Microsoft Corp's chief research and strategy officer, is sure he has a good handle on where technology is going. When is another story.
Mundie, who took over as Microsoft's lead visionary from co-founder Bill Gates in 2006, is preparing the company for a technology shift that he expects will be as big as the rise of the personal computer or the Internet: parallel computing.
"It's a lot easier for us to have a fairly accurate sense of what will happen and even make good technical progress toward achieving it," Mundie told Reuters in an interview last week. "Almost everything we tried to do took longer than we expected."
The overseer of Microsoft's $7 billion research and development budget, Mundie knows firsthand how even promising technologies can take time to develop. After all, he has led Microsoft's efforts in Web-based television and nontraditional forms of computing.
Parallel computing has been hyped for years as the next big thing in technology, allowing computers to run faster by dividing up tasks over multiple microprocessors instead of using a single processor to perform one task at a time.
The technology's full potential is almost unfathomable today, but it could lead to major advances in robotics or software applications that can translate documents in real time in multiple languages.
The computer industry has taken its first steps toward parallel computing in recent years by using "multi-core" chips, but Mundie said this is the "tip of the iceberg."
To maximize computing horsepower, software makers will need to change how software programmers work. Only a handful of programmers in the world know how to write software code to divide computing tasks into chunks that can be processed at the same time instead of a traditional, linear, one-job-at-a-time approach.

A new programming language would be required, and could affect how almost every piece of software is written.
"This problem will be hard," admitted Mundie, who worked on parallel computing as the head of supercomputer company Alliant Computer Systems before joining Microsoft. "This challenge looms large over the next 5 to 10 years."
The shift to parallel computing was born out of necessity after processor speeds ran into heat and power limitations, forcing the semiconductor industry to assemble multiple cores, or electronic brains, on a single chip.
Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc have already assembled chips with as many as four processors on a single chip. Tilera Corp, a Silicon Valley chip start-up, foresees a 1,000-core chip by 2014.

KILLER APPLICATIONS
Mundie, who assumed half of Gates' job almost two years ago, sets the long-term technological direction for the company as the co-founder moves to a part-time role in July to focus on philanthropy. Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, sets the shorter-term agenda.
Mundie has at his disposal Microsoft's research department with over 800 PhD researchers working on the new technology.
The research focuses on everything from Web search to simultaneous translation to touch-screen technology, but parallel computing is certainly among its top priorities because it will likely affect every part of Microsoft.
Computers about 100 times more powerful than now will emerge within 20 years, Mundie estimated, packing the capabilities of a corporate data center into a single die sitting inside a mobile phone or laptop.

A "killer application" will bring this computing power to the forefront, he said, just like what word processing and spreadsheets did for the PC and how e-mail and the Web browser popularized the Internet.
Pushing a company as big as Microsoft -- with about 80,000 employees -- to look past historical strengths and traditional ways of doing things to focus on new technology is not easy.
"Bill (Gates) and I have both talked at times over the years that you can't do these jobs unless you are an optimist, almost an extreme optimist because in a way you are fighting so many forces that are resistant to change," said Mundie. (read (http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1222563020080313?feedType=nl&feedName=ustechnology&pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0))
(Additional reporting by Duncan Martell in San Francisco, editing by Richard Chang)

[destiny1]

LCD-TV shipments to nearly double by 2012


Mar 14, 2008
Global shipments of Liquid Crystal Display-Televisions (LCD-TVs) will nearly double from 2008 to 2012, driven mainly by falling prices and consumer demand for flat screens and the High-Definition (HD) format, according to iSuppli Corp.

Worldwide shipments will rise to 193.9 million units by 2012, increasing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 67 http://www.emsnow.com/images/banners/spacer1pxa.gif (http://www.emsnow.com/as/ad.cfm?locbanid=710) percent from 100.1 million units in 2008.
This explosive growth is being driven by widespread acceptance in worldwide markets. "Consumers no longer want bulky, heavy CRT-TVs that have inferior resolution," said Riddhi Patel, principal analyst for television systems at iSuppli. "Instead, they want space-efficient sets that can support the full-HD 1080p pixel format. Furthermore, declining prices are enabling more consumers to adopt the technology. LCD-TVs in the 42-inch size range in the first quarter of 2006 were priced at $2,000 and above, but now can be purchased for less than $1,000, making them affordable for a wider range of consumers."

Another factor promoting greater consumer acceptance is aggressive promotion of LCD-TV technology by the leading brands. This is attracting consumers that may not have been familiar with the technology but now have an interest in 1080p after reading or hearing about it, Patel noted.

Regional variations
Regionally, Europe and North America continue to be the largest markets for LCD-TVs and shipments in those regions will grow at 13 percent and 10 percent CAGRs between 2008 and 2012, respectively. Japanese shipments will remain flat, but sales in China will rise due to the huge uptake in interest spurred by the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games.

The rise of full HD
As consumers begin to embrace larger LCD-TVs sized 50-inches and more, support for full-HD is becoming critical. An increasing number of brands are adopting a full-HD lineup for sets 37-inches and larger in order to differentiate their products from the competition and to be able to charge premium pricing.

Furthermore, increasing availability of content in the form of Blu-ray DVDs, game consoles and other devices is increasing consumer incentives to buy a full-HD set that can support the best viewing experience. Shipments of full-HD sets will grow at a 45 percent CAGR between 2008 and 2012 to reach 104 million units or 54 percent of the market by 2012. In 2007, these sets accounted for a mere 14 percent of LCD-TV shipments, but will grow to 23 percent of the 100-million-unit market in 2008.

LCD-TV trends
Some interesting trends are emerging in the LCD-TV market that will further promote demand and profitability of companies competing in this sector, including:

-- The rising use of desktop PC monitor panels for TVs—specifically for smaller sizes of 15-, 19- and 22-inches.
-- Increased emphasis on 120Hz panels. Premium brands are offering a 120Hz refresh rate in their high-end full- HD product lines, specifically in 40-inch and larger sizes. The faster refresh rate improves the overall viewing experience. Such 120Hz sets will account for about 15 to 18 percent of total 40-inch and larger-sized LCD shipments in 2008.
-- The availability of thin-bezel TVs that make the sets look larger and more attractive.
-- Slim LCD-TVs have been demonstrated and likely will be available in 2009. This technology will be a means of product differentiation as well as a way to provide consumers with a newer form factor that is attractive and suits their lifestyles.
-- Connectivity options like wireless, Ethernet, USB and SmartMedia are becoming increasingly available.

Overall, LCDs have emerged as the leading technology in the television market because of the continued support and interest from panel makers, brands, retailers—and consumers.

Find out more about the LCD-TV market with Patel's latest report entitled, Samsung Continues to Dominate Global TV Market. For more information about this report, please visit: http://www.isuppli.com/catalog/detail.asp?id=9572 (http://www.isuppli.com/catalog/detail.asp?id=9572)

[deeba]

From today's WSJ.

The China market is very large, and will be getting larger.

deeba:cool:



China Is Likely Top Internet User

By LORETTA CHAO

March 14, 2008


BEIJING -- China's rapidly growing population of Internet users may have surpassed the U.S. last month to become the world's largest Internet user base.

According to official estimates by government research group China Internet Network Information Center, which are released every six months, the number of Internet users grew at an average of 6.1 million users per month in 2007 and would total about 225 million now. In its own research, BDA China Ltd., a Beijing-based technology consulting concern, estimates that China has as many as 228.5 million Internet users, compared with 217.1 million in the U.S.


Becoming the world's largest population of Internet users is a milestone for China, and it raises the stakes for Chinese and foreign companies battling for market share. Still, the U.S. market remains leaps and bounds ahead in terms of online advertising and e-commerce.

BDA estimates that China's online advertising market reached $1.3 billion in revenue in 2007, while U.S. Internet ad spending was expected to reach $21.4 billion in the same period, according to New York-based research company eMarketer Inc. Although the two numbers aren't directly comparable, analysts agree the disparity of the ratios of user numbers to advertising dollars is vast.

Liu Bin, an analyst at BDA, says the Internet makes up only about 5% of advertising spending in China, compared with 10% in the U.S. But if China's economy continues to grow and China's Internet users increasingly choose the Internet over traditional forms of entertainment, China is bound to catch up.

"Advertising grows with the growth of the economy and media," Mr. Liu said. Over the next five years, he estimates that the number of Internet users in China will grow at a compounded annual rate of 18.5%, while the U.S. will grow at 2.2%. By 2012, that would give China 590 million Internet users.

So far, online advertising has yet to flourish in China, where even the largest Internet companies, including search company Baidu.com Inc., operator of the most-popular Web site in China, have said they struggle with convincing small- to medium-size advertisers of the efficacy of paid search.

E-commerce, which is expected to be a major driver for online advertising, also has been slow to pick up because many consumers are unaccustomed to shopping online and are reluctant to pay for products electronically.

China's booming online-games market, meanwhile, has surpassed the combined revenue of online brand advertising and search, with 13.3 billion yuan ($1.87 billion) revenue last year.

For now, China has only about a 16% Internet penetration rate, compared with a global average of 19.1% and the U.S.'s 69.7%, according to China Internet Network Information Center.

[destiny1]

Update from the IPTV World Forum
(VIDEO (http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&vidid=2777&view=video&page=1))



D1;)

[destiny1]

http://web20.telecomtv.com/images/thumbs/news/760782674_BIG.jpg

Telco data services growing fast in "emerging" Asian Countries 19/03/2008 09:07:00 - by Andrew Beutmueller & Martyn Warwick

For how much longer will we be able to describe India and China as "emerging nations" in the global economies? A new research report says things are changing so fast that this is now an incorrect characterisation and that henceforth the appelation should be used to describe Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam – at least in terms of telecoms data services.

According to a new study by research house IDC, the telecoms data services markets in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam are set to rise by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36 per cent between now and 2011.

In fact, data, undeniably never the most attractive branch on the telco tree, now has mobile data services, fixed line corporate data and Internet access services under its purview and, of late, has really taken-off in Asia. The sector there showed a year-on-year revenue rise of 256 per cent over the course of 2006/2007 and is now estimated to be worth US$952 million per annum.

Commenting on the publication of the report, Karen Rondon, Research Manager for IDC's Telecommunications Research said, "Corporate customers and consumers in the emerging Asian countries are highly cost-sensitive, and benefits and returns on investments are measured on a short-to-medium term. Services that require small immediate spending
while providing immediate benefits are most attractive to end-users."

Ms. Rondon also pointed out that although Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam are still essentially "voice-centric" economies and will remain so during the forecast period, data will, nevertheless, make up an increasing portion of revenue share and will reach 30 per cent of the market by 2011.

That being said, it seems that good old SMS will be the main driver of increased uptake in a segment that is expected to contribute 41 per cent CAGR from 2007-2011 across Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

Thereafter, higher bandwidth data services will become the norm as new, next-generation networks are built out.

By contrast fixed-line will grow by about 24 per cent over the same period, mostly as a result of only a "gradual" increase in demand for enterprise IP services in a corporate sector, which for the time being at least, seems likely to stick with the tried and tested dedicated leased lines approach.

The governments of each of the four nations, (Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam) are acutely aware of the importance of telecoms to their economies, and are fostering a favorable climate for Internet Access Services with a view to "increasing market awareness and
education of the various Internet access services available."

And as in the past, it is emigrants from "emerging nations" and "emerging economies" that are helping to drive the sector forward, as they increasingly email and text home from abroad. These habits are not only increasing local awareness of telco data services back at home, but also fostering increased adoption and demand for such services from local operators.

IDC also says that DSL and prepaid dial-up services (bold/italics added) "will be the most preferred Internet services in emerging Asian country markets."

[deeba]

From the Chicago Tribune.

deeba:cool:


Microsoft, Intel fund U. of I. research center

By Wailin Wong


March 19, 2008


Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. are investing $10 million in a new research center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign focusing on computing technology that will help make highly intelligent mobile phones and hand-held gadgets a reality for consumers.

The two firms are spending the $10 million over five years, with the university putting in an additional $8 million. Microsoft and Intel are also giving the University of California at Berkeley $10 million for a similar research center.

The collaboration between the firms and the universities centers on what's known as parallel computing, which uses multiple "cores"—the parts of microprocessors that control operations—simultaneously to perform a task. Parallel computing is expected to significantly boost power and speed, leading to breakthroughs in areas such as server technology, laptops and mobile devices.

This computing will "enable a real change in the way people use technology," Tony Hey, corporate vice president of external research at Microsoft Research, said Tuesday in a conference call.

Hey gave the example of "an intelligent digital assistant" that can learn to prioritize incoming phone calls and e-mails based on user patterns. David Patterson, a computer science professor at Berkeley who will head that school's research center, said he would like to have a cell phone that can recognize a face from a distance and instantly call up information on that person.

"We believe you will actually need a lot more power, a lot more skill to pull this off," Patterson said.

The Illinois center will be headed by Marc Snir, a computer science professor, and will be staffed by 20 additional faculty members and 26 graduate students and researchers. The companies' executives said most of the technology produced at the two centers will be available to the broader industry through open-source licensing.

[deeba]

This is a PR released today by TSMC.

deeba:cool:


TSMC First to Deliver 40nm Process Technology

Includes Embedded DRAM, Mixed Signal & RF and Regular MPW Prototyping Service

Issued by: TSMC
Issued on: 2008/03/24


Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C. - March 24, 2008 - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (TSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) today unveiled the foundry’s first 40 nanometer (nm) manufacturing process technology.

The new node supports a performance-driven general purpose (40G) technology and a power-efficient low power (40LP) technology. It features a full design service package and a design ecosystem that covers verified third party IP, third party EDA tools, TSMC-generated SPICE models and foundation IPs. First wafers out are expected in the second quarter of 2008.

Highlights:
․A 2.35 times raw gate density improvement over 65nm
․Active power down-scaling of up to 15% over 45nm
․Smallest SRAM cell size and macro size in the industry
․General Purpose and Low Power versions for broad product applications
․Dozens of customers in the design pipeline today
․Frequent and regular CyberShuttleTM, MPW prototyping running

Following successful tapeouts and customer announcements of its 45nm process technology in 2007, TSMC has moved forward quickly and developed an enhanced 40LP and 40G process that delivers industry-leading performance with 40nm density. The 45nm node provided double the gate density of 65nm, while the new 40nm node features manufacturing innovations that enable its LP and G processes to deliver a 2.35 raw gate density improvement of the 65nm offering. The transition from 45nm to 40nm low power technology reduces power scaling up to 15 percent.

“Our design flow can take designs started at 45nm and target it toward the advantages of 40nm,” said John Wei, senior director of Advanced Technology Marketing at TSMC. “A lot of TSMC development work has gone into ensuring that this transition is truly transparent. Designers need only concentrate on achieving their performance objectives,” he said.

TSMC has developed the 40LP for leakage-sensitive applications such as wireless and portable devices and its 40G variant targeting performance applications including CPU, GPU (Graphic Processing Unit), game console, networking and FPGA designs and other high-performance consumer devices. The 40nm footprint is linearly shrunk and the SRAM performance is fully maintained when compared to its 45nm counterpart, its SRAM cell size is now the smallest in the industry at 0.242µm2.

A full range of mixed signal and RF options accompany the 40G and 40LP processes along with Embedded DRAM, to match the breath of applications that can take advantage of the new node’s unbeatable size and performance combination.

The 40nm process employs a combination of 193nm immersion photolithography and extreme low-k (ELK) material. The logic family includes a low-power triple gate oxide (LPG) option to support high performance wireless and portable applications. Both the G and the LP processes offer multiple Vt core devices and 1.8V, 2.5V I/O options to meet different product requirements.

TSMC’s CyberShuttle prototyping service can be booked for 40nm designs in April, June, August, October and December this year and first wave 45/40nm customers have already used above 200 blocks on completed multi-project wafer runs. The 40G and LP processes will initially run in TSMC’s 12" wafer Fab 12 and will be transferred to Fab 14 as demand ramps.


About TSMC


TSMC is the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry’s leading process technology and the foundry industry’s largest portfolio of process-proven libraries, IP, design tools and reference flows. The Company’s total managed capacity in 2007 exceeded eight million (8-inch equivalent) wafers, including capacity from two advanced 12-inch Gigafabs, four eight-inch fabs, one six-inch fab, as well as TSMC’s wholly owned subsidiaries, WaferTech and TSMC (Shanghai), and its joint venture fab, SSMC. TSMC is the first foundry to provide 40nm production capabilities. Its corporate headquarters are in Hsinchu, Taiwan. For more information about TSMC please see http://www.tsmc.com.


TSMC Spokesperson

Lora Ho
Vice President & Chief Financial Officer & Spokesperson
Tel: 886-3-5664602



TSMC Deputy Spokesperson

J.H. Tzeng
Deputy Director, PR Department
Tel: 886-3-5055028

Fax: 886-3-5670121

Mobile: 886-928-882-607

Email: jhtzeng@tsmc.com



For further information, please contact

Richard Chung
Technical Manager
Tel: 886-3-5055038

Fax: 886-3-5670121

Mobile: 886-911-258-751

Email: cychung@tsmc.com

[destiny1]

http://www.itwire.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=17279

[destiny1]

Here is an interview with Michael Browne, a FTTH network strategist talking about challenges with fiber deployment in Ireland. (Video (http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?id=959ddeaa-d869-422f-871e-dace425807d4&vidid=2781&view=video&page=1))
D1;)

[destiny1]

Telecom Firms to Spend W1.6 Trillion in IPTVBy Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter

Korean telecom firms are to invest around 1.57 trillion won ($15.8 billion) on Internet-protocol TV (IPTV) services this year, the Broadcasting and Communications Commission (BCC) reported Friday.

KT, the dominant telephone and broadband Internet service provider, alone plans to spend 1.3 trillion won, and LG Dacom and Hanarotelecom respectively allotted 146.4 billion won and 122.1 billion won for the Internet TV business.

A large part of the money will be used in expanding and improving Internet networks, the report said, since it is difficult to guarantee high quality for real-time TV broadcasting on existing networks. Purchasing TV content is another big expenditure, the report said.

``By enriching the content of its Mega TV service, KT will endeavor to narrow the information gap between rich and poor people,'' a company public relations officer said.

IPTV is a system where content is delivered to TVs by using broadband Internet lines and a set-top box, instead of using traditional TV antennas, cable boxes or satellite dishes. Users can select programs they want to watch and download material via the Internet at any time they want.

The service operators are also to provide real-time broadcasting of popular terrestrial channels by ``streaming'' the programs via the Internet network this year.

Hanaro Telecom has pioneered the field in South Korea since last year. The firm is expecting its IPTV service to make a profit from the first quarter of this year. Latecomers KT and LG Dacom have also been increasing their marketing activities by offering discounts for subscribers to their telephone and Internet services.

According to the report from the commission, the firms have said that they will spend 1.06 trillion won on improving networks, 113.7 billion won on platforms, 223 billion won on set-top boxes and another 180 billion won on purchasing content. The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute estimates IPTV will be a 540-billion won market this year, meaning it will take a few years for the firms to start making any profits.

Government agencies expect IPTV subscribers to reach 2 million this year and grow to 3.3 million by 2012. The commission, which was the Ministry of Information and Communications, is to introduce regulations for real-time broadcasting as early as this May. Telecom and TV firms have been engaged in a tug-of-war over the price of IPTV programming.

indizio@koreatimes.co.kr (indizio@koreatimes.co.kr)

[destiny1]

Cover Story
LTE has WiMAX in its sights
The battle for "4G" intensifies as LTE supporters claim growing momentum
by Ken Wieland
Thu. March 13, 2008
LTE is the hottest buzz-acronym in the mobile industry. Those attending the Mobile World Congress (MWC) extravaganza in Barcelona last month were bombarded by messages from a variety of vendors (and some operators) saying the time for LTE, or long-term evolution, is drawing ever closer.

And with momentum apparently gathering for this all-IP mobile broadband technology (dubbed "4G" in some quarters), one possible interpretation is that time is running short for mobile WiMAX (which purports to occupy the 4G space now) to establish itself as a mainstream mobile broadband technology.
Alcatel-Lucent and NEC were among the loudest LTE drum bangers at MWC. The two companies announced in Barcelona they had created a 50/50 joint venture exclusively focused on LTE development. The companies will combine existing R&D resources on LTE with the aim of each releasing its first single LTE product line before the end of 2009.
"There are two triggers for the JV with NEC," says Alcatel-Lucent CTO Olivier Baujard. "Increased scale in R&D and market reach, and getting commercial products quicker to market on a global basis."


NEC is already trialing LTE with NTT DoCoMo, while Alcatel-Lucent is trialing LTE with Verizon. "Customers have reacted very positively [to the JV]," Baujard says. "They can see it will be backed by around twice as large R&D and system architecture capability."
The prospect of supplying NTT DoCoMo is a key attraction for Alcatel-Lucent, which Baujard believes will be the earliest and biggest adopter of LTE worldwide. But NEC benefits, too, with the chance of getting a firmer toehold in Western markets.
The LTE product line will develop both FDD (frequency division duplex) and TDD (time division duplex) variants aimed at both CDMA and WCDMA operators. Baujard is optimistic the JV will mushroom quickly. "I wouldn’t be surprised if the JV with NEC, after two or three years, had about 1,000 staff," he says.
Ericsson also demonstrated at MWC what it claimed to be the world’s first end-to-end phone call enabled by LTE. The Swedish supplier says its LTE network equipment supports multi-user data rates of up to 160Mbps per cell, using handheld mobile devices developed by Ericsson Mobile Platforms.
Not so long ago, the general industry consensus was that LTE wouldn’t be around until after 2010. But now, major suppliers are saying the first commercial deployments will be much sooner. Robert Puskaric, head of Ericsson’s mobile platforms business, in a prepared statement released during MWC, said, "This world-first demonstration marks a key milestone in the development of LTE. It proves the stability and integration of our platform with a form-factor-accurate handheld device, reaching uplink and downlink data speeds of 25Mbps already today. Samples of our first LTE platform will be available in 2008."
Jean-Pierre Bienamé, chairman of the UMTS Forum (which supports the 3GPP "family of standards", which it says includes LTE), is equally bullish on LTE development. "I think 90 to 95 percent of LTE standardization is already finished," he says. "I am confident we can finalize the LTE standard by the middle of this year, have the first commercial deployments by 2010, and have widespread deployments during 2011."
In January 2008, 3GPP announced some of the RAN (radio access network) specifications had been frozen, but it was generally believed at the time it wouldn’t be until the end of the year that the 3GPP Release 8 specification for LTE would be finalized.
Bienamé clearly sees it differently and insists there has been no undue haste to catch up with mobile WiMAX in the wake of comments made by Arun Sarin at last year’s show in Barcelona. At the 3GSM event, the Vodafone CEO famously threw down the gauntlet to 3G suppliers to develop data-friendly networks as quickly as possible. He noted that other data-centric technologies, such as WiMAX, could "eat our lunch."


Chris Beardsmore, WiMAX product marketing manager at Intel, which has invested more than US$1bn in WiMAX operations around the world, is skeptical that LTE suppliers will deliver commercial networks in such a short timeframe. "The LTE standard has yet to be finalized and there is still a lot of work to done," he says. "We were doing the same booth demos as LTE are doing now more than two years ago on mobile WiMAX, and we didn’t have a standard agreed [upon] until December 2005."
Bienamé remains undaunted and adds that the NGMN (next generation mobile network) initiative, created last year by some of the world’s leading mobile operators to look at 4G options, is destined to go for LTE. "I think if you take an open view, without being partisan, there is a major trend for converging toward LTE," he says.
Recent announcements would seem to support Bienamé’s view. Telstra, AT&T and Verizon already have committed to LTE and, during the course of the MWC event, China Mobile also revealed it would join Verizon Wireless and Vodafone in coordinating LTE trials, which will focus on both FDD and TDD modes. The TDD emphasis is significant given that China’s homegrown 3G standard, TD-SCDMA, uses TDD. A TDD variant would give LTE a better chance of adoption in China as a 4G path from TD-SCDMA.
As the bulk of mobile WiMAX R&D has gone on TDD, it hardly can be ruled out as a 4G contender in the China market. But the announcement by Ericsson earlier this year that it had demonstrated LTE in both FDD and TDD modes on the same platform would seem to suggest the Swedish supplier, which has no mobile WiMAX portfolio of its own, is looking to compete directly with mobile WiMAX on TDD territory.
The WiMAX Forum is believed to be exploring FDD solutions of its own, however, which would enable it to compete head to head with LTE in the 4G space where operators have suitable spectrum allocations that would allow them to go down either the LTE or WiMAX route.
A converged 4G standard?

Vodafone’s Sarin, speaking at this year’s MWC, called for "unified standards." His proposal is to integrate TDD WiMAX with FDD LTE into a single standard, which would, theoretically, make the lives of carriers much easier. No longer would they have to test both WiMAX and LTE equipment separately and, again theoretically, it would eventually reduce infrastructure costs and optimize R&D resources already allocated by LTE and WiMAX suppliers on FDD and TDD respectively.
Technically, there appears to be no insurmountable barrier to making a unified standard happen. "We estimate there is around 75 to 80 percent reuse between WiMAX technology and LTE," says Fred Wright, Motorola senior vice president of WiMAX and cellular networks. "The LTE equipment we have basically uses WiMAX hardware components, although the software is different."
Wright is not prepared to speculate how long it would take to make WiMAX and LTE interoperate in one single standard. Alcatel-Lucent’s Baujard believes, however, it could take up to "several years."
"If standards do converge, I think it would be best for everyone involved," Wright adds, but IPR issues could be a problem. The WiMAX community has managed to establish a distributed IPR regime where no one company dominates. "We [Motorola] are proposing a similar IPR structure [to various standards groups] for LTE because it is good for the industry," Wright says. "If we have rational people out there, we can work it out."
Motorola, like Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung and Nortel, is developing LTE at the same time it is shipping WiMAX equipment. And with a view on the two technologies, Wright distances himself from comments made by the likes of the UMTS Forum that LTE is more compatible with 3G than WiMAX (see Is LTE a more optimal 4G path than WiMAX?, top right).
"LTE is going to be, essentially, an overlay network," he says. "It doesn’t matter who the incumbent supplier is. The vast majority of base stations that exist today in the world of UMTS or GSM are not upgradeable. Let’s say an Ericsson or a Nokia does have a brand new base station that is upgradeable to LTE. What percentage of those base stations will exist in the global market by the time you start rolling out LTE anyway?"
At the moment, Wright says there is almost no hardware reuse between UMTS and LTE. However, Motorola has developed a retrofit kit to allow an LTE carrier to be installed in Verizon’s existing GSM base stations. By using the same physical package, this will help conserve floor space and optimize power consumption.
But, as Wright is keen to point out in all the debate surrounding LTE and WiMAX, WiMAX has one main advantage over its would-be 4G rival. "The one thing LTE doesn’t have going for it is it doesn’t exist. WiMAX is here and now," he says.
Wright says Motorola has shipped more than 3,000 WiMAX base stations and shipped almost 50,000 CPE units. With 16 contracts with operators, another 60 "active engagements," and a WiMAX order book worth nearly US$1.5bn, Motorola’s WiMAX business is growing impressively. "WiMAX fills a very defined need for certain operators around the world," he says.

http://www.telecommagazine.com/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_4015

[destiny1]

This article speaks to the need for BB across in underservered areas. But like most FTTH proponents, they see fiber as the only answer. Survery says: It cost too much and could not be deployed fast enough to keep up with the demand! Oh, by the way, annually worldwide there are 10x more DSL lines deployed than fiber, cable and satellite combined!
D1;)


Survey says: U.S. needs broadband boost and redistribution
Tellabs calls to close the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’
by Doug Allen
Wed. April 2, 2008
According to a new telecom industry survey from Tellabs, America’s growing economic inequality is coming to broadband service access as well, making the country one of data-rich haves and have-nots.

While 65 million Americans depend on broadband services almost daily for work, education, entertainment and/or general communications, “too many other Americans have no access to broadband services,” in Tellabs’ words.
Much of those “other Americans” can be found in rural or under-served areas that have been marginalized by service providers for economic or geographic reasons. These potential customers can’t even get broadband at the current FCC-defined rate of 200 kbps, at which speed the survey notes, it takes longer to download a movie than to watch it. (See: Audiocast: Tellabs argues for the closing of the broadband divide (http://telecommagazine.com/search/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_4073))
Breaking down the survey results, 451 readers of major U.S. telecom publications shared a general concern for lost productivity, including:
• 89 percent think that lack of broadband access hurts an individual’s educational, productivity, and employment potential.
• 81 percent think that America should some of the current Universal Service Fund to expand rural broadband.
• 79 percent think where you live should not dictate broadband availability.
• 77 percent think that economic status should not determine broadband availability.
“I find this survey of the telecom industry’s perspective stimulating and insightful,” said Ron Westfall, research director at Current Analysis. “A more accurate definition of what broadband is only helps elevate the debate and better frames the serious challenges we face. And whatever industry solution is eventually worked out, it’s obvious the telecom industry will have a central role to play in further expanding access and the services that run over broadband access.”
Many of the respondents supported a new definition of broadband, especially when reminded the U. S. ranks 15th globally in broadband penetration measured against population, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 84 percent feel the U.S.’ laggard status in broadband penetration is a serious problem, while 93 percent think broadband is essential for continued Web 2.0 innovation. 94 percent of those polled decided to overturn the current FCC definition of broadband, with 84 percent in favor of defining broadband as a service that can deliver high-quality streaming video.
Taking the issue a step further, Joe Savage, president of the Fiber to the home (FTTH) Council argues that the government should look for ways to stimulate expanded broadband access deployments.
“We already have the technology and the business infrastructure to take America’s broadband capabilities into the next generation and make this country the world leader in the provisioning of ultra high bandwidth services,” he said. “Indeed, the deployment of these services is already under way, with more than 2.5 million American homes now connected directly into high speed fiber networks. But we need to ensure that national, state and local policies encourage, and do not inhibit, every community’s progress toward the high bandwidth future that is so important to our economic competitiveness.” (See: Fiber runs a forward pass to the home (http://www.telecommagazine.com/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_3885)) (read (http://www.telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_4070))

[destiny1]

Because of huge broadband demand and lack of availablility in the rural areas, there is quite a ground swell regarding government involvement in FTTH deployment. Here is an interesting article. More comments later.
D1

http://img.lightreading.com/internetevolution/TomNolle.gif
FTTH: Coming From a Government Near You (http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=561&doc_id=148317&)
Written by Tom Nolle (http://www.internetevolution.com/bloggers.asp#Tom_Nolle)
http://img.lightreading.com/images/rss_icon.gif (http://www.internetevolution.com/rss_simple.asp?f_s=561&f_ln=Tom+Nolle)
3/14/2008

The future of the Internet depends on its ability to deliver experiences. Things like “stamping out traffic management” or “promoting Net neutrality” are abstract issues that just poke at symptoms of the real problem, which is a lack of access bandwidth and quality of service (QOS). The only solution to that real problem is to get fiber to the home (FTTH (http://www.heavyreading.com/details.asp?sku_id=2087&skuitem_itemid=1071&promo_code=&aff_code=&next_url=%2Flist%2Easp%3Fpage%5Ftype%3Dall%5Frepor ts)) in every industrial nation on the planet. And the best way for that to happen is to get the governments involved.
Japan and Korea have far better Internet service than the U.S. The reason is because a mile of fiber passes a lot more demand dollars there. Korea and Japan have nine and twelve times the U.S. average of “demand density.” Some parts of the U.S. are nine to twelve times as dense as other parts. (Verizon (http://www.verizon.com/) has the best demand density, so it’s no surprise that it’s the only Regional Bell operating company [RBOC] committing to FTTH.) You can’t change demand density; no corporation with a profit motive (that’s every public company by definition) will deploy FTTH at a loss; and no abstract Net neutrality legislation is going to fix the problem.
What will fix it? Make the telcos into public utilities again? Aside from the fact that deregulation has never been successfully rolled back anywhere, there’s no assurance the “utility” will even deploy fiber, or that it will be affordable. Use the Universal Service Fund (USF) or its equivalent in other countries to subsidize FTTH? A USF subsidy hurts the middle class and poor because everyone pays USF charges. So, what’s left?
The only way to get universal FTTH is to make the bold decision to offer a 100 percent investment tax credit to all those who are willing to deploy FTTH. A tax credit of 100 percent means that any FTTH deployment cost could be simply written off against federal tax, dollar-for-dollar.
In effect, the government would be paying for the deployment of FTTH out of tax revenues, which means we’re paying for it out of our income taxes. Income tax is a progressive tax where the burden falls most on the wealthier taxpayers. And that’s where you’ll find high-tech employment -- the group that’s benefiting most from the boom the Internet has already created.
State and local governments can also get into the action by permitting FTTH infrastructure to be financed with tax-free bonds. All of this would turn FTTH from a huge cost to a huge benefit to businesses that deployed it, and FTTH would expand radically.
In fact, the issue might be keeping FTTH deployment from becoming too good a business. Therefore, we would need fast and objective standards to be set for minimum deployment features. That should be done through an independent industry group with representatives from the Internet community and the access providers, charged with quickly setting the standards for the FTTH infrastructure to be deployed. The second step is to require that all FTTH deployed under the tax credits be perpetually open to competitive access under technically viable requirements, and at a fair and present rate.
Access providers already deploying fiber benefit by having their costs reduced. For providers such as Comcast Corp. (http://www.internetevolution.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=1220) (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) that say they must manage traffic (http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=146016&site=cdn) to ensure the user experience, this offers a way of expanding the user experience instead. Public utilities that have been looking at low-capacity broadband over power lines could exploit their poles and rights of way with fiber to the home.
Any of these choices will expand the capacity and power of the Internet, all without destroying the business models of public companies like the RBOCs that have already invested in infrastructure. It would also help the economy by restoring the innovative drive that became a casualty of the tech bubble, but also gave us the best decade in modern history.
There is no question that the Internet is already a powerful public service, and one we can’t assume will be optimized if the disjointed forces of the free market have to somehow carve out profitable niches for all of the players involved. Access is the key to everything, but it’s hard to make it truly flexible and expandable enough to meet present and future needs. A tax-credit subsidy has worked for R&D in general, so let’s expand it to create the Internet of the future.
— Tom Nolle, software engineer and founder of CIMI Corp. (http://www.cimicorp.com/)

[McCloud]

How much would tax credit funding of FTTH hurt Rim? Seems like quite a bit.

Ernie

[destiny1]

Of late, Wimax and FTTH are getting all the media attention. These are certainly the hot topics of the day.

The challenge is, the media is not paying the bills nor running the companies tasked with deploying these new techs. Telcos, like any other business first look at the bottom line. Until the question of how profits will be generated is answered, the tech is not likely to go anywhere. And this question still remains unanswered with regard to fiber-to-the home and Wimax.

Here are several articles concerning Wimax and FTTH which demonstrate this point.

And DSL just keeps plodding along maintaining two-thirds of the broadband worldwide market share.

Wimax deployment in question down under. (read (http://tools.ntnews.com.au/rss_article.php?news_id=2279571))
Australian government cancels Wimax contract, opts for FTTN. (read (http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23471200-29277,00.html))

Projected U.S. Internet Growth
(Disregard the editorial comment that FTTH is the only way to provide this solution :)) - (Video (http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?id=959ddeaa-d869-422f-871e-dace425807d4&vidid=2786&view=video&page=1))

For "economic reasons" Telllabs discontinues GPON Activities for Verizon. (read (http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/telecom/article/tellabs-discontinues-current-gpon-activities-focused-verizon_544748_13.html))

Bottom line: The market will not bear to cost of deployment

D1;)

[destiny1]

Though now older news, this is pretty significant for the wireless industry. Since AT&T and Verizon are both migrating to the 700 mhz spectrum, LTE will be the winner, not Wimax or 3G (Qualcomm CDMA)

Verizon, AT&T big winners in 700 MHz auction

W. David Gardner (wdavidg@earthlink.net)


(03/20/2008 5:12 PM EDT) http://i.cmpnet.com/automotivedesignline/spacer.gif
Verizon Wireless and AT&T, as expected (http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206904726), won most of the spectrum in the FCC's 700 MHz auction, according to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.
Verizon Wireless bid $9.6 billion to grab a large block of valuable spectrum, bolstering its nationwide network and positioning it to roll out next-generation, high-speed wireless infrastructure known as LTE. AT&T bid $6.6 billion to grab spectrum that will supplement the 700-MHz spectrum it purchased before the auction from Aloha Partners for $2.5 billion.
According to an analysis by The Associated Press, the two telecom companies bid more than $16 billion, constituting the vast majority of the overall $19.6 billion that was bid in the FCC auction. With Verizon Wireless and AT&T dominating the auction so completely, hopes that the auction would allow for the creation of a new nationwide wireless service provider were dashed. However, Martin said a large enough percentage of the new licenses went to other companies that competition in the wireless market would increase.
Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon and Vodafone Group, won the highly sought-after nationwide "C" block of licenses. AT&T won 227 licenses from among the B block of regional licenses. Frontier Wireless gained airwaves in the E block of the auction, covering almost all of the United States.
Google, which had pushed for opening up at least some of the spectrum over the initial resistance of Verizon and AT&T, did not garner any licenses in the auction.
A section of the C block will be set aside for devices and services that can be interchangeable by consumers among different vendors. The Verizon unit revealed earlier this week that it expects to certify devices from outside vendors for use on its network by the end of the year.
AT&T has noted that its GSM-based infrastructure already leads to easy swapping of devices and services with other GSM suppliers. Retailers have recently been selling new "unlocked" cell phones that can be used on both AT&T and T-Mobile networks in the United States. The two other major mobile phone services providers -- Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile -- didn't bid in the auction. Sprint has been occupied with management upheaval and deciding whether to concentrate on 3G or WiMax technology, while T-Mobile is preparing to make use of spectrum it won with a $4 billion bid (http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193003341) in an FCC spectrum auction in 2006. The public-safety D block didn't get enough bids to reach the reserve set by the FCC. Consumer groups have asked the commission to investigate whether public-safety groups discouraged wireless companies from bidding on the block of spectrum. The commission and Congress have said they will study what to do next with those frequencies.

[destiny1]

AT&T’s 700 MHz Strategy: LTE

Om Malik (http://gigaom.com/author/om/), Thursday, April 3, 2008 at 3:49 PM PT

The open access restrictions mandated by the Federal Communications Commission on portions of the recently auctioned 700 MHz spectrum (http://gigaom.com/2008/01/24/8-things-to-know-about-the-700mhz-auction/) were among the main reasons AT&T chose not to bid for that spectrum but opted instead to pay more for that of the B-Block (http://gigaom.com/2008/03/20/verizon-and-att-score-in-700mhz-auction/), which complements the slice they bought from Aloha Partners (http://gigaom.com/2007/10/09/att-buys-700-mhz-spectrum-licenses/), according to AT&T Wireless President and CEO Ralph de la Vega.
Verizon Wireless paid $4.74 billion for a majority of the C block spectrum, while AT&T picked up 227 licenses in the B block of regional licenses. Verizon forked out $9.63 billion on spectrum licenses, and AT&T ponied up $6.64 billion. Some on Wall Street have criticized AT&T for paying too much for the Aloha Partners slice of the 700 MHz spectrum, but it seems like AT&T thinks paying a premium so it doesn’t have to share the network with others was worth it. “Our strategy was to acquire the spectrum that complemented our spectrum we acquired from Aloha,” de la Vega said on a conference all with reporters.
He pointed out that the company has enough wireless spectrum to cover 87 percent of the total U.S. population and 100 percent of the nation’s top 200 cities. Also during the call, AT&T officials said the 4G LTE wireless broadband networks based on the 700 MHz spectrum will roll out in 2012. De la Vega said the company has a road map to push the 3G speeds quite high — up to 14.4 megabits per second. (I am checking on this bit as my notes got a little smudged, the risk you run when writing with an old-fashioned ink pen.)
(I will update with details from interviews with AT&T executives.)
When I asked de la Vega whether AT&T would work with anyone outside of their traditional vendors, he said the company wants to explore all options and would be open to working with new suppliers, especially if they have interesting technologies and price points. In other words, don’t be surprised to see some Asian vendors bidding for the 700 MHz business.

[destiny1]

[/URL]
[URL="http://gizmodo.com/tag/at%26t/"]At&t (http://gizmodo.com/375856/intel-working-on-anti+theft-tech-for-laptops) AT&T to Use 700MHz Spectrum for High-Speed 4G LTE Network (http://gizmodo.com/375898/att-to-use-700mhz-spectrum-for-high+speed-4g-lte-network)

http://gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2008/04/wirelessauction2.jpg The mandatory period of silence for 700MHz auction (http://gizmodo.com/370350/fcc-700mhz-auction-winners-verizon-wins-c-block) participants is over, so AT&T is revealing what's up their sleeve (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/wireless/att-buys-25-billion-in-700mhz-spectrum-licenses-308808.php) for the prem-o slice of spectrum (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/the-ultimate-700mhz-auction-guide/the-ultimate-700mhz-auction-guide-what-it-is-wholl-win-and-why-you-should-care-330628.php) on a conference call. AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said that it'll give them more flexibility and bandwidth to handle surging demand for mobile broadband now and later; better coverage (like in buildings, thanks to the spectrum's sweet properties); and an "easier path to 4G technology," that being LTE (http://gizmodo.com/375288/wimax-competitor-lte-runs-wii-online-multiplayer-so-fast-it-seems-local) (which Verizon is also in on (http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/verizon-switches-to-gsms-side-for-ultra-highspeed-4g-technology-327849.php)). They'll primarily be using 700MHz for their LTE network, and since it's GSM based, 4G devices will be able to work in 2G and 3G areas.
So, when's that awesomeness going to happen? Ralph says they "don't need the [new] spectrum tomorrow or even next year" because HSPA (their current 3G standard) has "a lot of headroom." They're going to roll out 4G "when the consumers demand it" (um, I want it now) and when the gear shows up to support it. Feb. 2009 is when the spectrum is clear for use, and beyond that "I think you'll begin to see commercial deployment in select locations." Good news: It's going to be cheaper per megabyte of data. Bad news: You won't really see widespread commercial deployment until 2012. But! They're planning on doubling their 3G speed to 7.2 Mbps downstream in the next year.
Won't comment on WiMax, which presumably, theoretically, maybe will be rolled out sooner than AT&T's 4G network.
He's kind of pooing on the C block which Verizon bought because it's stuck with open access rules—hampered with more regulations, etc. The C block chunk they bought from Aloha earlier wasn't subject to open access rules, and the B block slices they bought to fill in the gaps during the auction wasn't either. Om Malik asks if Ralph's referring to open access rules. Ralph replies that's "exactly correct." He also calls the regulations on the C block "excessive" which gives AT&T flexibility that "other" C block winner won't have.
A dude from the NY Times asks if the open rules kept them from bidding on the C block. Ralph says, "Our strategy in the auction was to complement the spectrum we had already acquired" from Aloha and "we accomplished exactly that." He dodges a follow-up trying to pin down whether they would've bid on the C block if there had been no rules placed on it.
On open access: "I think it's difficult to define what 'open access' is" but AT&T is all about choice, and their networks will be open for applications and development. "It's all about giving customers' choices." Reiterates that you can use any GSM handset "today" while some people are "just talking about it." *Makes dirty eyes at Verizon*
And we're done.

[destiny1]

Qualcomm does what Google threatened: buys spectrum to boost its core business 07/04/2008 09:45:00 - by Andrew Beutmueller


http://web20.telecomtv.com/images/thumbs/news/49211907_BIG.jpgIt’s one way to ensure you get your technology out there.

The San Diego based mobile chipmaker just announced that it has bought its way into eight coveted FCC 700 MHz E-block slices, paying US$558.1 million for the right to offer its MediaFLO mobileTV app in some of the most lucrative mobile regions of Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco Economic Area regions. Qualcomm has thus established itself as the dominant player in the US mobileTV market.
The regions not only pay top mobile subscription rates but comprise about 68 million potential users - just enough to give heretofore nascent MobileTV a bit more traction in the real world.
Qualcomm also snapped up three B block licenses on the cheap for US$3.5 million. This gives Qualcomm access to a large swath of an additional five of the nation's top seven so called "Economic Area regions" extending from New Hampshire to Maryland and from Southern California's Orange County to Northern California - again all highly prized densely populated wireless markets.
Qualcomm CEO Dr Paul Jacobs said "our strategic purchase of E block licenses will enhance our efforts in the mobile TV space and further MediaFLO USA's mission to bring world-class mobile entertainment to American consumers."
It also means the company's FLO TV service will now beam out to more than 130 million people - nearly one half of the US population.

[destiny1]

BT vision and Microsoft TV (video (http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&vidid=2798&view=video&page=1))

[destiny1]

Verizon survey points to enduring landline strengths as key
Mobile offers convenience, but lifeline reliability provides comfort
by Doug Allen

Mon. April 7, 2008
Is there a tipping point for the average American phone consumer when it comes to cutting the cord on the old landline phone and going wireless? Cell phone adoption rates have been moving upward relatively steadily for so long, its esteemed landlocked predecessor can sometimes get lost in the shuffle as wireless applications focus ever more attention on the mobile phone.

But according to a recent KRC Research survey sponsored by Verizon — polling more than 800 consumers 18 and over who pay for landline service — that tipping point is very real. Why? Voice quality and safety considerations such as power back-up still trump the convenience of mobility for many users.
It makes sense that customers remain satisfied with landline service quality, as the 92 percent of respondents did attest, or that 91-98 percent of landline users consider their connection to be reliable regardless of weather, a typical mobile phone concern. But it’s a bit surprising that customers who rely on cell phones still value their landlines so highly as well.
For instance, among these landline users, 76 percent of whom use their landline phone every day: 83 percent of the respondents plan to continue using their a landline home phone indefinitely, even though 74 percent own a cell phone as well; and 94 percent of the respondents cited landline’s “reliability” — voice quality and ability to establish a connection — while 91 percent cited its always- on power status as key reasons for hanging on to traditional phone service. Roughly three-quarters of the respondents — seemingly a low figure — said their landline home phone beat out their cell phone when it came to voice quality, reliability and consistency of service.

The survey also revealed the ongoing psychological impact that safety concerns plays in the decision to retain landline phone service. Nearly half the respondents said they would feel “unsafe” without a landline connection on their premises that isn’t battery-powered. A small sample of responses capture the general feeling of urgency around lifeline services: “My telephone line is my lifeline.” “That’s the one I use the most and it doesn’t have to be recharged.” “It’s most ready in case of an emergency.” “It gives me security that I can reach 911.” And, “When the electricity goes out I can still use the landline phone.” According to the survey, those most likely to hold on to landline service are women, senior citizens, middle-income earners (US$50,000-$75,000) annually) and those living outside of metropolitan areas.
If you’re wondering why all the polling on landline vs. cellular, the answer boils down to one word: bundling. Verizon’s survey has found that that nearly two-thirds of respondents — including those who live in urban areas, younger adults and people who make more than $75,000 a year — say they would consider bundling their landline home phone with TV, Internet services and wireless phone. Moreover, those with both a landline and cell phone are more likely than those without a cell phone to bundle their communications services. Strategically, then, Verizon hopes to use the landline phone as an anchor or gateway service to entice new customers into stickier bundled services, a strategy which was successful for up to half of all new customers by year-end 2007.
Bundling remains one of the telco’s best weapons against encroaching cable competitors who are trying to offer similar triple or quadruple play service plans, but lack the all-important landline phone service infrastructure piece.

[destiny1]

Here is a white paper from frostt. which discusses some of the complexites encountered with IPTV deployment. (read (http://www.frostt.tv/accelerating_iptv_innovation_whitepaper.pdf))

D1;)

[destiny1]

Here is a short summary of AT&T's new VRAD cabinets (Uverse)being installed in cities nation wide. (read (http://www.ci.costa-mesa.ca.us/council/study-session/2008-01-08/AT&T%20Cabinet%20Installation%20Status%20Report.pdf))

This morning on my drive to the office, I stopped and talked to a couple of technicians installing on of Alcatel's new VRAD cabinets in my neighborhood. The question is: Are these new cabinets backwards compatible with CupriaTM line cards?

D1;)

http://us.mg2.mail.yahoo.com/ya/download?fid=Inbox&mid=1_14540_ADVu%2FNgAAXIwR%2F5mjgS2ditVEgg&pid=1&tnef=&YY=1209448789806&newid=1&clean=0&inline=1

[destiny1]

I just remebered something. These VRAD cabinets are VDSL 2 capable. Once VDSL 2 is in place, replacing a VDSL 2 line card with a CupriaTM line line is just a plug-in.

D1;);)

[destiny1]

20 March, 2008 - 2:26 PM
Worldwide Broadband Subscribers Top 349.98m (http://www.ispreview.co.uk/news/EkpypkFEAETNnwIqxC.html)
Point Topic has released its latest 'World Broadband Statistics Report' to the fourth quarter of 2007, highlighting a worldwide growth in broadband subscribers of 4.8% (16.1m) between Q3 and Q4-2007. This number of net additions represents the lowest since Q2-2006, when 14.53 million new broadband subscribers were added.

However, global broadband population penetration stood at 6.1% at the same time, representing a 24% increase year-on-year from 4.9% penetration at Q4-2006. Quarterly growth increased by 0.3% from 5.8% in Q3 2007. The regional Share of World Broadband Subscribers has been rewritten by us below:

Western Europe - 26.82%
North America - 23.31%
South and East Asia - 20.91%
Asia-Pacific - 16.49%
Latin America - 5.23%
Eastern Europe - 4.70%
Middle East and Africa - 2.54%

Eastern Europe, despite coming lower down overall, still managed to top the pack for quarterly growth at 10.45%; thanks largely to the growing markets of Russia, Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic.

For comparison, quarterly growth in North America fell from 7.41% in Q1 to 4.23% in Q4 while growth in Western Europe fell from 7.16% in Q1 to 4.42% in Q4. Regardless of that, North America still recorded the third highest number of net additions (3.3m) after South and East Asia and Western Europe, representing 20% of the global total.

The dominant technologies remain largely unchanged, with DSL (ADSL, SDSL etc.) commanding 65.19% of the global market, cable modems on 21.95% and fibre (FTTx) lines still lingering in the sub-11% range (10.79%). Other technologies, such as wireless and satellite, accounted for a meagre 2.08%.

Despite FTTx's limited global penetration, quarterly growth of subscribers was the highest of the three technologies at 6.35%. This was a higher growth rate than in Q3 2007 when it was 4.26% but not as high as that reported in Q2 2007 when it was 7.81%. Asia continues to be the main source of FTTx subscribers, representing a staggering 83% share.

Top Ten Broadband Countries

1. USA
2. China
3. Japan
4. Germany
5. UK
6. France
7. South Korea
8. Italy
9. Canada
10. Spain

The USA continues to lead with 72.9 million subscribers in Q4 2007. China is in second place with 66.5 million subscribers. Highest growth from Q3 to Q4 2007 was experienced in Germany, which put it in fourth place after USA, China and Japan; its subscriber base increased from 18.8 million to 20 million representing a 6.23% increase.

The countries that experienced lowest growth were UK (1.83%) and South Korea (0.82%). The full report can be found here: http://point-topic.com (http://point-topic.com/) .

[destiny1]

Tech results: So far so good, not out of woods yet


Sun Apr 20, 2008 2:24pm EDT

By Duncan Martell - Analysis
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Phew! The first week of the technology earnings season is over, and many are breathing a sigh of relief because, by and large, the numbers and forecasts from some sector heavyweights were not as bad as expected.

Some were even better than that.
Shares of IBM, Intel Corp and Google Inc all rallied after the companies posted results, though plenty of uncertainty remains, and Wall Street estimates for the second quarter may well be taken down another notch.
Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, said its core microprocessor business was "strong" at the moment, and Chief Executive Paul Otellini, who was in Europe two weeks ago, said he saw no red flags either there or at home.
"From an economic standpoint, the two most mature of our markets (Europe and the United States) are not showing any signs of weakness," he said on the company's conference call. "I did not pick up anything."
Google and IBM said much the same thing. "We're well positioned for 2008 and beyond, regardless of the business environment," said the Web search giant's CEO, Eric Schmidt.
"Second-quarter guidance has been fine, and estimates are generally not falling as many feared," said Justin McNichols, a portfolio manager at Osborne Partners Capital Management in San Francisco.
"Entering the first-quarter earnings season, 2008 estimates for the S&P Tech sector were for a 6 percent year-over-year increase," he said. "Going into earnings, sentiment was this number was not achievable. Coming out of earnings, it appears at least the first half is achievable."

SHOES COULD DROP
But there are still shoes that could drop. The weaker economy is forcing U.S. consumers to find ways to cut their phone bills, for example, likely limiting profit growth for the likes of AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc.
Top mobile phone maker Nokia rattled the market on Thursday by partly blaming the U.S. economy for an estimated drop in the global mobile phone market in euro terms in 2008.
"We're not done seeing some more pain, but that just might be in some of the specific end markets," said Henry Asher, president of New York-based money manager Northstar Group. "The consumer has pulled back so sharply."
Market research firm NPD Group on Friday released a study showing that in just two months, the number of consumers who believe the U.S. economy is in or heading toward a recession or slowdown rose to 84 percent from 79 percent.
"Consumers are generally the last to react to economic downturns; they don't want to halt or cut back on spending, but it is clear they're beginning to throttle back," said Marshal Cohen, NPD's chief industry analyst.

HAPPY POCKETS
Pockets of strength, though, include Internet companies and the video games sector, whose companies have yet to report.
"Google's 46 percent revenue growth and eBay's out-performance on both the top and bottom lines show that the Internet has yet to see adverse effects from the slowing economy," Jefferies & Co analyst Youssef Squali said. "This bodes well for the rest of the group." Apple Inc stock rose 9 percent this week, helped by industry data fueling optimism over Macintosh computer sales and rosy forecasts from Mac processor supplier Intel.
Analysts are also growing more confident that Apple will unveil a faster, sleeker iPhone at a company event in June. That should boost sales of the device and help Apple meet its target of selling 10 million units by the end of this year.
Another bright spot is video games, with U.S. sales jumping 57 percent in March, driven by new games and sustained enthusiasm for Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii console.
Industry leader Electronic Arts Inc is expected to show strong sales of games like "Burnout: Paradise" and "Army of Two" when it reports quarterly earnings early next month.
EA is also bidding $2 billion for Take-Two Interactive Software Inc, whose "Grand Theft Auto 4" is expected to pull in $300 million to $400 million in revenue within a week of its April 29 launch.
Such games drive demand for consoles from Microsoft Corp and Sony Corp. Nintendo sold 720,000 Wiis to U.S. consumers in March, better than any non-holiday month.

THE SHOW AIN'T OVER
But the good news may not last. Yet to report are Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell and Cisco Systems Inc, to name just a few.
"Right now there is a lot of negativity out there," said John Buckingham, chief investment officer of Al Frank Asset Management. "I think the economy is going to remain weak for the next couple of quarters."

Seagate Technology, the world's largest disk-drive maker, gave a muted current-quarter forecast on Tuesday after it noticed U.S. consumers began cutting back in late March.
"People in the U.S. are being cautious," Seagate Chief Executive Bill Watkins told Reuters in an interview. "Every day they are throwing out the newspaper, there's a recession."
His view was supported by researcher IDC's estimates on Wednesday that U.S. PC unit shipments grew only 3.5 percent in the first quarter, down from 8 percent growth in 2007.
"In my view, there's still going to be some turbulence probably until sometime in the summer or as late as mid-fall," said Jerry Dodson, president and chief investment officer of San Francisco-based Parnassus Investments. "You're still talking about a weak economy for most of the year."
(With reporting by Eric Auchard, Scott Hillis and Philipp Gollner in San Francisco, Jim Finkle in Boston, and Ritsuko Ando and Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Braden Reddall) (read (http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSN2037160020080420?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0))

[destiny1]

AT&T Ramps Revenue Growth, Delivers Strong First-Quarter Results

April 22, 2008 7:35 AM EDT
SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T (http://www.streetinsider.com/stock_lookup.php?q=T)) today reported strong first-quarter results, highlighted by a significant ramp in consolidated revenue growth, led by improved results in wireless and enterprise, and further expansion of wireless and consolidated margins. This marked AT&T's 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth in adjusted earnings per share.
"We delivered an excellent first quarter and a solid start to the year," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and chief executive officer. "Revenue growth continues to ramp, we have good momentum across key growth areas, major cost initiatives are on track, and our operational results reinforce the confidence we have in our outlook.
"AT&T's goal is to innovate and lead in a communications world driven by mobility and interactivity," Stephenson said. "To that end, as we deliver strong earnings and return substantial value to shareowners, we are also taking important steps to expand our networks and product sets to drive continued growth in wireless, broadband and IP-based services.

"AT&T is moving quickly to create the next generation of wireless," Stephenson said. "The future of wireless has never been more promising, and I am very pleased that through our transaction with Aloha Partners and our successful bids in the recently completed auction, we have assembled the industry's premier, high-quality wireless spectrum position. This spectrum will provide a terrific foundation for new wireless and integrated services, and it significantly advances AT&T's long-term growth potential."
Reported Results: Ramp in Revenue Growth, Net Income Growth
For the quarter ended March 31, 2008, AT&T's revenues totaled $30.7 billion, up 6.1 percent versus reported results in the year-earlier quarter and up 4.6 percent compared with first-quarter 2007 pro forma revenues, which exclude merger-related accounting impacts on directory revenues. This marks a substantial step up from year-over-year pro forma revenue growth of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 and 1.7 percent in the first quarter of 2007.

Compared with results for the year-earlier first quarter, AT&T's reported operating expenses for the first quarter of 2008 were $24.8 billion, up from $24.3 billion; reported operating income was $6.0 billion, up from $4.7 billion; and AT&T's reported operating income margin was 19.5 percent, up from 16.1 percent.
AT&T's reported first-quarter 2008 net income totaled $3.5 billion, up 21.5 percent from $2.8 billion in the year-earlier first quarter, and reported earnings per diluted share totaled $0.57, up 26.7 percent from $0.45 in the first quarter of 2007.

Double-Digit Growth in Adjusted EPS
AT&T's adjusted results for the first quarter of 2008 exclude merger-related amortization expenses and costs associated with a workforce reduction. Adjusted results for the first quarter of 2007 excluded merger-related costs and accounting effects as well as gains from wireless transactions.

Compared with results for the year-earlier first quarter, AT&T's adjusted operating expenses for the first quarter of 2008 totaled $23.2 billion, versus $22.4 billion; adjusted operating income was $7.6 billion, up from $7.0 billion; and AT&T's adjusted operating income margin was 24.6 percent, up from 23.7 percent.

AT&T's adjusted first-quarter 2008 net income totaled $4.5 billion, up 10.3 percent from $4.1 billion in the year-earlier first quarter, and adjusted earnings per diluted share totaled $0.74, up 13.8 percent from $0.65 in the first quarter of 2007.

AT&T's merger integration and operational cost initiatives continue on schedule. For the full year 2007, operating expense savings from BellSouth and AT&T Corp. merger integration efforts and previously outlined operational initiatives totaled approximately $3.9 billion. AT&T expects these expense savings to grow in 2008 by more than $2 billion dollars.

Cash From Operations, Share Repurchases
Compared with results in the year-earlier first quarter, AT&T's cash from operating activities for the first quarter of 2008 totaled $5.0 billion, up from $4.6 billion; capital expenditures totaled $4.2 billion, versus $3.3 billion; and free cash flow (cash from operations minus capital expenditures) totaled $0.7 billion, compared with $1.3 billion.

As it invests in the future of its business, AT&T continues to return substantial value to shareowners through dividends and share repurchases. In the first quarter, dividends paid totaled $2.4 billion and shares repurchased totaled 111.6 million for $4.1 billion. AT&T ended the quarter with 5.9 billion shares outstanding.
First-Quarter Operational Highlights

[deeba]

Not all HD signals are delivered as they should be or were intended to be. From yesterdays Chicago Tribune.

deeba:cool:



Compressed cable signals irk HD fans
By Chris Williams

Associated Press

April 21, 2008

MINNEAPOLIS—In Brent Swanson's basement home theater, there should be nothing drab about "Battlestar Galactica." He's got a high-end projector that beams the picture onto a wall painted like a silver screen, and speakers loom in the corners, flanking two big subwoofers.

Yet when he tuned into Sci Fi HD for a recent episode filmed in high definition, the image was soft and the darkest parts broke up into large blocks with no definition. Explosions, he said, were just dull.

"It kind of looked like they took the standard definition and just blew it up," said Swanson, a 33-year-old graphic designer and videographer who subscribes to Comcast Corp.'s TV service. "I couldn't really tell if what I was seeing was really better than what I saw on regular television."

As cable TV companies pack more HD channels into limited bandwidth, some owners of pricey plasma, projector and LCD TVs are complaining that they're not getting the high-def quality they paid for. They blame the increased signal compression being used to squeeze three digital HD signals into the bandwidth of one analog station.

The problem is viewers want more HD channels at a time when many cable and satellite providers are at the limits of their capacity, said Jim Willcox, a technology editor for Consumer Reports magazine.

"They have to figure out a way to deliver more HD content through their distribution networks," he said.



Compression cheaper
Compressing the signal is cheaper than costly infrastructure upgrades to increase capacity. Satellite TV providers—including DirecTV Group Inc. and Dish Network Corp.—also have the option of launching satellites to boost the number of HD channels on their systems.

While information is nearly always lost when signals are compressed and then uncompressed, the process can theoretically be made unnoticeable to eyes and ears—and Comcast says it should be.

But some viewers say they can see it. Willcox said complaints about compression have been showing up on Web forums, including the AV Science Forum, a site for serious audiovisual enthusiasts.

"It's not exclusively Comcast, although Comcast being the largest cable provider, is probably the largest target," he said.

Derek Harrar, a Comcast senior vice president in charge of video, said the company recently began using new technology on some channels to compress three HD channels into the bandwidth of one analog station. Other channels continue to get the previous 2-to-1 compression.

Harrar said the company works to make sure any new compression technology is invisible to consumers, but Comcast is "constantly monitoring our network and making adjustments" for best picture quality. The company has been rolling out the new compression technology at different times around the country.

In fact, postings on the AV Science Forum from early April suggest the Comcast network has improved in some places.

And there are other reasons a high-definition picture can appear subpar: The source image might not have been recorded in HD or the television's settings, the viewing angle and even the ambient lighting in the room could be the cause.

New York-based Time Warner Cable has avoided many of the criticisms aimed at Comcast, although the companies are technologically similar and face the same capacity limits.

Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley said before Time Warner rolls out new technology that may affect image quality it sets up two identical televisions in a lab, one with the old signal and one with the new. Technicians make adjustments until the pictures can't be told apart.


Switched video
Comcast and Time Warner Cable have introduced switched video on a trial basis across their networks. In concept, it's like on-demand videos. The company sends only the channels the viewer is watching, instead of all the channels at once.

But switched video has its own issues, including possible slower channel switching times and compatibility problems with digital video recorders.

Willcox said cable providers can't afford to ignore quality complaints. Many customers are already picky about quality after paying $800 to $3,500 for an average-size, HD-ready LCD television.

[destiny1]

Here is Qwest's official announcment of their new FTTN service. They are using ADSL 2+ to attain these speeds. If you remember Rim Semi's recent telecom trial, telcos are getting up to 15 Mbps at 5500 feet. The fact that Qwest is upgrading their cabinets to handle the ADSL2/VDSL 2 offerings is the key. Once CupriaTM line cards are available, Qwest and other carriers that have upgraded their infrastructure to VRAD-type cabinets will get 40Mbps at 5500 feet via a simple plug-in.

D1 ;)

Qwest Launches Two New, Super High-Speed Fiber-Optic Internet Services

DENVER, April 24, 2008 — Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE: Q) today launched a new generation of fiber-optic Internet services that provide unprecedented speed, value and capabilities to residential and small-business customers. Qwest Connect® Quantum and Qwest Connect® Titanium – with connection speeds of up to 20 Mbps and 12 Mbps, respectively – are the latest Internet services powered by Qwest's ongoing fiber to the neighborhood (FTTN) network expansion. In a phased roll-out of Quantum and Titanium, Qwest is introducing the blazing-fast connection speeds in 23 of its top markets, as well as the best overall value for super high-speed Internet in its residential service territory.
Qwest Connect Quantum and Titanium services are well-suited for customers looking for higher speeds to download multimedia files like music, videos and photos, online gaming and file-sharing, as well as business customers looking to maximize productivity with light-speed downloading of large files and documents.
The new super-fast connection speeds of Qwest Connect Quantum and Titanium offer the advanced, customizable capabilities and security features of Windows Live™. In addition, Qwest ranked highest in customer satisfaction in the West region in the J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Internet Service Provider (ISP) Residential Customer Satisfaction Study.
Quantum's 20 Mbps connection speed allows faster access to content than ever before, enabling customers to surf the Web as quickly and easily as they change TV channels. For example, with Quantum customers can download:

a 2-hour movie in as little as 6 minutes
30 songs in as little as 1 minute"Our customers tell us that they want more speed, capability and value in their connections. Qwest listened and has developed the Quantum and Titanium services that really change the game when it comes to today’s online experience," said Dan Yost, executive vice president of product for Qwest. "Qwest has committed to spend up to $300 million to bring the latest in fiber-optic technology closer to the customer than ever before, and we're ahead of schedule on our goal to make this service available to two million customers by the end of this year."
Qwest Connect Quantum & Qwest Connect Titanium: Service Features, Pricing, Availability

Qwest Connect Quantum: This is a premium fiber-optic Internet service with connection speeds of up to 20 Mbps, for lightning-quick broadband access for a bundled price of $99.99 per month. This is the fastest connection speed available in most cities in the Qwest residential service region. Quantum is designed for serious broadband users who want to optimize speed for streaming video, high-resolution photography, file-sharing, online gaming and other bandwidth-intensive applications. Quantum is backed by Qwest’s Price for Life and 100% 30-Day Satisfaction Guarantees.
Qwest Connect Titanium: With connection speeds of up to 12 Mbps for a bundled price of only $46.99 per month, along with the Price for Life and 30-Day Satisfaction Guarantees, Titanium is the best value available in the Qwest residential service region. The service offers super-high speeds ideal for customers interested in online music, video and keeping in touch with friends and family. At less than $50 per month, Titanium offers robust speed at the best value.
Availability: Qwest Connect Quantum and Titanium will be available in 23 of Qwest's top markets across 10 states in 2008 as Qwest continues to execute its phased rollout of fiber-optic technology to the neighborhood. Customers can go to www.qwest.com (http://www.qwest.com/) and enter their zip code or phone number to check availability and sign up for notifications regarding the availability of the faster speeds in their neighborhoods.Qwest Connect Quantum and Titanium complement Qwest's full portfolio of existing Internet services, giving Qwest the fastest and most valuable set of Internet options available in most cities where it provides residential service. As Qwest continues its phased FTTN rollout, the portfolio will expand to accommodate the rapidly changing bandwidth needs of customers. Qwest will use its fiber-optic network as a platform for its vision to deliver integrated communications and entertainment services to customers at home, at work and on the go. (read) (http://www.fiercewireless.com/press-releases/qwest-launches-two-new-super-high-speed-fiber-optic-internet-services?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal&cmp-id=EMC-NL-FW&dest=FW)

[destiny1]

Qwest comes clean on 20Mb/s FTTN

Apr 24, 2008 3:26 PM, By Carol Wilson
more on the topic

Qwest Communications today hailed two new DSL offerings (http://telephonyonline.com/external.html?q=http://press.qwestapps.com/index.cfm?fa=press.view&pressReleaseId=56664), at 20 Megabits per second and 12 Mb/s, over its fiber-to-the-node architecture. Travis Leo, product director for broadband at Qwest, spoke to Editor-in-Chief Carol Wilson about Qwest Connect Quantum and Qwest Connect Titanium.

On availability of the new services: We don’t dislose where we are now, although we will be announcing significant milestones. We will pass 2 million homes by the end of the year, and I can say we are ahead of schedule to meet or exceed that mark.
On the network/technology in use: Our node size is generally from 300 to 500 customers. We are able to deliver these over our ADSL 2+ archtecture without bonding. We are looking at pair-bonding as well as VDSL 2 to increase both the upload and download speeds over time. The typical copper loop lengths vary on a lot of different factors, but we design our distribution areas such that the vast majority of customers in those areas will be able to take advantage of these offerings.
On pricing of the services: The Qwest Connect Titanium is priced at $46.99, and that’s a price for life, not an introductory offer, if you have an agreement with Qwest and the qualifying home-phone package with us. Without the home phone package, it’s $5 more. The same is true for Qwest Connect Quantum. It is $5 a month more without the phone package. We have a bundled discount structure that is different depending on the number of products you have. If you have a home phone, long-distance, broadband and DirecTV from us, you get a $20 savings. If you add wireless as a fifth product, the discount goes to $27 a month.
On how these services stack up to cable in Qwest territory: We think we are providing the right products at the right price for the customer. If you want the fastest speed avialable – Qwest Connect Quantum is the fastest one. If you want a good value, Qwest Connect Titatium is an extremely good value. We did some deployments in 2007 that we are starting to get history on. When faster speeds are available, customers are adopting those faster speeds.
On using faster broadband to subtitute for voice and video lines: Both of these services are available as standalones. We have seen some of that. But we also have seen a really compelling value proposition to bundle Internet with TV and phone. We think our bundle propositon in conjunction with Qwest Connect will also have market appeal.

[destiny1]

Qwest CTO on bonded VDSL2, PBT and more

Apr 25, 2008 1:02 PM, By Ed Gubbins



http://telephonyonline.com/access/news/08Poll.jpg Pieter Poll

In the second part of a two-part interview, Qwest Communications Chief Technology Officer Pieter Poll lends his views on cutting-edge technologies including VDSL2 bonding and PBT. (Read the first part of this interview here (http://telephonyonline.com/access/news/qwest-cto-femtocells-0418/index.html).)

On VDSL2 pair-bonding (http://telephonyonline.com/access/technology/telecom_att_puts_bet/index.html), which AT&T has targeted for deployment late this year (http://telephonyonline.com/access/news/att-pair-bonding-0124/index.html): Good commercial availability of the modems is a 2009 [thing]. A little earlier in terms of equipment, but maturity of the equipment and driving price points where we’d want them may take a little while. I think it all speaks to 2009 as probably the right time frame. Other companies may choose to put linear video on VDSL2. Qwest isn’t saying we don’t want to deliver video signals over broadband to the home. We’re saying: The way we understand linear video today -- in terms of network TV, CNN and so on, in linear broadcast fashion -- is not the video model we necessarily see using the broadband pipe for. I don’t think the bandwidth demands are changing at all; it’s the services consumers are looking for. Video is video, whether it’s delivered from a European, streaming-video quasi-TV station or your local CBS affiliate delivering their linear broadcast signal. We’re doing a fairly significant fiber-to-the-node program this year (http://telephonyonline.com/fttp/news/qwest-20mbps-fttn-0424/index.html). would follow that footprint as we start to introduce higher speed products and other services that would leverage that footprint.
[B]On PBT (http://telephonyonline.com/mag/telecom_new_mpls_debate/index.html): Qwest is always interested in technologies that are going to make things simpler to operate and reduce costs, which are the two big promises of PBT. However, my view on PBT is that the alleged cost reductions have not really appeared yet. There’s an argument that if you try to address the transport problem with T-MPLS, T-MPLS is more expensive because there’s an MPLS control plane involved. Loosely speaking, that’s the argument. I’m not sure I buy that one yet. I appreciate the challenge with developing MPLS control planes. But I think there are people in the marketplace that have developed MPLS control planes and are able to leverage that and not necessarily place it at a cost disadvantage. I think there is an interesting application on PBT against MPLS. Whether that’s conceptually simpler to operate is something we’re having to look at. We have no current plans to purchase or deploy PBT technology. We’re very pleased with what MPLS has done for us so far and what we plan to do with MPLS looking forward.
On using routers as hair dryers (http://telephonyonline.com/access/news/ofc-qwest-optical-0226/index.html): At OFC, I was probably misquoted or underestimating. A router rack probably dissipates somewhere in ballpark of 10 kilowatts. Unless you have a much more powerful hair dryer than I’ve ever seen, that’s probably more like 10 hair dryers. It illustrates a couple points. As we think about what our industry contributes to the greening of the globe, we are continuing to drive down the energy consumption per bit per second. We want to be more effective in how we move information around. It’s not quite fair at this point to pick on router suppliers by saying it’s 10 kw on a rack. They will show you what it is per kilowatt per bit per second, and that is far more effective than older technologies. It’s just that it’s so dense that we have a lot of heat we have to move. Qwest is serious about green networking. We have initiatives on how we remain responsible corporate citizens. As we select gear, we ask hard questions about this. We ask about what are called “swap metrics” – base wattage and performance — which are more standard in the server type of industries. We’re starting to ask questions about materials disposal and the impact on the environment as it relates to how things are manufactured. We want to be responsible in how we get our hands on equipment that we’re using as well as the energy it’s going to consume and what disposal means at some point in the future.
On third-party applications: Qwest absolutely embraces the concept of third parties. QZone is perhaps a step in that direction. QHome provides capabilities that bridge the data world where ISPs and applications partner. MSN, in the consumer segment, has services that bridge with the wireline telephony world. So if you have Messenger on your computer, it will give you a pop-up when you have a call going into your residence or wherever your phone might be. You’ll have call logs. Your voicemail will appear integrated with your email. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The point is really around integration. The way we achieve that integration is we created a parlay interface, which we made available through our wireline infrastructure. That parlay interface is available to others that want to leverage third-party capabilities. It’s tarriffed and available. It’s a step toward starting to create interfaces that really allow the power of the third party to leverage communication networks that people are using. We’re absolutely behind that. If you look at our five strategic tenets, not just the one around partnerships--the one around simplicity is what we’re trying to get to here. As a communications company, we don’t believe we can create everything for everyone.

[destiny1]

China becomes world's largest Internet population

Thu Apr 24, 2008 6:17am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has surpassed the United States to become the world's largest Internet-using population, reaching 221 million by the end of February, state media said on Thursday.
The number of Internet users in China was 210 million at the end of last year, only 5 million fewer than the U.S. Internet users then, Xinhua news agency said, quoting the China Internet Network Information Centre.
"Despite a rapidly increasing Internet population, the proportion of Internet users among the total population was still lower than the global average level," Xinhua quoted the Information Ministry as saying.
The proportion was 16 percent at the end of 2007, compared with 19.1 percent for the world average.
Internet censorship is common in China, where the government employs an elaborate system of filters and tens of thousands of human monitors to survey surfing habits, surgically clipping sensitive content.
But the Internet has most recently become an important tool in countering anti-China protest dogging the Olympic torch relay with an outpouring of nationalism and indignation.

[destiny1]

http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/nws/p/ap_logo_106.png (http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/brand/SIG=br2v03;_ylt=AqB98sIZCbNVIZmC22TXLRlv24cA/*http://www.ap.org)
Clearwire, Sprint Nextel to form $14.55B wireless company

By MICHELLE CHAPMAN, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 3 minutes ago


NEW YORK - Clearwire and Sprint Nextel will combine their wireless broadband units to create a $14.55 billion communications company.

The new company, to be named Clearwire, will receive a $3.2 billion investment from Intel Corp., Google Inc., Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks. The investment is based on a target price of $20 per Clearwire share and will give the companies a 22 percent stake in the new venture.
Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint Nextel Corp. will be majority owner with a 51 percent equity stake, while existing Clearwire shareholders will receive about 27 percent interest.

Clearwire, which will concentrate on rolling out a mobile network based on the emerging WiMAX standard, will also receive an investment from Trilogy Equity Partners, led by U.S. wireless industry veteran John Stanton.
WiMAX promises faster download speeds than the latest networks run by cell-phone operators, and it's even seen as a potential competitor to fixed-line broadband.

Rivals such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless have eschewed WiMax, opting instead for upgrades to their current wireless broadband networks and a future technology called Long Term Evolution.

Clearwire already provides wireless Internet service in some parts of the country, using a WiMax-like technology. The company had a subscriber base of nearly 400,000 wireless broadband customers at the end of 2007.
The new company is looking for a U.S. network deployment between 120 million and 140 million people by the end of 2010.

Sprint and Clearwire, a startup founded by cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, had already announced their plans to build out networks using WiMAX technology, but had been looking for outside funding.

The new company will be led by Clearwire Chief Executive Benjamin Wolff, with Sprint Chief Technology Officer Barry West serving as president. West also leads Sprint's XOHM division.

The Kirkland, Wash.-based venture will house workers from Clearwire and Sprint's XOHM unit and will have research and development and other operations located in Herndon, Va. Its board will consist of 13 members at the start. Sprint will name seven of them, which will include at least one independent director. The investor group will name four members, including one independent. Eagle River, a private investment company controlled by wireless veteran Craig McCaw, will name one member, with the remaining independent member selected by Clearwire's nominating committee.

McCaw is expected to serve as non-executive chairman. Other anticipated board members include Sprint President and CEO Dan Hesse, Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts, Time Warner Cable President and CEO Glen Britt and Stanton.
The deal, which has been approved by the boards of all companies involved, is expected to close during the fourth quarter. The company will apply for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker "CLWR."

Clearwire shares jumped 7.4 percent, or $1.22, to $17.68 at the open of trade. Sprint shares rose 4.5 percent, or 41 cents, to $9.60.

[destiny1]

LTE Jumps Ahead in the Race to 4G

Om Malik (http://gigaom.com/author/om/), Wednesday, April 9, 2008 at 7:45 AM PT

Related Stories



4G Wireless & the Ensuing Bandwidth Boom (http://www.gigaom.com/2008/04/11/4g-wireless-the-ensuing-bandwidth-boom)
LTE vs WiMAX: A Little 4G Sibling Rivalry by LTE Jumps Ahead in the Race to... (http://www.gigaom.com/2008/03/05/a-little-4g-sibling-rivalry/)
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The awkwardly named Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology is pulling ahead in the race for the 4G wireless networks. If carrier plans are any indication, Ultra Mobile Broadband, the upgrade technology for CDMA networks, is quickly becoming a non-factor. Even WiMAX, which was at one point seen as offering significant cost and time advantages, has started to lose out to LTE (http://gigaom.com/2008/03/05/a-little-4g-sibling-rivalry/).
Since so many industry insiders have started talking about the inevitability of LTE over everything else, I have started to keep tabs on different carriers and their 4G plans. Here are some notables that have made their LTE plans public.

Vodafone, the largest global carrier, has been an early champion of LTE (http://gigaom.com/2007/11/29/verizon-picks-lte-as-4g-standard-for-wireless-broadband/).
AT&T plans to roll out its 4G network sometime in 2012 (http://gigaom.com/2008/04/03/open-access-restrictions-may-have-undervalued-spectrum/) utilizing their recently acquired 700 MHz spectrum.
Verizon Wireless has plans to roll out its 700 MHz (http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/NYF02004042008-1.htm)-based network in 2010.
Japanese carrier KDDI, which has been using CDMA technologies for a while now, is said to be favoring LTE over UMB (http://www.engadgetmobile.com/category/lte/).This is not a complete list so much as a directional indicator. (If you have any carriers you want to see on this list, please send me an email.) China and India, the big gorillas on Planet Mobile, have yet to decide their 3G/4G destiny and so remain an X-factor. (More on India down below.)
As more carriers opt for LTE, the equipment makers can start planning for scale and thus bring down the cap-ex costs for these carriers. Lower pricing can have a domino effect, so we could see smaller carriers start to opt for LTE as well. Companies on the equipment side are already making LTE plans.
At the CTIA show in Las Vegas (http://www.ctiawireless.com/), which wrapped up last week, there were a couple of significant announcements:

Chinese equipment maker Huawei Technologies said it will have its 700 MHz products ready for launch in the first quarter of 2009 (http://www.huawei.com/news/view.do?id=5446&cid=42), around the time the carriers can start claiming the wireless spectrum they bought. These offerings include UMTS, CDMA and LTE devices.
Ericsson, which is now a dominant wireless infrastructure equipment provider, announced its 700 MHz plans with its new M700 mobile platform, an LTE-capable platform with peak data rates of up to 100Mbps in the downlink and up to 50Mbps in the uplink.Again, this is not a complete list. (If you want us to include you in future 700 MHz/LTE posts, please drop us a link or short informational blurb via our contact form.)
Our favorite wireless data analyst, Chetan Sharma, (http://www.chetansharma.com/ctiawireless2008.htm) did the rounds at CTIA and his conclusion about LTE concurred with our reporting. “Without a doubt the operator community is rallying behind LTE, and there might be an opportunity to finally converge to a single standard,” he says.
Sharma points out that single standards, while nice and dandy, will soon become a thing of the past thanks to “advances in silicon” that now make it possible “to integrate multiple radios” on single chip. Of course, the potential of software-defined radios are finally beginning to be realized as well; Huawei, for example, will be using SDRs in its 700 MHz gear.
So what about WiMAX? Well in the U.S., things aren’t looking so good. Sprint’s Xohm Network has hit some snags and Clearwire is riding rough seas. A rescue in the form of a new, megabillion-dollar funding for a new WiMAX operator might emerge, but we’ll have to wait and see.
As Sharma notes, “WiMAX has forced acceleration of the LTE standardization process but is starting to lose its time (and cost) advantage.” From what I have been able to learn, WiMAX is the technology of choice in the emerging telecom economies. In India for instance, Tata and Reliance, two giant telecom operators, are spending a ton of cash on WiMAX, as is the incumbent Indian incumbent, BSNL.
Charlie Martin, CTO of wireless for Huawei, in an interview with Fierce Broadband Wireless, said, “We view WiMAX as different from CDMA and LTE in terms of the fact that WiMAX is a good alternative for emerging markets and alternative operators.” If there is one company that knows emerging markets, it is Huawei, so I give Martin’s comments a lot of credence.

[destiny1]

This debut is larger than the first week take of most major motion pictures. Interactive video is driving tomorrow's internet.
D1;)

Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto 4 sales top $500 million

Wed May 7, 2008 7:22am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Software publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc (TTWO.O: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=TTWO.O), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=TTWO.O), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=TTWO.O)) on Wednesday said it sold some 6 million units of its criminal action game "Grand Theft Auto 4" in its first week, with estimated retail sales exceeding $500 million.
The company, which is facing a takeover offer from rival Electronic Arts Inc (ERTS.O: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=ERTS.O), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=ERTS.O), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=ERTS.O)), said it sold about 3.6 million units globally at its debut on April 29.
Retail chains such as GameStop Corp (GME.N: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=GME.N), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=GME.N), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=GME.N)) and Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N: Quote (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/quote?symbol=BBY.N), Profile (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=BBY.N), Research (http://www.reuters.com/stocks/researchReports?symbol=BBY.N)) took advance orders for weeks of the game, which has been lavished with near-universal accolades.
(Reporting by Franklin Paul; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

[destiny1]

Commentary
Using WiMAX to fight the evil empire

Non-mobile freedom fighters band together to fight AT&T and Verizon

by Jim Barthold
Mon. May 12, 2008 http://www.telecommagazine.com/article_images/Barthold_T.jpg
If you can’t join ‘em, fight ‘em. That could be the rallying cry behind the “new” Clearwire which is being shaped from the ashes of the old Clearwire, Sprint’s XOHM, the Sprint-cable Pivot relationship, Google’s failed attempt to control the 700 MHz spectrum auction and Intel’s ongoing need to put its chips in anything a consumer might want and some things consumers don’t even know they want.

The other rallying cry for this band of skywalking freedom fighters could be “Use the WiMAX, Clearwire” as they fight the evil empire of AT&T and Verizon Wireless and its death star femtocell (OK, so maybe that’s pushing the imagery a bit) and 3G mobile broadband.
It’s not unrealistic to wonder how a group as disjointed and ego-centric as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, Intel and Google are going to line up their star cruisers with Sprint and the newly sublimated but never subjugated Clearwire. It’s expected to take until the end of the year to work out all the regulatory details; it may take even longer to work out the pecking order and who gets to order the first strike against the Evil Empire.
One thing is certain, these Jedi knights had no choice but to put up their shields and stand united with their backs to the wall, even if some consider it a suicidal mission.
The cable guys don’t have a wireless play and despite their bravado the services fourplay from Verizon and AT&T has to have them worried. Only Cox, which decided not to participate with Sprint this go-round, bid in the 700 MHz auction and might have some hidden plan to launch its own wireless service. The rest of the cable guys have some AWS spectrum as part of a SpectrumCo venture, but it’s anybody’s guess what they’ll do with it or when. Certainly it won’t be soon enough to fend off the onslaught of 3G mobile broadband.
Google, after making a pre-bid fuss, got stung in the 700 meg auction and this alliance is clearly a way to at least be part of the mobile broadband revolution. Sprint and Clearwire were, of course, doing WiMAX but were kind of drifting in space, not getting the attention they wanted from consumers, the jaded-cynical media types and investors. And Intel just likes to have its hands in anything that can make its chips ubiquitous.
Aligned and allied they make an impressive unit to lead a revolt against the forces of evil and their 3G/LTE plans. History shows, though, that revolutions are generally started by strong-willed individuals who often can’t agree on when to take coffee breaks let alone when to launch preemptive strikes against the enemy. Perhaps history will be wrong. Just because Pivot spun out of control the minute it was named and sank faster than a submarine with a screen door and Clearwire and Sprint couldn’t agree on anything when they first got together and Google talked big but came up small in pushing open Internet doesn’t foretell failure this time.
Perhaps because money’s changing hands, because Comcast chairman CEO Brian Roberts for the first time in his life is feeling some little pressure from uneasy shareholders who wonder how he’s spending their money, because Google really is committed to the Internet, because Intel really, really wants to make WiMAX chips happen and Sprint really, really wants to show its mobile brethren that it’s right and they’re wrong about 4G … perhaps this time it will work.
When the services are launched into the air like so many intergalactic cruisers and the consumers start breaking their bonds with traditional wireless carriers to join the alliance, then it will be time to cheer on the revolution. Until then, the Starship Cynicism will sit in the dock holding onto this passenger’s thoughts.

[destiny1]

U.S. Online Video Up 13 Percent, YouTube Still Top (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,zmuj,2czv,5jgf,tqo,2koc,4gtf)
By Doug Mohney
ComScore (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,zmuj,2czv,cja1,6ids,2koc,4gtf) has released March 2008 from its Video Metrix service, with U.S. Internet users viewing 11.5 billion online videos during the month. It’s a 13 percent gain from February and a 64 percent gain when compared to March 2007.
Google (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,zmuj,2czv,18up,ec8m,2koc,4gtf) sites ranked as the top U.S. video property with 4.3 billion videos viewed and a 38 percent share of all videos; but it should be noted that YouTube.com (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,zmuj,2czv,gatl,1qpr,2koc,4gtf) makes up 98 percent of all the videos viewed in the Google sites category (Note to comScore: Could you break YouTube stand alone next time?). Google added 2.6 share points in comparison to February’s stats.
Far back in second place, Fox Interactive Media has 4.2 percent and 477 million videos viewed, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.9 percent share and 328 million and Viacom Digital with 2.2 percent and 249 million.
Nearly 139 million U.S. Internet viewers watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March. Google sites attracted the most viewers (nearly 86 million), watching an average of 51 videos per person. Fox pulled in a bit over 54 million viewers, followed by Yahoo sites (37.5 million) and Viacom Digital (26.6 million).
Around 74 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video, with the average online video duration 2.8 minutes. The average viewer watched a total of 235 minutes of video.
For more:
- comScore’s March 2008 online video statistics (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,zmuj,2czv,77lv,hipf,2koc,4gtf)

[destiny1]

Thomson Financial News
German govt eyes France Telecom as Deutsche Telekom partner in Europe - report
05.14.08, 7:59 AM ET
BERLIN (Thomson Financial) - The German government considers that France Telecom would make an 'ideal partner' for Deutsche Telekom in Europe, Handelsblatt quoted an unidentified finance ministry source as saying.
Speculation has recently linked Deutsche Telekom (http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/05/11/afx4994473.html?partner=lingospot) (nyse: DT (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=DT) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=DT)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=DT)) - in which the government's 32 percent stake makes it the largest shareholder - with a number of merger or acquisition targets, most recently Sprint Nextel (nyse: S (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=S) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=S)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=S)).
A ministry spokesman said the government is 'very happy with the way (Deutsche Telekom) is developing,' but declined to comment directly on the Handelsblatt report.
The company holds its AGM tomorrow.
tf.TFN-Europe_newsdesk@thomsonreuters.com (tf.TFN-Europe_newsdesk@thomsonreuters.com)

Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/05/14/afx5007057.html)
jms

[destiny1]

Alltel: We will deploy LTE
Technology still three to five years out

By Matt Kapko (mkapko@crain.com)

Story posted: May 15, 2008 - 12:46 pm EDT

Alltel Corp. has committed to LTE as its technological choice for a 4G network, but any significant network upgrades are still three to five years out, the company said on a conference call with investors after releasing financial results from the previous quarter.

“We do currently plan to move towards LTE in the three-to-five year timeframe versus WiMAX, but we’re still early in that,” President and CEO Scott Ford said.

“We are working through our planning phase and will be talking to our board about all that over the next two quarters,” Chief Operating Officer Jeff Fox added. “Certainly there’s no money for 4G evolution anytime in our near-term plans, and so I think from a cash-flow perspective you should not expect to see us talking about 4G anytime at least in 2008.”

AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless earlier this year committed (http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080404/SUB/581566019) to the technology for their 4G plans, and will deploy the spectrum across their recently acquired 700 MHz spectrum (http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=700MHzmain). Those carriers’ deployment timelines somewhat mirror Alltel’s.

Further, Alltel is the second major CDMA carrier (after Verizon Wireless) to switch tracks and select LTE — which stands on the GSM evolution path — as its 4G choice. Thus, the future of UMB, the 4G upgrade for CDMA, remains that much cloudier.

Clearwire Corp., which recently benefited from a seven-party deal (http://rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080507/FREE/590647445) to form a much larger Clearwire that would include Sprint Nextel Corp.’s WiMAX business, stands alone as the only major carrier to select WiMAX as its network technology of choice.

Despite being taken private in a $27.5 billion acquisition by equity firms (http://rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071030/FREE/71030007) last November, Alltel Corp. recorded nearly $125 million in losses during the past quarter, its first full period off the New York Stock Exchange. The company, which blamed the losses on costs associated with the deal, profited $230 million in the same period a year prior.

The No. 5 carrier’s net subscriber adds surged, however, with nearly 380,000 new customers coming into the fold in the quarter, up 63% year-over-year. Alltel’s total subscriber base climbed 9% to just over 13 million customers at the quarter’s close. Subscriber growth was in some cases double what analysts predicted for the quarter.

Average revenue per user (ARPU (http://rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=glossary)) jumped 2% from $52.49 to $53.64 while customer churn was also up from 1.77% to 1.83% year-over-year. Data ARPU climbed 60% from the year prior to $7.50. Revenues were up 11% overall to $2.3 billion.

[destiny1]

U.S. game sales jump 47 percent in April on GTA4

Thu May 15, 2008 8:41pm EDT

By Scott Hillis
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. sales of video game hardware and software rose 47 percent from a year earlier, as Take-Two Interactive Software Inc's "Grand Theft Auto 4" and Nintendo Co Ltd's Wii console stole the show.
The popularity of "Grand Theft Auto 4," however, failed to boost sales of Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 and Sony Corp's PlayStation 3, which both saw unit shipments fall sharply from the previous month.
U.S. consumers bought 188,000 Xbox 360s and 187,000 PS3s in April, data from market research firm NPD showed on Thursday. That was down from 262,000 units and 257,000 units in March.
"The Easter shift from April to March this year I think had an impact on sales during the month," Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian said.
"I know on the hardware side it was a little light but let's see what a month of 'GTA' sales does for those platforms as well as a month without a holiday shift," Sebastian said.
"Grand Theft Auto 4" launched on April 29 and sold nearly 2.9 million copies in the United States in its first five days, NPD said.
Because the criminal action game can only be played on those two systems, Microsoft and Sony were counting on the title to convince those who hadn't bought a new gaming system to seize the opportunity.
"It was surprising not to see bigger hardware sales for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 given the release of GTA IV," NPD analyst Anita Frazier wrote in the report. "However, since the game was only in the market for 5 days during this reporting period, that sales lift could very well be evident in May data."

Sony said PS3 sales were still up nearly 130 percent from a year earlier, and pointed to upcoming games such as "Metal Gear Solid 4" and "Resistance 2" as ones that would spur sales.
"For us it doesn't end after GTA ships," Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment America, told Reuters. "We've got a great back half of the year."
Meanwhile, Nintendo's Wii juggernaut rolled on, selling more than 714,000 units in a sign of unabated demand for the slim white box and its friendly, simpler games.
Gamers bought more than 1.1 million copies of Nintendo's cartoony racing game "Mario Kart Wii," which was the No. 2 game in the month.
"It has a broad appeal that brings in a diverse audience," Cammie Dunaway, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America, told Reuters, referring to the game.
Sony's "Gran Turismo 5 Prologue" racing game was the No. 6 game, selling 224,000 copies. Other top games included Nintendo's "Wii Play" and "Super Smash Bros Brawl", Activision Inc's "Guitar Hero 3" for the Wii and "Call of Duty 4" for the Xbox.

[destiny1]

http://img.lightreading.com/contentinople/franksmith.gif
Report: 11.5B Video Streams in March (http://www.contentinople.com/author.asp?section_id=431&doc_id=153887)
Written by Frank Smith (http://www.contentinople.com/profile.asp?piddl_userid=35)

Wednesday, May 14. 2008 at 03:15 PM EDT

If you can tear yourself away from YouTube Inc. (http://www.contentinople.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=9077) long enough, it might behoove you to know that 11.5 billion videos were streamed in the U.S. in March 2008 (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2223), according to comScore Inc. (http://www.contentinople.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=9236)
Online video views were up 13 percent from February 2008 and up 64 percent from one year ago. The average online viewer (http://www.funnyhub.com/pictures/img/couch-potato-cat.jpg) clocked in 235 minutes of video. That's almost four hours of video.
http://img.lightreading.com/contentinople/2008/05/153887/3175.png
Google (http://www.contentinople.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=2294) (Nasdaq: GOOG) sites took the top position in March, serving more than 4.3 billion videos to account for 38 percent of videos watched. YouTube accounted for 98 percent of all the videos viewed at Google. The 85.7 million Google viewers watched an average of 51 videos each.
Fox Interactive Media (http://www.contentinople.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=11459) sites came in at No. 2 with 477 million videos (a 4.2 percent share), followed by Yahoo Inc. (http://www.contentinople.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=6518) (Nasdaq: YHOO) at No. 3 with 338 million videos (2.9 percent share), and Viacom Digital (http://www.viacom.com/) came in at No. 4 with 249 videos (2.2 percent share).

[destiny1]

It's been stated time and again, the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth, driven by video file sharing, is bringing service providers to their knees.

This is a very interesting white paper authored by Level 3 (http://ticktockstock.com/pdf/Video Changing the Internet.pdf) which discusses the ever-changing business model surrounding video content delivery.

For the first time in video history the consumer has become a major force in both content creation and distribution. Utube, the Internet's most vibrant video site, is simply a massive content distribution channel for consumers.

This creates a huge revenue generating challenge for traditional content providers. How do they profit from a video phenomenon they had no part in creating?

For Rim Semi enthusiasts the take home point is that bandwidth capacity challenges will continue to grow. And this bodes very favorably for future CupriaTM chipset adoption.

D1;)

[destiny1]

2008 Parks Associates @ USC (http://ticktockstock.com/pdf/Users prefer large Screen for Video.pdf) submitted a very interesting white paper which looks at why consumers continue to prefer the big screen over portable devices for video viewing.

I disagree with his conclusions. Even given free content, the psychosocial satisfaction achieved by "escapism" cannot be achieved viewing a 4 inch screen on a crowded New York subway... no matter how great the resolution. Ever been to a movie and the couple next to you didn't silence their cell phones?

They do a good job however of highlighting the fact that though portable viewing device uptake is near 90% in some groups, a very small percentage <10% prefer these devices over the big screen for viewing video.

D1 ;)

[destiny1]

Access Network Upgrades continue to fuel DSL growth (read (http://broadbandtrends.com/Report_Summary/BBT_GlobalDSLPortOutlook_081140_TOC.pdf))

D1;)

[destiny1]

Commentary
Open the broadband pipes!
Users, not service providers drive new applications
by Sean Buckley
Wed. May 21, 2008

http://www.telecommagazine.com/Article_Images/buckley_T.jpg In 2004, when I asked Keith Scarzafarva, director of technology for New York-based independent ILEC Warwick Valley Telephone, why it offered naked DSL (or what the industry officially calls dry loop DSL, which allows you to get data service without voice), his response was simple: meeting the needs of gamers.
With naked DSL, gamers could get a dedicated, higher-speed, data-only DSL connection. While online games are now more advanced, at that time, gamers were telling Warwick Valley a dedicated connection would prevent a gamer’s interactive session with an opponent in another location from potentially timing out.
Bear in mind, those smaller independent ILECs like Warwick Valley — many of which face degradation of their precious PSTN lines to cable operators and wireless substitution — can be a bit faster on the feet than their larger ILEC counterparts.
Nonetheless, whether you’re a small ILEC or a large RBOC, the significant trend here is service providers are realizing they can’t do business as usual anymore.
Unlike the old monopoly telephone days where the service provider told you what you could get, it’s clear the tide is shifting to a paradigm where applications, whether they are developed by the service provider or not, are driving bandwidth requirements and the applications used.
Whether it’s a gaming application or a video download, the fact is the service provider and user relationship has changed to one where the provider no longer dictates how or what service the end user gets.
Martin Creaner, president of the Telemanagement Forum, points out in a recent Telecom Online column The shifting value chain: adapt or face the consequences (See: http://www.telecommagazine.com/search/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_4125&SearchWord=) that this paradigm shift has created two unique situations. On one hand, the service provider will deliver the service or application directly to the end user. On the other hand, the service provider is nothing more than a bit pipe provider, while the third-party gaming company or video service owns the customer relationship.
Taking it up a level, Creaner adds that the ultimate model will be more open access, whereby the service provider invites a third party to use its network infrastructure, including elements such as billing and authentication.
“The [end users] may believe they have a relationship with an independent third party, such as a music download service,” Creaner writes.
No matter if the service provider or a third-party owns the customer, the relationship should be transparent to the user.
Those entities that own the customer relationship are a broad mixture, ranging from gaming-centric service providers such as GameRail or Cinema Now for movie dowloads.
Although Game Rail shut down last month and there were reports that the service did not work as well as advertised, gamers brought their broadband network connections and connected to a dedicated network that bypassed the public Internet and worked with major operators. In this case, Game Rail owned the gaming customer relationship. The user downloaded the service or application and went off happy.
Getting what you pay for

Of course, the growing demand for interactive applications obviously will require more bandwidth. Fueled by interactive gaming and newer video-based features such as YouTube, a service provider’s bandwidth capabilities will have to keep up.
So just how much bandwidth is enough? Is 10Mbps enough, or maybe 20Mbps or 30Mbps? I think that depends on what the user wants to do.
In the case of a YouTube application, users are not only downloading their favorite Jackass video, but also perhaps uploading their kid’s soccer game. The increased velocity of upstream bandwidth applications ultimately will require service providers to be smart about how they provision and deliver bandwidth.
While their strategies may differ, the RBOCs and even the cable guys with their respective FTTN/FTTH and DOCSIS expansions are trying to accommodate end users with asymmetrical, multiple megabit per second speed packages.
Verizon’s FTTH-based FiOS service offers speed tiers starting as low as 5Mbps/2Mbps for US$42.99 up to the 30Mbps/15Mbps at US$139.95 package. Meanwhile, Qwest, in a move some bloggers say is still too expensive, offers users two high-bandwidth packages: Qwest Connect Quantum with 20Mbps at US$99 a month and Qwest Connect Titanium at US$46.99 a month with up to 12Mbps of bandwidth.
Qwest’s CTO Pieter Poll told me recently he’s confident that with their US$300 million fiber-to-the-node investment, he’ll have enough bandwidth to support his public IP address space vision.
“Qwest has always believed in the power of the public Internet. It’s our goal to enable that public Internet and we would like to make as much of the bandwidth going to the home available for public Internet applications,” Poll said.
As long as the usage is legal, Poll aims to give users the freedom to pick and choose how they want to use their connections.
No matter what the speed or price for telecom service, service providers must embrace the fact their end-user relationships have become multidimensional.
To survive, service providers must open their pipes and be more agile to the changing nature of their users.

[destiny1]

Keep your hands off my copper, man
Fiber may hold future, but copper remains strong
by Sean Buckley
Tues. May 20, 2008
It seems almost ironic that as large RBOCs and even independent operating companies (IOCs) migrate their last-mile network infrastructures to fiber there still are a number of reasons to love the copper line.
In the late 1990s, just as the optical boom began in earnest, a parallel trend began to emerge with the copper line.

Taking a cue from the underlying technologies that helped launch DSL in the mid-’90s, a host of new innovations (i.e., ADSL2+ and VDSL2, pair bonding, MIMO/DMT and dynamic spectrum management) can expand the rate and reach of the copper line. (See: There’s Still Gold in that Copper (http://www.telecommagazine.com/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_2661), Telecommunications Americas, January 2007).
All these innovations can achieve what Jim Hansen, Embarq’s senior vice president of network services, says can effectively “stretch the copper.” Similar to AT&T and Qwest, EMBARQ has been pursuing a fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) strategy to deliver ADSL2+ services to residents and is examining other bonding technologies to expand its business services portfolio.
Not surprisingly, you’ll get a different story on what the RBOCs want to do with their existing copper.
Clearly, Verizon is the most aggressive on the FTTH front. The operator plans to spend US$23 billion to extend FTTH to 18 million residences by 2010.
Alternatively, Qwest and AT&T are content to extend the capabilities of their existing copper assets with a hybrid fiber/copper FTTN strategy. For sure, these innovations will have their place in extending the rate and reach of copper lines to the residential user, but are helping to extend Ethernet into smaller business sites.
Still, the RBOC’s copper loop retirement has become a major debate among competitive carriers and even the end customer.
CLECs’ regulatory dogfight

Unless you’re a large corporate account, it’s unlikely you’ll have the muscle to demand a large carrier build a fiber to another office outside your headquarters in downtown New York or Boston.
However, old faithful copper will be there.
Leveraging new copper innovations has become the CLECs’ weapon to target SMBs whose needs may surpass T1 access but can’t afford or need a fiber-based, 10Mbps-and-above service.
Following the lead of the former BellSouth (now AT&T), which apparently has re-ignited its own Ethernet over Copper (EoC) program, a number of pioneering CLECs are using EoC to target what Vertical Systems Group calls the fiber availability gap. (See: Closing the Fiber Availability Gap (http://www.telecommagazine.com/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_3095))
Just as the CLEC community tries to get back on balanced ground with its suite of Ethernet over Copper offerings, the ILECs’ fiber drive has become a double-edged sword.
CLECs’ copper delivery strategies for Ethernet and related services have been paying off. XO, for example, has added EoC to complement its fiber-based and wireless-based Ethernet service products. Through Hatteras’ EoC technology, XO has been able to expand its Ethernet footprint to more than 75 markets in the past year. (See: XO turns to copper for national Ethernet access push (http://www.telecommagazine.com/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_4177))
Sticking to their respective regional footprints in the South and Northwest territories, NuVox and Integra have targeted SMBs with their own brand of services that can scale down to as low as 2Mbps and above. The sweet spot with these operators has been the smaller or perhaps midsize businesses that need more than a T1 line but not quite 10Mbps.
What’s threatening CLECs and their EoC ambitions are the current federal rules that govern how an ILEC can retire a copper loop. Under the current ruling, an ILEC can turn down a copper loop without much more than 24 hours’ notice.
Although there have been no reports of a CLEC being affected, the imminent danger has them worried.
“The problem with this harm reliance the FCC has is that if you are an immediate impacted carrier, you can’t stop it; they can give you a better date to work with,” says Lisa Younger, director of federal regulatory affairs for XO Communications. “If they don’t get the rules fixed, all of a sudden when carriers are threatened, it will be too late.”
Showing their support and dismay over this policy, last year a group of CLECs—that included Integra Telecom, XO and NuVox—petitioned the FCC to have the rules changed.
True to form, the FCC has not responded one way or another. Meantime, the RBOCs continue to ask for regulatory relief in the states they serve.
Separately, copper retirement is also being fought at the state level. Industry groups and CLECs in Maryland and California have filed petitions with the respective public utility commissions to open a Order Instituting Rulemaking (OIR) into whether or not to adopt new rules on how ILECs retire their copper loops.
In January, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved an OIR granting California Association of Competitive Telecommunications Companies' (CALTEL's) July 2007 petition that will consider whether the commision should “adopt, amend or repeal regulations governing the retirement or other removal of copper ‘loops’ and related facilities” by incumbent operators such as AT&T and Verizon.
Of course, one could argue, why not just build out your own last-mile facilities?
Many facilities-based CLECs are fiber rich on the metro- and even the long-haul side, but still have to use the UNE-L loops to connect to the end customer to deliver DSL, T1 and increasingly EoC.
Building out their own last-mile networks becomes even more challenging for CLECs such as Integra Telecom, which is targeting the SMB side of the market.
“When you’re serving customers at the lower end, as we are, with one, two, three, 10 or up to 100 employees with an average of eight to 10 lines of service, those customers are generating, say, $450 a month in revenues,” says Russ Merbeth, assistant general counsel for Integra Telecom. “At US$450 a month, it’s going to take you a lifetime to recoup the investment you would need to make to run a single line to that customer.”
Leggo my copper

Knock copper if you must, but there is a certain comfort level and predictability to the copper line. After all, copper facilities are line powered, so you never have to worry you won’t have voice or dial-up backup if the power goes out. Not only does disabling copper line eliminate network redundancy, but also it could be a competitive issue.
“There’s no reason, if a residential customer elects FiOS, to disable the copper going into the home,” argues XO’s Younger. “What if that customer chooses not to have FiOS and their copper has been disabled, they are wedded to the FiOS service and have a truck roll to reestablish a copper connection. There’s no reason any of that has to happen because it can be left in place.”
For business-driven carriers like XO, residential copper cutoffs aren’t really a problem. However, for Cavalier, a Virginia-based carrier that offers both residential and business services over copper, it will be an issue.
And as Verizon and even much smaller independent ILECs continue to retire their copper, there’s no shortage of anecdotes about how residents are demanding their carriers keep their copper line as a backup or saying they don’t want fiber service at all.
According to Verizon, customers who order FiOS are supposed to be asked three times if they want to maintain their copper lines: first, by the customer rep; second, in writing on the work order; and, third, by the technician. While this may be Verizon’s corporate policy, some consumers have said they were not aware the copper line was cut or they were forced to do so.
Independent public relations proprietor Paul Schneider—who interestingly enough covers the cable industry—said that, while he has not had problems with the FiOS data capabilities, he decided to give up his whopping $5 discount to keep the copper line. The reason was quite simple: uptime.
“One of the biggest issues was reliability—not necessarily of FiOS (I have had close to zero problems there), but in terms of power,” he explained. “We generally have a few power outages a year around here from old trees or auto accidents taking down lines. They can range from a few hours to a day or more. I wanted to make sure I would have phone connectivity and probably more important dial-up connectivity when that happens.”
This, however, is not an entirely isolated case.
Other smaller independent ILECs, while not the headline grabbers of AT&T or Verizon, have run into protests by community members when they tried to replace their copper with fiber as part of their network upgrade projects.
Georgia-based Pembroke Telephone is upgrading its existing copper plant to serve residential and business ADSL2+ services. Ironically, the IOC is running into trouble not only with the local new homes contractor who can’t see FTTH as an amenity, but also with older residents.
Even after offering one older resident the opportunity to be the first with FTTH, she turned them down.
“Selling people, especially older people, on fiber to the home has also been challenging,” says Noah Covington, Pembroke Telephone’s plant manager. “I had an older lady here who had never had DSL. I said to her, we have fiber running by your house and you could be one of the first people in Pembroke to have fiber to the home. She was like, I need to try DSL.”
Similarly, New Mexico-based Tularosa Basin Telephone, a company formed out of the ashes of old US West/Qwest exchanges, says the reaction to FTTH, which has been a company-wide replacement initiative, has been mixed.
(con't)

[destiny1]

“We have some customers that are ecstatic,” says Nathan Fuchs, OSP engineer and project manager. “Then there are other customers not as interested in technology who look at it from the standpoint of ‘I did not ask for this and I don’t want you to drill a hole through my house for technology I don’t want at this time.’”
Although Tularosa has had to explain that, they had to do this to maintain service, some customers “disconnected their service because they don't want to deal with it.”
Fiber may be the future, but copper is not going to go without a fight.

[deeba]

From today's Chicago Tribune.

deeba:cool:

China telecom mergers boon for suppliers
The Associated Press

8:01 PM CDT, May 26, 2008

BEIJING — China's phone companies will merge into three large groups in a long-awaited government restructuring of its giant telecom market that could lead to billions of dollars in new orders for foreign equipment suppliers.

A plan announced over the weekend calls for energizing competition by bringing together mobile and fixed-line operators. It says once mergers are complete, licenses for next-generation services will be issued — a step that would require heavy spending on new equipment.

The announcement said mergers were expected to take place as quickly as possible but gave no time frame.

The plan is aimed at creating more robust competitors to China Mobile Ltd., which dominates China's market and is the world's biggest carrier by number of subscribers, with more than 400 million accounts.

It would result in three groups based around the parent companies of China Mobile and fixed-line carriers China Telecom and China Netcom.

The competitive environment will "dramatically change" over time, but China Mobile is unlikely to lose its dominance for at least one to two years, said Fitch analyst Jinqing Li.

Fixed-line carriers are struggling to attract new business at a time when first-time customers are passing up traditional service in favor of mobile phones. China Mobile's smaller rival, China Unicom, also is having trouble attracting users.



Dominant role
The merger plan highlights the communist government's continued dominant role in the industry even after an earlier restructuring that broke up China's phone monopoly into smaller competitors.

The plan released by China's telecoms regulator, the Ministry of Information Industry, directly applies to the state-owned parent companies of Chinese carriers.

But it is expected to affect subsidiaries that have public shareholders abroad and create new commercial opportunities for equipment vendors such as Sweden's AB LM Ericsson, Franco-American company Alcatel-Lucent SA, China's Huawei Technologies Co. and Nokia Siemens Networks, a partnership between Finland's Nokia Corp. and Germany's Siemens AG.

The mergers would set in motion the awarding of licenses for third-generation, or 3G, service that supports wireless video, Web surfing and other services, the government statement said.


Billions in orders
Nokia and other suppliers are anticipating billions of dollars in orders for 3G equipment.

China has the world's biggest population of mobile phone users, with some 520 million accounts, and the government says that should reach 600 million soon.

The plan's rollout began Friday with the announcement that China Mobile's parent, China Mobile Communications Corp., will acquire China Railway Communication, also known as Tietong.

The plan also calls for China Telecommunications Corp., parent of China Telecom, China's main fixed-line carrier, to buy a mobile network from China United Telecommunications Inc., Unicom's parent company.

The rest of Unicom would be folded into fixed-line China Network Communications Group Corp., Netcom's parent. The remaining carrier, China Satellite Communications Corp. would be taken over by China Telecommunications.

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

[destiny1]

Long live Videotex
Internet becomes the dominant news and information portal
by A. Michael Noll (special to Telecommunications)

Wed. May 28, 2008

http://www.telecommagazine.com/Article_Images/3843_mnoll_T.jpg
Finally, after decades of promise, the electronic newspaper has arrived and its paper-based version is slowly dying.
The basic concept of an electronic newspaper goes back to the 1970s when Videotex was first introduced. The basic idea of Videotex was to use an electronic terminal to access information stored remotely in a central computer. The home TV receiver was used for the display of text and graphic information, thereby reducing the cost of the terminal. There were predictions that Videotex would soon lead to the demise of the paper-based newspaper.
http://horizon.bvdep.com/banmanproV8/ad.aspx?ZoneID=969&Task=Get&Mode=HTML&SiteID=14&uid=&JournalId=0&PageID=45417PM7055476 (http://horizon.bvdep.com/banmanproV8/ad.aspx?ZoneID=969&Task=Click&Mode=HTML&SiteID=14&uid=&JournalId=0&PageID=45417PM7055476)
Videotex was introduced during the late 1970s, initially in Great Britain in 1979 and then with trials in the United States in the early 1980s. The British service was called Prestel; a U.S. service developed jointly by AT&T and Knight-Ridder Newspapers was called Viewtron. In the end, both offerings failed in the marketplace. The technology was not yet ready, the home TV set was not really appropriate for the display of text, and the idea of a single large centralized database of information was flawed.
Videotex was expanded to include electronic yellow pages. Some people believed that AT&T would monopolize both news and advertising in this new electronic era. All were wrong — Videotex and electronic yellow pages were premature and would have to await cheap personal computers, the Internet, and search engines. In the ensuing decades, the old AT&T was broken apart and then reformed from SBC — but no longer with any interest in terminals or the provision of news.
So now finally after decades have passed, the Internet offers timely news that you want and when you want it. Also, the Internet makes it far easier to find telephone numbers, stores, and goods than any paper- based yellow pages could ever provide.
The lesson to be learned from all this is to be patient — it sometimes can take decades for novel services to succeed. And when they do, it might be in a modified form from the original.
A. Michael Noll is Professor Emeritus of Communications at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Rowman & Littlefield published his most recent book, The Evolution of Media.

[deeba]

Set-top boxes fading out

Cable operators hope a new internal system—dubbed tru2way—will keep Internet competition out of the living rooms of their customers


By Wailin Wong

Tribune reporter

May 29, 2008

In the quest for the ultimate home entertainment system, the days of the cable television set-top box may be numbered.

As soon as this holiday season, televisions will become available with the familiar cable box effectively embedded in the set, giving consumers easier access to interactive digital cable, including on-demand services, digital video recording and other features cable subscribers currently control through their set-top boxes.

With a built-in cable connection, viewers would need just one remote control to operate both the set and cable service.

But the cable industry mainly sees the new technology as ushering in the next generation of two-way services allowing viewers to interact more with programming and advertising.

The cable operators say that as momentum builds for the internal system—dubbed tru2way—a variety of interactive features such as gaming, shopping or voting for a reality show contestant will be built into TVs. Sets might eventually have broadband connectivity so viewers can check their e-mail on their TVs while they watch a program, for example. In addition, the technology will be embedded into consumer electronics such as portable media players or mobile phones so the different devices can interact with each other.

The technology is "about providing a national platform for consumers to buy televisions that don't need a set-top box," said Brian Dietz, a spokesman for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, which includes the country's six largest cable operators, covering more than 82 percent of U.S. subscribers.

Sony Electronics came onboard Tuesday, announcing it has signed an agreement with the association to support the technology. Other big manufacturers have also agreed to adopt the standard for their products.

If the interactive services touted by the cable industry sounds like what consumers already do on the Internet, it's because cable operators want to protect their traditional business from the onslaught of online media. The ongoing race to integrate the Internet with television has created a confusing array of on-demand services and gadgets, many of which compete with cable services.

Consumers can record programs on their TiVo devices or watch streaming TV shows and movies for free on Web sites such as Hulu.com. Last week, online movie rental company Netflix introduced its own set-top box that lets its customers stream a limited catalog of movies on their TVs. Apple has a device that can rent films from iTunes and play stored media such as digital photos on a TV set.

The tru2way initiative comes "at a time when the cable industry needs to distract you from the Internet," said Forrester analyst James McQuivey. "They're trying to celebrate the fact that Sony is onboard. What they're really trying to say is: 'We've got you taken care of, family. … You don't need Internet in the living room.' "

The cable industry touts its "triple play" services: voice, broadband and television. If consumers find an easy way to link their personal computers to their TV, they might cancel their cable TV subscription and just keep the broadband connection. Cable companies want to keep viewers using their premium services. They believe the Internet-like, interactive features enabled by the new technology will help "stem the tide of users fleeing toward online types of sources for content," said Sean Wargo, president of The Market Sage, a consumer electronics consulting firm.

Besides Sony, big manufacturers such as Samsung, LG and Panasonic have already embraced the technology. No TVs with tru2way are on the market yet, but Dietz said some Panasonic sets might be available by this year's holiday season. Sony Electronics spokesman Dave Migdal said in an e-mail the company doesn't yet have a release date for its first tru2way products.

"HDTV sets are an obvious starting point," Migdal said, with other products such as Sony's VAIO computers, Blu-ray players and PlayStation 3 systems eventually incorporating the technology. Sony is also looking into Internet video-enabled TV sets, as it manufactures a separate device that can stream Internet video from providers such as CBS and AOL onto a TV.

Industry executives say the familiar set-top boxes will still be around for many years, given the millions of consumers whose current TVs are still working fine. Anya Chambers, a spokeswoman for Motorola, a major manufacturer of set-top boxes, said none of the company's cable customers have plans to change their business models.

The new technology is "not a straight replacement" for the traditional boxes, Chambers said. "There's room for both."

Wargo said he believes the new TV sets could have appeal. The majority of cable subscribers are more comfortable navigating a traditional cable television channel guide than sorting through Web sites and online services to watch their favorite programs. When they upgrade their sets, they might be ready to chuck their set-top boxes but not cut their cable connections entirely.

"There's a strong installed base of users who will probably find this compelling as they look to adopt more advanced features like DVR or video on demand," Wargo said. "For more main or late adopters who are still on the fence, … they might see this as a safe way to get in the pool."

wawong@tribune.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

[destiny1]

This is an older article that breaks down the announced China telco realignment. DJ initially posted one similar to this a few days ago.

Basically, Chinese telcos will now look more like other telcos which have both fixed and wireline assets. Prior to the restructuring, Chinese telcos had one asset or the other.

This restructuring came as result of the ongoing wireline losses experienced by China’s major fixed operators, China Telecom and China Netcom. Currently, wireless is the more robust service. The realignment appears to therefore level the playing field and allow the wireline carriers to compete with wireless.


Personally, I believe this is a boon for the incumbent wireline carriers. They will now be able to compete with the wireless carriers directly as well as provide fixed triple play/bundled services. In addition, as the wireline pipes get larger new fixed applications will again drive revenue into the sector. In the years to come, wireline revenue will again compete and possibly surpass wireless. This “convergence” will again create communications monopolies controlled by a few very large media conglomerates. Then once again the government will step in and break apart the very entities it created.

Didn’t that occur with the breakup of AT&T during the late 80’s?

D1;)

Market Scan
China Telecoms Sector Shake-up Reported In The Works (http://www.forbes.com/markets/2008/01/11/china-telecoms-restructuring-markets-equity-cx_vk_0111markets02.html)
Vivian Wai-yin Kwok (javascript:fdcBioWindow('vivianwai-yinkwok')), 01.11.08, 4:38 AM ET

HONG KONG -
Chinese telecoms stocks traded heavily on Friday in Hong Kong, in the wake of a rally Thursday sparked by news reports that the central government has finally given the green light to restructuring the sector, though in the end there was only one clear gainer, China Unicom.
Beijing has reportedly endorsed a reorganization of China’s telecommunications industry. The first change entails merging the country's biggest mobile telephone operator, China Mobile (nyse: CHL (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=CHL) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=CHL)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=CHL)), with fixed-line provider China TieTong Telecommunications Corp., formerly known as China Railway Communication Co. China Mobile will also be granted the right to build a nationwide fixed-line network.
The second initiative will merge the global system for mobile communications business of China Unicom (nyse: CHU (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=CHU) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=CHU)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=CHU)), the smaller of the country’s two major cellular phone operators, with fixed-line company China Netcom (nyse: CN (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=CN) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=CN)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=CN)). Finally, the nation's largest fixed-line operator, China Telecom Corp. (nyse: CHA (http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=CHA) - news (http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=CHA)- people (http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=CHA)), will acquire Unicom's code division multiple access mobile division.
Currently, each Chinese telecoms operator has concentrated on either the mobile or the fixed-line sector. Upon completion of the reform, three telecoms giants--China Mobile, China Netcom and China Telecom--will be left to provide a full range of fixed-line and mobile communications services. The shake-up is aimed at introducing competition into the industry, spurring market discipline and efficiencies and providing more choices to consumer.
The central government put the finishing touches on the blueprint for telecoms sector reform at meetings last month and this month, the South China Morning Post reported Friday, citing an unnamed official.
Given an opening to expand into the profitable mobile communications sector, China Telecom and China Netcom--regarded as biggest winners from the market integration--are expected to turn around their fortunes, no longer tied to the shrinking fixed-line business. By contrast, China Mobile will doubtless face stiffer competition and loss of market share in the cellular market it had long virtually monopolized.
The news about the official approval of the revamping of the telecoms sector was first reported two days ago by the mainland portal Sina.com, leading to a stir across China and Hong Kong.
Shares of China Mobile dropped 0.7%, or 90 Hong Kong cents (11.5 U.S. cents), to 134.20 Hong Kong dollars ($17.21), on Friday morning, following a fall of 1.1% on Thursday. China Telecom retreated 3%, or 21 Hong Kong cents (2.7 U.S. cents), to HK$6.79 (87 cents), after the stock soared 6.1% the previous day. Shares in China Unicom surged Friday morning 6.1%, or HK$1.06 (14 cents), to HK$18.58 ($2.38), on top of a 7.2% rise the preceding day. China Netcom’s stock sputtered, down 0.2% to HK$25.00 ($3.21) at midday.
Chinese authorities have not confirmed the news. But in a research note released Friday, Michael Meng, an analyst with Citi Investment Research, said the plan is highly anticipated and a welcome decision.
Meng predicted that every market player would benefit from the restructuring scheme. "Fixed line operators would get the much needed mobile networks, bundling with their fixed line and broadband data products to be a triple play. Equipment vendors would benefit from the resumed telecom spending, helping operators to ramp up capacity. Even China Mobile would benefit from reduced regulatory uncertainty."
However, another brokerage firm, UBS, regarded the news as "another false alarm." UBS said it does not see restructuring happening before the Beijing Olympics in August, and it could be delayed to 2009.
In a research note, UBS said, "Basically, we have not seen any clear regulatory driving force from the central government after the political reshuffle. We believe neither restructuring nor 3G licensing decisions could finalize before the political landscape crystallizes a bit more in China."
-- Thomson Financial News contributed to this article.

[destiny1]

Latest broadband stats:

http://www.wirelessbroadbandsystem.fi/bbstats.htm (http://www.wirelessbroadbandsystem.fi/bbstats.htm)

[destiny1]

China Telecom buys Unicom's CDMA net and pledges fealty to LTE (http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=43254&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10)
03/06/2008 10:24:00 - by Commsday



http://web20.telecomtv.com/images/thumbs/news/519893442_BIG.jpgHaving freshly announced the purchase of China Unicom’s CDMA network, China Telecom chairman and CEO Wang Xiaochu says that the company will migrate to LTE in 2 to 3 years’ time.

Under the deal announced in Hong Kong on Sunday, China Telecom’s listed arm will purchase the business from Unicom’s listed entity on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, while state-owned parent China Telecom Group will purchase the infrastructure. Wang said that the company will initially focus on rolling out EV-DO Rev A in key cities because the technology’s download speeds makes it ideal for mobile data services.

“In 2 to 3 years’ time, all networks, both GSM and CDMA, will migrate to LTE,” Wang said. The announcement by China Telecom to support LTE represents one of the last major CDMA operators to abandon the standard-specific migration path for the technology to Ultra Mobile Broadband and follows similar announcements from Verizon and KDDI. US CDMA operator Sprint has abandoned UMB in favour of mobile WiMAX as its 4G platform.

Wang confirmed the government’s framework for the allocation of three 3G licenses later this year, but did not comment on whether or not Telecom will be required to roll out 3G services using CDMA.

The deal came as China Unicom and China Netcom announced details of their merger, which includes the disposal of Unicom’s CDMA network to China Telecom and the integration of the two listed entities of Unicom and Netcom, in which Netcom will become a “wholly-owned subsidiary of Unicom.”

The merger is expected to be completed by the 4th quarter of this year and result in an enlarged company that will be the number two competitive carrier in both mobile and fixed services. In the fixed market, the new group’s market share at 30% is half of China Telecom’s 60% while in the mobile space, China Mobile dominates the market with 69% while the Netcom-Unicom group will hold 23% of market after the disposal of the CDMA asset.

When compared against its competitors on a subscriber and revenue basis, the figures tells a different story, with the group coming in last out of the three players. The enlarged company will have a subscriber base of 251.2 million, slightly behind China Telecom, with 256 million and far lagging China Mobile’s 369.3 million. In revenue terms, the merged entity has a combined revenue of RMB145.3 billion, also just behind China Telecom’s RMB178.7 billion and less than half of market leader China Mobile with RMB357 billion (US$1 = RMB6.9)

In a press conference yesterday, hosted by the heads of the two operators, the companies announced they will merge their respective listed vehicles in a share substitution scheme.
Unicom will issue new shares for existing Netcom shares. Each China Netcom shares on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong will be entitled to 1.508 Unicom shares while holders of every Netcom Amercian depository shares will be entitled to exchange them for 3.016 new Unicom ADS, the companies said. The proposal is subject to the approval of the shareholders of the two companies.

The merged entity is restricted to the assets of the listed entities and does not include a merger of the state-owned parent companies, Chang Xiaobing, CEO and chairman of China Unicom said. The new merged entity will have an estimated market capitalization of HK$439.2 billion (US$1 = HK$7.78).

The companies did not reveal a name for the new merged group. According to the companies, the two foreign carriers with shares in the two Chinese operators, SK Telecom (Unicom) and Telefonica (Netcom) have expressed their support for the merger and remain shareholders of the merged entity. The merger will not impact China Netcom’s sharehold- ing in PCCW as those shares are held by the parent company, which is not part of the transaction.

Meanwhile, China Unicom and China Telecom announced that Telecom will pay a total of RMB100 million for Unicom’s CDMA business. The transaction includes an RMB43.8 billion deal in which the listed arm of China Telecom will purchase the CDMA customers and operations of the listed China Unicom entity. The network infrastructure and other related assets will be purchased by state-owned China Telecom group from an unlisted subsidiary, Unicom New Horizon, under Unicom's parent for an additional RMB66.2 billion. The cash raised by the CDMA sale will be invested to boost the capabilities of the GSM network, which continues to lag behind the market, Chang said.

China Telecom also held its own press conference on the deal. Wang Xiaochu, Chairman and CEO of China Telecom pointed to China Telecom’s existing subscriber base as a huge market opportunity for the CDMA business because customers want a one- stop service for both fixed and mobile communications

[destiny1]

Burgeoning Copper-Based Carrier Ethernet Access Platform Market to Reach Nearly $630 Million by 2011, Heavy Reading Reports (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/burgeoning-copper-based-carrier-ethernet-access/story.aspx?guid=%7B4574C7E3-18C2-429D-8863-79BD14793C13%7D)

Ethernet-over-TDM access circuit and Ethernet-over-bonded copper pair equipment segments are both likely to see a CAGR of at least 39 percent

Last update: 5:32 p.m. EDT June 2, 2008

NEW YORK, June 2, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Worldwide sales of copper-based carrier Ethernet access platforms rose 75 percent year-over-year to $185 million in the four-quarter period ending in 1Q08, according to the new Carrier Ethernet Access Platform Quarterly Market Tracker service published by Heavy Reading ( www.heavyreading.com (http://www.heavyreading.com/)), the market research division of TechWeb's Light Reading ( www.lightreading.com (http://www.lightreading.com/)). Copper-based CEAP platforms include Ethernet over TDM access circuit and Ethernet over bonded copper pair (G.shdsl and MIMO on DMT/VDSL2) solutions.
"Operators have installed more than $4.5 billion worth of carrier Ethernet switch/router equipment in recent years for traffic aggregation and transport, and they are now increasingly evaluating and deploying CEAP solutions to add new customer end-points to leverage metro network investments," said Stan Hubbard, senior analyst at Heavy Reading and author of the Carrier Ethernet Access Platform Quarterly Market Tracker. "Growth in the Ethernet over TDM access circuit and Ethernet over bonded copper pair equipment markets primarily has been driven by efforts to extend Ethernet services to more enterprise locations, but copper-based vendors also see emerging opportunities to address cell site/WiMax and DSLAM backhaul applications."

Heavy Reading has identified 77 equipment manufacturers that sell nearly a dozen major types of wireline equipment for Ethernet access, including the three types of next-gen solutions the research firm tracks in the Carrier Ethernet Access Platform Quarterly Market Tracker: Ethernet over TDM access circuit, Ethernet over bonded copper pair, and Ethernet over fiber switch/demarcation platforms. At least 15 companies sell copper-based CEAPs directly and/or in partnership with system integration companies and network equipment providers such as Ciena, Nokia Siemens, Nortel, and Tellabs.
Heavy Reading estimates RAD and ANDA led the Ethernet over TDM access circuit market in 1Q08, with approximately 20 percent share each. Other suppliers with more than 10 percent share include ADVA, Ceterus, and Overture. Hatteras and Actelis led the field of players that supply Ethernet over bonded copper pair platforms, with an estimated 38 percent and 29 percent share, respectively, in 1Q08. Adtran has emerged on the scene in recent quarters and captured a 20 percent share in 1Q08.

Heavy Reading's Carrier Ethernet Access Platform Quarterly Market Tracker delivers quarter-by-quarter revenue and market-share breakouts for each copper-based CEAP supplier and revenue projections through 2011. The quarterly tracking service also analyzes each vendor's market strategy and identifies and analyzes customer wins, providing granular insight into this emerging market sector unavailable from other sources. It provides a comprehensive list of more than 120 operators and other entities around the world that have purchased CEAP platforms.

Heavy Reading's Carrier Ethernet Access Platform Quarterly Market Tracker is being rolled out in phases to provide complete coverage across the CEAP space, including Ethernet over fiber solutions in addition to the copper-based platforms currently examined in detail in the report.

The tracker provides in-depth analysis of 11 vendors that are now generating sales from CEAP products. These include: Actelis Networks, Adtran, ADVA Optical Networking, Aktino, ANDA Networks, Ceterus Networks, Hatteras Networks, MRV Communications, Overture Networks, RAD Communications, and Zhone Technologies. Heavy Reading plans to add coverage of other vendors in coming quarters.

The Carrier Ethernet Access Platform Quarterly Market Tracker is distributed in a convenient, plug-and-play PowerPoint format. Quarterly reports may be purchased individually, or as part of an annual subscription service.

For more information, or to receive a PowerPoint demo of the Carrier Ethernet Access Platform Quarterly Market Tracker, please contact:

Dave Williams Sales Director, Heavy Reading 858-485-8870 dave.williams@heavyreading.com Press/analyst contact: Dennis Mendyk Managing Director, Heavy Reading 201-587-2154 mendyk@heavyreading.com

[destiny1]

AT&T CEO's Keynote Looks Backhttp://img.lightreading.com/images/spacer.gif

JUNE 17, 2008http://img.lightreading.com/images/spacer.gifLAS VEGAS -- NXTcomm 2008 -- Some say NXTcomm has lost its luster as the year’s biggest event in telecom. In his second consecutive year of kicking off the show with a keynote address, AT&T Inc. (http://www.lightreading.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=502) (NYSE: T (http://www.lightreading.com/quote.asp?Account=lightreading&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=T) - message board (http://www.lightreading.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=1&thread_key=T&thread_title=T)) chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson (http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=140162&page_number=1&image_number=3&site=) didn't do much to prove them wrong.

“Is there anyone here who doesn’t believe this is an exciting time to be in the telecommunications industry?” Stephenson asked the crowd this morning.

True, AT&T has a lot of exciting work going on. U-verse and the upcoming Long Term Evolution (LTE) buildout on 700MHz spectrum come to mind. (See AT&T & Verizon to Use 700 MHz for 4G (http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=150165).) But the head of the world’s largest telco spent a lot of his time focused on all the excitement that was, back in the past.
The railroad industry, for instance. “The railroads connected hundreds of once-distant cities,” he said, launching into a discussion about connectivity. He also dropped the bombshell that “the one thing that has provided more connectivity than anything is the advent of the telephone.” Stop the presses!
Stephenson moved on to discuss mobility, a more modern-day topic.
“When you mobilize something, usage explodes,” he remarked. Was AT&T about to make an announcement that it had mobilized a new product or service that had once been tethered to a wire? It certainly seemed like that kind of setup, but instead Stephenson went retro, talking about cassette players and Sony’s invention of the Walkman.
He did, at one point, put in a plug for Cisco Systems Inc. (http://www.lightreading.com/complink_redirect.asp?vl_id=1131) (Nasdaq: CSCO (http://www.lightreading.com/quote.asp?Account=lightreading&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=CSCO) - message board (http://www.lightreading.com/boards/thread_view.asp?thread_topic=1&thread_key=CSCO&thread_title=CSCO)) TelePresence that would do John Chambers proud. This led back to a demonstration of how the mobile phone has revolutionized the way Indian fishermen do business -- which provided a case study more up to date than the railroads, anyway.

— Raymond McConville, Reporter, Light Reading (http://www.lightreading.com/)

[destiny1]

NXTcomm Tuesday keynote: Stephenson knows his velocity (http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=69l,10bw3,238p,ix2p,1u2z,cqx3,47pi)
By Dan O'Shea

AT&T Chairman, CEO and President Randall Stephenson was a few bland comments into his keynote speech at NXTcomm in Las Vegas Tuesday when he asked a provocative question of NXTcomm attendees: “What business are we in?”
It is a question—and a concern—on the minds of many who are at this show as telcos propel themselves further into TV and mobile broadband businesses, and further away from the traditional landline telephony business. I don’t know that Stephenson directly answered the question he proposed, but what he said was that AT&T and others in the telecom industry “are in the business of velocity, providing commercial velocity. And, connectivity is and always has been the foundation for velocity and commercial growth.”
Stephenson noted that 3 billion people could be connected to the Internet worldwide by 2011, and that there are already more than 1 billion devices connected to AT&T’s network today. He essentially reminded the telecom industry that it still is the telecom industry—the backbone supporting all of that connectivity and commerce. That’s a reassuring notion in a time of great change, when carriers are trying to figure out how much of a tether to keep to their traditional identities. The technology and services may change, but the role is not changing all that much, he seemed to suggest. It is also reassuring as network velocity moves faster and farther sooner than many of us expected.
Many companies at the show this week will be talking about 100 Gbps pipes, an innovation that has enjoyed a stunningly quick emergence in recent months. But, velocity has multiple connotations. It is interesting that Stephenson brought up velocity at a time when many broadband service providers are experimenting with usage-based billing for broadband or other measures to help them control and manage broadband traffic on their networks (some would say they are just slowing their velocity). Recent service provider actions to control that velocity may result in Net neutrality laws that will influence how all service providers deliver on that velocity promise.
Velocity may be the core business of the telecom industry, but that velocity, for all the good it will deliver around the world in the years to come, also will have its price.

[destiny1]

NXTcomm 2008: Goodbye DSL Forum, hello Broadband Forum
New name addresses the carrier’s evolving last mile networking drive

by Sean Buckley
Wed. June 18, 2008
Click here to listen to the Audiocast (http://www.telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_4271#)
Since being founded in 1994 initially as the ADSL Forum, the DSL Forum has helped to shape the worldwide broadband industry with various standards efforts and specifications for the carrier and vendor community. With all of this experience in hand, the Forum has decided to change its name and also expand its focus on helping operators manage not just the last mile fiber and copper networks, but also the home network.

In this special NXTComm Edition of Telecommunications' Audiocast Series, Sean Buckley, Editor in Chief, talks to George Dobrowski, Chairman & President of the newly-renamed Broadband Forum about its objectives for the rest of 2008 and beyond.

Dobrowski answers the following questions:
After 14 years helping to develop standards and related initiatives for the broadband industry, the DSL Forum is changing its name to the Broadband Forum. To start, what is facilitating this change?
It’s clear that the broadband industry is expanding globally. Earlier this year, four new European operators joined the DSL Forum board. Talk about the dynamics of the European broadband market and how this reflects the growth in that region with new services such as IPTV?

Speaking of video, there’s a lot of activity on various fronts: IPTV, RF over fiber and the latest craze, Over the Top or Internet video. What’s your take on the telco video opportunity and the various methods?
As part of delivering a good video experience, the DSL Forum continues to make inroads into the home network with its most recent initiative, TR- 143. How does TR-143 build on the foundation laid by the initial TR-69 standard and how it will help service providers be more proactive about monitoring the home network experience?

While it’s clear the initial drive for DSL and broadband was over coax and copper, there’s clearly a strong move to get to FTTX. DSL Forum has responded with extending TR-69 for PON networks. How did that come about and how is it resonating with the FTTX community?
Click here to listen to the Audiocast (http://www.telecommagazine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_4271#)

[destiny1]

Video - Achilles heel of the mobile ISP (http://www.telco2.net/blog/2008/06/no_video_really_has_killed_the.html)

There has been an ongoing online and offline debate recently about whether video is going to create some kind of “exaflood” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116925820512582318.html) of data with bad consequences for the telecoms industry. We’ve got a different point of view to most observers on the matter: video doesn’t ‘kill the Internet’, but it does kill the traditional stand-alone ISP business model. To see what’s happening, though, you don’t need probes in Internet backbones, but rather in ISP balance sheets.

Demand is rising, but unevenly
Overall, Internet backbone traffic is growing surprisingly