vz on SWiK

Where to Get the Cheapest Mobile Data Plans

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:01:52 -0700

Updated: We’ve talked about how popular wireless broadband is for a growing spectrum of the population. I personally would give up my iPod before my 3G USB modem. But how much bandwidth can you really get? DSL Reports recently noted that Canadian wireless provider Telus is backtracking on its original unlimited wireless broadband plan and capping users at 1GB for $65. That has some rural users in a tizzy since they use it for their home network. I’d be in a tizzy too, since I use my modem whenever I travel or visit coffee shops rather than pay for Wi-Fi.

In the U.S., Sprint started enforcing a 5 GB data cap on unlimited plans in May; since few people reached those caps the wider consumer market hasn’t protested. But with the iPhone, reasonably priced 3G data plans and the carrier focus on increasing data usage, how long before consumers believe 5GB isn’t enough?

As this article from the Register makes clear, wireless broadband is pricier to deploy than fiber or DSL, and as more people use it, carriers need to upgrade their networks via new infrastructure (base stations and backhaul) and buy more spectrum. That’s expensive, which means that limits –even on potentially fat LTE networks– could be here to stay. Here are details on a few North American mobile broadband plans to show how much you can get for your dollar or loonie. If anyone can help me with Telcel’s plans, I’ll add those too.

Verizon Wireless: 5GB data plans range from $24.99 to $44.99 for phones and are $59.99 for wireless modems.

AT&T: 5 GB data plans range from $30 for unlimited personal use to $60 for unlimited use plus tethering for phones and $60 for wireless data cards.

T-Mobile: Unlimited data plans for phones range from $29.99 for the Sidekick to $89.99 for an enterprise BlackBerry plan. Unlimited data cards are available for $49.99 a month, but they only work on the EDGE network.

Sprint: Has an 5GB wireless data plan for phone included in its $99 Simply Everything plan or as part of two other plans that range from $69.99 to $169.99. Wireless card users pay $59.99 a month for up to 5 GB.

Rogers Communications: Offers data card plans for $100 that give users up to 6 GB and costs 50 cents for each MB over the limit.

Bell Canada: Offers up to 5 GB for $80 a month for data cards and 1GB for data on smart phones for $100. It sells a $10 unlimited data plan with the Samsung Instinct phone.

Updated with more plans:

Leap Wireless: As keith pointed out in the comments, Cricket has a 5 GB data card plan for $40.

AT&T GoPhone: Kevin over at jkontherun drew my attention to the prepaid AT&T GoPhone’s data plan for $20 a month. It has the same 5GB cap and requires you to pop out the SIM card, but it’s a steal.

If this story interests you, check out our upcoming conference:
Mobilize — The Next Generation Mobile Conference

AT&T: Wireless Grows, Broadband Blows

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:56:25 -0700

In its second-quarter earnings call this morning, AT&T highlighted the awesome growth of its wireless business, which surged 14.8 percent to $11 billion and accounted for roughly a third of its $30.9 billion in revenue for the period. The company also said that the 3G iPhone was selling twice as fast as the first one, which given the price cut, isn’t too surprising.

Equally unsurprising was the 10 percent rise in the number of smartphone subscribers over the second quarter of 2007 (AT&T is the sole carrier of the iPhone in the U.S.). And those users are surfing the web, pushing AT&T’s data revenue up 52 percent from the same period a year ago, to $2.5 billion. After adding 1.3 million wireless subscribers during the quarter, AT&T is still the largest cell phone carrier with 72.9 million subscribers. However, Verizon said yesterday it had added 1.5 million subscribers, so the iPhone exclusivity can only do so much.

The tethered world was a little less rosy, however. AT&T did add 170,000 new U-verse subscribers, bringing that total to 549,000; it also reiterated its goal of having a million subscribers by year-end. But triple-play services were down and broadband growth is slowing. Subscribers to voice, data and TV fell to 48.4 million from 49.5 million at the end of the second quarter of 2007. And AT&T’s total broadband connections now number 14.7 million, up 1.4 million over the same quarter last year but a mere 46,000 higher than the first quarter of the year.

Verizon Helps Turn Consumers Into Geeks

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:56:24 -0700

As the average consumer embraces ever more complex technology, Verizon is offering a series of classes beginning in New York City to show consumers what their PDAs and smartphones can do for them. I’m sure many of our readers aren’t in need of such a class — which will teach users all about texting, syncing music and emails — but it’s a great idea.

I hated my BlackBerry Pearl when I first got it; it took what felt like forever to figure out how it was supposed to work. If done well, teaching people like me to use their phones should increase data revenue and overall ARPU for Verizon. If done well, it will also make committed smartphone users out of most participants. And luring people into the store and to teach them the “Verizon way,” means consumers are likely to pick up a few high-margin accessories to bolster their education.

People in the technology field know that poor usability and device complexity hurts customer satisfaction, but keep cramming more features into them. As consumers, rather than enterprises, buy more devices and drive technology adoption, usability needs to improve, or else vendors such as Best Buy with their Geek Squad or Verizon with its classes will take up the slack. At that point, consumers are more likely to heed the advice of their favorite Geek rather than the glossy ads of an OEM when looking for their next purchase.

Verizon’s Crazy Broadband Strigl Theory

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:23:18 -0700

Verizon President and Chief Operating Officer Dennis Strigl made a big splash at NXTcomm 08 yesterday when he announced that the entire Verizon FiOS footprint could now get speeds of 50 megabits per second. Typically such bandwidth news wouldn’t cause that much of a furor, but there wasn’t much to write home about from the show, which was held in Las Vegas this week.

In his speech, Strigl pointed out that the U.S. has the highest number of broadband users when compared with other countries, in particular that broadband is available in every U.S. zip code. Good point — and one that I’ve made in the past myself — except that it’s no longer true. By that metric, China now leads. Yes, the FCC used to defined broadband as a service that offered, at a minimum, 200 kbps downloads, but it’s since changed that requirement to 768 kbps.

But where Strigl went too far was when he suggested that three-quarters of American households have two providers to choose from — aka a duopoly, which is not my idea of a competitive marketplace. If you factor in wireless and satellite, he said, there are actually six or seven competitors. Talk about twisting the facts to fit one version of the truth! This part of his speech, however, had me choking on my breakfast cereal.

“Massachusetts and New Jersey have similar population density to Korea and Japan and similar broadband penetration. Unlike other countries, what we have accomplished has come not through [government] policy but through private investment.

How telling. So subverting government policy via lobbyists and highly biased friends at the FCC to ensure a future monopoly is all part of good, capitalistic, private investment theory? Maybe Harvard can include that in its future MBA curriculum.

Regardless, I thought it would be fun to see how Massachusetts and New Jersey really square up against South Korea and Japan when it comes to the price of a broadband connection:

Average broadband speeds in South Korea and Japan are 49.5 megabits per second and 63.6 megabits per second, respectively. The average U.S. speed is about 4.9 megabits per second, making it the 14th-fastest country in the world. The average price in South Korea and Japan is about 83 cents per megabit. In the U.S, it’s about $2.83.

But since it would be unfair to use average U.S. stats, I went with Verizon’s prices, the ones it’s going to offer in Massachusetts and New Jersey. On Verizon’s FiOS network, a 50 Mbps connection costs $140 a month — or about $2.80 a megabit. In fact, if you went with Verizon’s 20 Mbps service, you would be paying $3.25 per megabit. (To be fair, Verizon’s price-per-megabit is still cheaper than the $5.25 Qwest charges for its 20 Mbps connection, which costs $105 a month.)

In other words, not until Verizon starts selling a 50 Mbps connection for $41.50 a month and 20 Mbps fiber connection for $16.60 a month can Strigl get away with comparing U.S. broadband with that of the rest of the world.

The Mobile Linux War

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:40:14 -0700

A recent report from ABI Research highlights the rise of mobile Linux, estimating that 23 percent of the world’s smartphones will have a Linux operating system by 2013. It appears that much of that growth will come at the expense of Nokia’s Symbian, and that LiMo and Android will be the main beneficiaries. What the report doesn’t note is that last year ABI predicted that 31 percent of smartphones will have Linux by 2012.

Either there’s something to explain the change in numbers, or we should perhaps take our analyst reports with a grain of salt. However, Linux is undoubtedly moving fast: 15 handsets were launched earlier this year with LiMo, and after several demos and prototypes, anticipation for the Android is running high. But the jury is still out on which framework will win out with carriers and application developers.

LiMo has the backing of NEC, Motorola and Samsung as well as SK Telecom and Verizon. Android, through the Open Handset Alliance, has T-Mobile, NTT DoCoMo, China Telecom, Telefonica, Google and several others. The stated goal behind both efforts is to eliminate some of the costs associated with developing mobile applications for multiple operating systems by using open source. It’s a laudable goal, but the fight between the two for market share demonstrates how hard it will be to lower costs, as developers will still have to build for multiple platforms.

photo courtesy of the LiMo Foundation and NTT DoCoMo

Verizon DSL Sales Are Stagnating

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:13:59 -0700

Verizon reported its first-quarter earnings this morning, with most things going as expected. Wireless is booming (1.5 million net additions, 13 percent revenue growth), FiOS TV’s demand seems to be picking up (263,000 new subscribers, putting the total at 1.2 million), and not surprisingly, the company saw accelerated decline in the number of wireline customers. During the quarter, the company lost 762,000 residential lines and about 186,000 lines.

In other words, there is a renewed urgency around FiOS offerings. The fiber broadband and TV offerings can help overcome some of the line losses. During the quarter, the company added 266,000 new broadband connections — 262,000 of which came from FiOS Internet service. The company had a total of 8.5 million connections: 6.7 million DSL-based Verizon High Speed Internet connections and 1.8 million FiOS Internet connections.

What that means is that Verizon’s DSL growth is all but over. At the end of 2007, the company had 8.2 million subscribers. Of the 300,000 new subscribers Verizon added in the first quarter of 2008, 262,000 are FiOS fiber subscribers. That leaves 38,000 DSL subscribers — or roughly 12,600 new additions per month. At present, FiOS Internet is available for sale to 7.9 million premises. Penetration for the service averaged 22.9 percent across all markets.

Verizon, like many other carriers, is in a race against time: It is critical for the phone companies to keep people talking on their lines if they want to sell them broadband and video services in the future.

CTIA: The Trailer

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:53:20 -0700

I’m getting ready to hit Sin City for next week’s CTIA Wireless show, from April 1-3, so for those of you not planning to attend — or who will attend but plan to gamble away your expense money — here’s your cheat sheet for the show.

Sure, everyone will be hoping for an announcement about the $3 billion Sprint/Cable/Clearwire joint venture that Om has dubbed the U.S. Rescue WiMax Act, and pondering both the valuation of and chances for Motorola’s handset business, but there will be a few trends to keep an eye out for as well.

Speech recognition and voice navigation on the mobile phone will be hot topics, with news expected out of vendors both big and small. An early indicator is voice mail-to-text provider SpinVox’s $100 million financing round. Look for other startups to launch similar services at the show, and for new search features and products from existing market players.

You won’t be able to walk down the aisle without running into someone offering a better way to watch, stream or create content on a mobile phone. While I’m skeptical about mobile video in the U.S., plenty of companies are still beating that drum. And with mobile content travel its two ugly stepsisters, advertising and digital rights management. There will be plenty of plays there.

All that content needs bandwidth, and the equipment vendors will be out in force with their WiMax and LTE equipment. Brace yourself for impressive upload and downlink demos as well as new service offerings such as television over a WiMax network.

In the meantime, now that the 700 MHz spectrum auction has ended and Verizon has laid out its plans, people are sure to be debating the benefits of open networks.

And finally, a 2008 wireless show wouldn’t be complete without plenty of femtocell demos and the much-anticipated launch of an Android-based phone. I, along with hundreds of other journalists, will be there, hoping to score the next big scoop. So if you see me, feel free to say hello and gently point me in the right direction.

10 Things You Need to Know About LTE

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:46:38 -0800

Since everybody likes lists, here are the 10 things you need to know about the 4G technology known as Long-Term Evolution, or LTE, standard.

It began in 2004 as the next-generation networking technology pushed by the 3GPP
It’s fast — with peak data rates of 1o0 Mbps down and 50 Mbps up
It makes CDMA and GSM debates moot
It offers both FDD and TDD duplexing, which means the upload and download speeds don’t have to be synchronous, so operators can better optimize their networks to use more upload channels
It won’t be deployed until 2010 or so
Verizon is testing it with Motorola equipment, and AT&T has backed it too
LTE will have lower latency, which makes real-time interaction on high band-width applications using mobiles possible
It competes against WiMax, and some want to subsume WiMax into it
China Mobile is testing it, which means China may skip 3G networks altogether
While it will make mobile data faster, it may not bolster sales of networking gear

Feb. 26, 2008: Verizon Wins and Telco Gear Loses

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:47:59 -0800

Feb. 19, 2008: Au Revoir Analog and Intel’s Money Pit

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:47:23 -0800

Verizon’s VoIP Patent Game Continues

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:45:01 -0800

Verizon’s VoIP patents have become a lucrative source of income for the second-largest phone company in the U.S. After squeezing out $120 million from Vonage, the company has been filing patent infringement lawsuits against all comers — from tiny startups to cable giants like Cox. Today Verizon went after Charter Communications.

On the flip side, VoIP Inc., an Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based VoIP provider with a questionable business outlook, is almost out of gas. They owe Verizon about $8 million related to the settlement the two companies agreed to last year. As Fierce VoIP points out.

Unless Verizon believes in fairies, this money is as good as gone because the stock price is now at $0.008, creditors are already in the courts for big debts and VoIP Inc. is admitting it expects to have to write off its only real asset, its network business.

Convicted felon Steve Ivester was involved with VoIP Inc. during its early days when it was making a transition from tea company to Vonage competitor. Over the past 12 months, VoIP Inc.’s stock has tanked — from over $8 a share to less than a penny.

Sprint Finds Cash in Patent Filings

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:19:09 -0800

Like finding a $20 bill in your coat pocket at the beginning of winter, Sprint has “found” a potential source of revenue in its patent portfolio. While it will certainly be harder than reaching into a coat pocket, the beleaguered wireless carrier probably sees patent litigation as easier than its corporate turnaround.

After squeezing $80 million out of Vonage last year, Sprint has apparently decided that its 115 “voice over packet” patents might be its next cash cow. The carrier says it will sue four smaller phone companies — NuVox Communications, Broadvox Holdings, Big River Telephone Co. and Paetec Communications — for violating six of its patents associated with delivering voice over a data network. It is seeking damages and an injunction. Interestingly, the carrier didn’t try to negotiate with the providers before dropping the L-bomb on them. All of the carriers said they were reviewing the lawsuit and couldn’t comment at this time.

Considering that these six patents have been tried in the courts thanks to Vonage, Sprint is in a much stronger position when it comes to getting a licensing deal, which makes the fact that Sprint chose to go with a lawsuit interesting. It’s likely that when presented with the patent violations and a reasonable license fee, the companies could reach some common ground. Another VoIP company, VoiceGlo, was sued in 2005 along with Vonage, and negotiated an undisclosed license with Sprint covering its use of the patents.

That means Sprint is either going for the injunction (to shut down its competitors), or it is taking them to court in an effort to weaken them (by way of scoring a larger financial settlement). Either way, Sprint is playing hardball — and it isn’t alone.

After successfully coaxing a $120 million settlement out of Vonage last year, Verizon Communications is also asserting its VoIP patents against a competitor. Earlier this month, Verizon sued cable operator Cox Communications for infringing eight patents. Two of those patents are the same ones Verizon successfully defended against Vonage. Vonage may have had to pay millions, but it looks like the power its loss gives the incumbents might keep independent VoIP players paying for years.

8 Things to Know About the 700MHz Auction

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:13:34 -0800

The 700MHz auction kicks off today, and like kids waiting for Santa Claus, the technology and business publications are tense with anticipation. But FCC chairman Kevin Martin is keeping a lid on this auction, rather than post periodic updates as was done in the AWS auction in 2006.

While you wait to learn who gets the goods who gets a lump of coal, here’s a quick list of everything you need to know about the upcoming auction and why it matters. Check out all the links, because the bidding doesn’t conclude until March 24 and down payments aren’t due until April 11. You’ve got time.

Setting the rules for this auction took a lot of time — and lobbying.
There are a lot of bidders: Out of the 214 of them, the big ones to watch are AT&T, Verizon and Google. Interesting no shows are Sprint Nextel and Time Warner.
It costs a lot to bid: Reserves are set high at $10 billion, but several people think that the current economic crisis might make it hard for those reserves to be met. Heck even Google has seen $16.15 billion lopped of its market cap so far this week.
Already some have failed. Both Frontline Wireless and Cyren Call, both of which were going after the “D” block of spectrum and its heavy load of public safety requirements, have already bailed.
Google is bidding, but may not be playing to win against the carriers.
The winners have to create an open network. The dream of having a network that would allow any device onto it is still alive.
Or maybe not. Om would like to see the spectrum become unlicensed and treated much like Wi-Fi is today for it to be truly open.

And like childhood obesity, short attention spans and the general decline of Western Civilization, you can blame all of this controversy on television — the shift from analog to digital TV signals, to be exact.

Here Comes Trouble: An Antidote to Software Patents

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 01:07:03 -0800

The $250 million Vonage burned through as a result of the patent lawsuit brought by Verizon et al provides yet another example of why patents for business processes implemented on computers (a.k.a. software patents) deserve to die. Verizon’s two successful “name translation” patents negate an open standard assembled by Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Intel and Vocaltec via the VoIP Forum during 1996. The threat of patent litigation cleared the landscape of independent VoIP companies the VoIP Forum sought to make possible.

Vonage survived and can look forward to a prosperous future as the third player in an oligopoly with the regional telcos and cablecos, but this hardly seems like the success story sought with the opening of patent protection to business methods in 1999. The work of the VoIP Forum built on the ITU H.323 standard, which dates back to 1991 , so Vonage’s loss in court does not owe to a lack of prior art. Vonage lost because of the difficulty in finding the proper documentation of prior art 15 years after the fact.

The antidote to software patents involves creating their exact opposite — a formal process of contributing software innovations to the public domain. Vonage’s experience, however, illustrates that the various standards-creating processes represent only a first step. A successful open-source model for patents requires creating a searchable archive of prior art in which inventors contribute their innovations in order to get protection from subsequent litigation.

This would replace the patent office’s dependence on the oath signed by patent applicants “acknowledging the duty to disclose all information known to be material to patentability.” Vonage’s decision to base its technical implementations on the work of the VoIP Forum and IETF seems reasonable. Who would have guessed the patent office granted Verizon a patent on the same subject matter?

Verizon’s “name translation” patents address the process of converting between an IP address and a telephone number during call setup. Absent the expectation of end users dialing IP addresses, all VoIP implementations will involve some form of “name translation.” A patent examiner trying to meet expectations of reviewing a patent per day can be excused for having missed the fact that the name translation issue arose with the ITU H.323 standard.

Questions remain over how Verizon failed to disclose the H.323 standard in their declaration, never mind the VoIP Forum’s efforts that built on the H.323 standard. Verizon’s first name-translation patent (’711) has a filing date two months after the VoIP Forum published the results of their efforts. Verizon’s prior art disclosures also failed to mention VocalTec Communications, the company credited with bringing the VoIP category to public awareness in February 1995. The author of the patent in question, Eric Voit, initiated a relationship with Lior Haramaty, a co-founder of VocalTec, in the same month he filed the first patent.

As project director for VocalTec, I was around then; I also led a joint venture with Digital Equipment that involved implementing Verizon’s first VoIP pilot in 1998. Eric Voit’s second patent, from February 2000 (’574), incorporates ideas addressed in detail during this pilot. However, Verizon filed the second patent as a continuation of the first — and it, too, was absent any disclosure about VocalTec or the VoIP Forum. The filing of the second patent as a continuation gives the claims the same prior art grace period as the first patent.

A formal process of filing prior art to the public domain will protect an emerging infocom industry better than just depending on overworked patent examiners and applicants for prior art searches.

Are Cable and Phone Companies Still Recession-Proof?

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:32:06 -0800

Cynthia Brumfield is a long-time communications, broadband and media analyst at Emerging Media Dynamics, and a blogger at IP Democracy.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson triggered a mini-free fall in the shares of phone companies last week when he told investors at a Citibank conference that non-pay disconnects are “happening all across consumer products lines,” with the possible exception of wireless voice accounts. In other words, a larger-than-expected chunk of customers aren’t paying their bills. And AT&T is pulling the plug on them.

This bit of concrete evidence that a recession is indeed underway spooked an already jittery stock market, dragging down non-telecommunications shares in the process. Hardest hit, though, were the leading telecom and cable companies, which managed to recovered slightly but continue to labor under a cloud of investor suspicion.

Comcast CFO Michael J. Angelakis echoed Stephenson’s claim. Speaking at the same Citibank conference, Angelakis said that during the second half of 2007 “we clearly saw bad debts increase, and we clearly saw a pickup in churn.” Translation: A growing number of cable customers aren’t paying their bills, either.

Against this backdrop, earnings season is about to get underway, meaning we’ll soon get a look at some hard fourth-quarter 2007 numbers from the top telecom and cable companies. If Stephenson and Angelakis are any indication, we’re in for disappointing results from the country’s top broadband, voice and video providers.

But a recession-driven slowdown for either cable or phone companies would be a new thing. Historically, cable has prided itself on being recession-proof. During the recession of the early 1990s and the downturn in 2001 and 2002, cable companies didn’t lose customers. In fact, in 2001 and 2002, cable was in the midst of digital TV and high-speed Internet rollouts, which cranked up growth (although the telecom and dot.com meltdowns, not to mention the accounting scandal that brought down WorldCom, made cable seem like it, too, was in the doldrums).

Phone companies have also held up well during economic downturns. Even though the big incumbent companies that now make up AT&T, Verizon and Qwest started losing access lines in 2000, those losses were mostly restricted to the commercial sector and were due to the rapid late-90s rise of competitive local exchange carriers. Consumer spending cutbacks typical of a recession didn’t come into play.

Things could be different this time around, because unlike in the past, cable and phone companies now sell a lot of services that consumers feel are discretionary. During past downturns, customers clung to their voice and pay-TV services because the telephone was considered essential and subscription TV was a bargain service, relative to other entertainment options.

However, that held true before the days of triple-play or quadruple-play bundles, before multiple digital service tiers and HD packages came along and before broadband either existed or was widely adopted. The thing to watch out for now is the possibility that the proverbial bundles of voice, video and data services might unravel.

For example, homes that buy both mobile and landline voice services could feel free to simply cut off the wired voice connection. During his Citibank talk, Stephenson cited this cost-savings measure as one cause of what will in all likelihood be stepped-up line losses for the company in the fourth quarter. Not that wireless substitution hasn’t been going on for a while, but tight household budgets could no doubt accelerate this trend.

Contrary to what I would normally expect, broadband service might turn out be a dispensable expense during a recession. “It’s non-pay disconnect that is driving the disconnect on access lines and on broadband as well,” Stephenson said during his Citigroup talk, reiterating several times that residential broadband growth has suffered some kind of a setback.

Cable companies, which posted very disappointing growth rates across the service board for the third quarter of ‘07 — before the economic slowdown truly took hold — have already started drawing up lower-cost service options and are about to market “double-play” packages of voice and high-speed services.

So what will we hear from cable operators and phone companies in the upcoming quarterly reporting season? Comcast officially confirmed back in December that it won’t make its fiscal 2007 guidance, citing weaker-than-expected subscriber gains. Based on the sounds Stephenson made, AT&T is managing expectations in advance of a weak fourth-quarter report as well.

Most of the other cable and phone companies will probably not have much better news, with the possible exception of Verizon, whose CFO, Denny Strigl, told the same Citigroup investors that the weak economy had “minimal” impact on his company. Moreover, in contrast to its peers, Verizon issued relatively robust third-quarter numbers last fall.

But compared to a lot of other industries, and despite any short-term hit that cable and phone companies may take, the communications network business — be it cable, telco or wireless — is a relatively sure bet in the long term. Both AT&T’s Stephenson and Comcast’s Angelakis, while acknowledging the challenges of increased competition and a weak economy, stressed this fact. “We are in the middle of a growth industry,” Stephenson said.

Yahoo’s Baby Steps to Phone 2.0

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:42:10 -0800

Champions of a more open Internet could take a small bit of cheer from Yahoo’s plans, unveiled today, to open up its mobile platform to third-party developers. But the lack of a service-provider partner to endorse the idea is one clear sign that chief Yahoo Jerry Yang and all the other exclamation-pointers have a long way to go before they can expect to have a major impact on the growing market of the mobile web.

To be sure, plans like Yahoo’s Go or Google’s Android, which aim to bring the power of the open Internet to your handheld device, seem a preferable future than locked-in services like Verizon’s VCast. But without a service-provider partner to watch its back, Yahoo (YHOO) seems unable to answer a big looming question for open-Internet apps accessed via a cellular phone: How fast will the app perform, and how much will it cost to download the data?

Here at CES this year, there’s evidence of a trend toward more single-purpose devices or agreements (like Sony’s Skype/PSP deal, which has BT as the phone power behind it) that are complete with the service necessary to deliver the goods.

On the video side, LG has an interesting plan to give existing broadcasters a mobile outlet, just another one of the competing methods arising to bring TV to places you never thought possible. But like Yahoo’s ideas, such plans don’t mean a whole lot unless the service providers play along.

Since we weren’t able to view the Yang speech live here at CES (long bus lines and the absence of transporter technology kept us from getting from the Sands to the LVCC in time), we weren’t able to question Yahoo folks afterwards about service-provider buy-in for Go 3.0. But there’s plenty of time ahead for answers.

Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.

Verizon runs into Vermont Regulators

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 01:11:30 -0800

Vermont regulators are giving Verizon’s decision to sell 1.6 million lines in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire the thumbs down. They are concerned that buyer of these lines, Fairpoint Communications of Charlotte, NC is too small and as a result the service will suffer, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Fairpoint will have to take on about $2.5 billion in debt to make the deal happen, which means there is real risk of quality of service will go down as Fairpoint starts to tighten the belts to pay off the debt. This is particularly bad news for Verizon which is counting on sales of these quasi-rural lines to fund its fiber optic network. The $2.5 billion can be revived if Verizon lowers the price.

This isn’t the last we have heard of Verizon’s problems with the state PSBs, and expect this to become a hot issue in the upcoming election year.

Update: A spokesperson for Verizon emailed me and said that the sale of lines is not for funding the fiber optic network.

We are NOT counting on this money to fund anything, including Fiber deployment. Our debt is very low and our cash flow is high. We have the capex already built into our funding plan. We are selling these lines simply because they are not a strategic fit for us given our broadband plans. Plus, we’ll continue to be heavily invested in Vermont with wireless and enterprise.

Why phone lines - 1.6 million in total - not strategic for a phone company, I don’t get!

AT&T, Verizon…We Are All Open

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:52:13 -0800

Ever since Verizon announced that it was going “open,” OPEN has become the new buzzword. For instance, this morning USA Today ran a story on AT&T being open, with extensive commentary from AT&T Wireless CEO & President Ralph de la Vega. The headline, “AT&T flings cellphone network wide open,” made it seem that AT&T was doing something new.

It isn’t a pretty sight to get up in the morning and find such a major development on your beat and not know a thing about it. But after reading through the piece, it was much ado about nothing. After all even today, once your contract expires, you can continue to use the AT&T network on a month-to-month basis. You can use any unlocked device which you can buy from anywhere, as long as it’s a GSM device and supports the frequencies used by AT&T. The phone can use any operating system — Windows Mobile, Symbian, Linux or whatever.

When I spoke with de la Vega following the Google Android announcement , he made precisely the same statements and said that AT&T (T) was already doing what Verizon (VZ) was announcing. He said pretty much the same thing in an interview with Ryan Block of Engadget a few weeks ago. I think the most recent story overstates the case. Just to make sure that I wasn’t missing something, I spoke to an AT&T spokesperson, and basically was told what de la Vega had said previously.

I think the bigger issue here is that we really need to get companies to define what they mean by OPEN. Open handsets, open networks, open applications, open operating systems — some combination of those, or all of them? Otherwise, I might have to start translating OPEN to “We’re Scared of Google.”

Verizon, AT&T Are They Really OPEN

Harsh Reality Of Verizon’s Open Network

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 04:47:54 -0800

Consider the recently unveiled “any app, any device” initiative by Verizon Wireless in the context of the company’s latest quarterly results.

The wireless unit of Verizon (VZ) reported year-over-year subscriber growth of 12 percent, but a mere 5 percent rise in voice revenues. Data revenue saved the day, surging 63 percent and lifting the company to 15 percent revenue growth overall. Data revenue per user increased 43 percent, while voice revenue per user declined 5 percent — pushing data to 20 percent of revenues from 14 percent.

The same report revealed a 10 percent decline in residential access lines. The voice business of Verizon Wireless, in other words, seems to have entered the same cycle of contraction suffered by Verizon’s wireline business in recent years. Joining the open access bandwagon promises to keep data revenues growing strongly, but CEO Lowell McAdam faces some mighty difficult choices as the 80:20 ratio of voice to data revenues reverses. The legacy pricing model incorporates price discrimination that will prove awkward to preserve.

Consider the lucrative SMS business of shipping 160 character messages for 10 cents each, or roughly $1,000 per megabyte. What happens when all devices cleanly incorporate instant messaging? “Any app, any device” means VoIP-capable devices that transparently support voice and web browsing via data plans. Why would someone pay Verizon an extra $40 per month for voice services? Any data plan that makes video affordable makes voice essentially free.

Does Verizon really have enough conviction to price without discrimination by application type? McAdam said pricing for the bring-your-own-device crowd will be “competitive” and “usage-based.” Even assuming other carriers follow Verizon’s lead to create competition, does “usage” refer to bit volume or application type?

“Any app, any device” sounds like it eliminates the long list of acceptable use prohibitions associated with existing data plans — quite a change of heart for the company. Verizon only recently settled a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Cuomo for terminating the accounts of customers with so-called “unlimited” Internet plans for unwittingly violating the plans through activities such as downloading movies.

It may already be too late for Verizon to back away from the edge. Anything short of a fully open network, neutral to bit type, seems likely to turn the PR love fest into user backlash. In any case, no one expects Verizon to embrace the “faster, cheaper” mantra necessary to fully earn induction into the infocom future.

We can suspend our disbelief until the pricing details arrive in January, but the unintended consequences of the announcement likely represent the best hope for progress. Verizon’s vision of the future may not have changed much. It just gets easier to read the writing on the wall when your back is up against it.

Verizon Boosts FiOS Speeds

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:41:48 -0800

Verizon is rolling out major speed boosts for its FiOS broadband subscribers across its entire service area. These new tiers offer up to 50 Mbps/20 Mbps or up to 30 Mbps/15 Mbps, depending on the state in which the service is sold, at costs ranging from $89.95 to $139.95 a month. (I seriously want the 50Mbps connection, but sadly the service isn’t available in San Francisco.)

It has also rolled out symmetrical connections in the entire 16-state region it currently serves. The symmetrical connections have up and down speeds of up to 20 megabits per second. The symmetrical services were first launched on Oct. 23 in the New York Tri-State Region. Today, Verizon (VZ) launched the service in the remaining 13 states.

In Florida, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, offers the option of a FiOS Internet service with downstream and upstream connections of up to 20 Mbps. In California, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington, the company has added a new FiOS Internet service with downstream and upstream connections of up to 15 Mbps.

These services start at $64.99 a month. More details are here.

Why Wall Street Hates Comcast?

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 03:26:59 -0800

Slower subscriber growth, worries about competition from phone companies and a management crazy enough to make a bold move — all this has Wall Street worried about Comcast (CMCSA), the Philadelphia-based broadband and cable provider.

The Nervous Nellies of Manhattan’s nether regions have pushed the stock down almost 30 percent so far this year. Of course, these very same worrywarts were sweating about Verizon’s (VZ) bold bet on fiber to the home technologies.

The divergent fortunes of Verizon and Comcast are very clearly reflected in this chart.

Verizon has done a better job of winning the hearts and minds of Wall Street, and that is why Comcast stock is moving south, while Verizon stock keeps moving up. Never mind the fact that Comcast has a much bigger footprint compared to say, Verizon. That said, one can’t deny that Comcast has challenges, and Verizon FiOS is not to be taken lightly. Here are some of the issues facing Comcast.

More HD channels to compete with satellite broadcasters.
Show that it can offer even higher-speed broadband connections, not just talk about it.
Make its web services strategy pay off.
Overcome the “managed” traffic scandal.
Better Customer Service. Again, Better Customer Service.

Even with those issues, Comcast can put its rivals on the defensive by making a few aggressive moves.

Get more people signed up to its phone service, and if that means discounts. It is a move that hits at the heart of phone companies’ core money machine: voice.
Get serious about wireless — both cellular and WiFi. Connections everywhere will help the company get sticky with its customers.
Boost speeds to 20 megabits and lower prices.
Offer $15 a month broadband plan for a basic, 3-megabits-per-second broadband connection. This will take pricing power away from their phone company rivals.
Bring to market a very compelling online video offering.
CEO Brian Roberts should make a public pledge for better customer service, and start with making TiVo-powered Comcast DVRs available everywhere, especially in downtown San Francisco. ;-)

Ignore Wall Street is the final thing I wanted to say — but it looks like management knows that all too well.

“Our job is to keep our heads down and continue to put good operating results on the board,” said Steve Burke, chief operating officer of Comcast, in an interview (with the Wall Street Journal). “If we continue to do that the stock will take care of itself.”

Is Facebook Beacon a Privacy Nightmare?

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:51:26 -0800

Mark Zuckerberg & Co. stood up in front of the advertising community in New York today and unveiled Facebook Ads, an ad system that allows companies to use the Facebook social graph and to develop highly targeted ads. Large brands such as Coca-Cola (KO), Sony Pictures (SNE) and Verizon (VZ) have signed on for this effort. Part of the engine powering this new ad system is called Beacon, which takes data from 44 web destinations and mashes it up with Facebook’s internal information to help build more focused advertising messages.

While it seems to be a clever idea, a quick review reveals that Beacon might turn out to be a privacy hairball for the company.

The 44 sites that have partnered with Facebook include everyone from Kongregate, LiveJournal, NYTimes (NYT), Sony Online, Blockbuster (BBI), Bluefly.com, STA Travel, The Knot, TripAdvisor, Travel Ticker, TypePad, viagogo, Vox, Yelp, WeddingChannel.com and Zappos.com.

These partner sites put a little a piece of Facebook javascript on their web site and certain information, cleverly (and innocuously) labeled as a user alert, is sent to Facebook. For instance, Fandago users can publish information about the movies they saw. It all seems like a clever idea because it lets Facebook triangulate your likes and dislikes even more, and deliver more focused ads.

Facebook Beacon provides advanced privacy controls so Facebook users can decide whether to distribute specific actions from participating sites with their friends.

Reading that line prompted the following questions, which I put to Facebook:

Can consumers opt out of this?
If yes, does their data get erased?
Will the sites for example, Fandango, stop sending all personal and any kind of information to Facebook once the user opts out?
Why didn’t they make this an opt-in feature, instead of being an opt-out feature?

Their PR spokesperson emailed me this response:

Users can opt-out of Beacon on a per-site basis. They can opt-out for each action, or they can opt-out to never have an affiliated site send stories to Facebook. For instance, a user that buys The Notebook from Blockbuster can stop a story from being published about it, or she can opt-out of having Blockbuster publish any actions she takes on the Blockbuster site.

The response doesn’t seem to answer my questions and basically makes it seem like users have control over this data, when in reality, this is a privacy disaster waiting to happen. The javascript on the Fandango site pops up a little screen which asks if you want to publish the information on Facebook. If you say no, your friends won’t see the information, but apparently Facebook still receives it. This means that if you are a Facebook member, Facebook will know what you are doing on each of their partner sites. And there is no way for you to opt out of that. Or is there? I asked Facebook to clarify and I am still waiting for them to write back.

As for the rest of their announcement, while long and elaborate, it doesn’t contain any information we haven’t already seen. MySpace (NWS) has been doing brand specific-pages for a while now, in addition to using other targeting techniques.

EmacsのVZ化計画 Ver.0.12 (Studio UNQ)

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:44:33 -0800

Link about applications related Linux

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:44:33 -0800

Index of /~yoh/vzmode

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:44:32 -0800

Google Launches Mobile Phone Platform, Android: What it Means, What Experts Think

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 08:04:41 -0800

Updated post press conference, read My Take #2: Google (GOOG) has just announced its much talked about Google mobile phone platform, Android, and has announced a large list of partners who are working with the company. The company said it’s worked with T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm (QCOM), Motorola (MOT) and others on the development of Android through the Open Handset Alliance, a multinational alliance of technology and mobile industry leaders.

Andy Rubin, who spearheaded the project, writes on the Google blog:

It’s important to recognize that the Open Handset Alliance and Android have the potential to be major changes from the status quo — one which will take patience and much investment by the various players before you’ll see the first benefits. But we feel the potential gains for mobile customers around the world are worth the effort.

The first handsets are likely to be available in the second half of 2008, the company said. Other partners in the alliance include Sprint Nextel (S), Telecom Italia, NTT DoCoMo, Broadcom (BRCM), and a slew of other technology companies.

What is Android? A fully integrated mobile “software stack” that consists of an operating system, middleware, user-friendly interface and applications. It will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Next week, the Alliance will release an early access software development kit to provide developers with the tools necessary to create innovative and compelling applications for the platform.

Who is missing? Quite a few large carriers, including Vodafone (VOD), Orange, SK Telecom, AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ). Nokia (NOK), Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are among the handset makers not part of this alliance.

My Take: This is one massive PR move, with nothing to show for it right now, and it seems like there are other unknown reasons (Facebook ad platform launch perhaps) for the motivation here. No phones till second half of 2008 — in our ADD culture that is a lifetime. The partners — with the exception of HTC and T-Mobile — are companies who are, in cricketing parlance, on the backfoot. Motorola, for instance is not exactly a bastion of handset excellence. Sprint — we know how well they are doing.

MyTake #2: Following the press call, I actually have more questions than answers. They completely dodged my question about how does it reconcile with other mobile linux efforts which are backed by none other than partners like Motorola. Andy Rubin replied that all the software is available for the developers in a week, which is non-answer if there is any. Funny - no phones till second half of 2008 and they want developers to shift their attention from iPhone, Symbian, other Mobile Linux and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Even more convinced that this is a PR move. Not clear how this helps Google from a fiscal sense and its business implications for the company. Oh well, time to hound their press department.

What Others Say:

Chetan Sharma of Chetan Sharma Consulting: Google definitely assembled an impressive list of partners for this initiative. On a fundamental level, it still remains to be seen if this move is going to be transform the industry. Of course, everyone wants to be seen supporting openness, proof will be in the implementation and the business models that support this vision, otherwise this is just yet another initiative.

The initiative does help lower the cost of the handset due to cheap licenses for the stack and if this proves successful, some device manufacturers might give up their own efforts to minimize cost and focus more on hardware features that integrate well with Android. This is more an answer to Microsoft than to the carrier fragmentation Google has talked about. Is this going to be a successful Trojan horse strategy for Google remains to be seen.

Forrester Research wireless analyst Charles Golvin: The impact is broad across all players in the mobile environment, driving innovative developers to craft new applications that leverage both the mobile networks and the Internet, and helping to change the way consumers behave when on the go. Google is far from the only beneficiary, as competitors like Yahoo (YHOO) and even Microsoft (MSFT) stand to benefit should they embrace this approach; the impact will build slowly over time as initially the devices using this platform will form a very small percentage of the market.