Owner: Communications Breakdown URL:http://telcommunicator.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 01:42:44 -0500 Rating:1 Site Description: Tracking trends in telecoms, internet and media businesses. It´s for investors, but I do not give recommendations. Typical subjects are wireless technologies such as WiMAX; issues around competition and regulation; internet search technology and click fra Site statistics:Click here
Whither Orange NL's broadband unit? 2007-10-11 04:33:00 When France Telecom finally sold its Orange
NL unit to T-Mobile NL, the focus was on the mobile unit. Deutsche Telekom will, over the next few months, decide what to do with the broadband
unit (the former Wanadoo NL, an unbundler).
Here are the possible outcomes I envision:
Hang on to it. T-Mobile could kick-off a major strategy shift, away from being a mobile pure-play and go the way of Orange
Innovative mobile communication services 2007-10-10 08:08:00 Innovation is coming to the mobile communication
s sector. Voice and SMS are not dead yet. This way, data revenues (other than SMS) will never make it past the 20% or so share of mobile service revenues ;-).
Virtual + real calling
Vodafone ('InsideOut') enables voice calling on and off Second Life. Telecom Italia's Second Life service is limited to on-net calling (between avatars). This Read more:Innovative
KPN is pushing all the right buttons 2007-10-08 01:16:00 KPN and Reggefiber are teaming to build FTTH in Almere, we learned last week. The importance of this deal is in its size (we are talking the #5 town in the Netherlands, 180k inhabitants), but let me summarize why this is so much up my alley.
FTTH
No need to step on the soapbox over this shiny new fiber stuff.
Sharing
All we need is a single strand of fiber. Nobody would like to get into a land
Telcos should embrace the wholesale market 2007-10-05 02:40:00 Yesterday I had a short meeting with an industry executive in my hometown Utrecht. Another very valuable meeting - by way of reality check.
We mainly discussed two topics.
1. Wholesale
I think of wholesale as a very attractive business. Obviously, there is a strong connection to the separation stance.
In the old days, incumbents like KPN instructed managers pretty explicitly to frustrate Read more:embrace
The bottom-up economic argument for FTTH 2007-10-16 08:19:00 The New Zealand Institute published an interesting document supportive of FTTH. The economic benefits are calculated bottom-up and are (conservatively) estimated at 2.7-4.4bn NZD/year. Their next report will focus on the cost of covering 75% of the population by 2018.
(All fine and dandy, but I was reminded of a recent Greenspan quote: "It is not yet settled, although I guess it should be by now
FTTH ultimately drives separation (2) 2007-10-16 07:32:00 Will functional (or even structural) separation happen to the European telcos?
Several countries (Poland, Italy, Australia), operators (Telecom New Zealand, TeliaSonera, eircom and of course BT) and the EC seem to be moving in that direction.
Here are the external forces driving or slowing down the movement. They differ from country to country, but the end-game is the same everywhere (FTTH), so
GDP grab will drive FTTH 2007-10-31 07:31:00 Earlier this week I spoke with a colleague who is in charge of providing debt to TMT companies worldwide. FTTH was the main topic.
It was enlightning to notice how much aversion there is in the market against government funding - to any degree. My colleague holds that, after the telco sector was privatized and liberalized, the last thing we should want should be a return of government bodies (‘ Read more:drive
Update on WiMAX 2007-10-30 04:49:00 WiMAX is gaining momentum, especially in Taiwan, Japan and Italy.
Looking at the technicalities, we have seen several interesting developments recently:
Standard: The ITU approves the standard as 3G.Handover: Datang (a TD-SCDMA vendor) challenges the ITU decision, pointing to the lack of handover capabilities. Interestingly, Alcatel-Lucent and Onemax just demonstrated seamless 16e handover in Read more:Update
, WiMAX
DIY fibre to the farm 2007-11-01 06:24:00 A local Dutch newspaper carries a story (in Dutch) on bridging the digital divide in rural areas. The eastern towns of Bronckhorst and Berkelland have launched a 'Fibre to the Farm' project. A trial is currently conducted among 150 households. Next year it will be evaluated.
It involves a co-op ordering a backhaul network from a company like Reggefiber or Schuuring. The members of the co-op (
Broadband Cities - Day 1 2007-11-14 14:48:00 Today the Broadband Cities
2007 conference started. Thanks Dirk for inviting me!
A great place to meet people, but above all to attend several great presentations. I will not attempt to present a summary, and instead encourage you to check out some material that is freely available on the internet (see links below). Euroforum will post the presentations on its site from November 16.
Here are
KPN: away from network ownership and toward FTTH 2007-11-13 15:26:00 Today I had the honor to meet with Joost Farwerck, director of Wholesale and Operations at KPN. Most striking were unequivocal belief in FTTH ('the endgame', as I have referred to it before) and an apparent decline in interest in being a network
operator.
Joost very tellingly was able to see me in between a trip to Australia and New Zealand and a meeting with bbned (Telecom Italia).
Here are my
Update on WiMAX 2007-11-13 14:48:00 Some more factoids (see also the previous update).
Standard: the ITU approval, I would add, is a set-back of sorts. Not 4G but 3G, as Mr. Daniels eloquently put it. I suppose if you want 'xG' real-life performance, you better aim for '(x+1)G' lab-performance. (Also, compare this WiFi distance record: 382 km!)Sprint/Clearwire: much has been said about the consequences for Sprint, Clearwire, Intel, Read more:Update
, WiMAX
Broadband Cities - Day 2 2007-11-16 03:24:00 Yesterday the conference included great presentations from Nico Baken (KPN's #1 strategist, Delft professor disseminated his view of massive, ubiquitous broadband once more), Anders Johansson (SABO, Swedish Housing Sector), Martin Geddes (STL) and Jaap Doeleman (Houthoff Buruma, lawyers defending Amsterdam Citynet in the courts).
At the break-out session, Robert Bell of ICF and Dirk van der Woude Read more:Cities
Cool news: FTTH, M&A, SMS, products and services 2007-11-22 13:49:00 Here is some recent and noteworthy stuff, with just a few words of my own:
FTTH:Gaining a lot of momentum. I just updated my private litle database, a Google spreadsheet that you can also access on the right (under 'Fiber Ring').Of note: OEN (Houston) closes its network, SureWest may buy the assets.Takeover speculation:DT is checking out EDS. Will DT be the big new consolidator? DT is also Read more:SMS
Wither Orange NL's broadband unit (2) 2007-11-20 01:50:00 The balance seems to be tipping in favor of holding on to the former Wanadoo unit.
What is happening? Deutsche Telekom bought Orange
NL to merge it with T-Mobile NL. However, Orange NL also operates an LLU unit (the former Wanadoo operations). So far, Deutsche Telekom appears to have either a PTT (eatern Europe) or a mobile-only strategy 'abroad' (even as Vodafone is entering the fixed-line Read more:broadband
Behind the end of OEN and Sprint/Clearwire 2007-11-29 03:56:00 Here is an interesting story on why OEN (Optical Entertainment Network, a FTTH company in Houston) folded. Apparently there were management issues, but it seems to have boiled down to a tech matter: PON (gear from Alloptic) v. active ethernet (gear from PacketFront). The company couldn't decide. "It was a group of engineers getting together and having a serious case of vendor love." (PON is Read more:Sprint
Verizon Wireless' limited open access 2007-11-28 06:56:00 Verizon Wireless
opens up. Under the new 'any apps, any device' strategy anybody can submit products to a VZW lab for certification. The company will publish details 08Q1, and hold a developer conference. New products are to hit the market 08H2.
So what does this mean? I think the company is opening up in a limited
way, with only one goal in mind: retain (or even win) market share.
Here are my Read more:Verizon
, Verizon Wireless
M1 launches SMS 2.0 2007-11-28 04:40:00 Singapore mobile operator M1 launched SMS
2.0: another innovative SMS-based service (cf. my previous post).It requires a (free) download, which may also be pre-installed (Nokia/Symbian handsets only). Content is pushed and free, some of it actually consists of ads. Data charges apply when a subscribers wants to dig deeper.Sending will cost the same as a "SMS 1.0" message, but now the user can add
Down under 2007-12-05 06:52:00 How about this deal for a day like today!
Signing off for a short vacation. Anybody care to meet me in Adelaide?
Back December 17!
World's first large-scale 802.11n network 2007-12-05 06:02:00 Morrisville State College claims the world's first large
-scale 802.11n network
. It has 720 access points from Meru Networks. Capacity (speed) should be 130-150 Mb/s per basestation (shared). The MSC reports 1200 simultaneous users at peak times. It's still early days, but improvements relative to 11a/b/g are noticeable.
The report also mentions Duke University (a Cisco user) and Carnegie Mellon ( Read more:World
Teleworking: traffic growth to stay at the 100% level 2007-12-05 03:24:00 In this release Foundry Networks announces a deal with the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX). In case you didn't know, it's the largest in the world.
Some interesting info in the release:
By late October a new record was set: 350 GB/s. AMS-IX expects to maintain its c. 100% growth rate and get near the 1 Tb/s threshold by the end of 2008. By the way, in the AMS-IX stats it now appears that the Read more:traffic
, level
The Investment Incentive Problem 2007-12-04 07:36:00 Do monopolies lack an incentive to invest? I suppose they did in the ‘old world’, where business was guaranteed and a government-based owner didn’t care much about maximizing value.
However, things are different in today’s telco marketplace. Governments have largely backed out and the market has taken over. Monopolies are on the brink of extinction. Add to that the natural monopoly of fiber ( Read more:Incentive
, Problem
KPN and Reggefiber roaring ahead 2007-12-03 07:04:00 It looks like 2007 was the breakthrough year for FTTH in the Netherlands. Two players have emerged as leaders, Reggefiber and KPN. They co-operate in Almere and now appear to be dividing up the rest of the country among themselves.
Meanwhile, cablecos (mainly UPC and Zesko) are fighting rearguard action.
News of the last few days underscores these trends:
KPN will build a network in Haaksbergen Read more:ahead
Teleworking (and Web 2.0 and P2P) wil drive FTTH 2007-12-20 01:52:00 Here at Communications Breakdown, a Fibre Ring member blog (see right), we are strong believers in the benefits of true broadband, i.e. FTTH.
Time for a reality check, though. Below are 5 issues that may be relevant for broadband, through the laws of demand & supply.
But make no mistake: they do not reduce the urgency to build FTTH (they may necessitate a long-term view and perhaps new business Read more:drive
Back on the grid: FTTH and OA 2007-12-19 06:28:00 On my way back from Australia, I had a chance to read the Straits Times, which reported on the next stage (an RfP for the NetCo layer), of the Singapore Next Generation National Broadband Network plan. The leading front page story on that day, mind you. Justice finally to this eminently important issue.
This is what I found in my mailbox and around the net on FTTH:
Algeria, neatly covered by
Reader feedback loop: FTTH and more 2008-03-12 06:06:00 Over the past few days I spoke/mailed with a number of 'industry leaders'. In some cases the most interesting things came up in a sideline. Here is what I have to share, with more to come next week.
1. Ed Achterberg of Telecompaper.com
His outfit is growing, both internationally and 'up the value chain'. Telecompaper already is the preferred partner of most Dutch operators and providers (and Read more:Reader
Expanding the network business up & down 2008-03-11 06:48:00 An MSO (Vigcom in Krimpen, NL) and an FTTH operator (OBR in Rotterdam NL) are starting a field trial of UCD's 'Daily Media' set-top box. The box will bring together both the video feed and internet-based video (comparable to AT&T's 2Wire box).
This way, the network
operator, which already has upstream deals for its video feed, can expand this side by adding internet-based video. The latter will
Vermont: FTTH at 'Free' price level 2008-03-11 03:24:00 Another munifiber project launched, ValleyFiber. This time it's in Vermont
- apparently triggered by Verizon's sale of the incumbent network. A 'non-recourse 15 year capital lease' with an 'outside private financier', along with pre-registrations, is targeted in order to avoid a municipal bond.
The project plans a Fall 2009 launch, an 8 Mb/s symmetrical BB connection (not terribly ambitious, but Read more:price
, level
Interesting read and event from STL (Telco 2.0) 2008-03-10 08:38:00 STL Partners (who trademarked the Telco 2.0 term), the firm of Simon, Martin, Keith et al, plan to do another brain torturing event
in April. I was lucky to get a view of the accompanying report (they will also present some entirely new research). Their concepts are thought-provoking, highly original and totally worthwhile for anybody in the industry, or even with an interest in business models
Buried duct (for FTTH) is cheaper than buried cable 2008-03-06 08:05:00 Emtelle and Wavin commissioned an FTTH cost evaluation study from TNO, an independent Dutch research organisation.
A quote:
One of the key conclusions of the study was that the cost of direct buried duct
— plastic tubing into which optical fibres can be blown as and when required —
was lower than that of direct buried cable when considered over a 25 year
period, even though the upfront costs
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