Broadband Mapping: A Buried Treasure

In the olden days, explorers paid a lot of money for maps that they hoped would lead to buried treasure. Things apparently haven’t changed too much from the days of Hernando Cortez and Ponce de Leon, as broadband mapping companies hope to find their pot of gold – or at least a respectable return -- from creating maps that the government will use to judge broadband stimulus applications. “If you want to develop the right broadband technology, you have to do a thorough needs assessment” The issue is highly contentious, however. While broadband mapping has been ongoing for years, it became a far more interesting industry segment when The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 became law. ARRA includes $7.2 billion to extend broadband access to areas – mostly rural – that are underserved or unserved today. ARRA also mandates $350 million for creation of broadband maps that can nail down more precisely where the billions of dollars should go. This makes perfect sense, of course. It’s illogical to try to fix a problem or meet a challenge if the precise nature of what is in play isn’t known. “If you want to develop the right broadband technology, you have to do a thorough needs assessment,” says Craig Settles, a consultant who works in the sector. “To walk into some place and spend a bunch of money to build or buy technology without understanding the needs of the people involved is a crap shoot.” It’s a vital job, and much of the effectiveness of the broadband stimulus will depend on how well the mapping is done. “If it is not worked out right, it will be a mess. There’s no doubt about that,” says Art Brodsky, the communications director for Public Knowledge, an advocacy group. The maps will be created on a state-by-state basis and integrated into a single national broadband map. A fight has broken out among companies that want to provide the state-level mapping services. The battle pits the biggest of the mapping firms – telecommunication industry-backed Connected Nation – against many of the other organizations and companies that want a slice of the business. Tight Timeframes It is important to consider the context. The ARRA assigns fulfillment of the mapping requirements to the National Telecommunication Information Administration (NTIA, which is part of the Department of Commerce). The NTIA’s Notice of Funds Availability (NOFA) also sets a tight timeframe for such a big job: Data for the map is to be collected by March 1, 2010, and the national broadband map is to be finished by February 17, 2011. So the states are scrambling, and the company with the biggest profile – quite an advantage in a chaotic environment – is Connected Nation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that grew out of a project early in the decade called ConnectKentucky. The organization, according to National Policy Director for Finance Phillip Brown, has been designated or is working with designees in 12 states and one territory. That number will grow as the industry states try to meet the deadlines set by the NOFA. Connected Nation is allowed to apply for broadband mapping under ARRA because it is a public/private partnership that runs its mapping business as a non-profit. The criticism is that major carriers and industry groups – including Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, the CTIA – The Wireless Association, the National Cable Telecommunications Association, the TIA, and the US Telecom Association – are on the board of directors and the organization’s advisory council. Indeed, Settles calls Connected Nation “essentially a PR group for the telecom industry” that was able to tilt the legislation in its favor. In addition to its board and advisory council membership, Connected Nation is partially funded by telecommunications companies. In an e-mail response to an inquiry, a Connected Nation press contact wrote that the organization’s funding sources are half public and half private. The e-mail says that less than 6 percent of private funding comes from the telecommunications companies. “The perception has been put out there that the bulk of our funding comes from the private sector and broadband providers. That’s not true,” Brown says. Critics say that the relationships suggest a conflict of interest, since the incumbent telecommunications companies would benefit by the amount and speed of broadband connectivity being overstated. The idea is that the higher the data rates and more extensive the footprint are in a certain area, the less likely it is that NTIA will approve of a project. Thus, relying on maps from a provider closely aligned with companies with a keen interest in the findings raises eyebrows. Indeed, the critics are not shy about saying that something untoward is going on. Vince Jordan, the president and CEO of broadband engineering, construction and management firm RidgeviewTel, says that Connected Nation isn’t doing a thorough job. “These guys basically are taking whatever the telco and cable guys feed them and regurgitate it, and say that’s where the coverage is,” he says. Data that is given by carriers to the broadband mapping companies is protected under non-disclosure agreements. Thus, actual cases in which speeds are overstated are impossible to identify. But appearances are vital. Drew Clark, the editor and executive director of BroadbandCensus, a news and commercial data services organization, says he believes that the telecommunications carriers shouldn’t be in the broadband mapping business, even indirectly. “I personally believe that broadband data needs to be collected independently of the carriers and incumbent interests,” he says. “You need to have an alternative to a group that is focused on the incumbents to get independent measures of broadband data.” The fear is that the good intentions of the broadband element of the stimulus can be waylaid by the intricate political maneuvers. Brodsky doesn’t pull his punches. He says that the effectiveness of the broadband stimulus hangs in the balance, and that whether applications from Connected Nation are accepted will be the key. “If the NTIA accepts Connected Nation’s applications – with their caveats and hidden data – I fear for the worst,” he says. Connected Nation: Standing on Its Record Not surprisingly, Connected Nation thinks the criticisms are unfounded. Brown defends the relationships with the carriers as the best way in which to get them to agree to the NDAs. “For us, it has not been necessary to use a stick,” he says. “Because we have always worked on demand creation, the carrot has worked.” Brown stands behind Connected Nation’s track record. He says mapping organizations are mandated to grant NDAs to telecommunications companies that ask for them under rules set by the NTIA. Brown adds that information contributed by the telecommunications firms is verified in a number of ways, from information provided by customers on their broadband speeds to engineering tests by Connected Nation engineers. In the bigger picture, Brown says he sees the smoke but has trouble finding the fire in the criticisms: “If the critics are not directly saying that Connected Nation misrepresented information on its maps, I am trying to figure out exactly what we’re being accused of. What’s the criticism?” The next few months will be vital to the success of the broadband element of the stimulus package. It is certain that some people in rural and underserved areas will be helped. The effectiveness of the broadband mapping project will go a long way to determining if the $7.2 billion investment is maximized. (source: Carl Wienshenk)

New Strategic WiFi Service: WiFi Direct Connect

A new Wi-Fi certification is nearing completion to allow direct connections between Wi-Fi devices without joining a traditional Wi-Fi network. Known as Wi-Fi Connect, Alliance plans to begin certifying devices by mid-2010.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is nearing completion of a new specification to allow Wi-Fi devices to connect to one another without joining a traditional home, office or hotspot network. The Wi-Fi Alliance expects to begin certification for the new specification in mid-2010 and is currently called Wi-Fi Direct. In its early stages of development it was known as Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer.

The new specification can be implemented in any Wi-Fi device, including mobile phones, cameras, printers, notebook computers, keyboards and headphones. Certified devices will also be able to create connections with Wi-Fi certified legacy devices already in use. Devices will be able to make a one-to-one connection or a group of several devices can connect simultaneously.
Resource Library:

The new specification targets both consumer electronics and enterprise applications, providing management features for enterprise environments and includes WPA2 security. Wi-Fi Direct devices will support typical Wi-Fi ranges and the same data rates as can be achieved with an infrastructure connection, so devices can connect from across a home or office and conduct bandwidth-hungry tasks.

“Wi-Fi Direct represents a leap forward for our industry. Wi-Fi users worldwide will benefit from a single-technology solution to transfer content and share applications quickly and easily among devices, even when a Wi-Fi access point isn't available,” Wi-Fi Alliance Executive Director Edgar Figueroa said in a statement. "The impact is that Wi-Fi will become even more pervasive and useful for consumers and across the enterprise."

The Wi-Fi Alliance plans to publish its peer-to-peer specification upon completion and will begin certifying devices for the Wi-Fi Direct designation in 2010. Only Wi-Fi Alliance member companies will be able to certify devices to the new specification. (source: Roy Mark - eWeek)

Mobile Broadband Market Change

Alcatel-Lucent chief Ben Verwaayen speaks the truth when he admits the telecom industry has "missed everything" in the digital boom.

"We missed email. We missed SMS. Some people have made a lot of money with ringtones...[we] think technology; we don't think end-users," he told an industry conference in September.

This is a guy who's worked both sides of the industry fence, previously holding BT's top post and before that was a senior exec at pre-merger Lucent.

Can the industry learn? I hope so, because the good times just don't last the way they used to.

It wasn't long ago we were celebrating the arrival of mobile broadband. Now a lot of people are fretting about the coming mobile data flood.

A US consultancy, Chetan Sharma, expects global mobile data traffic will pass 1 exabyte (EB) - a million terabytes - for the first time this year. In the next year both North America and Western Europe will top the 1 EB mark in mobile data traffic.

To put that into context, Cisco says that mobile data traffic will grow from a petabyte per month to an exabyte month in half the time it took fixed data traffic to do so. Cisco's Visual Network Index (VNI) predicts that mobile data volume will double every year between 2008 and 2013.

And here's an arresting stat: a single high-end phone like the iPhone or BlackBerry generates more data traffic than 30 basic or feature phones. A laptop aircard generates more data traffic than 450 basic-feature cell phones.

(For what it's worth, Cisco thinks most of the growth will come from video. In four years it will account for 64% of total mobile traffic.)

Huawei Technologies says that 3G dongles and smartphones have driven up mobile data usage by 10 to 15 times prior volume.
Mobile data is already a big chunk of revenue for many operators; in the case of NTT DoCoMo, the world's biggest mobile data carrier, 45%.

It's contributing to ARPU, but is it enough to halt its decline?

The problem is, as we all know, many operators have moved to flat-rate plans with large monthly allowances of data. Huawei puts it as only a vendor could: "If operators simply expand capacity to keep up with demand... including everything from streaming video to P2P downloads, they will never be able to achieve profitable operations."

Few operators that have experienced increase in overall ARPU, Chetan Sharma's survey concludes.

Indeed, DoCoMo's current numbers are scary, although they are as much to do with the pounding it's getting from its competitors, and the tough financial conditions, as mobile data alone.

In Q2 revenue was down 7.3% and income down 15%. Subscribers to its Pake-hodai service grew 43% - but that's a flat-rate data product. Voice revenue dived 80 billion yen ($882 million), or 29% compared with Q2 last year, while data sales were up just 25.2 billon yen. Ouch.

At the other end of the scale is Verizon Wireless, which is right in the sweet spot. Verizon is the world's fastest growing mobile data provider and according to Chetan Sharma, will overtake DoCoMo in the next few quarters.

It boosted data revenue 33% and data ARPU by 23%. Net effect on total ARPU? A measly 0.6%. If Verizon isn't minting cash, what hope is there the rest of us?

One part of the solution is what operators measure. Chetan Sharma suggests that instead of ARPU, operators should track performance and profitability by average margin per subscription (AMPS), average connections per user (ACPU), or "customer lifetime value" that maximizes profits across all connections of a user or his or her family.

That will get people looking at the right things.

Technology - femtos or Wi-Fi, for example - is another part of the solution.

But the biggest part will be to take Verwaayen's admonition to heart. Don't miss anything. Whether it's new price structures, app stores, fixed-mobile bundling, or partnerships with apps or handset firms, the mobile industry has to get ahead of the game. Or it really will become the land of bit pipes.
(source: Robert Clark - Telecomasia)

Nokia will launch Booklet 3G Netbook

Nokia will launch its Booklet 3G netbook in the US in mid-November through carrier partner AT&T.

The company said the Booklet 3G will be available through electronics chain store Best Buy, for $300 on a two-year AT&T contract with a roughly $60 per month data plan.

The device, which aims to blur the lines between smartphones and netbooks, will be powered by an Intel Atom chip and include Wi-Fi, 3G/HSPA and GPS capabilities.

The Booklet 3G will run on the Windows 7 OS, but will also be able to use the applications available on Nokia's Ovi app store.

“Our alliance with Nokia is advancing on multiple fronts and the Nokia Booklet 3G is an important step,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said.
Source:
telecomasia.net
Dylan Bushell-Embling

Amazon.com will release new Kindle eBook Reader

Amazon.com announced on Tuesday evening that it would soon begin selling a new version of the Kindle that can wirelessly download books both in the United States as well as in more than 100 other countries.

The move pits Amazon.com, based in Seattle, against a range of other players in the growing global market for digital reading. The rivals include iRex, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, the Dutch consumer electronics company; Sony; and China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier, which said last month it would soon begin selling several kinds of electronic reading devices.

The new Kindle is physically identical to Amazon’s current Kindle, with its slender profile, six-inch black-and-gray screen and angular keyboard. The main difference: it will use the wireless networks of AT&T and its international roaming partners, instead of Amazon’s existing wireless partner for the Kindle, Sprint. Sprint’s network is incompatible with most mobile networks outside of North America.

The new Kindle will sell for $279. It begins shipping on Oct. 19.

“We regularly ship millions of English-language books to non-English speaking countries and people have to wait for the delivery,” said Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive. “Now they can get books in 60 seconds. That is a pretty exciting part of what we are announcing.”

In addition, Amazon also announced a price cut for the United States-only Kindle, which will continue to be sold alongside the new global Kindle. The domestic Kindle is now $259, down from $299. Amazon previously dropped the price in July, from $359, to stimulate demand and to match the prices of rivals like Sony, whose least expensive e-reader now costs $199. Amazon also sells the larger-screen Kindle DX for $489.

International users of the new Kindle will have a slightly smaller collection of around 200,000 English-language books to choose from, and their catalogs will be tailored to the country they purchased the device in. Amazon said it would sell books from a range of publishers including Bloomsbury, Hachette, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet and Simon & Schuster.

Among the apparent holdouts: Random House, which is owned by Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate. Stuart Applebaum, a Random House spokesman, said the company’s “discussions with Amazon about this opportunity are ongoing, productive and private."

One challenge for publishers is navigating complex foreign rights issues: Books are often published by different companies and bear different prices in each country.

Though exact sales numbers are hard to come by, it appears electronic reading devices are having a breakout year. In a report being released on Wednesday by Forrester, the research firm revised its prediction for the industry, saying that three million e-reading devices would be sold in 2009, up from its previous estimate of two million.

Mr. Bezos declined to offer specific information about Kindle sales. But he said Kindle titles were now 48 percent of total book sales in instances where Amazon sold both a digital and physical copy of a book. That was up from 35 percent last May, an increase Mr. Bezos called “astonishing.”

“This has grown much faster than any of us ever anticipated,” Mr. Bezos said. (NYT)

What will the Wireless Web look like?

The future of the Web is up for grabs—again. It was only a few years ago that the Internet made the leap from dial-up to high-speed broadband connections. Today, another transformation looms as those wired connections give way to the possibility of a wireless Web. At the helm of this change is a fast-evolving wireless ecosystem that combines the greater speeds and higher data volumes of today’s wireless networks (such 3G-HSPA and, soon, LTE1) with the growing numbers of smart phones boasting bigger screens, better touch pads, and more processing power.

In the early 2000s, 3G technology was seen as a failure for the mobile-phone industry. By the eve of the Internet bust, companies had shelled out billions for wireless licenses, and the resulting implosion seemed to shut down any hopes (except in Japan) for the existence of a mobile Web. Today, the use of wireless data is growing rapidly and has passed a tipping point. Surveys show that two-thirds of mobile-phone owners access data on their devices—up from only one-quarter three years ago—with 60 percent using them for basic Internet browsing. Spending on smart phones, meanwhile, has soared from barely 3 percent of new-phone purchases to nearly 20 percent in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.2 Consider Austria: although the country is not usually ranked among digital hot spots such as South Korea or Finland, more new Austrian Web users are connecting via wireless data cards in their PCs and notebook computers than by wired broadband connections. (McKinsey)

Bug at iPhone OS 3.1 Found

Complaints about Apple's new iPhone OS 3.1 are flooding the web, with one poster calling it "the buggiest update that Apple has yet released for the iPhone."

The problems being reported are legion. They include iPhones becoming totally unresponsive, dropped calls, poor battery life, difficulties with Wi-Fi connections, failed Microsoft Exchange syncing, dead GPS service, loss of signal after syncing, tethering no longer working in "legally" unlocked phones outside the US, and more.

It should, of course, be noted that on some message boards there's an "everything's fine with mine" post for every complaint - and we've experienced no problems with OS 3.1 on our iPhone 3GS - but the sheer volume of problems being reported can't be ignored.

Take the unresponsive-iPhone reports, for example. Tartly dubbed "Coma Mode," it's a hot topic (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2151766&tstart=0) on Apple's own Apple's "Using iPhone (http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=245)" user forum.

Reports vary, but they have one common thread: that the iPhone chooses to simply disregard all input and needs to be fully rebooted before it will work again. Users report seemingly random occurences, sometimes when the phone has been put to sleep, sometimes when it's locked, and sometimes just whenever it feel like it.

A blogger at the Detroit News provided a detailed description (http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/techblog/index.php?blogid=192) of his attempted - and unsuccessful - workarounds, and a poster in an Apple thread (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10203961) entitled "Mysterious random total shut downs following 3.1 update" described how he reset his iPhone to factory settings, restored it, set Autolock to Off, deleted his email account, and removed all third party apps - all to no avail.

That poster also tried to downgrade his iPhone OS to version 3.0 - but, unfortunately, Apple's iTunes doesn't provide that option. One tech-savvy user, however, has posted a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FByu96DuCR0) of how he used the Mac OS X Terminal to restore iPhone OS 3.0 from an iPhone running the iPhone 3.1 beta.

Finally, as of Thursday morning in a decidedly unscientific poll (http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2009/09/16/poll-is-your-apple-iphone-useless-after-31-update/) on Phones Review, 70 per cent of respondents had answered the question "Is your Apple iPhone useless after 3.1 update?" with "Yes and I am so ticked off."

Even those lucky enough to have their iPhone remain functional after the OS 3.1 update are expressing frustration. On the Apple discussion boards alone, there are threads devoted to problems making and receiving calls (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2159018&tstart=0) even when a strong signal is available, reduced battery life (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2154857&tstart=90), flaky Wi-Fi (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2158541&tstart=0), and disabling of tethering (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2151255&tstart=15) in unlocked phones outside of the US.

Other users have reported a loss of signal after syncing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGMDL1qu9oQ) (YouTube video), and a multitude of problems reported on MacInTouch (http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/iphone_touchplatform/index.html), Macworld (http://forums.macworld.com/index.php?/forum/2007-iphone/), and iPhone Chat (http://iphone-chat.org/tag/iphone-3g-not-restore), including problems with GPS service, the ability to restore, and many, many other problems.

And there's also a thread (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10166076) on the Apple discussion boards and a series of posts (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22999133-iPhone-31-breaks-Exchange-Sync-for-pre3GS-phones) on DSLReports about the inability to sync with Microsoft Exchange on iPhone 3G phones that have been upgraded to OS 3.1. This frustration, however, involves the new hardware encryption in the iPhone 3GS, and AppleInsider has a comprehensive article (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/16/exchange_enhancements_in_iphone_3_1_cause_some_users_grief.html) explaining the problem and providing a server-side workaround for iPhone 3G users.

Apple did not respond to our request for comment. (Rik Myslewski -The Register) OS

WiFi 802.11n Standard approved

The latest version of Wi-Fi, 802.11n, received formal certification on Friday, despite the fact that more than 700 products have already been certified as compatible by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Never let it be said that the IEEE hurries things: more than two years after the first 802.11n products (conforming to an early draft of the standard) came out the standards body has finally ratified the specification - which should give confidence to enterprises looking at the technology even if everyone is already using it at home.

In addition to the early draft-compliant devices we have Wi-Fi-Alliance-certified devices that conform to a later draft and are allowed to carry the "Wi-Fi" logo. The Alliance reckons it's certified more than 700 devices, all of which should (thankfully) be seamlessly compatible with devices conforming to the final specification.

This compatibility is achieved thanks to the last details of the specification all being options in the draft, so draft devices should connect seamless with their properly-compliant siblings.

But Enterprises have been reluctant to deploy 802.11n until the standard was formally approved: only 15 per cent of the devices approved under the draft version are aimed at enterprise users, compared to 30 per cent which were home-networking products - the rest being laptop computers (45 per cent) and other bits of consumer electronics.

IEEE approval will mean 802.11n appearing in more offices, but the length of time it's taken to get the standard approved reflects badly on the IEEE and its ability to react with a speed commensurate with the rest of the industry. (source: Bill Ray -The Regoster)

A Blogger's Success Story

Lisa Sugar began blogging about celebrity gossip in her spare time four years ago. Now she and her husband, Brian, have a little media empire called, sensibly enough, Sugar Inc., with 12 blogs, 11 million readers a month and advertisers like Chanel and Sony.

The dream of quitting the day job and making a living from blog revenue has proved to be far-fetched for most bloggers. But a few entrepreneurs, like the Sugars, have found success in blog networks.

Such networks put blogs on various topics under some form of central control, like a digital-era Condé Nast. Though they do not command nearly the same ad rates that glossy magazines do, they are attracting ad dollars while magazines are losing them.

Sugar’s ad revenue increased 20 percent in the first half of the year, and the company is on track to double its revenue and turn a profit this year, said Mr. Sugar, the company’s chief executive. Gawker Media, one of the earliest and biggest blog networks, reported that ad revenue was up 45 percent in the first half of this year.

Both companies are private, and neither would disclose more specific figures, but by some estimates the larger networks have annual revenue in the low tens of millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, advertising revenue for magazines dropped 21 percent in the first half, and the number of ad pages sold dropped 28 percent, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

The blog networks that have survived the downturn in advertising and the explosion of competing content on the Web credit their obsessive coverage of narrow topics, along with business models that reach beyond advertising.

“It’s actually really hard creating compelling content that brings an audience,” Mr. Sugar said.

Hobbyist bloggers first got the idea that their online entries could be profitable in 2002 when Nick Denton, a former reporter for The Financial Times, started what would become Gawker Media. The catty network quickly grew into a powerhouse, and it now has eight blogs, 20 million monthly readers and more than 150 full- and part-time employees. When Jason Calacanis sold his blog network, Weblogs Inc., to AOL for a reported $25 million in 2005, the notion that blogging could be a business was cemented.

Today, blog networks range from big, like Gawker and Sugar, to smaller and more focused, like The Business Insider, VentureBeat and the GigaOm Network, which cover business and technology. There are also large networks of blogs that share ads but not editorial control, like BlogHer and Glam Media.

Sugar’s blogs — with names like PopSugar (celebrity gossip), BellaSugar (beauty) and LilSugar (mothering) — are all edited and designed with 28-year-old women in mind. The writers and sales staff are fanatical about going after that ideal visitor, Mr. Sugar said. The posts are short, light and sarcasm-free, with big photos and headlines like “The Jolie-Pitts Bring the Twins to the Golden Arches” and “10 Sexy Bedhead Hairstyles to Try Today.”

Other blog networks take a similarly narrow focus. Gawker Media’s business cards used to read “Unhealthily obsessed,” said Lockhart Steele, the company’s former managing editor. He follows the same motto at Curbed, a company he founded that publishes blogs on real estate, dining, shopping and travel in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“We are completely obsessed with every square inch of the areas we cover,” Mr. Steele said. “It’s the classic blogger model: give people everything they could possibly want on a topic.” For the Curbed sites, that sometimes means two dozen posts a day just about New York real estate.

That all-encompassing coverage is meant to keep readers coming back many times a day, in turn attracting advertisers.

Blogs, with their unpredictable and sometimes edgy content, can be frightening to advertisers, but blog networks are less risky, said Shenan Reed, a founder of Morpheus Media, a digital marketing agency that represents brands like Louis Vuitton and L’Oréal.

“When you’re dealing with a company where the editorial control is living under one roof, you feel like there’s a consistency in the message, which is what makes Sugar, Gawker and Curbed fantastically interesting to us,” Ms. Reed said.

Blog networks also make it easier for advertisers, who do not have time to sift through the millions of blogs on the Web, to reach a big blog audience. For example, Morpheus ran an ad campaign for Neiman Marcus on the Sugar network in which it dressed each of the Sugar blogs’ cartoon mascots in outfits from the store, and readers could click on the clothes to buy them.

Yet for Sugar, the dream of growing a large and profitable media business on advertising alone did not come true.

“Outside of a few examples, I think people way overestimated the amount of ad revenue that was there for the taking for blogging as a business,” said Scott Rosenberg, author of the recent book “Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters.”

In 2007, Sugar, which is backed by Sequoia Capital and has 105 employees, acquired ShopStyle, an e-commerce site. Today it brings in half of Sugar’s revenue. At ShopStyle, shoppers can browse online retailers’ selections, and Sugar gets paid when they click through to a retailer or make a purchase.

Sugar would not have been able to grow as it has without both sources of revenue, said Mr. Sugar, who was formerly vice president for e-commerce at J. Crew. The company plans to eventually make money selling virtual goods, too, like stilettos in a fashion game.

Blog networks have also had to change the type of content they publish. Though many started by publishing links to and commentary on other Web sites’ material, there is now so much material online that they need to offer original reporting to stand out, Mr. Steele said.

Each of Curbed’s sites has a full-time editor and a few freelancers, and they have started competing with local papers for scoops. Curbed often depends on readers’ tips and might publish 10 updates to an article in response to them.

When Gawker blogs get exclusive content, like leaked videos, they can get more than a hundred times their typical traffic. “Scoops pay,” Mr. Denton said.

Sugar gets press passes to the Oscars and recently started producing videos about shopping and celebrities. It also developed blogging software called OnSugar. When bloggers use the software to showcase clothes and readers click to buy them, the bloggers and Sugar get a cut. Sugar plans to eventually sell ads on these blogs.

“Perpetual movement is the essence of survival and prosperity online,” said Michael Moritz, the Sequoia investor who backed Google, Yahoo and Sugar. “If online media and entertainment companies don’t improve every day, they will just wind up as the newfangled version of Reader’s Digest — bankrupt.” (source: Claire Cain Miller-NYT)

ProtoStar Satellite Operator Filed For Bankruptcy

BANGALORE, July 29 (Reuters) - Satellite services operator ProtoStar Ltd filed for bankruptcy protection along with its five affiliates on Wednesday and said it was looking to sell its satellites through a court-supervised auction.

The Bermuda-based company, which has two satellites, said its lenders support the restructuring plan and had agreed to provide debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing. Companies rely on DIP financing to fund operations while in bankruptcy.

The company was formed in 2005 to launch and operate high-power geostationary satellites to lease capacity to Asian direct-to-home (DTH) satellite television and broadband service providers.

The company said in court documents that in March, Agrani Satellite Services Ltd, which had agreed to lease capacity on ProtoStar's first satellite, terminated the contract. Protostar said it disputes the validity of the termination notice.

Court documents show that ProtoStar's working-capital lenders declared an event of default in April and were soon followed by other secured lenders.

The company, which employs about 22 people, listed assets and liabilities in the range of $100 million to $500 million in its Chapter 11 filing.

It lists Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co (PLDT) (TEL.PS), to which it owes $27.5 million, as its largest unsecured creditor.

The case is In re: ProtoStar Satellite Systems Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware (Delaware), No.09-12658. (Editing by Gopakumar Warrier, Vinu Pilakkott)

Android installed quietly in More Mobile Phones

Google's Android platform isn't often cited when end users discuss the leaders in the mobile phone market. Typically, those discussions are dominated by companies such as Apple, Research In Motion and even Microsoft. But it's Google that's quietly gaining ground in the space.

The company is behind more phone releases running its Android operating system than you might think. Aside from the T-Mobile G1—the first Android-based phone to hit store shelves—HTC's MyTouch 3G is currently offered to consumers. HTC also announced the Tattoo Tuesday that promises some neat functionality for European users. It's the company's fourth Android-based phone.

But HTC isn't alone. Companies like Motorola, LG and even Acer have signed on to produce Android-based products. Google's partners in the Open Handset Alliance have joined at such a rapid rate that the company hopes to have up to 20 Android-based phones available by the end of 2009. It could more than double that number by the end of 2010. And yet, Android doesn't receive the kind of respect or attention Apple does. It's an afterthought when it comes time to analyze the mobile phone market.


Admittedly, that is mainly due to the fact that Android doesn't hold the kind of market share its competitors do. In fact, it's trailing far behind Apple's iPhone, RIM's BlackBerry devices and even Windows Mobile.

But it may not stay that way much longer. Unlike Apple, which has tied its future to one product, Google decided to follow in Microsoft's footsteps and open up its software to vendors. And unlike Microsoft's Windows Mobile, which provides a subpar experience, Google's Android mobile operating system is a fine alternative to the iPhone.

The Experience

In the cell phone market, providing an experience is a key success factor. If a phone doesn't have a touch-screen, doesn't sport some kind of multitouch technology and doesn't have an App Store, most users won't find as much value in it. Those are requirements that Apple has put in place, and like it or not, its competitors have to play ball.

And Google is playing ball. Its Android operating system boasts outstanding software that appeals to just about anyone who uses it. In fact, it's a nice alternative to Apple's iPhone software.

Google's China Chief left the Company to setup a New Venture

Google’s high-profile China chief Lee Kaifu is set to announce his resignation from the company.
Lee, who has been China president and a Google global vice-president since 2005, will go to work for a start-up, mainland media reports said.

Since setting up in China Google has taken about one-fifth of the search market from leader Baidu, but the latest figures show it lost 1.6 points to Baidu in Q2, and now trails with 19.8% of the market to Baidu’s 75.7%.

Taiwanese-born Lee joined the company from Microsoft in controversial fashion, sparking legal action against Google over a non-compete agreement he had signed with his former employer, Microsoft Corp.

iPhones Caused ATT Network Overload

Slim and sleek as it is, the iPhone is really the Hummer of cellphones.

It’s a data guzzler. Owners use them like minicomputers, which they are, and use them a lot. Not only do iPhone owners download applications, stream music and videos and browse the Web at higher rates than the average smartphone user, but the average iPhone owner can also use 10 times the network capacity used by the average smartphone user.

“They don’t even realize how much data they’re using,” said Gene Munster, a senior securities analyst with Piper Jaffray.

The result is dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and glacial download speeds as AT&T’s cellular network strains to meet the demand. Another result is outraged customers.

Cellphone owners using other carriers may gloat now, but the problems of AT&T and the iPhone portend their future. Other networks could be stressed as well as more sophisticated phones encouraging such intense use become popular, analysts say.

Taylor Sbicca, a 27-year-old systems administrator in San Francisco, checks his iPhone 10 to 15 times a day. But he is not making calls. He checks the scores of last night’s baseball game and updates his Twitter stream. He checks the local weather report to see if he needs a coat before heading out to dinner — then he picks a restaurant on Yelp and maps the quickest way to get there.

Or at least, he tries to.

“It’s so slow, it feels like I’m on a dial-up modem,” he said. Shazam, an application that identifies songs being played on the radio or TV, takes so long to load that the tune may be over by the time the app is ready to hear it. On numerous occasions, Mr. Sbicca says, he missed invitations to meet friends because his text messages had been delayed.

And picking up a cell signal in his apartment? “You hit the dial button and the phone just sits there, saying it’s connecting for 30 seconds,” he said.

More than 20 million other smartphone users are on the AT&T network, but other phones do not drain the network the way the nine million iPhones users do. Indeed, that is why the howls of protest are more numerous in the dense urban areas with higher concentrations of iPhone owners.

“It’s almost worthless to try and get on 3G during peak times in those cities,” Mr. Munster said, referring to the 3G network. “When too many users get in the area, the call drops.” The problems seem particularly pronounced in New York and San Francisco, where Mr. Munster estimates AT&T’s network shoulders as much as 20 percent of all the iPhone users in the United States.

Owners of the iPhone 3GS, the newest model, “have probably increased their usage by about 100 percent,” said Chetan Sharma, an independent wireless analyst. “It’s faster so they are using it more on a daily basis.”

Mr. Sharma compares the problem to water flowing through a pipe. “It can only funnel so much at a given time,” he said. “It comes down to peak capacity loads, or spikes in data usage. That’s why you see these problems at conferences or in large cities with high concentration of iPhone users.”

When thousands of iPhone owners descended on Austin, Tex., in March during South by Southwest, an annual technology and music conference, attendees were unable to send text messages, check their e-mail or make calls until AT&T installed temporary cell sites to amplify the service.

AT&T’s right to be the exclusive carrier for iPhone in the United States has been a golden ticket for the wireless company. The average iPhone owner pays AT&T $2,000 during his two-year contract — roughly twice the amount of the average mobile phone customer.

But at the same time the iPhone has become an Achilles’ heel for the company.

“It’s been a challenging year for us,” said John Donovan, the chief technology officer of AT&T. “Overnight we’re seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones,” he said. “There’s just no parallel for the demand.”

AT&T says that the majority of the nearly $18 billion it will spend this year on its networks will be diverted into upgrades and expansions to meet the surging demands on the 3G network. The company intends to erect an additional 2,100 cell towers to fill out patchy coverage, upgrade existing cell sites by adding fiber optic connectivity to deliver data faster and add other technology to provide stronger cell signals.

As fast as AT&T wants to go, many cities require lengthy filing processes to erect new cell towers. Even after towers are installed, it can take several months for software upgrades to begin operating at faster speeds.

The company has also delayed bandwidth-heavy features like multimedia messaging, or text messages containing pictures, audio or video. It is also postponing “tethering,” which allows the iPhone to share its Internet connection with a computer, a standard feature on many rival smartphones. AT&T says it has no intention of capping how much data iPhone owners use.

The upgrades are expected to be completed by next year and the company has said it is already seeing improvements.

But AT&T faces another cost — to its reputation. AT&T’s deal with Apple is said to expire as early as next year, at which point other carriers in the United States would be able to sell the popular Apple phones. Indeed, a recent survey by Pricegrabber.com found that 34 percent of respondents pinpointed AT&T as the primary reason for not buying an iPhone.

“It’s a P.R. nightmare,” said Craig Moffett, a senior analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

AT&T might be in the spotlight now, analysts say, but other carriers will face similar problems as they sell more smartphones, laptop cards and eventually tablets that encourage high data usage.

Globally, mobile data traffic is expected to double every year through 2013, according to Cisco Systems, which makes network gear. “Whether an iPhone, a Storm or a Gphone, the world is changing.” Mr. Munster said. “We’re just starting to scratch the surface of these issues that AT&T is facing.”

In preparation for the next wave of smartphones and data demands, all the carriers are rushing to introduce the next-generation of wireless networks, called 4G.

Analysts expect that in a year or so, AT&T’s network will have improved significantly — but it may not be soon enough for some iPhone owners paying for the higher-priced data plans, like Mr. Sbicca, who says he plans to switch carriers as soon as the iPhone becomes available on other networks.

“What good is having all those applications if you don’t have the speed to run them?” he said. “It’s not exactly rocket science here. It’s pretty standard stuff to be able to make a phone call.” (source: Jenna Wortham-NYT)

Skype Sold to Private Investors for US$3.1 Billion

SAN FRANCISCO — With its sale to private investors, the online calling service Skype has thrown off the last of the shackles that limited its growth and potential as a unit of eBay. Now its challenge is to turn its global popularity into bigger profits.

EBay announced on Tuesday that it was selling Skype to a group led by Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm in Silicon Valley. As part of the deal, which values Skype at $2.75 billion, the buyers agreed to pay $1.9 billion in cash, which includes a loan from eBay of $125 million, for 65 percent of the company. EBay, which is based in San Jose, Calif., will retain a 35 percent stake.

Skype offers free software for computers and smartphones that lets people make free voice and video calls to other Skype users over the Internet. It makes money primarily by charging for calls to landlines and cellphones around the world, although its rates are generally far below those of traditional phone companies.

When it acquired Skype in 2005, eBay said it hoped the service would support its auctions and its PayPal payment service by letting buyers and sellers discuss transactions. But eBay users were not so chatty.

The deal announced Tuesday would essentially allow Skype to go back into start-up mode. For example, it will be able to conceal investments in projects and new technologies from the public — and from rivals — instead of disclosing them in eBay’s public regulatory filings.

The company will also be able to lure new employees with its own stock, which could become valuable if Skype’s buyers decide to sell shares in an initial public offering.

“This gives us a great set of investors who are going to add a lot of value to the business,” said Josh Silverman, Skype’s chief executive. “And as a stand-alone company we are focused solely on communications, and there is always benefit to focus.”

The group buying Skype includes the London venture capital firm Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, a new venture capital firm co-founded by Marc Andreessen, the Netscape co-founder.

The deal completes a journey that began early last year, when Meg Whitman, eBay’s longtime chief executive, left the company and her deputy, John Donahoe, took over. Mr. Donahoe moved Mr. Silverman over from Shopping.com, another eBay division, and gave Skype, which is based in Luxembourg, wide latitude to operate independently.

“All the previous presidents had a really short leash back to San Jose, and the company was basically a bureaucratic mess,” said Phil Wolff, editor of Skype Journal, a blog covering the service. “With the changes last year, the company got a strong leadership team and a strong sense of direction.”

The result has been steady, solid growth, even as competing Internet calling services like Google Voice came on the scene. Skype, which had 276 million registered users in the first quarter of last year, ended July with 480 million.

Revenue rose to $170 million in the second quarter of this year from $136 million in the same quarter a year earlier. EBay does not break out Skype’s profits but says it has been profitable for 10 consecutive quarters.

In a sign that Skype may have discovered new opportunities outside the personal computer, the Skype application for the iPhone has been one of the most popular programs for the device since it was released in March. Skype has also struck deals to place its service on Nokia phones.

Egon Durban, managing director at Silver Lake Partners, said the iPhone application was “a great example of what we feel are the attractive opportunities for the company to develop.”

“This is one of the leading Internet franchises with terrific growth prospects,” Mr. Durban said. He gave no specifics on features Skype might offer, but said it was easy to imagine possibilities. He also said the buyers had no plans for a public offering.

Some of Skype’s newest features may suggest directions for the company. The latest version of its software, released this year, emphasizes face-to-face video chats. Skype now says that 34 percent of calls between Skype users include video, and such chats have become a popular way for people around the world to connect with one another.

In addition to working on allowing outside programmers to weave Skype’s features and infrastructure into their own programs or Web sites, the company is also working on replacing the service’s underlying peer-to-peer technology. That is partly out of legal necessity. The rights to that technology remain with Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who have sued eBay in a British court over some changes eBay made to it. That case is to go to trial next year.

For eBay, selling Skype — particularly at a valuation higher than many analysts had thought possible — offers partial redemption for a deal that many Internet analysts said was an awkward fit. EBay paid $2.6 billion for Skype, and performance incentives lifted the final price to $3.1 billion.

“The purchase was a serious mistake by Meg Whitman. It was an attempt to buy growth, which investors saw through instantly,” said Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. The new eBay management found ways for Skype to generate revenue, he said, “and now they sold it at a great price.”

Mr. Donahoe said eBay did not regret having bought Skype when company executives believed eBay was in a mortal struggle with Google, which was also pursuing the service. He said the spinoff would allow eBay to focus on its core e-commerce and online payment businesses and avoid extra distractions.

“We don’t regret having done this at all. We compete in a dynamic market, and you have to move quickly and take risks,” Mr. Donahoe said. “When we bought Skype we thought it had synergies with our other two businesses, and it turns out it did not. But it also turned out that it’s a great stand-alone business.” (source: Bradstone, NYT)

Mobile Payments are getting Public Acceptance

The value of mobile payment transactions is forecast to expand 68% annually and reach almost $250 billion in 2012 from $29 billion in 2008. By then, accourding to Arthur D. Little, proximity payments will represent 51% of the total m-payment transactions.

Based on ADL's Global M-Payment Report Update 2009, the company believes these figures will be realized as telecom companies have an incentive to launch m-payment services to take advantage of the current window of opportunity. Additionally, transaction volume is expected to keep rising as m-payments will take market share from banking transactions due to lower service costs, and from online-payment services due to increased mobility.

M-payment services are largely still focused on a business-to-person environment, and are equally balanced between remote and proximity services. Volume-wise, remittances will globally be the strongest growth contributor, rising 25% annually over the next two years, before retail purchases will take the lead with 77% yearly growth until 2012.

A key factor influencing the potential for m-payments in any market - developed or emerging - is the banking infrastructure. M-payments have a greater opportunity in markets where the banking network is relatively less developed, acting as a competitive service channel.

ADL expects m-payment transactions in developed markets to grow 56% yearly, representing a little over a third of the total transaction value by 2012. That same year, emerging markets will grow by 76% yearly and account for about two-thirds of the total.

The biggest share in 2008 came from the cluster of developed countries Japan, South Korea and Australia, with 24% of the global total. Western Europe is in the second spot with a 13% share, but will become the biggest contributor at 17% by 2012. South America will follow closely with 12% and North America with 11%.

In developed markets, ADL does not see m-payments substituting existing payment systems - as massive adoption is limited to convenience-enhancing applications and niche segments - but it will put pressure on existing transaction channel margins. In the next two years, m-payments will remain a complementary transaction channel in developed markets.

For an m-payment solution to be adopted on a mass scale, it must fulfill the key success factors, offering unmatched mobility, a user-friendly interface, a high number of contacts with banks and operators and a new level of convenience. Most of the m-payment applications supply niche segments.

Despite the current hype, ADL does not expect a massive adoption of near field communication (NFC) solution in a majority of developed countries until 2011 at the earliest. Instead, this is seen to be still two years away due to a delay in hardware standardization, the limited availability of NFC-enabled handsets and issues in the development of a viable business case for all stakeholders.

Also, improved regulations and movements toward a liberal ecosystem will push market developments into going "cross-border". As seen in the EU, m-payment market development depends on the creation of a liberal regulatory framework, enabling increased competition and aiming at streamlining cross-border m-payment transactions.

Concerns beyond convenience

As for emerging markets, m-payment services will become the first widespread cashless payment system in many countries, enabling cost-effective and secure transactions. As already seen from several successful service launches, emerging markets are a fertile ground for the development of m-payment solutions due to their limited banking infrastructure and growing mobile penetration.

End-users' benefits will mainly be created through low-value but high-frequency transaction services. Service providers will continue to focus on such transactions while leveraging their customer relationships. Regulators and governments are establishing a legal environment that encourages further development of m-payment services.

New know-your-customer (KYC) norms will be developed, forcing market players to find the balance between convenience of use and security concerns. Regulators, operators, banks and other players have to find the right balance between making the service very convenient and lowering barriers to adoption on one side, and appropriate security and anti-fraud controls on the other side. Hence, value chain players should take an active role in defining the KYC norms to secure their influence on the development.
Remittance will be the strong growth driver for m-payment transaction volume and cross-border cooperation. Global mobile remittances, with 146% annual growth, will be the target area for m-payment services and will lead to the establishment of international strategic partnerships. This will positively influence the m-payment transactions.

For financial institutions, m-banking and related m-payment services can be a differentiating factor and a chance to tap into the trillion-dollar market of micro cash payments.

For merchants, it is best to evaluate the m-payment channel as a means to increase consumer convenience, mobility and accessibility of their services and goods.

ADL recommends that independent payment service providers increase their partnerships to become well-integrated and, thus, to increase their bargaining power concerning value chain margin distributions. (source: telcomasia.net)

T-Mobile Android Phones are sold at RadioShack

In July, T-Mobile announced a new partnership with RadioShack that looked to bring more of its cell phones and smartphones to more customers. Now, these T-Mobile products are available at RadioShack starting Aug. 19. These handsets include the HTC myTouch 3G, which is based on Google Android, as well as new Samsung models.

T-Mobile is bringing a new line of cell phones and smartphones, including the Android-based HTC myTouch 3G handset, to RadioShack starting Aug. 19.

In July, T-Mobile and RadioShack announced the new partnership, which looked to expand the audience for T-Mobile’s line of smartphones and other handset devices. In addition to the much-anticipated myTouch 3G, T-Mobile is bringing other devices to RadioShack, including ones from Samsung and Sony Ericsson, as well as Research In Motion’s BlackBerry.

The partnership also allows T-Mobile to bring more customers onto its new 3G network, which is facing competition from the likes of Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint. In addition, it allows T-Mobile to dive deeper into retail with access to more than 4,000 RadioShack stores. This is an area where AT&T, which has more than 2,000 retail outlets, has had a district advantage.

At the same time, Google and its open-source Android operating system is given a much bigger stage and more access to potential customers.

“The Android platform, with its broad array of unique applications, offers our customers another exciting option for their mobile lifestyle,” Peter Whitsett, an executive vice president with RadioShack, said in an Aug. 19 statement.

Besides the myTouch 3G, RadioShack now has several other brands on its shelves, including the BlackBerry Curve 8900, the Samsung T239, the Samsung Comeback, the Samsung Gravity 2, the Samsung Behold and the Sony Ericsson TM506.

In addition to the RadioShack deal, T-Mobile announced that the Samsung Gravity 2 is now available for a price of $30 after the rebate and a new service contract. The Gravity 2, a horizontal slider phone, is available through T-Mobile’s 3G network and offers a full QWERTY keypad, multiple messaging options, a 2-megapixel camera and camcorder, and 16GB of additional memory.

Malaysia's P1 WiMAX Operator Celebrated its One-Year Anniversary with 80000 Subscribers

PETALING JAYA – Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. (“P1”), Malaysia’s first and leading WiMAX telco today announced that it has surpassed the 80,000 subscriber mark, after one year of rolling out its P1 W1MAX high-speed wireless broadband service.

The impressive subscriber milestone underlines P1’s commitment to challenge the Malaysian broadband scene through its innovative 4G (fourth generation) technology and compelling consumer and business high-speed wireless broadband packages. At the same time, the leading WiMAX player here and in the region is playing an active role in catering to the insatiable demand for high-speed broadband, in line with the Government’s goal of ensuring that Malaysia reaches 50% household broadband penetration rate by 2010.

P1’s CEO, Michael Lai said, “We are one year into our mission to provide broadband technology that reaches out to everyone in Malaysia. As one of the forerunners in the world for large scale 802.16e 2.3GHz commercial WiMAX deployment, we’re very proud of what we’ve achieved today from ground zero.”

P1 acquired one of Malaysia’s four WiMAX licenses in March 2007. Following this, P1 began a series of strategic alliances with the aim to be the first to launch Malaysia’s and one of the world’s first WiMAX services. In May 2008, through its parent company, KLSE Main Board listed Green Packet Berhad, P1 secured a US$14.3mil (RM50mil) investment from Intel to make it the very first Intel-invested WiMAX telcos in the Asia Pacific.

Navin Shenoy, General Manager of Intel Asia Pacific, said: “Intel congratulates Packet One on a successful first year. The Internet is an essential, enriching and entertaining part of our lives, and the strong take-up of Packet One’s WiMAX service demonstrates Malaysia’s need for powerful, flexible, wireless broadband solutions. Intel is pleased to continue its work with Packet One to bring the benefits of WiMAX to more Malaysians.”

Barely 17 months into operations, P1 launched commercial services with the go-to-market brand of P1 W1MAX in August 2008. The competition was nowhere in sight.
Lai attributes P1’s progress to a few key success ingredients. He said, “We have over 500 strong workforce that believes in our WiMAX vision, and everyone from our engineers, marketers, and finance personnel to our help desks staff tackled the knowledge gap in relation to the new WiMAX technology and on the 2.3 GHz spectrum band. Now we’re probably one of the most skilled workforce the world has to offer for deployment and service provision of WiMAX.”

Talent aside, Lai advocates the importance of the WiMAX DNA (Device, Network, and Applications).
Whilst WiMAX devices on the 2.3GHz spectrum band were practically non-existent, P1 had an unfair advantage which leverages the technology and R&D strength of Green Packet, also a wireless connectivity products and solutions provider for the international market. The outcome of which is a host of stylish and user-friendly plug-and-play fixed and mobile devices, which not only accelerated P1’s launch preparedness but continues to help it gain traction in the marketplace. P1 has also maintained a respectable (Average Revenue per User) of above US$24.30 (RM85), which it plans to sustain by continually introducing new and innovative connectivity and communications services to its consumers.

Services in the pipeline include P1 VoWiMAX or Voice over WIMAX, which is expected to bring digital voice to a whole new level with the high bandwidth capability of WiMAX and QoS. Within the next few years, P1 expects to further support WiMAX-enabled laptops and several new Mobile Internet Devices (MID) such as mobile phones and PDAs.

Rapid is the key word says Lai, when it comes to network deployment to expand coverage to the entire nation. To meet P1’s ambitious network coverage goals, the Company employs a multi-vendor strategy with Alcatel Lucent deploying the first phase, and towards the tail end, launch ZTE’s concurrent second phase deployment. P1 had even built its own in-house deployment team to support its aggressive rollout target. P1 expects to deliver 35% population coverage by 2009, and 65% by 2012.

“We want to make broadband a right for all Malaysians and not a privilege”, said Lai when asked what the P1 W1MAX brand is all about. He added with zest, “We’re the challenger, unconventional, engaging, fun and out to make an impact. More importantly, we go out of our way to understand and respond to what our consumers want.”

P1 is definitely changing the Malaysian broadband industry landscape. This new player is promising new subscriber addition numbers on the back of limited network coverage.
“More and more Malaysians are becoming convinced that P1 is capable of providing a compelling alternative and we can’t wait for them to join the P1 W1MAX revolution, if they have not already,” concluded Lai.

Opposition to Google's Plan to Commercialize Digital Copies of Books

BERLIN — Opposition is mounting in Europe to a proposed class-action settlement giving Google the right to commercialize digital copies of millions of books.

The settlement would permit Americans to buy online access to millions of books by European authors whose works were scanned by Google at American libraries.

While some big European publishers, like the Oxford University Press and Bertelsmann (which owns Random House) and Georg von Holtzbrinck (the owner of Macmillan), support the agreement, there is widespread opposition among French publishers. The German government, supported by national collection societies in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Spain, plans to argue against it and encourage writers to pull out of the agreement.

A United States District Court has set a Sept. 4 deadline for submissions on the settlement and plans to hold a hearing Oct. 7.

Akash Sachdeva, an intellectual property lawyer with the law firm Allen & Overy in London, said that last-minute objections from Europe were unlikely to stop the settlement from going forward.

“I would imagine the court is going to say that because you have a significant amount of big players around the world who have opted into this, then it is worth proceeding with,” he said.

Google, which has been digitizing books since 2004 to make them available online, says the proposed settlement will benefit publishers, authors and consumers, making a vast reservoir of work available for easy access.

Around the world, 25,000 publishers, libraries and individuals are working with Google to digitize their archives and catalogues, including Oxford’s prestigious Bodleian Library and the Bavarian State Library. Even the French National Library, an outspoken opponent of the project, said last week that it was talking to Google about a deal to help digitize its archives.

“We believe that we are helping the industry tremendously by creating a way for authors and publishers to be found,” said Santiago de la Mora, Google’s head of printing partnerships in London. “Search is critical. If you are not found, the rest cannot follow.”

Mr. de la Mora also said that authors could always remove their works from Google’s scanning registry.

The European Commission is to hold a staff-level meeting on the proposed settlement on Sept. 7, but it has not directly involved itself in the case. The commission has supported homegrown digitization projects, including the Europeana online book and cultural library database.

In Britain, where many publishing houses have close ties to the United States, publishers have avoided open confrontation with Google.

But some British publishers have objections and are working with Google on issues like how to determine whether a book is out of print, which comes up when books are still widely available in Europe but no longer in the United States.

Some are also concerned about a lack of European representation on the Book Rights Registry, a panel that is supposed to collect and distribute revenue from Google’s book sales in the United States to authors and publishers.

In Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Spain, opposition to the settlement is more vocal.

The German government has hired an American law firm, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, to submit a friend-of-the-court brief opposing Google.

Copyright agencies in the opposing countries, which represent publishers and authors and generate revenue by levying fees on their book sales, view Google’s online sales platform as a direct threat.

Four European agencies, VG Wort of Germany, Literar Mechana of Austria, Pro Litteris of Switzerland and Cedro of Spain, are asking members to remove their books from Google’s online registry, should the settlement be approved.

In Germany, about 2,700 people, including the prominent authors Günter Grass and Daniel Kehlman, have signed a petition asking the government to try to scuttle the settlement. Alain Kouck, the chief executive of Editis, the second-largest French book publisher, said he was talking to other publishers about developing a unified French digital sales platform.

(source: NYT)

ProtoStar I and ProtoStar II Satellites are for Sale under the US Bancruptcy Law

Yesterday, ProtoStar Ltd. filed two separate motions seeking approval of procedures to separately sell substantially all of the assets of two of its subsidiaries - ProtoStar I Ltd. and ProtoStar II Ltd. All three of the entities filed voluntary chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on July 29, 2009.

ProtoStar was formed in 2005 to "acquire, modify, launch and operate high-power geostationary (i.e., fixed with respect to a given point on Earth) communication satellites optimized for direct-to-home satellite television and broadband internet access across the Asia-Pacific region." ProtoStar operates two such satellites - the ProtoStar I Satellite (owned by ProtoStar I Ltd.) and the ProtoStar II Satellite (owned by ProtoStar II Ltd.). The ProtoStar I Satellite launched on July 7, 2008 and "provides Ku-band coverage for digital DTH services, high-definition television and broadband internet to under-served areas from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, while C-band transponders on the satellite enable ProtoStar to provide cellular backhaul, traditional last mile telecom and basic broadcasting services." The ProtoStar II Satellite launched on May 16, 2009 and became operational on June 17, 2009 following in-orbit testing. At that time, the ProtoStar II Satellite began providing services to PT Media Citra IndoStar and PT MNC Skyvision (the largest DTH satellite television service operator in Indonesia).

According to the motions, there is no stalking horse bidder for ProtoStar I's assets, but "potential acquirers have expressed an interest to purchase the assets." However, ProtoStar is seeking the authority to enter into a stalking horse agreement and provide a break-up fee and expense reimbursement in an amount of up to three percent of the cash purchase price (in aggregate). There is also no stalking horse bidder for the assets of ProtoStar II and the company is similarly seeking the ability to enter into a stalking horse agreement later. However, ProtoStar II seeks advance approval of a three percent break-up fee and a separate $500,000 expense reimbursement.

The bidding and auction procedures sought for both sets of assets include the following (differences between the two proposed sets of procedures are noted):

• Bid Deadline: 4:00 p.m. (Eastern) on September 17, 2009
• Good Faith Deposit: 10% of proposed purchase price
• Minimum Overbid (in the event a stalking horse bidder is selected): $500,000
• Credit Bidding: ProtoStar's lenders are entitled to submit a credit bid at any time before or at the auctions
• Auction: September 23, 2009

In addition, each motion attaches a proposed form of asset purchase agreement for bidders to use in submitting their bids (a bidder must include a copy of the form agreement with its bid which is marked to show any requested changes to that form).

Anyone would send an SMS to the Universe?

From now until August 24, in honor of National Science Week in Australia, Hellofromearth.net is collecting goodwill messages to be sent to the nearest Earth-like planet outside our solar system likely to support life.

The planet – Gliese 581d – is eight times the size of Earth and some 20 light years away (194 trillion km). It was first discovered in April 2007. Due to its size, it is classified as a 'Super Earth'.

Those of you who have something to say to whoever might be living on Gliese 581d can submit your message – which must be less than 160 characters long – to the web site. The messages will be broadcast via the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla in cooperation with NASA.

The web site has been publishing the messages collected so far – and let’s just say that, for the most part, Earthlings probably won’t be making the greatest of first impressions when the messages arrive at on Gliese 581d in December 2029.

Still, there are some good ones. My personal favorite:

"Dear Alien, to unsubscribe from planet Earth SPAM please respond with *UNSUBSCRIBE*. Thank You."

Well done, David of Melbourne. Cheeky Earthling.

Twitter was used by Hackers as Botnet Command Channel

For the past couple weeks, Twitter has come under attacks that besieged it with more traffic than it could handle. Now comes evidence that the microblogging website is being used to feed the very types of infected machines that took it out of commission.

That's the conclusion of Jose Nazario, the manager of security research at Arbor Networks. On Thursday, he stumbled upon a Twitter account that was being used as part of an improvised update server for computers that are part of a botnet.

The account, which Twitter promptly suspended, issued tweets containing a single line of text that looked indecipherable to the naked eye. Using what's known as a base64 decoder, however, the dispatches pointed to links where infected computers could receive malware updates.

Master command channels used to herd large numbers of infected machines have long been one of the weak links in the botnet trade. Not only do they cost money to maintain, but they can provide tell-tale clues that help law enforcement agents to track down the miscreants running the rogue networks. Bot herders have used ICQ, internet relay chat, and other chat mediums to get around this limitation, but this appears to be the first time Twitter is known to have been employed.

Nazario said he's found at least two other Twitter accounts he suspects were being used in the same fashion, but needs to do additional analysis before he can be sure. The bots using the Twitter account connected using RSS feeds, a technique that allowed them to receive each tweet in real time without the need of an account. It was unclear how many bots connected to the account.

Up to now, the bot designers have done a good job keeping their enterprise under wraps. The original bot software is detected by just 46 percent of the major anti-virus tools, according to this VirusTotal analysis. The updates, which appear to be affiliated with the Buzus trojan, are even stealthier, with only 22 percent of AV engines detecting it.

"This continues the themes that we've been seeing for years now," Nazario told El Reg. "Twitter is just a new mechanism for this, of once you're on the bot pushing out new stuff that's not detected, basically outrunning AV."

Nazario, who offers more details here, says he discovered the Twitter command and control channel by accident, while looking for evidence into denial-of-service attacks that took it out of service for millions of users last week. His finding suggests that in the world of internet crime, large sites can unwittingly be cast as both the victim and the enabler, perhaps simultaneously.

Facebook to launch Facebook Lite for Developing Nations

Facebook today launched a low bandwidth version of its site, for users on slow connections.

Facebook Lite, currently on trial in Russia and India, is billed as a "faster, simpler version similar to the Facebook experience you get on a mobile phone". It includes the basic communication and photo-sharing functions of the usual site, but excludes bandwith-hungry adornments such as apps and video.

"We are currently testing Facebook Lite in countries where we are seeing lots of new users coming to Facebook for the first time, and are looking to start off with a more simple experience," Facebook said.

As well as being more accessible where 2G mobile and dial-up internet dominate, the launch makes financial sense for the site, which remains Profit Lite. Users in developing countries draw even less per head in advertising revenue than their Western counterparts, who themselves do not cover Facebook's ever-rising bandwidth and storage bill.

Microsoft and Nokia agreed to equip MS Office in Mobile Phones

Microsoft and Nokia, long adversaries in mobile phone technology, have agreed to a partnership to equip many Nokia cellphones with the Microsoft Office software, according to a person with knowledge of the agreement.

Microsoft’s lucrative Office line faces an emerging competitive threat from free Web-based word processing, spreadsheet and other software, especially from Google. And consumers are increasingly using their smartphones to do tasks that once could be done only on personal computers, Microsoft’s stronghold.

“This appears to be a case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” said Rob Enderle, an independent technology analyst.

The alliance, expected to be announced Wednesday, seems to be a pragmatic step by both companies, as each tries to cope with growing competitive threats.

Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, is struggling in the smartphone market against rivals led by the iPhone from Apple and the BlackBerry by Research in Motion. The competition is increasing with the recent entry of phones using the Android software from Google.

Neither company would comment. The two companies said in an advisory that they would hold a conference call on Wednesday.

Nokia and Microsoft have been rivals for years in cellphone operating systems, with Nokia adopting Symbian software and shunning Windows Mobile. Despite few details, the Microsoft-Nokia alliance apparently extends only to Office.

“This does seem to be a case of Microsoft Office business trumping Windows Mobile,” said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a research firm. (Steve Lohr -NY Times)

Global Mobile Transformation in Emerging Markets

Emerging markets will lead the global economic recovery in 2010, with countries such as China and India likely to show the most obvious signs of upturn, but prospects for other emerging economies are also promising. Developed economies are expected to grow about 1.7 percent next year, while emerging markets will increase their GDP by 4.9 percent, according to a recent report by Bank of America Securities-Merrill Lynch Research.

The term “emerging economies” was first used in 1981 by Antoine W. Van Agtmael of the World Bank. There are currently 28 emerging markets in the world, which constitute approximately 80 percent of the global population and about 20 percent of the world's economies. With most consumers located in emerging markets, we simply can’t ignore this fact and the unique, innovative consumer trends we see coming out of these markets.

In the communications industry in particular, companies have lagged the market’s recovery since March 2009, according to Bank of America Securities-Merrill Lynch Research. But despite the fact that there were wide variations across markets, emerging economies will continue to develop at a pace that will surpass developed economies and probably further influence the future of our industry, particularly in the mobile sector. China's communications market is already the second largest telecommunications services market in the Asia-Pacific region after Japan, according to Pyramid Research, and it will surpass Japan by 2014.

As we move towards a more customer-centric business model, we can’t ignore the power of 80 percent of the world’s population, and these consumers buy products and services, love or hate brands, influence their peers and demand services from their providers in their own, particular way. And as globalization forces continue to expand, these consumers can influence the wider “global village”. Service Providers in emerging markets are preparing for the future, and that is why they have continued to experience healthy growth in terms of IT spending this year despite the global financial crisis.

The Mobile Revolution
As the world becomes more and more mobile, the global communications market is expected to recover in 2010, with mobile data being the major engine of growth. Global mobile penetration is estimated at 60 percent and will jump to 84 percent by 2013, led by growth in India, China and other emerging markets. China and India will add 829 million mobile subscribers in 2009-2013, which will represent 44 percent of the world's total net additions during that period (Pyramid Research). Given this data, it’s clear that organic growth will come mostly from emerging markets.

Currently, China’s mobile penetration stands at just over 50 percent, in Indonesia it is at 63 percent, and India is at 34.3 percent (it is expected to pass 54 percent by 2010). But in other emerging markets in Asia, mobile penetration is close to/or has exceeded 100 percent (like Malaysia and Taiwan). Looking at other parts of the world, mobile penetration in Peru and Mexico has reached 66 percent and almost 75 percent, respectively. But in countries such as Brazil and Colombia, mobile penetration is already at 81 percent and 83 percent, respectively, and well over 100 percent in Argentina and Russia.

While there’s still room for organic subscriber growth in markets such as China and India, for the most part the future for service providers in emerging markets – that have focused so far on increasing connections – is going to be about increasing the level of additional, innovative services and improving the quality of their customer experience. Saturation is around the corner, and the increase of triple and quad-play offerings has turned the telco-cable competition increasingly fierce in many emerging markets.

In a recent column published in TM Forum’s Inside Latin America, Wally Swain, Senior Vice President Emerging Markets, Yankee Group, indicated that “churn management becomes even more critical of an issue, and keeping customers from churning is the best way to improve the bottom line. Prepaid churn management is all about using sophisticated data mining and CRM techniques to target offers that appeal to a particular client’s profile.”

Swain added, “This is the OSS challenge as penetration rises, growth slows and it is no longer sufficient to merely hang out a sign for clients to know where to sign up. Using advanced OSS tools to reduce prepaid churn and also the percentage of inactive customers is the route to an improved bottom-line in these difficult economic times.” And I would add, and this is the right strategy even beyond this challenging economic stage (and beyond Latin America).

The innovation of services has been in most instances about delivering an “integrated” offering that is mostly just about combining the bill with a discount for a package of services. That was a relatively easy move, but according to Ignacio Perrone, Industry Manager, ICT, Frost & Sullivan, the next step will be a much more significant and qualitative effort, as service providers move from bundling to what he calls “blending of services” but in an even more complex mobile world, determined by not just one device, but a scenario of multiple mobile devices per consumer and an overload of content.

What is consumed and how it’s consumed will change radically. How services are packaged, offered and paid for, will have to change too. This new, more complex type of convergence will further affect the customer experience. This is a challenge that affects developed and emerging markets at the same time. It is a world with more of everything, everywhere: services, devices, content, you name it.

According to Perrone, whoever understands it first and develops the necessary capabilities and appropriate business model will be the clear winners.

We don’t really know where the global mobile market will be 10 years from now, or how OSS/BSS systems will continue to transform themselves to support our industry’s needs. But one thing I know for sure, I’d be looking in emerging markets for clues. The customer is king, and the greatest percentage of future global subscriber growth is in those markets. Watch closely, many of the most innovative solutions are flourishing from emerging markets these days. (source:

How would we live in a 4G World?

3G promised us the mobile Internet but, as ever, the hype got ahead of reality. To be fair, by the time that 3G was finally agreed upon and rolled out, the speeds it offered seemed rather pedestrian, and most industry watchers are now waiting on a 4G world for a truly global, mobile Internet with access speeds capable of supporting the kinds of applications and services that the iPhone is letting us glimpse. And that might happen faster than we think. The 1.5 billion app downloads on iPhone – a tiny fraction of the total mobile phones in the world – has shown service providers everywhere that there really is a market for mobile content and applications.

Now I don’t really want to step into the debate over which flavor of 4G will win – LTE or WiMAX – except to say that I think LTE will be a much simpler operational step for cellular service providers to roll out and be able to play the same kind of staged deployment as they did with 3G where multi-protocol handsets ‘hide’ the initial patchiness of the network infrastructure.

The battle for 4G technology dominance aside, a 4G world will be a very different one from 2G and 3G because several key technologies and approaches are coming together: fast and ubiquitous mobile Internet; powerful smart devices and cloud-based services. Cloud-based services allow the edge of the network (the device) to be smaller, lighter and simpler yet still as powerful because all of the heavy duty applications processing and storage are done inside the cloud. To be useable, it needs fast and reliable communications anywhere the user might be, and hence 4G is a crucial enabler of this approach.

Apart from a large screen and keyboard (and you could Bluetooth to those) why would you need a PC when you have a smart phone and all of your information and applications available online anywhere you go? No wonder Google has targeted its focus on the handset (Android) and netbooks (Chrome). If this scenario came about, it would obviously have very big implications for the PC and software industries as we know them today.

But there are many new issues to worry about too in a 4G world. It’s an all-IP network, so problems like VoIP security and service quality rear their head. In such a radically altered world, what are the implications for charging, settlements and so on? The operational headaches for service providers are likely to grow, so we need to crack on and solve them before these networks become high volume reality, and that starts with the basic infrastructure being manageable in a sophisticated and common way – not having to build different systems to cope with different manufacturers, for example.

But the implications of a 4G world go way beyond this. We may see a complete revolution in the business models underpinning these networks and services. Already we are seeing cracks with so-called over-the-top services bypassing the communications provider’s billing system. Do we see a separation between companies that operate networks and players that operate services and market those to end customers? How will value chains evolve? Even the model for who pays for services may change – already we are seeing more and more ‘free’ applications and content on the iPhone supported by advertising.

Net Neutrality: A Spoiler in the Making?
If we can take one lesson from history to understand a 4G world, it’s that the success of regulation on communications markets has been patchy at best. To me that’s why the whole net neutrality issue looks like one more step along that rocky road where regulators generally regulate by looking back at markets we have had rather than markets that might exist in the future. Free markets usually work well, and ones that are distorted by ‘helpful’ regulators usually don’t.

If a 4G world is totally dependent on high bandwidth, always on, IP connectivity anywhere on the planet, one of the inherent inadequacies at the heart of that structure will be the Internet itself. A 4G world will upgrade the fatness of the pipe, the device you’re viewing content on and business models. But one thing that hasn’t actually changed is the design of the Internet and all of its flaws having to do with service quality and the debate about IPv4 versus IPv6.

There are solutions out there, but essentially we’ve got this ungroomed, unmanaged, uncoordinated world in the Internet and variable quality that will not lend itself well at all to tomorrow’s value-added services where people are depending on the availability of the network to support pretty much everything they do.

Our old friend net neutrality seems to rattle around and around. The bit I don’t understand, especially in such a free market country as the U.S., is why would anyone want to enforce legislation that would prevent those who wanted it to pay for better classes of service? If this was healthcare and President Obama said everyone is going to get basic healthcare with no option for private plans, you can bet there would be rioting in the streets.

But that’s exactly what net neutrality proponents are saying about communications services: that everyone has to have the same thing. Is bringing everyone down to the level of the lowest common denominator really going to serve a world where people may well be prepared to pay for subscription services that give them sporting events on their phones in HD quality? So you have customers asking for this, but you as a provider have to say sorry, we can’t give that to you because the government passed a law that said we couldn’t.

I think the sheer possibility of a 4G world will make the current thinking we have about legislation and regulation seem pretty stupid, but then, that never stopped governments from interfering in the past!

We can only hope that legislators and regulatory bodies understand the potential of a 4G world and do their best to keep their hands off of it. I think only then will real innovation happen and a real evolutionary leap take place. (source: Keith Willets -TM Forum)

After Paralysed by DDoS Attack, Twitter was questiond about its Long Term Stability

The paralysing effect of an internet attack against Twitter has raised questions about the site's apparent fragility.

Attacks against accounts maintained by pro-Georgian blogger Cyxymu at a number of social networking sites including Facebook, Blogger and LiveJournal as well as Twitter, and apparently aimed at silencing him, brought the micro-blogging site to its knees.

The attack caused intermittent difficulties accessing Facebook (see notice here (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/facebook?ref=pf)) and other sites on Thursday, but it was over at Twitter where it really hit home, flooring the micro-blogging service for almost two hours and reducing service levels well into Friday.

Bill Woodcock, research director at Packet Clearing House, advanced (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/07/twitter_attack_theory) the theory on Thursday that the assault wasn't the result of a traditional distributed denial of service, but the effects of users clicking a link contained in spam messages ostensibly promoting Cyxymu's web presence.

The messages were designed to discredit Cyxymu by associating him with a spam run. Other security researchers, such as Patrik Runald at F-Secure (here (http://twitter.com/patrikrunald/status/3175741744)) and Graham Cluley at Sophos, are sceptical about this Joe Job-style theory for the attack.

The vast majority of recipients wouldn't have bothered clicking on such a link, but it is possible that the spam campaign was either run alongside a denial-of-service attack from a network of compromised PCs or inspired a Russian patriot with access to a botnet to attack Cyxymu's web presence and by extension the social networking sites he uses. The timing of the attack coincides with the first anniversary of the ground war between Russia and Georgia.

However the attack was caused, and whether or not there's any significance in its timing, there's little doubt that it succeeded in throttling Twitter. An analysis (http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2009/08/where-did-all-the-tweets-go) by Arbor Networks, experts in DDoS attack mitigation, explains that Twitter-related traffic slowed to a trickle.

We generally don’t see a lot of data (i.e. it takes thousands of tweets to match the bandwidth of a single video), but 55 ISPs in the Internet Observatory were exchanging roughly 200 Mbps with Twitter before the DDoS. Then traffic dropped to a low of 60 Mbps around 10:40am and began climbing after that. As of 1pm EDT, Twitter traffic was still down by 50% at 150 Mbps (normally we see close to 300 Mbps for this time of day).

Twitter’s two NTT hosted address blocks were moved in response to the attack, Arbor adds. Twitter's reliance (http://blog.twitter.com/2008/02/twitter-chooses-ntt-america-enterprise.html) on just one service provider, and apparent lack of back up and redundancy, much less a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, goes a long way towards explaining why it was hit so badly.

Twitter's website was back up and running, albeit with minor latency issues, by Friday. The latest status update from Twitter states (http://status.twitter.com) that "site latency has continued to improve, however some web requests continue to fail" (source: The Register)

Google Buys On2 Software Firm for $106 million

Three years after buying the video-sharing Web site YouTube, Google is making a much smaller acquisition of a company that helps make online video files smaller.

Google said on Wednesday it agreed to buy On2 Technologies, which sells video compression software, in a stock deal valued at about $106 million. The per-share price was 57 percent above On2’s closing stock price on Tuesday, and On2’s shares soared on the news.

“We are committed to innovation in video quality on the Web, and we believe that On2’s team and technology will help us further that goal,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president for product development, said in a statement announcing the deal.

Google paid about $1.6 billion in stock for YouTube in 2006. The deal gave Google a hugely popular destination for online videos, but it has yet to produce significant revenue for the company.