What is ICT Convergence?

There is no universal definition of convergence, although generally it is understood to mean the ability of different networks to carry similar kinds of services (e.g., voice over Internet Protocol (IP) or over circuit switched networks, video over cable television or Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) or, alternatively, the ability to provide a range of services over a single network, such as the so-called “triple play.” Box 4-1 summarizes some of the issues that regulators should consider with regard to convergence.

Box 4-1: Checklist of Issues for Regulators to Consider with Regard to Convergence Does the regulatory framework facilitate the provision of different services over different platforms (e.g., technology neutrality)? Does the regulatory framework support full competition? Does the regulatory framework allow service providers to offer multiple services? What are the regulatory policies for these new technologies and services with regard to numbering, spectrum, universal service, and interconnection? Does the country’s legal framework contain the necessary legislation to support an ICT environment (e.g., intellectual property laws, computer crime, electronic transactions, data privacy and security)? How much turn-around time and process is required for the country's legal framework to respond to future changes in the sector?

Convergence is accelerating as existing networks are modified to offer new services (e.g., upgrade of telephone networks to offer ADSL, alteration of electric power networks to offer broadband services, and the modification of cable networks to offer interactive services). Convergence is also possible with wireless broadband technologies. As a result, different network infrastructures can today provide a plethora of services (Table 4-1). Cable television providers can offer consumers voice, Internet access, and broadcast services over the same network as one bundled package of services, and for one monthly price. Likewise, a mobile service provider may be able to offer a subscriber data and video services, as well as voice services, and digital television (DTV) providers are offering interactive services.

Table 4-1: Developing viable business models with convergence

Multiple service provision under different network infrastructures
Infrastructure	Voice	Data	Video
Copper line	PSTN	DSL, FTTP	VOD, IPTV
Cable	Some	Cable modem	Analogue, DTV
Mobile	Analogue, 2G, 3G	2.5 G, 3G	DVB-H, others
Fixed Wireless	Some (VoIP)	Proprietary, 3G, WiMax, LMDS, MMDS	DVB
Powerline Communications	VoIP	BPL	VOD, DVB, IPTV
DSL=Digital Subscriber Line, FTTP=Fiber to the premise, VOD=Video on Demand, IPTV=Internet Protocol TV, DVB=Digital Video Broadcasting, 2G = Second generation mobile service, 3G=Third generation mobile service, BPL=Broadband over Power Line.

Source: Telecommunications Management Group, Inc.

The combination of services over the same platform is challenging common perceptions about the best means to license and regulate providers in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector. Traditionally, regulatory frameworks were designed for an era when clear functional differences existed between services and infrastructure, but these regulations are increasingly inadequate for dealing with today’s world.

Policy-makers and regulators are responding to the challenges presented by the ICT sector in a variety of ways. First, there has been a shift towards an equal or technology-neutral regulatory treatment of different information and communications infrastructure. For example, the European Union (EU), India, and Kenya1 have introduced, or are in the process of introducing, legal frameworks and regulations to regulate aspects of convergence through a flexible and a technology neutrality approach.

Second, governments such as Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom, are modifying the structure of regulatory authorities by providing them with the authority to regulate the telecommunications, broadcasting, and information technology sectors. Finally, governments are drafting and implementing new laws and regulations to create the necessary legal enabling framework to support an ICT sector. These laws and regulations deal with such issues as intellectual property, content, data protection, security, and computer crime.

Another approach to convergence is to accommodate it within the existing legal and regulatory framework. This is possible in countries where there are no barriers to market entry or restrictions on the type of service offering. Although operators can, and do, offer multiple services over multiple platforms in fully competitive markets, it is often a cumbersome process requiring multiple licences and regulatory oversight by different institutions.

ENDNOTES

1 The Communications Commission of Kenya announced in 2004 its intention to adopt gradually a technology-neutral and unified licensing framework. See public consultation on intention to merge licence published on 21 September 2005 at http://www.cck.go.ke.

Tata Communications Rolls Out World's Commercial WiMAX Network

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 4 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Tata Communications,
a leading global provider of a new world of communications, has selected
Telsima Corporation, a global player in WiMAX systems to provide WiMAX
solutions for Tata Communications broadband wireless network in India. Tata
Communications is the first to launch broadband services on the WiMAX
platform on a large scale for retail consumers in India.

   -- Over 5000 Enterprise and Retail customers already up in ten cities;
      Aggressive plans to capture 200,000 customers in retail segment alone
      in FY 2009
   -- Bangalore unwired for Retail customers; over 600 base station sectors
      deployed and radiating
   -- Plans to roll out WiMAX in 110 cities for Enterprise and 15 Cities for
      Retail Segment by 2008
   -- Telsima WiMAX solutions selected for the largest deployment; 3000 base
      station sectors being deployed
   -- Telsima WiMAX solutions selected based on advanced wireless
      technologies; Largest WiMAX STC/MRC network ever deployed
   In the initial phase, Tata Communications' WiMAX network will offer
Broadband Internet access and content services to enterprise and
residential customers in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai,
Hyderabad, Cochin, Chandigarh, and Kolkata. By the end of 2008 Tata
Communications plans to have enabled WiMAX retail broadband service in
about 15 cities.

   "Tata Communications' seeks to enrich life by enabling reliable and
affordable communication anytime, anywhere", said Shankar Prasad,
President, Tata Communications' Retail Business Unit. "To that end Tata
Communications has selected Telsima to provide WiMAX infrastructure and
subscriber equipment solutions to deploy our commercial WiMAX network, with
3000 base station sectors already getting deployed. This enables our
customers to access video, education, music and business services.
Telsima's focus on meeting the needs of the Indian market and their
commitment to deploy state-of-the-art WiMAX solutions for a competitive
market such as ours prompted us to select them amongst various other
solution providers. Telsima's solution equipped with STC/MRC technology
allows us to increase base station capacity thereby improving our ability
to serve large number of customers with high quality and high speed
broadband."

   "WiMAX enables broadband services in a cost effective, decentralized
manner in India where a majority of the country is not covered by wired
infrastructure. The Indian broadband market, which today serves only 3.1
million customers in a nation with a population of over 1.2 billion, is
forecast to grow significantly. The scale of unmet demand coupled with the
emphasis on connectivity for education and the increasing ability to
purchase Internet services will ensure that WiMAX broadband networks will
thrive in this market," Shankar Prasad further added.

   "Inflection points create new winners", said Alok Sharma, Telsima's
CEO. "WiMAX combines disruptions in Radio Frequency and Internet Protocol
technologies to support new cost structures that enable the proliferation
of wireless broadband telecommunications services into new markets. Telsima
has capitalized upon this opportunity and delivered the largest and most
advanced WiMAX deployments in the world."

   "Given the pent up demand for broadband Internet access, this extensive
WiMAX network deployment by Tata Communications and Telsima has the
potential to dramatically accelerate the adoption of true broadband
services by thousands of businesses and millions of consumers in a short
period of time throughout India", said Berge Ayvazian, Chief Strategy
Officer of Yankee Group. This wireless broadband network deployment will
have an even more profound impact on the country's educational and economic
development, and could rapidly enhance worker productivity, facilitate
electronic commerce and improve the quality of health care services."

   In support of Tata Communications' broadband wireless network, Telsima
provided a comprehensive WiMAX solution including base station and
subscriber station systems, customer provisioning system and Network
Management System (NMS).

   About Telsima

   Telsima Corporation is the leading provider of Mobile WiMAX and WiMAX
Certified Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) solutions. Telsima's
award-winning, innovative technologies offer service providers economic
advantages, new business models and more capital efficient network
investment profiles. The Company has supplied the largest WiMAX Certified
deployments in the world, with over 10,000 base station sectors and 100,000
modems sold to Tier 1 operators in India, Eastern Europe, Russia and Africa
in 2007. Telsima has been an active Principle Member of the WiMAX Forum
since 2004. The Company is backed by leading Silicon Valley investors
including NewPath Ventures, CMEA Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, JAFCO
Asia, Intel Capital and other strategic investors. Telsima is headquartered
in Sunnyvale, California with development, sales and customer support
offices in Bangalore, New Delhi, Mumbai and Ljubljana, Slovenia. For more
information, please visit, http://www.telsima.com .

   About Tata Communications

   Tata Communications Limited along with its global subsidiaries (Tata
Communications) is a leading global provider of the new world of
communications. The company leverages its Tata Global Network, vertical
intelligence and leadership in emerging markets, to deliver value-driven,
globally managed solutions to the Fortune 1000 and mid-sized enterprises,
service providers and consumers.

   The Tata Communications portfolio includes transmission, IP, converged
voice, mobility, managed network connectivity, hosted data center,
communications solutions and business transformation services to global and
Indian enterprises & service providers as well as, broadband and content
services to Indian consumers. The Tata Global Network encompasses one of
the most advanced and largest submarine cable networks, a Tier-1 IP
network, connectivity to more than 200 countries across 300 PoPs and more
than one million square feet data center space. Tata Communications serves
its customers from its offices in 80 cities in 40 countries worldwide. Tata
Communications has a strategic investment in South African operator Neotel,
providing the company with a strong anchor to build an African footprint.

   The number one global international wholesale voice operator and number
one provider of International Long Distance, Enterprise Data and Internet
Services in India, the company was named "Best Wholesale Carrier" at the
World Communications Awards in 2006 and was named the "Best Pan-Asian
Wholesale Provider" at the 2007 Capacity Magazine Global Wholesale
Telecommunications Awards for the second consecutive year.

   Becoming the leading integrated provider to drive and deliver a new
world of communications, Tata Communications became the unified global
brand for VSNL, VSNL International, Teleglobe, Tata Indicom Enterprise
Business Unit and CIPRIS on February 13, 2008.

   Tata Communications Ltd. is a part of the $29 billion Tata Group; it is
listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of
India and its ADRs are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TCL).
For more information, please visit, http://www.tatacommunications.com .

   Forward-looking and cautionary statements

   Certain words and statements in this release concerning Tata
Communications and its prospects, and other statements including those
relating to Tata Communications' expected financial position, business
strategy, the future development of Tata Communications' operations and the
general economy in India, are forward-looking statements. Such statements
involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including
financial, regulatory and environmental, as well as those relating to
industry growth and trend projections, which may cause actual results,
performance or achievements of Tata Communications, or industry results, to
differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking
statements. The important factors that could cause actual results,
performance or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking
statements include, among others, failure to increase the volume of traffic
on Tata Communications' network, failure to develop new products and
services that meet customer demands and generate acceptable margins,
failure to successfully complete commercial testing of new technology and
information systems to support new products and services, including voice
transmission services, failure to stabilize or reduce the rate of price
compression on certain of the company's communications services, failure to
integrate strategic acquisitions and changes in government policies or
regulations of India and, in particular, changes relating to the
administration of Tata Communications' industry, and, in general, the
economic, business and credit conditions in India. Additional factors that
could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ
materially from such forward-looking statements, many of which are not in
Tata Communications' control, include, but are not limited to, those risk
factors discussed in Tata Communications' various filings with the United
States Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings are available at
http://www.sec.gov . Tata Communications is under no obligation to, and
expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking
statements.

E-Government 2.0

Early breakthroughs in e-government—the use of information and communications technologies to provide and improve public-sector services, transactions, and interactions—have enabled government organizations to deliver better service and improve effectiveness and efficiency. In many countries, more than 70 percent of taxpayers now file taxes electronically, for example, and many other transactions—ranging from renewing drivers’ licenses and paying parking tickets to managing government benefits—can be conducted online. Employees within government agencies also use the Internet routinely to manage internal processes, such as human resources and travel.

However, despite the continued allocation of enormous resources, progress on the e-government front appears to have plateaued over the past few years. Many new e-government initiatives have neither generated the anticipated interest among users nor enabled clear gains in operational efficiency. In the face of unprecedented fiscal constraints, as well as users’ heightened expectations based on the integration of the Internet into their daily life and work, it is imperative that the public sector refine its approach to e-government to ensure that these initiatives achieve maximum impact.

In our experience, three obstacles have, however, limited the impact of e-government efforts: ineffective governance, lack of Web-related capabilities, and reluctance to allow user participation in the creation of applications and content.

Ineffective, complex governance processes present a fundamental obstacle to success. Accountability for Web-based activities (the focus of this article, since such activities have the broadest applicability and the greatest potential) too often resides deep within IT or communications departments. And because the Web is typically not viewed as a core business channel, Web-related efforts are often fragmented across an agency. One US agency found that it had more than 100 internal Web sites alongside dozens of external sites, as well as multiple tools and platforms to maintain them. In addition to increased costs and inefficiency, this complexity impedes adoption, as, for example, users must endure multiple sign-ons within and across sites.

Most government agencies also lack the necessary capabilities to develop and improve Web services. Whereas best-practice private-sector companies employ specialized talent to adapt and optimize their Web sites, governments rarely prioritize Web capabilities and have few experts in Web design or analytics.

Even those agencies that have begun to overcome the challenges relating to governance and capabilities have yet to join their private-sector counterparts in embracing Web 2.0 technologies—such as blogs, wikis, and mashups—that allow users to participate in discussions, develop applications, and combine data from multiple sources. This stems from a mind-set that favors maintaining control over the use of data, and from valid (though manageable) concerns about security. But as users become more accustomed to online participatory experiences, governments’ failure to embrace Web 2.0 threatens to reinforce the public’s perception that government Web sites offer a vastly diminished experience.

To reach the next level in e-government services, organizations must overcome each of these obstacles. First, they must move to a governance model in which e-government initiatives are owned by “line of business” executives and supported by a dedicated, cross-functional team. Second, they must develop capabilities in critical areas such as marketing, usability, Web analytics, and customer insights. Finally, government agencies must shift mind-sets to proactively get citizens, businesses, and other agencies involved in contributing or creating applications and content.

Implementing these changes will enable public-sector organizations to provide Web services that are used by more people with greater ease, reduce the costs of developing and maintaining the services over time, and offer more functionality and content, thereby providing a higher return on public money spent. Although focused on initiatives in the United States, the recommendations in this article are broadly applicable, as government agencies around the world continue to recognize opportunities to improve their interactions with citizens, businesses, other institutions, and their own employees through online services.

The plateau

During the Internet boom of the late 1990s, government entities raced to develop Web sites, and high levels of e-government spending became the norm. Spending on e-government-related initiatives has continued to grow—indeed, in 2009, the US government is expected to spend more than $71 billion on IT, of which an estimated 10 percent will be related to e-government.¹

While the total price tag for e-government services has risen dramatically, these outlays have not yet delivered on the promise of e-government. Public enthusiasm for government Web sites has waned. Americans’ satisfaction with e-government, which rose steadily early in the decade, has started to decline.² In 2004, Time featured three federal government sites in its list of the “50 coolest Web sites,” while more recent lists contain at most one mention.

Illustrating this trend, one US government agency site was recognized as an innovator in online information and transactions and became a model for other agencies to follow, as it enjoyed user adoption rates that justified its e-government expenditures. However, more recent initiatives have failed to catch on with users, who regard the Web site as having become harder to use and new services as too confusing and complex. Nor is this phenomenon confined to the United States. One government agency invested millions developing a service that enabled citizens to manage their accounts with the government online, only to achieve a disappointing adoption rate of less than 5 percent.

What’s more, data suggest that investments have not yielded major improvements in the operational efficiency of government. A random sample of six US government agencies suggests that administrative costs have increased by 7 to 12 percent per year over the past decade. Nor has public perception of government efficiency improved. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of US citizens who agree that “When something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful” has increased in recent years, from 53 percent in 2002 to 62 percent in 2007.³

Creating new governance models

Getting to the next level of e-government requires agencies to regard Web development as an integral part of the services they provide to constituents—on par with initiatives such as call centers or field offices—or, in the case of internal efforts, as important as an all-hands meeting. Web projects should be maintained as a consolidated portfolio with a centralized view of costs and benefits. Clear end-to-end ownership of the online experience must be established and reinforced, with accountability for user adoption rates and costs. Specific business goals—more accurate processing, for example, or enhanced Web self-service to reduce incoming phone calls—should be agreed upon at the outset of initiatives so that the objectives can drive the approach to design and implementation.

Line-of-business leaders should be responsible and accountable for driving Web initiatives, but to support them agencies should establish a dedicated product-management team—consisting of designers, information architects, developers, and editors—responsible for not only the initial development process but also ongoing improvements to usability and functionality. To keep up with real-time feedback, this team must have access to funding that can be adjusted on a monthly rather than annual or multiyear basis. The team should also be expected and empowered to make quick decisions, and rewarded for adopting a test-and-learn mentality so that it can feel free to shut down pilots or programs that are not meeting expectations.

The management of e-government efforts must also become much more data-driven. Assumptions should be challenged rigorously, and data from small, low-investment experiments used to guide decisions. Best-practice online businesses continually conduct experiments to improve the user experience. Google has stated that at any given time it simultaneously runs 50 to 200 experiments on its Web sites.⁴ Online government initiatives should adopt a similar orientation to determine, for example, what services are most in demand and how to make those services easiest to access.

Finally, governments must follow a structured approach to evaluating security issues. Organizations must balance the trade-offs between the benefits of implementing security decisions and the costs of restrictions, including financial impact and effects on usability, convenience, and adoption. When one agency realized that its Web team, IT team, and security team each had a different understanding of legal and security requirements, it clarified the requirements and assigned specific responsibilities. The security team was given full responsibility for assessing security, while the Web team was made responsible for understanding how security requirements would affect usability and deciding on the features in which to invest and launch.

Investing in Web capabilities

Effective Web management does not require a large team but should consist of a core group that is well versed in user-centric business requirements, fact-based decision making, usability and navigation, marketing, information architecture, and agile Web development. Initial hiring should focus on building a small interdisciplinary team of highly skilled Web specialists with a variety of complementary backgrounds.

While partnering with external vendors is an option, especially for capabilities that are commodities and that benefit from scale (for example, Web hosting), in-house skills are required to oversee development and design and to manage vendors effectively. We have found that agencies often lack the internal expertise required to appropriately select and work with these partners. Indeed, a review of US federal government contract records reveals that in 2008 five of the leading Web analytics firms were hired only six times,⁵ the five largest digital marketing firms were hired five times, and the five largest Web design firms were not hired at all.⁶

Capabilities that enable an agency to discern users’ needs and preferences are also critical. Product-management teams must be able to incorporate findings from focus groups, surveys, usability tests, pilot programs, and real-time online experiments. One agency did not evaluate customer needs until after it launched a Web service. It found that very few citizens were willing to endure the authentication hurdles to access the service and its non-intuitive user interface. Usability testing and use-case analysis, which should have been done well before the launch, indicated that it would be more effective and less expensive to offer only a few simple transactions online.

Such capabilities will enable agencies to identify, design, and implement solutions that overcome potential obstacles to user adoption. For example, Austria, which has one of the most popular e-government offerings, uses a standard “citizen card” approach to identity management, thereby simplifying the log-on process. Existing identity cards, such as bank cards, are certified for use with a digital signature to access all e-government services, eliminating the need for separate paper registration to access each service.

Building internal product-management and technical capabilities also enables agencies to better select and manage external partners. Many government procurement and tendering processes are isolated from business or functional experts. It is crucial that subject-matter experts—not just purchasing experts—be responsible for helping select and negotiate with external partners, to ensure that outsourcing efforts cover the right capabilities on appropriate terms. We helped one agency identify a 65 percent reduction in Web-portal operating costs by involving its subject-matter experts in determining the scope of an outsourcing effort, the savings from which will be used to fund future initiatives or reduce operating budgets.

Agencies can identify the gaps in their capabilities and set targets by developing a scorecard that lists categories of capabilities and actions relating to each, as shown in the exhibit. For each action listed, the agency should specify detailed criteria for staff members to use as a basis for rating their current performance and setting improvement targets.

Adopting “open innovation” and user participation

Strengthening governance and capabilities will not only improve existing content and services but also help lay the foundation for pursuing Web 2.0 technologies. A shift from a “publishing” to a “sharing” mind-set—one that embraces user participation—must happen within government agencies.⁷

Some agencies across the globe are leading the way. One high-profile example in the United States is the District of Columbia’s “Apps for Democracy,” a contest to encourage developers to create applications that would give residents access to data such as crime reports and pothole repair schedules. Forty-seven applications were created in 30 days. Hiring contract developers would have cost approximately $2.6 million, whereas the cost of running the contest was a mere $50,000. The US government has also shown a willingness to accept outside innovation. For example, it adopted software code developed by a nonprofit organization for USAspending.gov, a database of government grants and contracts. The government had initially estimated that it would cost $10 million to create the database and $2 million a year to maintain it, but it adopted the code developed by OMB Watch to run FedSpending.org, which had been funded through a $334,272 grant.⁸

Elsewhere in the world, a European health authority has developed, with our support, an information architecture that allows health care providers to access aggregated data and build tailored applications to improve clinical care. In another example, the South Korean government’s “ePeople” site invites civil petitions online (for example, policy suggestions or corruption complaints), moderates online discussion of submitted petitions, and reports back on its decisions.

Moreover, governments can use Web 2.0 technologies to break down barriers between and within organizations. For example, the US intelligence community has created Intellipedia to share information among previously unconnected organizations, while the US Food and Drug Administration employed Web 2.0 tools to better engage and capture the knowledge of its internal experts.

How can the shift in mind-sets be achieved to enable Web 2.0 initiatives such as these across more government agencies? Agency leaders, both line-of-business and IT, must embrace third-party innovation and participation. They must communicate the benefits of these efforts, encourage risk taking, and enhance the capabilities of their staff to implement these initiatives—for example, by ensuring that they have both the “soft” skills to manage informal networks of partners and the “hard” skills to connect government data with external systems.

To reinforce these mind-set shifts, agencies must reward externally sourced innovation as much as they reward producing applications and content internally, the way P&G has done. A well-known advocate of open innovation—that is, sourcing innovative ideas from outside an organization—P&G CEO A. G. Lafley set the tone from the top when he publicly announced the goal to have 50 percent of P&G’s innovations come from outside the company.⁹

From a technology standpoint, achieving the benefits of open innovation and participation requires IT security systems and policies to ensure that public systems are appropriately protected. Many of these systems and policies have already been developed and are being used in the private sector to balance the estimated return on investment with the probability-adjusted risk of loss (tangible and intangible) from a security risk.

To embark on the journey to the next level of e-government, public-sector organizations should begin by estimating the cost and time required to achieve their agreed-upon business goals, taking into account realistic user adoption rates, usage, and impact on other channels (for example, reduction in paper-based forms). Agencies should then ensure that their governance models emphasize line-of-business accountability and develop a plan to address capability gaps, particularly in areas such as Web analytics and usability. Based on a comparison with successful innovators in the public and private sectors, they should also assess their technological and organizational readiness to open data and systems to outside developers and to use participatory Web 2.0 tools. By taking these steps, agencies will begin charting their path to the next horizons of e-government.
(source: McKinsey Quarterly)

HSDPA+ is Key Differentiator for Broadband Service

CSL CTO Christian Daigneault tells Telecom Asia group editor Joseph Waring why its new HSPA+ network is a key differentiator and why its has invested to be the fastest

Joseph Waring: You switched over to your all-IP HSPA+ network in April. Can you give us an update on that move?

Christian Daigneault: There is lots of interest in the shops. This is not the handset market so we're not expecting the same numbers for dongles. We cannot talk about the numbers as this is very strategic. But, in terms of traffic, we saw data traffic double in the first month compared to that on our 3G network. Users are consuming a hundred times more data than the regular users, so it doesn't take many users to make up the traffic.

Our 3G network was not really being used for data, although we saw data traffic double each year. But that was nothing. That was the traffic generated by handsets, downloading music and things like that. But once we offered dongles, it complete changes user behavior. In just one month we saw traffic double, so it remains to be seen what it will be after 12 months.

What are the implications for your network if traffic continues to increase at this rate?

First of all, this network has been built with huge capacity. A typical network in Hong Kong is using one frequency, although we have the possibility of three. HSPA 21 Mbps gave us more efficiency so we can consume more data because we have efficient modulation.

We have built this network for 40 times the capacity of our existing network on day one. So there is no issue for this year. But if the success continues the way we see it now, that would be a good problem, and we'll need to expand further the capacity.

With many people now looking at the infrastructure more as a commodity, which can easily be outsourced, how much of a differentiator in the market is an operator's network today?

We think it's still a huge differentiator. All the operators have access to the same technology because technology is a world standard. But how much money they put in the network is the choice of each operator. We believe we are investing higher, and the Next G network is a full-blown replacement network.

All our promotions are based on having the highest speed and the widest coverage in Hong Kong, so network differentiation is really what we are promoting. We see from tests that the network is very different, and once users try it and experience it they will see the difference.

What happens when everyone offers 21 Mbps?

The challenge is that it is becoming very technical and more difficult for the customer to be able to understand. You can have a very good device, like the iPhone, but if your network is congested, then you work at 50-kbps max because you have so many users. Although every operator is claiming they have 14.4 or 21 Mbps, their ability to support that speed at peak times is really a function of how much they invested in the network capacity.

If you look at the fixed broadband example, there was a lot of talk about speeds in the past, but now speed is rarely something that comes up. Will that happen in mobile broadband?

I think it will. Right now speed on the fixed network is becoming a commodity - it's something that assumed to be there. For wireless it will take some time. Yes, in five years from now, potentially you will not differentiate with speed. But you still have a long way to go. The reason for that is that the investment is significant to be able to bring that capacity.

Do you see high-speed mobile networks as a viable replacement for fixed broadband?

Yes, in the long run. We are targeting to be a fixed broadband replacement, which is why we think we'll need capacity and technology like LTE on top of what we have now. Mobile couldn't be a 100% broadband replacement at this stage. The capacity would be enormous, but there will be some level of replacement for people who require mobility.

I think the trigger will be mobility, and then people can ask if they still need fixed broadband at home. We will need to come up with new products because the issue with home broadband is normally many users share the connection. We are looking at products, like mobile routers. But then the consumption becomes very high, and we need some experience in the capacity requirements before we can move ahead on this.

What is your device strategy going forward? Do you see dongles having less impact a year or two from now as handset user interfaces improve?

Dongles will be the main driver of network traffic and to a lesser extent our TV Studio on Demand and Musicholic applications, which were recently launched. We're introducing the HTC Touch HD and Diamond2 so users can maximize the network.

But handsets are not stretching the capacity of the network. Even when we talk about the implications of apps like Studio on Demand, they consume only a fraction of the bandwidth of PCs. Most people would watch Studio on Demand for five to ten minutes, so even after some time you use only 30 megabytes. When you use the dongle, you can very quickly go to 1 gigabyte in one day.

The iPhone is the best mobile device for using the internet. But when you look at the statistics, the traffic level is far from the level of dongles. I would say the dongle gets ten times the volume. But if handsets like the Touch HD and Diamond2 were to become mass market, then they would have a big impact, but that is not the case.

What about other formats - MIDs and netbooks?

The PCs we're selling in our shops now are the mini PCs, which are the same price as high-end handsets. You have to think more and more people will use their handsets to access the internet, but the limitation of the screen size means that with mini laptops you will still always consume more [bandwidth].

What happened to Wimax in Hong Kong?

I believe it's dead. I would be surprised if it comes back. We were surprised that no one came in and proposed Wimax, although from a technology standpoint, we always thought that there was no place for Wimax in Hong Kong. But this is our belief. We thought others had the belief that they could make Wimax work.

Already HSPA+ has exceeded the throughput of Wimax, which is in the 6-Mbps range. There was a window of opportunity probably two years ago or last year, but now it doesn't have any benefit over LTE. The biggest challenge for Wimax is that LTE is backward compatible with HSPA, so we can decide to deploy LTE only in locations where we really need the capacity. In terms of coverage we can do it much faster. If you deploy Wimax and want to achieve the same coverage, the investment would be huge in Hong Kong.

I think that Wimax been a success in some developing countries as a fixed replacement where there was no fiber in rural areas.

The downturn has forced many operators to focus more on opex. What moves have you taken to run your operations more efficiently?

We were running two networks after we merged two years back with New World Mobility. The networks were running separately with five switching centers, which wasn't efficient. With the new network we have two switching centers and a fully integrated network, which brings economies upscale. We now have more efficient backhaul, operations and maintenance.

Another area, and this is common to all operators, is we are renegotiating the costs of site rentals. The price of real estate has dropped some 20% on average but not for the operators. It is a bit more challenging because it's not the same as people going from one apartment to another. We are relocating a high percentage of sites because we are negotiating with the building owners and they are still asking in many cases for increases of 20-30%, which we cannot accept. Relocating increases our capital costs, but its largely compensated by bringing down the price of our site rentals.

New WiMAX Venture targetting Asia and South East Asia

New UK-based Wimax start-up Augere plans to focus on emerging markets, particularly within Asia, and will launch its first services in October.

Augere plans to launch in Bangladesh and Pakistan in October, and is looking at markets such as Indonesia and the Philippines.

The company will start service in Rwanda and Uganda next year.

Chairman and founder Sanjiv Ahuja, former CEO of France Telecom’s mobile arm Orange, says he aims to make broadband internet access available to 1 billion people within five years.

Augere has secured $125 million in an initial round of funding from France Telecom and New York based VC’s New Silk Route and Vedanta Capital.

The Augere business model is based on discount broadband access with a price point of $10 per broadband connection.

Ahuja has a 44% stake in the company, with new investors New Silk Route and Vedanta together holding 33% and France Telecom 22%.
(source: Natalie Apostolou telecomasia.net)

Is LTE not supporting conventional Voice and SMS?

One of the latest signs that LTE is moving into the "reality" stage of the hype curve is that equipment contracts are starting to pile up. As we went to press, LTE contracts had been awarded in Japan, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and the US, with Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson the early winners, while in recent weeks, Chinese vendors Huawei Technologies and ZTE have been picking up momentum with LTE trial wins with Netcom of Norway and Telef—nica in Spain, respectively.

Another sign that the hype bubble may be cresting is that some mobile players are already worried about how well LTE will play with legacy services - namely, mobile's two most reliably consistent cash cows: voice and SMS.

While most of the presentations, white papers and seminars on LTE in the past year have talked up the technology's multi-megabit data capabilities and the possible business cases that could be built on that, far less attention has been paid to LTE's ability to handle voice calls, apart from the fact that - unlike its 2G and 3G predecessors - it's not an old-school circuit-switched network retrofitted for packet traffic, but the other way around.

The assumption has always been that LTE would be rolled out as an overlay to existing 2G/3G systems, which meant that LTE could get in with the business of moving packets and leave the circuit-switched voice traffic to the old networks that are not only optimized for it anyway, but also aren't going anywhere. The other assumption was that the 3GPP's IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) platform would enable cellcos that wanted voice and SMS services on their LTE networks to duplicate them on the new platform.

However, T-Mobile International is not convinced that LTE will ship 100% voice-ready when it becomes commercially available later this year. It's banking on LTE supporting voice and SMS partially because it wants to launch with a full-service LTE portfolio and also because of the efficiency gains of running voice and data on the same network, which reduces the cost-per-bit (a key LTE selling point).

As such, T-Mobile has been rallying the LTE vendor space to revisit the voice issue to make sure it is ready. At February's Mobile World Congress, Emin GŸrdenli, T-Mobile International's SVP of radio networks (and technology director for T-Mobile UK), said his company wants voice capability in LTE "ideally from dayone".

A month later, T-Mobile spearheaded the formation of the VoLGA (Voice over LTE via Generic Access) Forum, with Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, Kineto Wireless, LG, Motorola, Nortel Networks, Samsung, Starent and ZTE onboard to define specs for circuit switched voice and SMS over LTE using the 3GPP's Generic Access Network (GAN) standard. The forum already has published its stage 1 specs and stage 2 draft specs, which it has also submitted to the 3GPP.

However, as is always the case with fledgling technology standards, not everyone is convinced that LTE's voice-SMS capability is an urgent issue - and most of the skeptics are cellcos that are more sold on LTE's data-only proposition.

Fallbacks and stopgaps

One of the problems with running voice over LTE is that there are literally at least a dozen ways to do it, according to Ericsson CTO Michael Lee, which is why the 3GPP is focusing on two technologies: IMS and Circuit-Switched (CS) Fallback.

"You have to keep it narrowed down because it's asking a lot for device vendors to support a dozen different voice clients, and it also makes roaming a real problem," Lee says.

CS Fallback - which as the name implies involves pushing the handset from the LTE network to the 2G/3G network when the user makes or receives a call - is not only supported by handset vendors and roams easily since 2G/3G systems have agreements in place, but is also the most efficient use of network resources, Lee says.

"Both 2G and 3G are already there and are optimized for voice, so why design that capability in a whole new network?" Lee says. "Operators will maintain those networks, and at first you'll have only have islands of LTE coverage, so you need something to fall back on anyway."

The VoLGA group, however, maintains that CS Fallback is "stopgap" solution that is flawed in a number of ways - first and foremost being that it introduces latency issues for call setup that will hurt service quality.

"Switching networks takes time, and that's added time the user is waiting to make or receive a phone call," Steve Shaw, VP of corporate marketing for Kineto Wireless, writes on his Voice and SMS Over LTE blog.

What's worse, says Franz Seiser, head of core network architecture for T-Mobile International, is that neither CS Fallback nor IMS currently support SMS.

"We don't have one single mobile broadband proposition that is not using SMS," Seiser said during a presentation at the LTE World Summit in Berlin in May. "I don't mean user messaging, because not too many people will send SMSs from PCs, but service messaging that we use to serve our customers."

He cited examples such as "bill-shock" messages sent to users approaching a designated usage cap and notification messages sent to roaming users directing them to preferred roaming partners or letting them know how to make cheaper IDD calls.

"We did our own internal investigation and I was really shocked by how many systems will be affected if we don't support SMS anymore," Seiser said, saying "much more than ten systems" would have to be changed if SMS is not available in LTE.

VoLGA display

Meanwhile, the VoLGA Forum is also critical of LTE's reliance on IMS to support voice services in the longer term. Kineto argues in a VoLGA white paper that interest in IMS has waned as cellcos rethink their data strategies around "real" mobile internet access to popular sites like Facebook and YouTube, and those still keen on IMS want to use it for developing new services such as those specified in the GSM Association's Rich Communication Suite (RCS) rather than spend time duplicating existing services.

The VoLGA solution is to leverage the 3GPP-vetted GAN standard (which, it should be noted, is based on Kineto's UMA technology for home-zone services that blend 3G and Wi-Fi). GAN was initially designed to link mobile services to fixed-line broadband environments, but under last year's Release 8 for LTE, GAN can also support 2G/3G core network interfaces.

Put simply, says Kineto's Shaw, VoLGA uses a simplified version of the GAN spec to link the 2G/3G core - and their respective BSS/OSS platforms - to the LTE evolved packet core without resorting to IPsec tunneling normally used in UMA/GAN deployments and without requiring an MSC upgrade.

It's worth adding that while the VoLGA Forum is critical of IMS as a mechanism for supporting voice and SMS - not least because not many cellcos have adopted IMS in the first place - it's not positioning VoLGA as a replacement but rather a supplement that will work alongside IMS, handling the voice and text messaging aspects and freeing up IMS to handle RCS and whatever other new services the mobile sector wants to build.

Voice not a priority

VoLGA's claims haven't been publicly put to the test yet, so it's too soon to tell how effective a solution it is compared to CS Fallback. The only chief criticism from the supply side has been from Nokia Siemens Networks, which is not part of the VoLGA Forum and sees the technology as a solution in search of a problem.

"LTE is for high-speed data. If you want to support voice and you have a legacy network, you can use CS Fallback, or if you don't have that but you have an LTE license, you can support voice through IMS," says Mike Wang, NSN's GM for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. "It is not necessary to implement VoLGA to support it - the ability is already there."

(Note: Since that statement NSN has struck a deal to take over the LTE business of VoLGA supporter Nortel, but hasn't announced any new policy or plan regarding VoLGA.)

But even if VoLGA works as advertised, the tough part may be convincing LTE licensees they need it at all.

Indeed, T-Mobile is the only operator involved in VoLGA thus far, and the only major cellco to publicly emphasize the importance of legacy voice/SMS support in LTE.

The division was clearly spelled out at LTE World Summit. T-Mobile's Seiser made the case for VoLGA and the urgency for LTE to fully support voice and SMS - and got some support from 3 Group technology director Ed Candy, who said he wouldn't support any technology with "fundamental holes" that limit service options, according to Unstrung. But Marc Fossier, executive VP of corporate and social responsibility at Orange (and former CTO of France Telecom), said that LTE will serve their needs just fine as a data-only platform for the time being, and that CS Fallback, while "not nice", could still support legacy voice/SMS.

Even Lee from Ericsson - a member of the VoLGA Forum - says that some of the operators he's talked to see LTE as data-only. "Some don't even bother with voice - mobile broadband is the only app," he says. "The main devices initially will be notebooks and netbooks and dongles, which don't need voice support."

Marc Einstein, industry manager for the Asia-Pacific ICT practice at Frost & Sullivan, agrees. "When you talk to the major operators about LTE voice strategies, almost all of them say there's no need for backward compatibility from a device perspective," he says. "Devices for LTE at DoCoMo will be LTE-only. Verizon is not planning to have a dual CDMA/LTE device. What I get from that is that LTE is going to be a data-only play initially."

One operator that sees LTE as a data-only technology at first is Hong Kong CSL, which acquired its LTE spectrum earlier this year. The reason, says CSL CTO Christian Daigneault, is that mobile data is where the growth is.

"In Hong Kong, mobile data is increasing, but voice isn't - it's relatively steady," he says. "So we are focused on using our LTE spectrum only for data because we need the capacity."

To be sure, Daigneault adds, he does see value in running voice on LTE in terms of the added spectral efficiency gains.

"Running voice over LTE will reduce the cost per bit, so when we start reaching full capacity, we can look at doing voice over LTE, as well as increasing the efficiency of our 3G spectrum, doing things like voice over HSPA," he says. "But that is maybe three or four years down the road for us."

Skype-proofing LTE

That said, it's still worth hammering out the details on voice/SMS support now rather than wait for cellcos to need it, says Lee - and not just because of the spectral efficiency gains and cost-per-bit savings.

"Once voice comes onto LTE, that will be an opportunity for operators to differentiate themselves from their 3G offerings," he says. "There's no point in offering the same voice apps that customers get with 3G. They should focus on IMS and the capabilities it can bring end-users - like tying text chat, videoconferencing, file transfer and photo sharing into calls."

That will be particularly crucial in competing against over-the-top services such as Skype and Google Voice, he adds.

"When fixed-line operators launched broadband, they opened the market for over-the-top apps like Google, Skype. Mobile operators don't want to repeat the same mistake," he says.

---

EV-DO also weighs LTE voice options

At first glance, the debate over LTE's ability to support voice services may seem primarily aimed at GSM/UMTS operators, but CDMA operators like Verizon Wireless and KDDI which are planning to launch LTE late next year face a similar dilemma.

At the CDMA World Forum in June, Richard Brown, VP of Alcatel-Lucent's CDMA product unit, had plenty to say about voice strategies for CDMA operators planning to adopt LTE, and CS Fallback will definitely be an option.

"If you have a device that can support both 1x as well as EVDO and LTE, users can make voice calls by falling back to the 1x network," Brown said in a presentation.

Furthermore, he added, the LTE/1x EV-DO device would be able to switch to the 1x network even in the middle of an LTE data session, and then resume that session once the call is finished.

"With that capability in place, we can continue to support 1x voice for a very long time," Brown said.

He also took the opportunity to talk up 1x Advanced, a Qualcomm-led program to boost the voice capacity of existing 1x network by four times the current level - which in turn would free up spectrum to add more capacity to EV-DO and LTE services.

That said, Brown added that the business case for running voice on or off the LTE network will vary from one operator to the next.

"Are you thinking of using LTE just for data and keeping voice under various networks? Or you are thinking about using VoIP on EV-DO and LTE? Either way, there are a number of factors to consider," he said.

Such factors include the importance of voice and/or all-IP to your business model, capex priorities, available capacity, roaming arrangements and handset complexity, he said.

- John Tanner and Fiona Chau

UAE Blackberry update contained spyware

A BlackBerry update that a United Arab Emirates service provider pushed out to its customers contains U.S.‐made spyware that would allow the company or others to siphon and read their e‐mail and text messages, according to a researcher who examined it.

The update was billed as a “performance‐enhancement patch” by the UAE‐based phone and internet service provider Etisalat, which issued the patch to its 100,000 subscribers.
The patch only drew attention after numerous users complained that it drained their BlackBerry battery and slowed performance, according to local publication ITP.

Nigel Gourlay, a Qatar‐based programmer who examined the patch, told ITP that the patch
contained “phone‐home” code that instructed the BlackBerries to contact a server to register. But once the patch was installed, thousands of devices tried to contact the server simultaneously, crashing it and causing their batteries to drain.

“When the BlackBerry cannot register itself, it tries again and this causes the battery drain,” he said, noting that the spyware wouldn’t have drawn any attention if the company had simply configured the registration server to handle the load.

The spying part of the patch is switched off by default on installation, but switching it on would be a simple matter of pushing out a command from the server to any device, causing the device to then send a copy of the user’s subsequent e‐mail and text messages to the server.

The spyware appears to have been developed by a U.S. company, which markets electronic surveillance software.

Gourlay obtained source code for the patch after someone posted it on a BlackBerry forum. He said the code contained the name “SS8.com,” which belongs to a U.S. company that, according to its web site, provides surveillance solutions for “lawful interception” to ISPs, law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world.

Neither Etisalat nor SS8 could be reached for comment.

UPDATE: Veracode has provided an analysis of the spyware source code. The spyware apparently is designed to encrypt messages it grabs from a BlackBerry before it sends them back to the server so that anyone intercepting the data en‐route would not be able to read it.

Wired.com spoke with Chris Wysopal, co‐founder and chief technology officer of Veracode, who pointed out that the fact that the interception is done on the client device rather than on the ISP’s server — where it would normally be done — helps law enforcement, or whoever else might want to intercept the messages, circumvent encryption used by the sender of an e‐mail, since it’s grabbing the message after it’s been decrypted on the recipient’s BlackBerry.
(source: Kim Zetter)

Smart Phone will be the next target of Cyber Crime

July 16, 2009
By Natalie Apostolou & Robert Clark
telecomasia.net

High-end smartphones and unaware users are becoming the next target for cybercriminals, Cisco and F-Secure have warned.

In its latest cybersecurity report, Cisco says the mobile sector is emerging as a “new frontier for fraud irresistible to criminals,” F-Secure spotted another Symbian worm and cautioned that such attacks are “becoming more and more popular.”

Cisco claims that text message scams have escalated in frequency since the start of 2009, with at least two or three new campaigns surfacing each week and warn that with 4.1 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide, “a criminal may cast an extraordinarily wide net and still walk away with a nice profit, even if the attack yields only a small fraction of victims.”

The Symbian worm is a classic example, distributing itself through a modified version of a legitimate app from the vendor “Play Boy”, F-Secure says.

"The worm uses the pornographic subject to social engineer a person into installing a malware on their phone,” said Chia Wing Fei, a senior security response manager for F-Secure. It opens an HTTP connection and when the app is executed it sends hundreds of messages to a web site where a copy of the worm can be found

“Even if you are running the latest phone you can get infected by malware,” Chia said.

The phone is a tempting target because users are storing more and information on the device. Cybercriminals “understand the value of this. It’s just a matter of time before they start to target it.”

Most of the malware today is being written for Symbian-powered phones because they dominate the market. Windows Mobile did not have such a large user base, but because they used the same code as Windows XP it was easy for criminals to target them.

Increasingly, the attacks are financially-driven. Some have hidden commands linked to a billing mechanism triggered when a user clicks on a link, he said. In-game purchasing, which is a feature of the iPhone 3GS, was a new financial incentive.

The Cisco 2009 Midyear Security Report also raises the alarm on disgruntled ex-employees affected by the recession.

“Insider threats are an increasing concern for businesses in the months ahead. Insiders who commit fraud can be contractors or other third parties as well as current and former employees,” said Patrick Peterson, Cisco fellow and chief security researcher

Digital fraudsters had evolved into highly sophisticated criminals.

“What is striking in our latest findings is how, in addition to using their technical skills to cast a wide net and avoid detection, these criminals are also demonstrating some strong business acumen.

“They are collaborating with each other, preying on individuals' greatest fears and interests, and increasingly making use of legitimate Internet tools like search engines and the software-as-a-service mode,” Peterson said.

Indonesia and India are global leaders in Mobile Ad

July 16, 2009
By Natalie Apostolou
telecomasia.net

Indonesia and India continue to lead globally in its adoption of mobile advertising, while demand across the board has increased 80% in the past year, a survey has shown.

The quarterly Global Mobile Advertising Index from mobile ad firm BuzzCity reveals that while mobile advertising activity slowed in Q2, growth remains strong across the 200 markets canvassed.

BuzzCity tracks the growth of the network and, by extension, the growth of off-portal mobile internet use on more than 2,000 publisher sites globally.

During Q2, the BuzzCity mobile advertising network delivered 7.5 billion paid advertising banners, a year-over-year increase of nearly 80% across the network. The numbers however represent a decline of 10% compared to the previous quarter. The slump was due to 600 million fewer impressions on the network in BuzzCity’s largest market, Indonesia.

“Indonesia, despite remaining in the number one position, saw traffic drop by 14%. This is primarily due to advertisers realigning their advertising campaigns as a result of operators tightening controls on subscription services by mobile VAS players. This easing of demand represents a significant opportunity for new advertisers to enter this very competitive market,” said BuzzCity CEO KF Lai.

India continued its growth trend, topping 1 billion banners in the last quarter, while the UK climbed four slots to rank fifth. The US ranked third with 487 million paid advertising banners but was down by 8% on the previous quarter.

Fast movers include Saudi Arabia - which experienced 63% growth on the last quarter, jumping ten spots to number nine - and Kenya, which ranked 10th with 15% growth.

New optimism with Femto Special Interest Group

July 16, 2009
By John C. Tanner
Telecom Asia

After a couple of years of promise - and not a little hype - femtocells are edging closer and closer to prime time. The finalization of a 3GPP femto standard in April was helpful, and last month's Femto World Summit in London provided some welcome optimism over the femto future.

For a start, Vodafone became the third cellco (after Sprint Nextel and Verizon in the US) to move from trials to a live femto service. Vodafone this month began offering the Vodafone Access Gateway, a router-sized box that creates a 3G home zone that supports up to four 3G devices and uses the customer's fixed-broadband line for the backhaul. Customers can buy a gateway for roughly $265, or rent one for $8.25 a month, or get it for free if they sign up for certain data plans.

What customers get for their money, at least at the start, is better indoor coverage, but Vodafone intends to launch more advanced services later. Which brings us to the other big news at the femto summit: the Femto Forum's creation of a special interest group to develop femto apps.

The SIG aims to develop a common app platform that works across multiple vendors and operators, as well as create open APIs for apps developers to allow their software to run on various devices.

That's good news for the femto sector, because without apps, femtocell benefits mean more to cellcos than they do to end-users. Macrocell offload, cost-efficient capacity increases, subsidized backhaul and better indoor coverage are all useful benefits, but the last one is the only one that's of any use to the end-user - and that alone is not what's going to convince most users to stick one in their home.

The weakest link

Which is why the femto pitch has always included apps. Intrinsyc Software and Ubiquisys made the point in May with UX-Zone, a femto app for the Android platform that automatically changes the UI of your Android handset as you enter the femto zone to reflect available services that you wouldn't use in the macro network, like automatically uploading photos to your digital picture frame.

The Femto Forum showcased similar possibilities at the summit, such as "virtual fridge notes", an app from ip.access that delivers messages to family members when they get home and can include ones posted via Facebook. Surely there's a business model in there somewhere. (And as Caroline Gabriel of Rethink Research has already quipped, it'll probably come in the form of an app store.)

Little wonder analysts like Juniper Research are bullish enough on the femto story to project $9 billion in new revenues for cellcos by 2014.

But while the femto app SIG is a good idea, I can't help thinking back to around this time last year when I sat in on a femto panel at the Broadband World Forum. There was a lot of skepticism expressed about femtos that day, and they all centered on business model issues that arguably still haven't been fully addressed.

For example, how do you create home-zone tariffs that are low enough to make it attractive to users without bringing your ARPUs down? If you make the service data-centric, will the users' DSL line be able to handle the backhaul, and will they blame you if it doesn't? Do you even know who your target audience is, what they'll use femtos for and what they'll connect to it? Can you make the entire experience plug-and-play - to include technical issues like RF interference and security? And if something goes wrong, who takes the service call - the operator, the hardware manufacturer or the POS outlet that sold it?

To be fair, the only way to find out is to get out there and do it, not least because the answers will vary from market to market anyway. But operators need to be aware at all times that femto success won't come easy, and that it's ultimately their strategy that remains the weakest link in the value chain.

Google Wave

About Google Wave

Google Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.
Here's a preview of just some of the aspects of this new tool.

What is a wave? A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when. A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Some key technologies in Google Wave
Real-time collaboration	Natural language tools
Concurrency control technology lets all people on a wave edit rich media at the same time. Watch the tech video	Server-based models provide contextual suggestions and spelling correction. Watch the tech video

Extending Google Wave

Embed waves in other sites or add live social gadgets, thanks to Google Wave APIs.

Microsoft Office 2010 will Challenge Google Apps

By: Nicholas Kolakowski
2009-07-13
Microsoft Office 2010 will be offered as a free online service to Microsoft Live subscribers, directly challenging Google Apps and other free cloud-based applications. Although Microsoft's market dominance has traditionally been centered on the desktop, the products rolling out at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans show that Microsoft is increasingly seeing cloud-based applications and productivity suites as the wave of the future.

Microsoft Office 2010, the newest version of Microsoft's office productivity suite, will be launched as a free online service for subscribers of Microsoft Live. The move is a potentially radical one for Microsoft—a company whose market dominance has traditionally been based on desktop-centered applications—and represents a direct counter to Google and other companies that have rolled out cloud-based productivity applications over the past few years.

OneNote, Excel, Word and PowerPoint are the parts of Office 2010 that will be rendered accessible online, although the cloud-based versions will not replicate all the features available in the full versions. In addition to access through Windows Live, Microsoft also plans to offer Office 2010 as both a hosted subscription service and an on-premises application.

"A lot of customers aren't just ready to move to the cloud in one shot," Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office, said in an interview with eWEEK. "We provide an option that says, if you want us to host it, of course we'll host it; but if you want more control, you can get a hosted service."

Numoto declined to mention any data related to potential uptime for Web-based versions of Office. Although he reiterated that the Microsoft Live version of Office 2010 will be free, Numoto also declined to mention any potential price structure for the hosted or on-premises versions.

Resource Library:

In a step that demonstrates the rising primacy of applications that run via a Web-based interface, even versions of Office 2010 running from an on-premises data center will be made accessible through the browser.

Microsoft will demonstrate Office 2010 at its Worldwide Partner Conference, which starts July 13 in New Orleans. Other products shown will include Windows 7, Silverlight 3, Windows Mobile 6.5 and Windows Server 2008. The accompanying lineup of speakers includes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and former General Electric CEO Jack Welch.

Office 2010, along with SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010, are now at the technical preview engineering milestone. The technical preview for rich client applications and Web services will begin for a select group of users in August, followed by the beta release.

In addition to the lightweight Web-browser versions of Office suite, Microsoft also plans to introduce new collaboration elements for Word, PowerPoint and OneNote. According to Numoto, users will be able to see what others have done in a collaborative document and avoid making conflicting changes.

Microsoft has also concentrated on making the Web-based version of Office 2010 more accessible through mobile devices.

"For any phones with a modern browser, you can access your documents on the browser and make lightweight edits, which does not cause the documents to be damaged in any way," Numoto said.

Microsoft Live currently has 400 million subscribers. Paired with the 90 million Office annuity customers who run the suite on their premises, that represents a potentially massive base with which the company can challenge Google, which has been making inroads into traditionally Microsoft territory with its Google Apps and upcoming Chrome OS.

Realizing that the future of IT may lie in the cloud, Microsoft has been moving away from its desktop-centered comfort zone to a more aggressive Web-based stance. Also at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft plans to announce Silverlight 3, the newest version of its RIA (rich Internet application) technology, which the company said will allow it to challenge Adobe and to provide, through new features such as enhanced video performance and support for various applications, a platform for its own browser-based initiatives.

On July 11, Google announced plans for the Google Chrome OS, an operating system initially intended for mininotebooks, aka netbooks. That announcement led to a news cycle in which a number of media outlets predicted an erosion in Microsoft's potential future market share; however, Microsoft is developing its own stripped-down operating system, code-named Gazelle.

Gazelle would potentially manage access to devices and system resources and enforce policies, and in the process allow for easier operation of cloud-based applications such as Office 2010. However, Microsoft has announced no plans for a commercial version of Gazelle to blunt the rollout of Chrome OS, which is scheduled to debut in the second half of 2010.

As Google, Microsoft and other IT companies seem more and more dedicated to trading body blows through new iterations of Web-based applications, it remains to be seen how the rest of the industry will respond to Office 2010.

Monta Vista Embedded Linux Business

By: Darryl K. Taft
2009-07-13
MontaVista Software has celebrated its tenth year in business as a provider of embedded Linux solutions.

MontaVista Software has celebrated its tenth year in business as a provider of embedded Linux solutions.

MontaVista officials announced the company's 10-year anniversary on July 13. Company founder and Chief Technology Officer Jim Ready started MontaVista in 1999 with the mission to bring the full advantage of open-source Linux to the embedded market.

Since then the company has remained committed to furthering the development and innovation of commercialized embedded Linux by enabling a broad range of architectures, delivering commercial quality and expanding the tools available for embedded developers, MontaVista officials said. As a result of this focus and commitment, there are more than 60 million devices in the market powered by MontaVista Linux today, the company said.

Resource Library:

“At the time the company was founded, the market was highly fragmented, comprised of many proprietary embedded real-time operating system offerings. I founded MontaVista with the goal of bringing the full benefits of open-source Linux to embedded developers,” Ready said in a statement. “People said we were crazy, but we quickly proved otherwise, and today Linux has become the OS of choice for new embedded device designs.”

Stephen Balacco, director of the Embedded Software and Tools Practice at VDC Research Group, said, “MontaVista has been a pioneer over the last 10 years in the embedded software market with their Linux product and support offerings. In an ever-changing competitive landscape they are a trusted supplier, constant innovator and contributor to embedded Linux and the open-source community. This has helped foster and accelerate the adoption of Linux as an embedded operating system for new embedded product designs.”

Among the many milestones and company firsts for MontaVista include that in 2005 the company announced MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition 4.0, a groundbreaking carrier grade Linux distribution. MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition has demonstrated 99.99999 percent uptime.

Another high point came in 2006 when MontaVista Linux reached the milestone of being deployed in 40 million devices, and provided support for 70 processors and 230 boards, which was greater than any other Linux provider. Then in 2009, MontaVista announced MontaVista Linux 6, a new approach to embedded Linux development, and Meld, a community for embedded Linux developers.

In addition to Meld, also in 2009, MontaVista announced support for the Moblin Linux stack. Moblin is an open source project focused on building a Linux-based platform optimized for the next generation of mobile devices including netbooks, Mobile Internet Devices, and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

Meanwhile, regarding some of its "firsts," MontaVista also launched the first commercial embedded Linux for x86, the first Linux for consumer devices, the first Linux for carrier grade equipment, and is the first and only Linux vendor to provide Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 4.0, Linux Standard Base (LSB) 3.0 and IPv6 certification, the company said.

What Does Google Chrome OS Look and Feel Like?

By: Clint Boulton
2009-07-09
Chrome OS looks sleek and feels fast, according to screenshots from Engadget, but what do we really know about the Chrome OS experience? Not much, though a source familiar with Google's application development says Chrome Web browser will essentially leverage Chrome OS to run Web apps really fast. That sounds all well and good, but what will this ultimately mean for Linux distributions?

Google engineers were quite vague in their description about what its new Google Chrome OS would look and feel like, telling the high-tech world that the user interface is "minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the Web."

Chrome OS, which has all the reporting world hailing it as the Microsoft Windows killer or as a non-player, is also supposed to be "fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the Web in a few seconds." A Google spokesperson declined to comment about the look and feel of Chrome beyond the blog post from Tuesday night.

However, a source with knowledge of Google's plans regarding the OS told eWEEK that Google has not finalized many of the design decisions and that Google is still baking the back-end code for the product. Just as Windows sits quietly in the background while Microsoft Office and other applications run on top of it, Chrome will be fairly invisible. The user experience will take place in the browser, where everything will run as a Web app.

Saul Hansell of The New York Times echoed this notion in a blog post July 9: "It will be built on a simple version of Linux that is meant to run only one application: the Chrome browser. Google's idea is that anything for which you may have wanted a separate software program can be done within the browser instead. Never mind all the other functions and add-on programs you find in Windows."

Resource Library:

UPDATE: Screenshots of the forthcoming Linux-based OS for netbooks leaked to Endgadget proved to be fake, whipped up by a graphic designer using CSS and HTML.

Google claimed July 8 that it is currently working with Acer, Adobe, Asus, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba to get Chrome OS into the market.

Google could easily change the user interface several times, and the product may even be faster once it reaches netbooks in 2010 to 2011, if it even sees the light of day that soon. Why doubt Google's bid to get Chrome OS to market in 2010?

Google is not used to releasing finished products, so creating an operating system, even one based on open source, is bound to be a challenge. Android took a few years of development before it saw the light of day, and it is continually being tweaked and improved. Expect Google to take great pains to release a stable product.

After all, this is a platform on which Web apps will run, not just a Web app that can be patched up with a few lines of code. A broken OS means a broken computer. A broken computer means a busted plan for Google. Failure here could be devastating to a company trying to beat Microsoft at its favorite game.

Assuming Chrome OS does emerge on netbooks in the next two years, a lot can happen between now and then. Microsoft Windows XP could be thrashing the netbook space. For all of the glory that Ubuntu on Asus EEE PCS has brought to the Linux space, Linux is not the most user-friendly distribution for people groomed on Windows.

IDC analyst Al Gillen told eWEEK that two things could happen. Google could bring great success to Linux, assuming that Chrome OS manifests itself as a Linux-based distribution such as Ubuntu and Red Hat. Or maybe the "applications don't run on conventional Linux, maybe it's a 'start-from-scratch' approach."

This would be bad for everyone, Gillen argued, because Linux already has a healthy ecosystem: "If Google adds too much customization, and ends up forking the code in the process, that creates an interesting dilemma for the greater Linux community - does the community endorse Google's approach, or does the community unite to encourage Google to not fork the base OS? Two Linux kernels is not better than one."

However, if Google is introducing an entirely new windowing environment, Gillen believes Google can really differentiate itself without disrupting the application portfolio that exists for Linux.

"I can see a scenario where Google could take the desktop into the future, and offer true integration of the Web into the desktop -- something that, to date, we really have not seen," Gillen wrote. Then again, the Intel-led open-source Moblin effort is doing some of this in netbooks, so is Google only further fragmenting the market?

This wouldn't be the first time Google has been accused of fragmentation in the market; Sun Microsystems believes Android only creates another fork for Java. Clearly, many questions remain. When will Google provide the answers?