MASTEL 2020

Indonesia Telecoms: A growth driver or a cash cow

2012-02-05T05:41:00.001+07:00

What will Indonesia’s telecom industry look like in 2011?

According to Fitch ratings agency, the picture is likely to look quite rosy. Subscriber numbers are expected to grow by 25 to 30 million this year, although it will not be the steepest annual growth the country has experienced. Other factors will help improve the landscape, as there is still plenty of room for growth in the broadband market. Indonesia’s Internet penetration is still less than one percent.

Ben Verwaayen, Alcatel-Lucent’s current CEO, seems to share this optimistic outlook on the country’s telecom industry.

“Telecom users in Indonesia are enjoying the lowest ARPU [average revenue per user] in the world. The growing middle class is tech-savvy, and Indonesians are known for their propensity to communicate,” he said during a limited media interview here in Jakarta last week. That is why Indonesia is an important market for his company.

During the interview, Verwaayen, who has lived — on and off — in Indonesia for many years, made a very important statement. He said every government had to decide whether it wanted to leverage telecommunications as a growth driver or a cash cow. Indonesia, according to him, has not really made up its mind yet, and this makes the country’s telecom environment one of the most challenging.

If telecommunications is to become one of the engines of economic growth, then the government should take steps that are more supportive to the industry. It should consider lowering the license fees for the use of frequencies and rates for interconnection.

Regulations should be made friendlier to the industry (unfortunately, Communication and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring’s recent demands from Research in Motion did not reflect a favorable stance toward the industry — and telecom users).

However during the interview, we did not touch upon Indonesia’s brawl with RIM. I, as well as the three other journalists from leading publications who were present during the interview, was more interested in what Alcatel-Lucent is doing in Indonesia and elsewhere and what its major contributions to the industry are.

The company, as stated by the affable CEO, is currently focusing on a couple of things including application enablement.

“If you can create open applications that operators can use, we will work together with the operators and provide the common platform for your applications,” he said. The investment would be the initial implementation, but the rest will be revenues.

One of the important contributions was the research done by Bell Labs published last October. The research, which involved 4,500 consumers and 850 enterprises in France, UK and Germany, pointed out that there is a strong demand for applications enabled by Long-Term Evolution (LTE). LTE is a wireless broadband technology designed to support roaming Internet access via cell phones and handheld devices.

Alcatel-Lucent has been an avid proponent of LTE. It is a strategic move, as devices such as the tablets and the smartphones’ demand for bandwidth continues to rise.

“As you can see, we now no longer communicate with words, we communicate with pictures and videos. We communicate through various sizes and types of screens,” Verwaayen said.

“Besides, we will soon have cloud services. Telecommunications will fulfill the delivery need,” he added.

By the way, Alcatel-Lucent is one of the world’s top telecommunications infrastructure vendors. In the past, it was the only vendor that had the three different types of communication technologies — satellite, terrestrial and submarine. It sold its satellite business a long time ago.

Other global players include Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Network, Huawei and ZTE. Competition between them and between the European and Chinese players, is fierce, because there is considerable overlap among their products and services.

Alcatel-Lucent’s projects encompass the whole lifecycle of a telecommunications network, starting from the preliminary network design phase and extending to the network dimensioning, architecture, deployment, planning and optimization, in addition to quality assessment and improvement and customer trainings.

The Paris-based company acquired Bell labs, the research arm of Lucent, when it merged with the latter four years ago. Today, the combined company serves both the operators and enterprises. It exited WiMAX two years ago and is now concentrating on LTE because, like most other global telecom vendors, it believes that LTE is the right option for the future.

The company is also strong in IP, thanks to the acquisition of Lucent and Bell Labs. “There is no question about it,” said the CEO, “the world has moved from analog to digital to IP.” In 2007, the company won a contract to provide VoIP for 1,600 users in the new terminal of the Dubai International Airport.

Apart from the airport project, which was won in 2007, Alcatel-Lucent has been busy with others such as the National Broadband Network rollout in Australia and 15 LTE trials across the Asia-Pacific region with operators including China Mobile, Singtel, Chunghwa Telecom and Maxis, it will be working with China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom to build fixed and mobile telecom networks.

Does he have any important message for Indonesia? Yes, he strongly believes that, given the tremendous potential it has, Indonesia should aspire to become a knowledge-based society and for that, its people must be connected.

“I think, for Indonesia, ICT is a massively important success factor. How can you be a knowledge-based society if you are not connected to the rest of the world,” he said.

Hopefully, this is a message our telecom regulator bodies will finally grasp.

Indonesia has not really made up its mind yet, and this makes the country’s telecom environment one of the most challenging.

By:Zatni Arbi Source:thejakartapost

Big Data is more than Hadoop

2012-01-31T05:09:00.003+07:00

We recently published the results of our benchmark research on Big Data to complement the previously published benchmark research onHadoop and Information Management. Ventana Research undertook this research to acquire real-world information about levels of maturity, trends and best practices in organizations’ use of large-scale data management systems now commonly called Big Data. The results are illuminating.

Volume, velocity and variety of data (the so-called three V’s) are often cited as characteristics of big data. Our research offers insight into each of these three categories. Regarding volume, over half the participating organizations process more than 10 terabytes of data, and 10% process more than 1 petabyte of data. In terms of velocity, 30% are producing more than 100 gigabytes of data per day. In terms of the variety of data, the most common types of big data are structured, containing information about customers and transactions.

However, one-third (31%) of participants are working with large amounts of unstructured data. Of the three V’s, nine out of 10 participants rate scalability and performance as the most important evaluation criteria, suggesting that volume and velocity of big data are more important concerns than variety.

This research shows that big data is not a single thing with one uniform set of requirements. Hadoop, a well-publicized technology for dealing with big data, gets a lot of attention (including from me), but there are other technologies being used to store and analyze big data.

The research data shows an environment that is still evolving. The majority of organizations still use relational databases but not exclusively: More than 90 percent of participants using relational databases also use at least one other technology for some of their big-data operations. One-third (34%) are using data warehouse appliances, which typically combine relational database technology with massively parallel processing. About as many (33%) are usingin-memory databases. Each of these alternatives is being more widely used than Hadoop. As well, 15% use specialized databases such as columnar technologies, and one-quarter (26%) are using other technologies.

While these technologies enable organizations to do things they haven’t done before, there is no technological silver bullet that will solve all big-data challenges. Organizations struggle with people and process issues as well. In fact, our research shows that the most troublesome issues are not technical but people-related: staffing and training. Big data itself and these new approaches to processing it require additional resources and specialized skills. Hence we see high levels of interest in big-data industry events such asHadoop World and the Strata Conference. Recognizing the dearth of trained resources here, some academic institutions have launched degree programsin analyzing big data, and IBM has started BigData University.

Research participants cited real-time capabilities and integration as their key technical challenges. The velocity with which they generate data and the fact that over half the organizations analyze their data more than once a day are forcing them to seek real-time capabilities; the pace of business today demands that they extract as soon as possible all useful information to support rapid decision-making.

With respect to integration, less than half of participants are satisfied with integration of third-party products, and almost two-thirds cite lack of integration as an obstacle to analyzing big data. Three-quarters have integrated query and reporting with their big-data systems, but more advanced analytics such as data mining, visualization and what-if analysis are seldom available as integrated capabilities. Responding to such comments, vendors have been racing to integrate their business intelligence and information management products with big-data sources. As you consider big-data projects and technologies, make sure that the vendors you select can handle the big-data sources you must use.

Looking ahead we expect more changes in this evolving landscape. In some ways big-data challenges and the presence of Hadoop in particular have paved the way for other technologies besides relational databases. NoSQL alternatives, such as Cassandra, MongoDB and Couchbase, are gaining notice in enterprise IT organizations after the success of Hadoop. In-memory databases, once considered a niche technology, are being considered by SAP, in HANA, as its primary big-data analytical platform. There are differing opinions about whether these various big-data technologies will converge or diverge. We can look to the past for some indications of where the market might go. Over the years a variety of alternatives to relational databases have emerged, including OLAP, data warehouse appliances and columnar databases; each eventually was absorbed into relational databases.

We also see signs of the major relational vendors embracing big-data technologies. IBM acquired Netezza for its massively parallel data warehouse appliance technology. IBM has also invested heavily in Hadoop. Oracle introduced its own line of data warehouse appliances and recently brought a big-data appliance to market that includes Hadoop and NoSQL technologies. Microsoft has invested in massively parallel processing and Hadoop. We also see independent vendors such as Hadapt combining relational database technology with Hadoop. The past is not necessarily an indication of the future, but our research shows and recent market dynamics suggest it may be premature to write off the relational database vendors as out of touch.

In light of this information, I recommend that your organization explore various alternatives for solving specific challenges. At a minimum you should be aware of the alternatives so when the need arises you will know what is available. Use our big-data research to guide your use of these technologies and to help avoid some of the obstacles they present so you can be more successful in applying big data to business decisions.

This blog originally appeared at Ventana Research. (David Menninger)

China Telecom agrees to UK MVNO deal

2012-01-10T06:32:00.000+07:00

China Telecom’s European division is a step closer to launching a virtual mobile network in the region, agreeing a network sharing deal with UK carrier EverythingEverywhere.

The agreement clears China Telecom Europe to launch services during the first quarter, targeting Chinese nationals and businesses in the UK. EverythingEverywhere claims the network will be the first MVNO established by a Chinese operator outside its domestic market.

China Telecom Europe’s managing director Ou Yan first detailed plans for an MVNO in the UK in August. At the time he told Telecoms Europe.net the network will pave the way for similar agreements in France and Germany, and he subsequently revealed the firm is also eyeing the US.

Yan says EverythingEverywhere’s network coverage and experience in launching MVNO’s were the deciding factors in the UK deal. “We are keen to launch the service in the UK as soon as possible as there is a real gap in the market for the provision of tailored mobile services…aimed at the growing Chinese population,” he comments.

The agreement is the 24^th arranged by EverythingEverywhere’s mobile virtual network aggregator Transatel.

Five new challenges for APAC telecoms in 2012

2012-01-10T06:19:00.002+07:00

The telecoms industry in the Asia-Pacific region will face considerable challenges in 2012 as overall growth in the mobile market slows down and competition for customers increases. As revenue growth slows, operators will be forced to improve efficiency and control costs within their businesses. They will need to do this in an environment driven by smart devices and fixed-service bundling.

While details vary from market to market, the overall picture is one of tightening margins. A key success factor for operators will be strong internal management to make operational changes that ensure continued profitability. Ovum believes that five major trends will drive the telecoms industry in Asia-Pacific in 2012.

The push for cost optimization and efficiency

Cost optimization will grow in importance as operators face increasing competition and margin pressures over the next 12 months. While early cost optimization initiatives will involve relatively simple measures such as passive network sharing and the outsourcing of non-core functions, more aggressive cost optimization strategies, such as backhaul sharing and access infrastructure sharing, will also begin to emerge. There is no single strategy that operators should adopt as different markets will require different approaches. However, organizing joint ventures with competitors will be challenging, especially in developed markets.

Opex reductions should be easier to realize than capex reductions, and opex reductions are expected to increase in 2012 through the outsourcing of network management, customer service, and other non-core business functions. Ovum expects outsourcing deals among emerging market operators to grow by approximately 50% in 2012.

The importance of customer service

Many operators are struggling to find sustainable, non-price advantages over their competitors. The current strategy is to stay ahead of the competition with a series of tactical moves including promotions, marketing, exclusive device relationships, better network coverage/reliability, and customer service.

As poor customer service is expensive to provide, good customer service benefits both operators and their customers. Many operators around the world are spending heavily to improve their customer service systems. This expenditure is encompassing areas such as 24/7 customer service and weekend fault repair calls. Some telcos are now also addressing customer problems over social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook. Customer service can be a significant differentiator for telcos, but any efforts must involve the entire organization and ultimately result in cultural change.

The future of smart devices and mobile app ecosystems

The continuing movement away from feature phones towards smartphones and tablets running “light” operating systems will continue to affect operator strategy. It will have a significant impact on network investment, service pricing, and will drive operators’ value-added service offerings. Application functionality and content will become increasingly reliant on the network and cloud services.

Consumers are no longer content to purchase a device based solely on hardware features and price. Successful devices will need to integrate applications, content, and services into the platform.

The emergence of cross-platform development based on web standards and/or proprietary Rich Internet application runtimes provides a potential route away from the current reliance on proprietary vendor-controlled app stores. The challenge for operators over the next two years lies in managing this transition, and using it to move up the value chain in delivering applications and content to users of smart devices on their networks.

Network data management is vitally important

With data traffic increasing exponentially, operators are being forced to implement a mix of technologies to alleviate network congestion. Advanced pricing schemes, such as quality of service and prioritization-based tariffs, have been hard for customers to understand and therefore difficult for operators to sell.

In some markets, operators have continued to embrace Wi-Fi offloading. While femtocells are gaining some traction in Asia-Pacific, the business case for them is very operator- and market-specific. Adding to operators’ dilemma is the debate surrounding picocell, macrocell, and microcell networks.

Operators will ultimately roll out a combination of solutions. We expect to see several more LTE networks launched, more extensive Wi-Fi offloading, and increased discussions of heterogeneous network solutions in Asia-Pacific in 2012.

A lack of sufficient backhaul will be a major component of capacity challenges in 2012. Mobile operators that have not already done so will look to move their backhaul to packet technologies (typically Ethernet) in conjunction with capacity upgrades.

Bundling for customer retention

Bundling strategies have begun to gain traction, and we expect this trend to accelerate in 2012. Telcos with bundling strategies maintain that the net outcome of bundling is revenue growth and reduced churn.

Ovum expects to see more bundling strategies emerge in 2012, particularly from second tier operators. There is also a significant bundling opportunity for mobile-only operators in countries where governments are deploying wholesale-only fiber NGA networks.

(David Kennedy, the practice leader for Ovum’s Asia-Pacific research group)

Technologies to watch: 2012 and beyond

2012-01-10T06:08:00.001+07:00

A series of trends are emerging in the telecom landscape, some of which will blaze a trail, but others are likely to vanish without a trace.

Factors that will ensure the endurance of certain technologies will ranging from pure necessity to a coolness factor, from innovativeness to cost. The following technologies are certain to be trailblazers in the years to come.

Software defined networking: SDNs are based on the pathbreaking paradigm of separating the control of a network flow from the flow of data. SDN is the result of pioneering effort by Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley and is based on the Open Flow Protocol. SDNs decouple the routing and switching of the data flows and moves the control of the flow to a separate network element namely, the Flow controller. This allows the flow of data packets through the network to be controlled in a programmatic manner.

The OpenFlow Protocol has three components – the flow controller, the OpenFlow switch and the flow table - and a secure connection between controller and switch. SDNs also include the ability to virtualize network resources. Virtualized network resources are known as a “network slice”. A slice can span several network elements including the network backbone, routers and hosts. The ability to control multiple traffic flows programmatically provides enormous flexibility and power in the hands of users.

Smart Grids: The energy industry is delicately poised for a complete transformation with the evolution of the smart grid concept. There is now an imminent need for an increased efficiency in power generation, transmission and distribution coupled with a reduction of energy losses. In this context many leading players in the energy industry are coming up with a connected end-to-end digital grid to smartly manage energy transmission and distribution.

The digital grid will have smart meters, sensors and other devices distributed throughout, capable of sensing, collecting, analyzing and distributing the data to devices that can take action on them.

The huge volume of collected data will be sent to intelligent device which will use the wireless 3G networks to transmit the data. Appropriate action like alternate routing and optimal energy distribution would then happen. Smart Grids are a certainty given that this technology addresses the dire need of efficient energy management.

NoSQL: In large web applications where performance and scalability are key concerns a non –relational database like NoSQL is a better choice to the more traditional relational databases. There are several examples of such databases – the more reputed are Google’s BigTable, HBase, Amazon’s Dynamo, CouchDB & MongoDB.

These databases partition the data horizontally and distribute it among many regular commodity servers. Accesses to the data are based on simple get (key) or set (key, value) type of APIs. The ability to distribute data and the queries to one of several servers provides the key benefit of scalability. Applications that have to frequently access and manage petabytes of data will clearly have to move to the NoSQL paradigm of databases.

NFC: Near Field Communications is a technology whose time has come. Mobile phones enabled with NFC technology can be used for a variety of purposes. One such purpose is integrating credit card functionality into mobile phones using NFC. Already the major players in mobile are integrating NFC into their newer versions of mobile phones including Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, and Nokia. We will never again have to carry in our wallets with a stack of credit cards. Our mobile phone will double up as a Visa, MasterCard, etc.

NFC also allows retail stores to send promotional coupons to subscribers who are in the vicinity of the shopping mall. Posters or trailers of movies running in a theatre can be sent as multimedia clips when travelling near a movie hall. NFC also allows retail stores to send promotional coupons to subscribers who are in the vicinity of the shopping mall besides allowing exchanging contact lists with friends when they are close proximity.

Tinniam V Ganesh is a telecom expert with 25 years experience in the software industry. He blogs at http://gigadom.blogspot.com

(Source: telecomasia.net Sept 11.2011

SingTel aims high for cloud growth

2012-01-10T06:01:00.002+07:00

SingTel’s cloud service portfolio comprises on-demand computing resources, on-demand connectivity, on-demand managed services, plus SaaS solutions, which include office productivity, finance and accounting, human resources, sales and marketing, and supply chain management.

Alvin Kok, SingTel Business’ head of infocomm services, said the carrier has more than 800 businesses and 150,000 business users subscribing to its cloud services today. "Demand for our cloud services has accelerated over the last three years. We aim to grow our cloud services with a CAGR of around 50-70% over the next three years," he said.

SaaS continued to gain traction among the small and medium businesses (SMBs) in Singapore. "We are expecting this momentum to carry on in the area of Infrastructure-as-a-service for both SMB and MNCs," Kok said. "In the next three to five years, SingTel will focus and continue our thrust to become Asia’s best and largest one-stop ICT experience provider," Kok said.

In an excerpted interview with Asia Cloud Forum, Kok describes SingTel’s cloud service deployment for the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games, and advised businesses the key questions to ask before they adopt cloud services.

http://www.asiacloudforum.com

Asia Cloud Forum: Describe one of your company’s most successful customer deployments of cloud services.

Alvin Kok: SingTel was the official data center infrastructure partner of the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games (YOG), the world’s first games for the youth. We provided secured virtual data center services to drive key applications such as games and results management, internet applications, email services and Web hosting for the successfully concluded Games.

SingTel’s virtual data center services allowed the Games organizers to deploy and scale up primary and secondary data centers rapidly, without the need to purchase, configure, and maintain physical infrastructure.

SingTel also provided a Web-based social networking application and a multi-language online chat platform to help athletes and officials keep in touch with one another, and to stay abreast of the latest results.

Finally, SingTel also provided disaster recovery and business continuity services -- including network and infrastructure diversity -- as well as 24/7 systems monitoring to ensure optimum performance and security.

“The Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games was the most complex IT project for a sporting event ever undertaken in Singapore to date.” Lim Bee Kwan, director of technology, Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee. (Source: Telecomasia.net)

Android Google TV to be released by LG

2012-01-10T05:55:00.002+07:00

With Google having confirmed LG as a major device partner for Google TV, the consumer electronics giant has revealed further details of the product it will be showcasing at CES in Las Vegas.

LG says the forthcoming LG Smart TV with Google TV combines the familiarity of Google’s Android OS with the convenience and comfort of LG’s 3D and Smart TV technologies, offering consumers a new and attractive home entertainment option.

“LG has constantly strived to provide consumers with wider choices in home entertainment that bring the highest level of sophistication and convenience,” said Havis Kwon, President and CEO of the LG Electronics Home Entertainment Company. “Through Google TV, LG has merged Google’s established Android operating system with LG’s proven 3D and Smart TV technologies, offering consumers a new and enthralling TV experience.”

LG says the LG Google TV’s most attractive feature is its ease of use, thanks to the combination of its Android-based user interface and the Magic Remote Qwerty designed by LG. LG Google TV’s user interface and main screen have been designed for convenient browsing and content selection. Multi-tasking is also possible, as the search, social networking and TV functions can be run simultaneously. The user interface can be accessed using the Magic Remote Qwerty which combines the user-friendly benefits of LG’s Magic Remote with a QWERTY keyboard.

Equipped with LG’s own CINEMA 3D technology, LG Google TV provides a home entertainment experience that is immersive, comfortable and convenient, says the company. Based on LG’s own Film Patterned Retarder (FPR) technology, CINEMA 3D glasses are battery-free and lightweight. “The glasses are also very affordable, making LG’s Google TV ideal for viewing by a large group of family and friends when used in 3D mode. And with a single click of the remote, any 2D content can be viewed in 3D, thanks to the built-in 2D to 3D conversion engine,” notes LG.

LG confirmed that alongside Google TV, the company will continue to advance its own Smart TV platform based on NetCast using open web technology such as Webkit browser and Linux. LG Smart TV with NetCast will be available globally in 85 plus countries at launch.

LG Smart TV with Google TV will be available in two series at launch in the US in 2012. The first demonstration of LG’s Google TV will take place at CES, January 10-13. (Source: Telecomasia.net)

Sharpening data center due diligence: 6-CIOs questions

2012-01-10T05:12:00.002+07:00

Asking a board of directors for several hundred million dollars to obtain new data center capacity is one of the least popular requests a senior technology executive can make. As one CIO said, “I have to go to the executive committee and tell them that I need a billion dollars, and in return I’m going to give them exactly nothing in new functionality— I’m going to allow them to stay in business. I’m not looking forward to this.”

Investments in data center capacity are a fact of business life. Businesses require new applications to interact with customers, manage supply chains, process transactions, and analyze market trends. Those applications and the data they use must be hosted in secure, mission-critical facilities. To date, the largest enterprises have needed their own facilities for their most important applications and data.

How much data center capacity you need and when you need it, however, depends not only on the underlying growth of the business but also on a range of decisions about business projects, application architectures, and system designs spread out across many organizations that don’t always take data center capital into account. As a result, it’s easy to build too much or to build the wrong type of capacity. To avoid that, CIOs should ask a set of questions as part of their due diligence on data center– investment programs before going to the executive committee and the board with a capital request.

1. How much impact do our facilities have on the availability of important business applications?

Resiliency is among the most common justifications for data center investments. Out-of-date, low-quality data centers are often an unacceptable business risk. Yet upgrading facilities typically isn’t always the most direct or even the most effective means of making applications more available. At the margin, investments in improved system designs and operations may yield better returns than investments in physical facilities.

Downtime overwhelmingly stems from application and system failures, not facility outages. An online service provider, for example, found that facility outages accounted for about 1 percent of total downtime. Even the most aggressive improvements in facility uptimes would have a marginal impact on application downtimes.

Organizations with high-performing problem-management capabilities can achieve measurably better quality levels by identifying and eliminating the root causes of incidents across the technology stack. Yet many infrastructure organizations do not have integrated problem-management teams.

2. How much more capacity could we get from existing facilities?

In many cases, older data centers are constrained by cooling capacity, even more than by power capacity: insufficient air-conditioning infrastructure limits the amount of server, storage, and network equipment that can be placed in these sites. The data center team can often free up capacity by improving their cooling efficiency, sometimes through inexpensive and quick-to-implement moves.

A large European insurance company, for example, wanted to consolidate part of its data center portfolio in its largest, most resilient data center, which was cooling constrained. The company freed up one to two critical megawatts of capacity in this facility—with approximately $40 million in capital cost savings—by replacing worn floor tiles, cable brushes, and blanking plates (all of which improved air flow) and increasing the operating-temperature range. As a result, the company consolidated facilities and provided capacity for business growth without having to build new capacity.¹

3. What does future demand for data center capacity look like and how can virtualization affect it?

World-class data center organizations deeply understand potential demand scenarios. Rather than make straight-line estimates based on historical growth, they use input from business and application-development groups to approximate the likely demand for different types of workloads. They then model potential variations from expected demand, factoring in uncertainties in business growth, application-development decisions, and infrastructure platform choices.

Without a business-driven demand forecast, IT organizations tend to build “just in case” capacity because few data center managers want to be caught short. A large European enterprise, for instance, cut its expansion plans to 15 critical megawatts, from 30, after the data center team conducted a deeper dive with business “owners” to better understand demand growth.

Even after years of rationalization, consolidation, and virtualization, many technology assets run at very low utilization rates, and every incremental server, storage frame, and router takes up space in a data center. Mandating that applications be migrated onto virtualized platforms in the facility, rather than moved onto similarly configured infrastructure, can be a powerful lever not only for reducing IT capital spending broadly but also for limiting new data center capacity requirements. A global bank, for example, cut their six-year demand to nearly 40 megawatts, from 57— a more than 25 percent reduction—by leveraging its data center build program to accelerate the use of virtual machines (Exhibit 1). This translated to a 25 percent reduction in new capacity build. That achievement helped create a political consensus for implementing virtualization technology more aggressively.

4. How can we improve capacity allocation by tier?

Owners of applications often argue that they must run in Tier III or Tier IV data centers to meet business expectations for resiliency.² Businesses can, however, put large and increasing parts of their application environments in lower-tier facilities, saving as much as 10 to 20 percent on capital costs by moving from Tier IV to Tier III capacity (Exhibit 2). By moving from Tier IV to Tier II, they can cut capital costs by as much as 50 percent.

Many types of existing workloads, such as development-and-testing environments and less critical applications, can be placed in lower-tier facilities with negligible business impact. Lower-tier facilities can host even production environments for critical applications if they use virtualized failover— where redundant capacity kicks in automatically— and the loss of session data is acceptable, as it is for internal e-mail platforms.

With appropriate maintenance, downtime for lower-tier facilities can be much less common than conventional wisdom would have it. One major online service provider, for instance, has hosted all its critical applications in Tier III facilities for 20 years, without a single facility outage. This level of performance far exceeds the conventional Tier III standard, which assumes 1.6 hours of unplanned downtime a year. The company achieved its remarkable record through the quarterly testing and repair of mechanical and electrical equipment, the preemptive replacement of aging components, and well-defined maintenance procedures to minimize outages that result from human error.

It is inherently more efficient and effective to provide resiliency at the application level than at the infrastructure or facility level. Many institutions are rearchitecting applications over time to be “geo-resilient,” so that they run seamlessly across data center locations. In this case, two Tier II facilities can provide a higher level of resiliency at lower cost than a single Tier IV facility. This would allow even an enterprise’s most critical applications to be hosted in lower-tier facilities.

5. How can we incorporate modular designs into our data center footprint?

There is a traditional model for data center expansion: enterprises build monolithic structures in a highly customized way to accommodate demand that is five or sometimes ten years out. In addition, they design facilities to meet the resiliency requirements of the most critical loads. New modular construction techniques (see sidebar “Three modular construction approaches”), however, have these advantages:

shifting data center build programs from a craft process for custom-built capacity to an industrial process that allows companies to connect factory-built modules
building capacity in much smaller increments
making it easier to use lower-tier capacity
avoiding the construction of new facilities, by leveraging existing investments (see sidebar “Deploying modular capacity: Two case studies”)

6. What is the complete list of key design decisions and their financial impact?

Even after the company has established its capacity requirements, dozens of design choices could substantially affect the cost to build. They include the following:

redundancy level of electrical and mechanical equipment
floor structure (for instance, single- or multistory)
cooling technology (such as free-air cooling, evaporative chillers, and waterside economizers)
degree to which components are shared between or dedicated to modules
storm grade (for instance, the maximum wind speed a data center can withstand, as defined by regional or national standards, such as the Miami–Dade County building code and the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale)

Individual choices can have a disproportionate impact on costs per unit of capacity even after a company chooses its tier structure. A large global financial-services firm, for example, looked closely at its incident history and found that electrical failures—rather than mechanical ones—caused almost all of the issues at its facilities. Knowing this, the firm increased its electrical redundancy and decreased mechanical redundancy, shaving off several million dollars in construction costs per megawatt.

Given the scale of the investment required—billion-dollar data center programs are not unheard of— CIOs must undertake aggressive due diligence for their data center capital plans. They can often free up tens of millions of dollars from build programs by asking tough questions about resiliency, capacity, timing, tiering, and design. Perhaps more important, they can tell the executive committee and the board that they are using the company’s capital in the most judicious way possible.
(Source: James Kaplan - McKinsey)

How a grocery giant puts technology at the center of innovation

2012-01-10T04:59:00.000+07:00

Cooperative Consumers Coop, better known as Coop, was Italy’s first retailer to embrace hypermarkets, in the 1980s, and then began opening even bigger superstore venues while expanding its offerings to include insurance and banking services, electricity, and prescription drugs. Throughout this expansion, Coop sought innovative ways to support its strategy with technology. Massimo Bongiovanni has strongly helped the company realize that goal as president of Coop Centrale, which manages purchasing and distribution for the retailer’s cooperative network of stores, as well as the IT and services that support marketing, pricing, and other elements of Coop’s commercial policies.

Earlier this year, McKinsey’s Brad Brown, Lorenzo Forina, and Johnson Sikes spoke with Massimo Bongiovanni about technology’s role in fostering growth and innovation.

A rising role for IT: McKinsey Global Survey results

2012-01-10T04:55:00.000+07:00

Aspirations—and current expectations—for IT have never been higher. Executives continue to set exacting demands for IT support of business processes, and they see an even larger role for IT in a competitive environment increasingly shaken up by technology disruptions. These are among the results of our sixth annual business technology survey, where we asked executives across all functions, industries, and regions about their companies’ use of, expectations for, and spending on IT.¹ Looking ahead, executives expect IT to create new platforms to support innovation and growth, help guide strategy with data and advanced analytics, and stay on top of possible new roles for mobile devices. For IT leaders, the good news is that along with these higher expectations, most respondents also see a greater willingness to spend more on IT.

Google TV Tries Again

2012-01-10T04:41:00.000+07:00

LAS VEGAS — Manufacturers of televisions have been searching for something — anything! — to reverse a years-long slide in profits.

This week, several manufacturers plan to unveil their effort at the huge International Consumer Electronics Show here. It’s called Google TV.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Google has been trying to crack the television market for some time, with rather tepid results. Google’s first foray into television, a partnership with Sony and Logitech in the fall of 2010, didn’t catch on because the remote was so big and complicated and because its software was confusing. And so far, Google’s success has been limited by the availability of on-demand television from the major networks.

Several announcements are expected at the show. LG Electronics says the latest iteration of Google TV has merged Google’s Android operating system with LG’s 3-D and Smart TV technologies, offering consumers “a new and enthralling TV experience.”

Whether consumers will be enthralled remains to be seen, but Google and television manufacturers are wagering that it will be a hit. Besides LG, Sony, Samsung and Vizio will introduce Google TV-powered products.

The idea of Google TV, and more broadly of Internet-connected televisions, is that viewers would be able to watch television in much the same way they browse the Internet, allowing them to watch movies, television shows, concerts and sporting events whenever they wanted.

In the case of Google TV, viewers would use Google’s Android operating system and apps specifically developed for the television. Google says it is a simpler interface than the first version of Google TV and offers more “TV-like” viewing of YouTube

IDC Predicts 2012 Surge for Mobile, Cloud, $1.8 Trillion IT Spending in 2012

2011-12-05T09:49:00.003+07:00

Most of the 10 top expectations for the coming year carried over from trends IDC anticipated for 2011. But its predictions report, “Competing for 2020,” brought along a wide-angle view for 2012 and going forward through the next decade. Predictions were winnowed from contributions by about 1,000 IDC analysts in a range of fields covering IT, information management and mobile communications, and were reduced to 10 based on growth opportunity, industry-wide impact and structural disruption.

Topping IDC’s predictions once again was the vast increase in worldwide IT spending, anticipated to go up 6.9 percent to $1.8 trillion in 2012. However, IDC warned of financial and disaster disruptions to this growth, like the worst-case-scenario of the total unraveling of the Euro that IDC stated could push the increase in IT spending down to 2 percent or less in 2012. Growth in emerging markets was the second-place choice driving overall IT changes, and IDC pegged emerging market spending to more than triple current levels to reach 53 percent of all worldwide IT spending in 2012.

Mobile communications ranked twice on the list: in third place, mobile growth will stem from an increase in devices, lowered price points due to emerging markets, and an explosion of apps for home and business; and sixth, with the expectations of mobile network growth and access worldwide. As part of mobile’s expected dominance in 2012, IDC stated that it will be a “make-or-break” year for mobile products from Microsoft, HP and RIM.

Also continuing to make a big splash through 2012 is cloud computing. IDC foresees cloud spending to top $36 billion next year, which is four-times the overall IT industry rate of growth. It ranked expanding cloud adoption fourth in its 2012 list, bringing along expectations of a slew of cloud and as-a-service acquisitions and the development of many more cloud applications. Increased cloud services enablement came in at number five, with 2012 turning into a watershed year for shifting away from self-built systems, and cloud systems management software to increase by 62 percent next year, IDC stated.

During a Web seminar on the predictions, IDC chief analyst and senior vice president Frank Gens said his research and advisory firm made the connection between predictions for 2012 and the outlook for eight years from now based on a generational shift in tech platform adoption and innovation underway. With that in mind, Gens said it is reasonable to think IT spending could hit $5 trillion worldwide by 2020, led by investment and innovation from mobile tech and the cloud.

“It’s easy to see that these technologies will inevitably become the vast majority of all IT spending,” says Gens.

Rounding out the expectations for 2012 are emergence of big data analytics and mash-ups (7); increasingly sophisticated social business capabilities (8); an increase in “intelligent” communications devices tapped into networks (9); and the development of smarter industry solutions in such areas as financial security apps and green tech (10). Gone from IDC’s list of predictions for 2011 are added broadband dedications and delivery, and the growth of consumer Web television.

European Parliament pushes to maintain Open Internet and Net Neutralitry

2011-11-19T02:41:00.002+07:00

Yesterday the European Parliament (EP) adopted a clear-cut position on net neutrality, giving the priority to maintaining an open Internet for all rather than increasing its use for commercial purposes.

A resolution passed by MEPs in Strasbourg calls on the European Commission to ensure that “Internet service providers do not block, discriminate against or impair the ability of any person to use or offer any service, content or application of their choice irrespective of source or target.”

As the Internet evolves into a crucial market for an ever-increasing number of services, many ISPs are stepping up their attempts to prioritize certain traffic in order to offer the best and quickest services to those who pay more.

Most controversial is the intentional slow-down of Internet connections – also referred as ‘throttling’ – for clients who do not pay the full price. Some are even inclined to block specific services such as Skype, to avoid competition with their traditional telephony services.

In their resolution, MEPs did recognize the need for a “reasonable” management of data traffic to ensure that the Internet continues to run smoothly. However, the parliament also clearly underlined that anti-competitive practices should not be allowed.

MEPs asked the Commission to “closely monitor the development of traffic management practices and interconnection agreements, in particular in relation to blocking and throttling of, or excessive pricing for, VoIP and file sharing, as well as anticompetitive behaviour and excessive degradation of quality”.

The text adopted reiterated privacy and data protection concerns raised by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) who issued an opinion last October warning of “serious implications” for the security of personal data due to an excessively intrusive interpretation of traffic management.

EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes stands accused by many MEPs of keeping an “ambiguous” approach to net neutrality.

The commission indeed refrained from taking a definitive position on traffic management in its communication on net neutrality published last April. However, it did made clear that further monitoring of dubious practices was required and could lead to regulatory measures in the future.

This analysis is still ongoing, explained Kroes’ spokesperson Ryan Heath.

“The Commission is monitoring the development of traffic management. To this end it has tasked BEREC (the Body of national telecoms regulators) to carry out investigations on net neutrality and traffic management, including instances of blocking and throttling. This work is currently ongoing.”

It remains unclear at this stage whether the commission will come up with new “guidance” for the sector or with binding legislation.

In December the EU telecoms ministers will discuss net neutrality. By the end of this year or the beginning of 2012 the commission is expected to conclude the analysis of traffic management practices.

Read the full article (EurActiv).

Also noteworthy: Traffic jams, ISPs and net neutrality (GigaOm).

Source: EurActiv

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ITU Releases Global ICT Pricing and Penetration Data

2011-09-18T03:32:00.001+07:00

ITU’s latest report Measuring the Information Society 2011 (PDF) ranks the Republic of Korea as the world’s most advanced ICT economy, followed by Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland. Broadband rates on average dropped 50 per cent between 2008 and 2010, while huge differences in speeds and quality remain between countries.

ITU’s ICT Development Index (IDI) ranks 152 countries according to their level of ICT access, use and skills, and compares 2008 and 2010 scores. Most countries at the top of the ranking are from Europe and Asia Pacific. The United Arab Emirates and Russia rank first within their respective regions and Uruguay ranks highest in South America.

Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Vietnam and Russia were some of the most dynamic countries between 2008 and 2010, with all of them making substantial improvements in their IDI ranks.

All countries included in the IDI improved their scores this year, underlining the increasing pervasiveness of ICTs in today’s global information society.

The report shows that while ICT usage and income levels are closely related, getting the right public policy mix can drive faster take-up and a number of countries, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea have higher IDI levels than their income level would predict.

The spread of mobile networks in developing countries remains buoyant, with 20 per cent growth in mobile subscriptions over the past year and no signs of a slowdown.

In developed countries, on the other hand, mobile cellular penetration has reached saturation, with average penetration now over 100 per cent at end 2010, compared with 70 per cent in developing countries. With more than five billion subscriptions and global population coverage of over 90 per cent, mobile cellular is practically ubiquitous.

Mobile broadband (3G) services are also spreading quickly. By the end of 2010, over 150 economies worldwide had launched 3G networks. Wireless broadband Internet access remains the strongest growth sector in developing countries, with mobile broadband growing by 160 per cent between 2009 and 2010. Countries registering the highest gains in the IDI ‘ICT use’ sub-index are mostly those which have achieved a sizeable increase in mobile broadband subscriptions.

Globally, telecommunication and Internet services are becoming more affordable. According to the 2010 ICT Price Basket (IPB), which spans 165 economies and combines the average cost of fixed telephone, mobile cellular and fixed broadband Internet services, the price of ICT services dropped by 18 per cent globally between 2008 and 2010, with the biggest decrease in fixed broadband Internet services, where average prices have come down by more than 50 per cent.

All economies in the IPB top ten have high GNI per capita, and, with the exception of the United Arab Emirates, all are from Europe and Asia Pacific.

In developed countries, average prices for ICT services correspond to no more than 1.5 per cent of monthly per capita income, compared with 17 per cent in developing countries. But while broadband prices declined sharply worldwide, a high-speed Internet connection remains unaffordable in many low-income countries. For example, in Africa at end 2010, fixed broadband services cost on average the equivalent of 290 per cent of monthly income, down from 650 per cent in 2008.

In addition, the report notes that the actual speed experienced by both fixed and mobile broadband customers is often much lower than the advertised speed, and calls on ICT regulators to take steps to encourage operators to provide consumers with clearer information on coverage, speed and prices.

Download the report or read the full press release.

Source: ITU

UMTS-HSPA Reached 750 Million Subscriptions

2011-09-15T05:58:00.002+07:00

BELLEVUE, Wash. – In 2Q 2011, Latin America saw remarkable uptake of mobile broadband with an annual growth rate of more than 90 percent, close to double the number of mobile broadband subscriptions, for UMTS-HSPA, reports 4G Americas, based on subscription data from Informa Telecoms & Media. Compared to a total base of 29.5 million UMTS-HSPA connections reported in the second quarter 2010, there were 56.1 million UMTS-HSPA connections reported at the second quarter of 2011.

Americas
In the Americas region, 3GPP technologies (GSM-UMTS-HSPA-LTE) grew by 19.26 million new subscriptions, of the total (net) 19.4 million mobile subscriptions added in the second quarter 2011 and represent 99.26 percent of the total new connections added in North, Central and South America. The explosion of 3GPP mobile broadband (UMTS-HSPA-LTE) subscriptions, as service providers continue to upgrade their networks to HSPA and HSPA+ and now LTE mobile broadband, demonstrates the increasing demands of mobile users in advanced wireless technology services and applications, and the growing proliferation of smartphones. A huge shift from 2G technologies is evident in the Americas region, with 3GPP mobile broadband subscriptions rising from 92 million at the end of second quarter 2010 up to 145 million as of June 2011.

3GPP technologies held a market share of 76 percent at June 30 in North, Central and South America, In the second quarter 2011 alone, GSM added almost 5 million new connections, while UMTS-HSPA added more than 13 million new connections and LTE added 1.23 million, for a total of 19.26 million new connections.

Total 3GPP subscriptions in the Americas reached 717 million as of June 2011, an increase of nearly 83 million new subscriptions in the region from June 2010 to June 2011.

“The 3GPP wireless technologies continue to lead the way in the Americas as one of the most prolific technology inventions for society,” stated Chris Pearson, President of 4G Americas. “HSPA and HSPA+ have provided a ubiquitous foundation for fast mobile broadband in North, Central and South America and LTE momentum is beginning to pick up in North America and the rest of the world.”

Latin America & Caribbean
The market share for 3GPP technologies continued to increase in the Latin America and Caribbean region, rising above 94 percent at the end of the second quarter 2011. Total 3GPP subscriptions (GSM-HSPA) equaled 564 million, supported by the addition of 69.6 million new 3GPP technology connections in the one year ending June 2011, of which 26.6 million were UMTS-HSPA mobile broadband connections. As noted, 3GPP mobile broadband subscriptions were close to double the number of subscriptions for the 12 months ending June 2011.

“HSPA and HSPA+ are providing Latin Americans with easy and efficient ways to connect to mobile broadband for work and play,” said Erasmo Rojas, Director of Latin America and the Caribbean at 4G Americas. “With the exciting momentum of HSPA+ deployments throughout the region, subscribers are simultaneously experiencing fast broadband connections for all types of business, enterprise and consumer value-added applications. The success of the HSPA evolution is paving the way for LTE trials and expected launches in many Latin countries during 2012.”

The Latin America and the Caribbean region now offers a large coverage footprint of HSPA+ on 21 networks in 13 countries. This number is due significantly to America Movil launching nine new commercial HSPA+ networks under the Telcel, Comcel and Claro brands in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Puerto Rico. Additional HSPA+ networks throughout Latin America and the Caribbean include Cellular One and Digicel in Bermuda; Digicel in Dominican Republic; LIME in Jamaica; Cable & Wireless in Panama; AT&T and T-Mobile in Puerto Rico; Movil de Entel in Bolivia; Movistar in Ecuador; and Iusacell in Mexico. In Chile, both Entel and Movistar offer HSPA+ dual carrier at peak theoretical downlink throughput at 42 Mbps.

U.S. and Canada
In the U.S. and Canada, 3GPP technologies added a net 3.1 million new subscribers of the net total 4.7 new subscriptions in the second quarter of 2011. Included in this quarterly number were 6.6 million new mobile broadband (UMTS-HSPA) connections and 1.2 million LTE connections reflecting the customer shift from the second generation GSM and CDMA subscriber base to the next-generation technologies. UMTS-HSPA subscriptions totaled nearly 89 million at the end of second quarter 2011, up 41 percent from one year earlier when UMTS-HSPA subscriptions totaled nearly 63 million.

Today, there are 16 commercially deployed HSPA networks in the U.S. and Canada, including 5 HSPA+ networks, an increase of 5 commercial networks since June 2010.

There are 3 LTE networks in the U.S. and Canada with 8 additional commercial launches expected by the end of 2011. LTE subscriptions achieved almost 2 million worldwide with North American subscriptions representing 93 percent of the global LTE subscriber base.

“With the large North American CDMA operators shifting towards LTE for their next generation networks, we will see an even larger portion of net additions coming from 3GPP technologies, most notably LTE and HSPA, as we move forward,” stated Kristin Paulin, Research Analyst- North America & Caribbean, Informa Telecoms & Media.

Global
Worldwide, there are 412 commercial networks in 157 countries that offer HSPA, including 163 HSPA+ commercial networks in 80 countries. These HSPA+ networks are at varying levels of technical enhancements: 112 networks at peak theoretical download throughput rates of 21 Mbps; 10 networks at peak theoretical download throughput rates of 28 Mbps; and 41 networks at peak theoretical download throughput rates of 42 Mbps.

The 3GPP technology roadmap continues to progress with its evolution to LTE. There are currently 28 commercial networks in 20 countries with a total of 50 commercial LTE deployments expected by the end of 2011. LTE will be the next-generation OFDMA-based global technology standard for GSM, CDMA, Greenfield and even WiMAX operators with commitments regarding future deployments by more than 250 operators worldwide.

Statistical Charts

For more information and to view a variety of statistical charts on the 3GPP family of technologies, visit www.4gamericas.org

About 4G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Mobile Broadband Technology

4G Americas is an industry trade organization composed of leading telecommunications service providers and manufacturers. The organization's mission is to promote, facilitate and advocate for the deployment and adoption of the 3GPP family of technologies throughout the Americas. 4G Americas contributes to the successful commercial rollout of 3GPP mobile broadband technologies across the Americas and their place as the No. 1 technology family in the region. The organization aims to develop the expansive wireless ecosystem of networks, devices, and applications enabled by GSM and its evolution to LTE. 4G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas. More information is available at www.4gamericas.org.

Telework in 10 Years from Now

2011-09-02T06:35:00.002+07:00

Chris Knotts is vice president of technology and innovation at Force 3, an IT services provider for government agencies.

I have good news for government agencies wrestling with how to implement and maintain effective telework policies and procedures: In 10 years, the word “telework” will feel as outdated as a rotary phone.

Knowledge workers won’t telework. They’ll simply work in whatever location makes the most sense. As I look out at the evolving technology landscape, I have 10 predictions for what the future holds.

1. Wireless carriers will increase to wired speed. The next evolution of mobile technology will bring the speed of wireless carriers in line with wired networks. Along the way, a security breakthrough will occur that will change the way we access information and ease hacking concerns dramatically.

2. We’ll be online all the time. The idea of “getting online” will seem antiquated. There will be no more hot spots or network connections. The network will simply be there — and we’ll be on it.

3. Tablets will replace desktop and laptop PCs. Desktop and laptop PCs will be supplanted by tablet PCs that are micro-thin and foldable. Picture a foldable smart phone that expands to a 20-, 30- or 50-inch screen. The new devices will have an on/off button but no more fans or moving parts. Because we’ll be accessing more information and applications in the cloud, the need to store data on the devices will decrease dramatically.

4. Everything will move to the cloud. Every application that we access will be in the cloud, and people will no longer store anything locally. In other words, you will have a hard drive, but it won’t be part of your computer.

5. There will be no more boxed software. What got the big software vendors to 2011 will not get them to 2021. I believe all software will transition to a service-based approach.

6. Text messaging is here to stay. Text messaging fits the way we work and live incredibly well. Therefore, even as networks and devices evolve, the practice of sending short text messages will endure.

7. 3-D video will become the norm. 3-D technology is mainly seen as a novelty now, but in 10 years, most teleconferences will be conducted with 3-D video. Imagine working from a home office and taking part in a 3-D video conference with colleagues and partners from around the globe. Workers are going to have to shower and dress for that one!

8. There will be no more Bluetooth. The image of someone walking around with a Bluetooth device sticking out of his or her ear will feel outdated by 2021. Those gadgets will be replaced by embedded audio in or on our ears (or somewhere else on our body).

9. Holdouts will proliferate. Not everyone will want to be on the grid all the time. I believe we’ll see a growing subculture of people who reject technology and form niche communities or companies.

10. The generation gap will get bigger. Previous generations will struggle more than younger generations as the workplace of the future evolves. The next generation of employees will not see the workplace as a focal point of social interaction. Being able to work will suffice, and they won’t feel that they need to be in the same place as their co-workers.

Right now, what’s holding many agencies back from telework are issues of control and trust in their employees. But as technology and human expectations evolve, telework will simply become “work,” with a greater responsibility placed on the individual to manage the balance between personal and professional time.

Symphonet secures RM1.359bil guarantor

2011-08-26T04:17:00.004+07:00

KUALA LUMPUR: Although it has yet to secure financiers, Symphonet Sdn Bhd announced that it has a guarantor for US$453mil (RM1.359bil) to fund its three large projects.

Chief executive officer Datuk Baharum Salleh said the three projects an e-commerce trading platform, and two submarine fibre optic cable systems, namely the Johor-Jakarta Cable System (JJCS) and Terengganu-Vietnam Cable System (TVNCS) were financially backed by Indonesia's PT Saras TLP Investment (Saras Group).

“Saras Group will be the guarantor for all those projects. We're still negotiating to secure financing. We've not decided yet... whichever bank that can give you a good deal,” Baharum said at a briefing after a signing ceremony between Symphonet and Saras Group, PT Interkoneksi Internet Indonesia (3i) and Vietnam Hi Technology Development and Investment Joint Stock Company (VITEDI).

Baharum declined to disclose which bank would provide the financing. “We hope to secure the funds as soon as possible subject to the discussion taking place,” he added.

On the cost of the projects, he said about US$300mil would be required for the e-commerce platform, US$100mil for JJCS and US$60mil for TVNCS.

The JJCS will link Iskandar Malaysia in Johor to Jakarta, while the TVNCS is from Kertih, Terengganu, to Vung Tau in Vietnam. The e-commerce project belongs to the Saras Group and would be carried out by Symphonet.

The Indonesian group will also fund the e-commerce project, which will cover at least 480 sites in Indonesia. Baharum said the details of the investment and ownership structure of the underseas cable projects were, however, still being discussed.

Symphonet had earlier announced its joint venture (JV) with 3i on the 1,300km JJCS. Yesterday's event formalised the setting up of the JV company, Malindo Cable Network Pte Ltd. At the same time, Symphonet signed a consortium agreement with VITEDI for the 800km TVNCS.

The TVNCS is meant to serve as the Eastern international gateway into the Indochina markets, while the JJCS was positioned as the Southern gateway that would extend its customers to India, the Middle East, Europe and the United States through strategic partnerships.

When asked on the expected revenue from the projects, Baharum said all three would have recurring income, with the JJCS expected to generate the most.

Without disclosing details, he added that Symphonet and the Saras Group would be announcing four more projects in the near future, including two in Malaysia.

Source: the Star Online 24 August 2011

Symponet bags US$300m deal to set up e-commerce in Indonesia

2011-08-26T03:44:00.001+07:00

KUALA LUMPUR: Little known company Symponet Sdn Bhd has bagged a US$300 million deal from
Indonesia's PT Saras TLP Investment Group to establish an e-commerce platform in Indonesia.
Symponet, established only three years ago, has been given the job to integrate 480 outlets across islands of
Indonesia.
Symponet managing director Datuk Baharum Salleh said that the e-commerce platform will also have two
data centres and network operations centres - one each in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur. It will also have a data
recovery centre in Malaysia.
Baharum was speaking to reporters following the signing of three documents, one of which was an
memorandum of understanding for the e-commerce platform.
The Saras Group, which is described as providing international financial services, is also acting as guarantor
for two other submarine cable projects - a 1,300km cable from Iskandar Johor Bahru to Jakarta with an
estimated cost of US$100 million and a 800km from Kerteh in Terengganu to Vung Tau in Vietnam worth
US$60 million.
Symponet is yet to secure any funding for these projects, but Baharum said it is in talks with several
institutions to see who can offer the best deal.
However, initial work on the Johor-Jakarta Cable (JJC) has commenced with the likely date for completion set
for end-2012, at the latest.
Symponet also formalised the joint venture with PT Interkoneksi Internet Indonesia called Malindo Cable
Network Pte Ltd for the JJC yesterday.
Another agreement was for the setting up of a consortium with Vietnamese broadband service provider
Vietnam Hi Technology Development and Investment Joint Stock Company (Vitedi).
The equity structure of both cable projects are yet to be determined. Baharum said that there could be as many
as four partners in each project.
The Saras Group financing instrument arrangement is to the tune of US$453 million encompassing a total of
seven projects, two of which are yet to be announced.
The group was represented by its executive chairman Arya Widjaya.
Source: Business Times 2011/08/24

England Riots: Hackers hit BlackBerry Site over Police Help

2011-08-11T14:09:00.000+07:00

A hacker group has attacked Blackberry's website after the company said it would assist police investigating riots in the UK.

Team Poison defaced the official Blackberry blog, posting a message that threatened the firm with retaliation if it handed user data to authorities.

Blackberry's instant messaging service is believed to have been used by some looters to plan their movements.

The firm has promised to co-operate with police and the Home Office.

In its statement, Team Poison said that it did not condone innocent people or small businesses being attacked in the riots.

However, it added: "We are all for the rioters that are engaging in attacks on the police and government."

The group argued that if Blackberry gave subscriber information to police, it could lead to the wrong people being targeted.

"Innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a Blackberry will get charged for no reason at all," said Team Poison's statement.

It threatened to release employee information, including names, addresses and phone numbers of Blackberry staff.

UK laws mean police can request data from individuals' mobile phones when that information relates to criminal activity.

The procedure is governed by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

Partner or Perish

2011-07-25T18:54:00.000+07:00

By Joseph Waring, Telecom Asia

"What do my customers want?" While it may seem like a simple question, it is shocking how many operators really don't have a clear picture. Traditional telcos are still focused on the technology - bringing down the cost per bit and delivering the fastest speeds. The marketing guys are mostly left out of the equation.

That's the "old" school. A roundtable of telco and media executives moderated by group editor Joseph Waring recently discussed how operators have to open up, give up some control and accept they are now the servant of the user.

The days of pushing ahead alone in segments that aren't their core competencies, such as music and entertainment, are over. The new model is partnerships, in various forms, and increasingly dealerships.

Softbank senior executive VP Ted Matsumoto said that in the past business executives were motivated by egos - they wanted to control the market by having others use their technology or products. "But today no one can do everything so it's a mixture of many people putting together components. In this new world, once you accept that the customer is the top priority, your life becomes easier. To be successful we have to get user support - no one will argue with that."

But he notes there is always the tendency for a company to want to "be the guy who sells to the users, but actually it has to be a mixture," citing the example of the winning package of iPhone hardware, Apple App Store and the operator's network and services.

When you realize you are the servant of the user, Matsumoto said it breaks down any reluctance to tie up with others. He said Softbank's exclusivity for the iPhone has given it differentiation and is the secret to its success.

Blyk co-founder Antti Ohrling pointed out the distinction between partnerships and dealerships, which need to be exclusive to have value. He said he's sure there are big players out there that will never give exclusivity because they don't need to.

"But on the other hand, operators sit on that gold dust of knowing their customers better than anybody else. By combining that intelligence from the network with Blyk's intelligence about what people say they like and don't like, it's a staggering picture you start to develop."
He said that is a level of intelligence that is not available from the over-the-top players, noting it gives operators a chance in a specific geographical area.

But having access to customer data and using it are two very different things. Nucleus Connect CEO David Storrie expressed surprise at how little some telcos know about what their users want.

"As a wholesaler, our whole business is based on partnering with the service providers. When we sit down with potential service providers, the first thing I do is ask them what they are trying to deliver to end-users, and you'd be amazed at how many blank faces there are on the other side of the table," he said.

Loo Yew Ming, Universal Music's VP for digital & business development, noted that the issue is that telcos try to work in a space that's not their core competencies. "Take music for example - a lot of operators try to sell music when the guys running those divisions know nothing about music. That's where they can definitely benefit from a partnership. Music marketing is our core competency and you guys run the network and know the customers best."

Dialogic CEO Nick Jensen said, “You’re spot on. A traditional telco is a technologist's playground - the marketers are the minority. With an MVNO the marketers are the majority because they don't care about the network infrastructure."

But partnerships come in many forms and benefit telcos differently. Ohrling explained that operators need social networks like Facebook more than they need operators. "If that is the case, they aren't paying you, you are paying them - because if you don't have them you're not as good in the marketplace as your competitor. The consumer wants that more and they don't care where they get it.

"There's this dynamic happening as well, it's not just a matter of being a partner or a dealer, but someone paying a 'market tax' which is eating up the playing field, like in the cable TV industry."

CSL CMO Mark Liversidge said it's a question of helping the end-user use Android and Apple devices for all the things they want and have a good experience on the social networks of their choice. "Our focus is how do we provide this in a packaged way that makes it easy for them to access."

CSL recently launched a social media program called Tribes, which builds social comment on Apple and Android.

The market reality, Jensen said, is that "if you have Apple, the other guy has Apple. If you have over-the-top play, the other guy has it. Everyone has Facebook and everyone will have LTE."

He said carriers are saying they don't just want to be the pass-through guy or the middleman who doesn't add value on the content side. "They want to own content because they have to compete with the guy around the corner that has the same devices, the same spectrum and the same network equipment. I can't differentiate there, so I have to differentiate on being hip and providing content the others can't."

He asks operators: "What do you want to do? Because you can't all do the same thing. If you all do the same thing, there is no differentiation and it becomes a commodity."

Jensen, explaining the benefits of blasting an announcement of say a Lady Gaga concert that is available to your video subscribers, said such a promotion drives sales of high-end handsets and generates transaction-based revenue from users who watch the concert on their handsets.

"Over time you build profiles and then you can add advertisements. That's how you make money so you don't have give it to Apple or give it to Google because you control it. You become hip because it happens on your network."

Ohrling said, from Blyk's experience, any information you gather is negative unless the subject knows you're doing it. "It's about transparency. People are willing to share an incredible amount of information if you tell them why. When you become a master of your subscribers' information, then the question of partnership or dealership becomes less important because you are the best channel to any individual in that market."

He said he found the Universal Music approach of working with mobile operators on a revenue sharing basis refreshing. "With the type of exclusive partnerships you can get much more intimate. You can build IPR that your partners can have and use."

Loo from Universal Music said that is the key driver of its partnership with SingTel. "The only way to go to a promoted concert for free is to sign up with SingTel and buy a device."

Nucleus Connect's Storrie pointed out that some offers to customers, such as LBS in-store promotions, are powerful only when they reach the majority of the market.

He gave an example of a retail chain in Singapore sending special offers to customers by SMS. "It didn't take off because they really needed to have all the operators working together so everybody in the store got the message, not just the StarHub customers."

Jensen said the challenges of the carriers are very different from market to market because of huge variations in monthly spend, the amount of fiber available and the bandwidth available.

Carriers have a choice – they can be an enabler of bandwidth and let people pass through and collect payment. "It's a great business model and will work for some markets if you're good at taking the costs down. But operators in developing markets like India and Bangladesh with low ARPU don't have that luxury - they don't even have customers that can afford to by an iPhone. Activity is transaction based."

He said the users still want a smartphone, so the operators have to think differently. Because content is king, he encourages them to have exclusive access to content, like Airtel, which owns the rights to Premier League Cricket and Manchester United content.

The operator's model is for users to make per-game or per-minute downloads and time shift to make a purchase of say a ManU jersey on the Airtel site and go back to the game.
Softbank's Matsumoto raised the point that many times business people are too impatient and try to make money very quick. "I think it's a mistake. If you sell devices capable of supporting certain services, users shouldn't have to always calculate how much they'll have to pay in total. But if they buy an expensive device and all the services are free, they will make a decision. To start with it should be free."

CSL's Liversidge said the industry needs to throw out the old model of looking at the number of connections. “It's the out old-fashioned way of looking at things. We need to shift our thinking to the context of 'we have a network, it's a sunken cost, how do I fill it?' I have to think like an airline now. If that jumbo flies half full, I can't take seats off and put them on the next one; it's wasted inventory."

He said CSL is shifting its focus to the end-user and moving away from the standard operator model of a single user, with a single device on a single plan. "This is why we've got into position where we're obsessed with the big device vendors that have been in control."
Because more consumers are carrying multiple devices, CSL has to cater to that change. "It's more important for us to build service support and delivery of content and apps to devices, which is were we see our value and where we'll take our profitability from."

He said CSL is getting out of the game of giving away devices with massive subsidies.

Extreme Trust: A Difficult Future for Telecom Companies

2011-07-25T18:45:00.001+07:00

By Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. - telecomasia.net

Most telecom operators today consider themselves to be trustable, and by yesterday’s standards they are. They post their prices honestly, they try their best to maintain the quality and reliability of their service, and they generally do what they promise.

The e-social revolution has brought an unprecedented level of transparency into all aspects of our lives, from personal friendships to business dealings, driving everyone’s expectations higher.

As a result, many common business practices today are becoming ‘worst practices’. And even though they don’t actually lie or steal, the fact is that telecom companies still generate substantial profits simply by fooling customers, or by taking advantage of their lack of knowledge, or by capitalizing on their mistakes.

In tomorrow’s hyperconnected, hyper-transparent world, however, companies will be expected to beextremely trustable. They will be expected to proactively work to protect a customer’s own interests. It has always been the case that making a profit from a customer’s error might (if the customer eventually found out) jeopardize a firm’s relationship with that individual customer.

Tomorrow’s untrustable behavior will be much more widely publicized, arousing the righteous indignation of customers who aren’t involved, but who will take satisfaction in ‘punishing’ a firm by spreading the news of their bad deeds and withholding their own patronage. As a result, simple trustability will soon become one of the most important basic ingredients of acceptable customer service in every business category, including telecom.

In the e-social future, a company will only be able to succeed, competitively, if it enjoys the extreme trust of each customer in the same way a friend enjoys the extreme trust of another friend.

Unfortunately, telecom companies are in danger of becoming case studies in untrustable behavior. If telecom companies don’t begin changing their policies soon, in fact, they are destined to become the ‘used car salesmen’ of the future, infamous for their sneaky ways and untrustable behaviors and parodied by the next generation of entertainers and comedians.

Due to pricing complexity, rapid technological change, and the increasing diversity of services offered, today’s telecom companies are ideally positioned to make money through consumer error or lack of information, and many of them gleefully do so.

In the U.S., for instance, the New York Times recently exposed an operator for coaching its call center reps on how to avoid giving legitimate refunds to customers.

When people called in to complain about unanticipated charges for data access, reps were instructed not to inform customers about how to block these types of accidental calls unless a customer specifically asked how to do so.

It may be an extreme case, but this sort of policy epitomizes the dilemma that most telecom companies face: Proactively protecting customers from their own errors costs money, requiring a firm to be willing to sacrifice some current profits.

The sheer complexity of telecom offerings today virtually ensures that consumers will in fact make many such mistakes.

So what will a genuinely trustable telecom company really look like? What will it do differently?

For one thing, a genuinely trustable operator will automatically assign customers to the most economic calling plans based on their calling, texting and data usage. A ‘best practice’ will
be to retroactively assign the most economic calling plan for each customer, crediting the customer with a rebate where appropriate.

Very few operators today do this, of course, and those that do often use it as an excuse to extend a postpaid contract.

If a customer is about to subscribe to a mobile or landline service from a home or business address that is prone to poor network coverage or slow broadband connectivity, a genuinely trustable telecom company will advise them in advance of this weakness in their offering, perhaps providing a discount or other benefit until such time as service in their home area is improved.

A genuinely trustable telecom operator will almost certainly have an unconditional money-back guarantee available to cover any and all customer complaints. In the same way today’s best online merchants offer unconditional refunds, tomorrow’s operators will use such a
policy to ensure that customers always receive the service they expect.

Trustable behavior like this is very difficult for any company to embrace, because it flies directly in the face of most firms’ deepest instincts to ‘keep the cash’ and maximize their short-term profits.

Acting in the customer’s interest requires a firm to be willing to forego immediate profits in return for earning the longer-term respect and confidence of its customers.

As telecom companies must become more trustable, because the rising power of customers exposes untrustable behavior, the question of a company’s trustability will go to the heart of its value proposition. Trustability will become an essential element of any company’s customer service in the future in much the same way that having a website has become an essential element of customer service.

To survive in this new, hyper-transparent world in which extreme trust is a prerequisite for business success, a telecom operator must pursue four basic courses of action:

Reciprocity. Having empathy for customers, and treating each one the way you yourself would want to be treated if you were that customer, is the single most important element of trustability. To be trustable, you have to adopt a customer-centric philosophy, and then re-engineer your value proposition and customer experience from the standpoint of the customer.

This will have consequences for your operating policies, of course, but the eventual implications for your firm’s culture will be even more profound. The reason the operator’s underhanded antirefund policies were exposed in the New York Times in the first place is that an employee contacted a reporter. In the end, your telecom employees are customers, too, and if your own workers don’t believe you are a trustable company, then your customers won’t either.

Giving up some control. To make your command-andcontrol, hierarchical firm more trustable you will have to give more authority to individual employees. You need resilience, but well-controlled hierarchies can be rigid and brittle. Think about how to decentralize.

Empower employees to ‘sense and respond’, in real time, to customer issues. This is yet another reason to pay close attention to the culture at your firm, and the unwritten rules that govern how employees really get things done.

While you’re at it, you should also recognize that things will never be perfect, so be prepared in advance for the mistakes. Even if your policies are extremely trustable you’re still going to get ambushed occasionally by rogue customer comments.

Don’t be too afraid to allow your workers to show your company’s human side, including its vulnerability. Brand statements and press releases are perfect, but vulnerability will encourage customers to be empathetic to you, and empathy generates trust.

Community. One of the secrets behind the e-social revolution is that people have an irresistible urge to share with others. They make their opinions known, they contribute ideas, they collaborate on things such as Wikipedia and open source software, and many companies even find that customers provide the best kind of customer service for other customers.

If you want to become more trustable you have to tap this sharing instinct, first by sharing your own honest counsel with customers. Talk to them not just in terms of how they can get more value from their service, but how they can better connect with friends, how they can find things out faster, manage their connections more efficiently, and live their own lives more fully.

It’s ironic that telecom play such a vital role in connecting people and releasing their sharing impulses, but service providers themselves don’t have much to say on the subject.

Competence. There are two requirements for being trustable. Not only must your intent be to act in the customer’s interest (reciprocity), but you have to have the competence to act on that intent, as well. On a basic level this means paying close attention to the quality of your product and service. But just as important, you should upgrade your data, analytics, and systems.

Quantifying the financial benefits of long-term customer trust and confidence requires good analytics. Customer lifetime values are not easy to compute, but in the communications industry, more than in most other categories, the statistical data is clearly available and there is no shortage of analytical tools to make these calculations. If you want your telecom company to become more trustable, you’ll have to begin paying attention to the data and pushing the envelope on analysis.

What kinds of events tend to move customer lifetime values higher or lower? What customer interactions, or ‘moments of truth’, are more likely to drive perceptions of trustability? And which of your customers are more trustable (and valuable) themselves?

The bottom line: in a world of extreme trust you always have to take a step back from whatever business policy you’re considering, whatever new idea you’re thinking about, and ask yourself: “If this became public, would it be an embarrassment to us? Would we be proud of it? Would some of our customers hold it against us?” There’s a very good chance that whatever you do will become public. If you want your telecoms company to be genuinely trustable, then you have to have clean hands, not just a good alibi.

Shaping the Future of Telecom

2011-07-25T18:40:00.000+07:00

It’s no secret that telcos can’t go about doing business as usual anymore. It’s been over 25 years since AT&T was broken up and competition came onto the scene, but today the traditional telcos are still having a rough time of it.

The future may be challenging for operators, but we offer some solutions. In an article from our flagship publication, Perspectives, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers point to four basic courses of action for telecom operators: reciprocity, giving up some control, community and competence. And in a roundtable discussion with industry executives, Telecom Asia editor Joseph Waring finds out that operators need to open up, give up some control and move toward a new business model of partnerships in order to survive.

The Hidden Value of Social-Networking Data

2011-07-25T18:33:00.001+07:00

More and more businesses are using social networking to keep in contact with their customers and to track how their products are performing. Yet social networking can offer much more (in the form of analytics) to businesses that know what to look for.

Posts and conversations on social-networking sites are turning into the latest form of big data, with large amounts of data being stored and available for analysis. That allows businesses to apply the same tools used for big data analytics to social networking.

Social-networking sites are ripe targets for companies to gain new business intelligence.

Many vendors are coming on the scene to offer analytical technology for this market. The idea behind these technologies is to identify customer sentiment toward a particular brand or product, which a business can then translate into marketing fodder.

A good example of this comes in the form of what Wall Street is attempting to do with social media and social-networking services. In a quest to gain a competitive edge, Wall Street traders and brokers are using socially aware big data analytics tools to monitor conversations, tweets and posts to social-networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Analytical tools that sort through this massive amount of data are using complex algorithms to monitor and decode the words, opinions, rants, and even keyboard-generated smiley faces posted on social-media sites. Wall Street is regaining insights into the mindset of consumers and the general feelings toward the market, the economy and the political environment. What’s more, that analysis can determine the communal mindset of consumers and their general feelings toward the market—the biggest element being consumer confidence.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss some of the new solutions that are available to perform the needed analytics on social-networking sites.

(Source: Frank Ohlhorst - smartertechnology.com July 25, 2011)

Five Reasons IaaS Will Top $4 Billion by 2015

2011-07-25T18:27:00.002+07:00

Infrastructure as a service is one of the fastest growing paradigms in the portfolio of cloud-based services. Here are the five reasons why IaaS is set to grow to become a $4 billion market by 2015.
Just as software as a service shifted software from being an enterprise asset that is licensed to being a service that is provided, and platform as a service shifted software development and hosting capabilities for specific computer architectures from being an asset purchased en masse to being a service provided on demand, infrastructure as a service allows all enterprise hardware architectures to be virtualized, including processors, storage, firewalls and other network resources.
Besides the savings in capital expenditures associated with building large data centers, IaaS reduces the labor costs of maintaining 24/7 network administrators, and greatly reduces the energy power budget for an enterprise. IaaS is delivered by platform virtualization where servers, software, data center space, and network equipment are outsourced to cloud service providers.
According to In-Stat, IaaS is destined to grow quickly over the next four years, culminating in a $4 billion market by 2015, with the top five markets being hospitality, food, health care, social services and retail.
Here are the five reasons that IaaS is destined to skyrocket:
Cloud-bursting: Without IaaS, enterprises must invest in servers that run at 10 percent of capacity 90 percent of the time, just so they can handle the bursts in activity that occur only 10 percent of the time. By off-loading these bursts to cloud-based services, substantial savings in capital expenditures can be reaped by an enterprise.
Virtualization: Virtualization is the process of running low-level code beneath operating systems, rather than using separate load balancers as would otherwise be needed. Virtualization manages failover, redundancy, monitoring, clustering and other infrastructure management tasks.
Hypervisor Convenience: IaaS combines hardware and software resources by virtue of low-level code, called a hypervisor, that runs independent any chosen operating system. The convenience of the hypervisor involves its taking inventory of hardware resources and allocating them based on demand.
Resource Pooling: IaaS software works by running virtualization code--the hypervisor--to allocate hardware resources on-demand, thereby enabling resource pooling among departments of an enterprise.
Multi-tenant Computing: Because of the resource pooling made possible by virtualization of resources, organizations with similar interests in regard to security requirements and compliance can share resources, called multi-tenant computing.
These five areas will be the drivers that bring IaaS to new levels in the next few years.
(Source smartertechnology.com July 25, 2011)

Net Neutrality: To Be, or Not to Be?

2011-07-19T08:35:00.001+07:00

I grew up in Latin America, so I think I know what bad regulations can do to technology investments, innovation, consumer interests and progress in general. It scares me to see that the issue of net neutrality may end up being regulated in the wrong way. Those who defend net neutrality, maintain that "the Internet fosters innovation and investment in new business opportunities because it's an open platform, and the network operators who build on-ramps to the Internet thrive when they maximize the returns on their invested capital" ("Why Network Neutrality Is Good for Business," Kevin Werbach, August 18, 2010, Harvard Business Review).

"We regulate the financial system, health care, electricity and every other essential infrastructure for a modern economy… The success of those regimes is a big reason for America's global economic strength," says Werbach. So why not regulate the Internet as well?

Apparently, if we 'kill' net neutrality, content companies would suffer, as the Internet won't be open anymore. "In other words, on mobile phones or on special access lanes, carriers like Verizon and AT&T could charge content companies a toll for faster access to customers or, some analysts worry, block certain services from reaching customers altogether… Content companies, the theory goes, would have to pay for favored access to a carrier's customers, so some Web sites or video services could load faster than others," ("Web Plan Is Dividing Companies," Claire Cain Miller and Brian Stelter, August 11, 2010, The New York Times).

Net neutrality is supposed to be good for consumers too. It prevents discrimination between subscribers that can afford to pay against those who can't pay for a premium service. Also, apparently, freedom of information would be at risk.

Some people have this notion that if you are in favor of something that big corporations defend, then you are not defending consumer rights. Is this the case with net neutrality? Believe me, I grew up during a military dictatorship, and I'm a former journalist, so I value and defend freedom of information more than anyone else, because I know what it's like not to have it.

So let me tell you why I think we should be careful with the issue of net neutrality. "Non-discrimination under the FCC's net neutrality proposal means that ISPs cannot offer enhanced services beyond the plain-vanilla access service to content providers at any price" ("Why Business Should Oppose Net Neutrality," Robert E. Litan and Hal J. Singer, August 13, 2010, Harvard Business Review).

Litan and Singer are right on the money when they say that "up until now, the debate over net neutrality has largely focused on how broadband consumers would be affected by net neutrality. But with price regulations, consumers lose."

If Communications Service Providers (CSPs) that invest billions of dollars to build their infrastructures are not able to charge an initial premium to early adopters and get a return on their investment, then what's their incentive to invest in next-generation technology in the first place? And look at what happened with the flat monthly unlimited plans initially implemented by Verizon and AT&T. Did it work? No. (See my TM Forum blog: "The War of the Roses 2010: The AT&T-Verizon Saga," published last July.)

My argument (just like Litan and Singer also suggest) is that regulation on net neutrality would actually imply price regulation, and price regulation obstructs innovation. In fact, as a particular technology gets adopted, prices will go down anyway, so let it follow its course.

Litan and Singer argue that "it is well established that price regulation often truncates the returns on an investment in a regulated industry, and thereby decreases investment." Anything that would imply price regulations means that operators would have to charge everyone for their investment in new technology (not just the few that are willing to pay a premium fee for something new).

Some folks that defend net neutrality as free expression and free access to information are forgetting that the Internet may not be so "open" right now. There were 234 million websites as of December 2009 on the Internet (47 million websites were added last year). How much of that data do we get to access? It depends on algorithms and search rules created by the Googles, Yahoos and Microsofts of the world. How much information shows up on our screen because someone actually paid advertisement fees for it?

Dan Frommer recently wrote for Business Insider, "If Verizon sells Google priority access to its pipes, my Internet connection is going to be bad. "No, that's not going to happen. ISPs like Comcast and Verizon are in business to sell Internet access to as many people as possible. They would not do anything that would jeopardize their subscriber retention. If even the slightest disruption occurred, the companies would retreat. They are not in business to lose customers."

But things can get more expensive if net neutrality is imposed and badly regulated. "If ISPs don't get alternative revenue opportunities, they will have even more incentive to force subscribers over to metered Internet plans, capping monthly bandwidth allotments and charging for overages, like AT&T recently did for its new wireless data subscribers."

Let's say for fun that Verizon and Google reach their agreement, and we end up getting differentiated access to the Internet. Then AT&T would do the same and so on… Right now, they are differentiating basically on what smartphone and monthly plans they offer, but nothing else. They still need to lock you for a 2-year contract so that you don't run away from them! With this new business model, they would start to differentiate and compete based on more variables, making competition a lot more sophisticated. With deregulation and more competition, prices have been going down in the communications industry, so why will things be different now?

Another viewpoint that I've seen going around is that companies like Google and Apple can afford priority fees for bandwidth access, but it would disrupt innovation, as smaller content developers will be at a disadvantage. How would start-up companies compete with the big fish? What will happen with innovation?

Frommer states that "bandwidth and infrastructure costs for startups have been getting cheaper… And the ones who do will figure it into their costs of doing business, the same way they do with rent, staff, health insurance, etc. If startups need to raise more money from venture capitalists, then they need to raise more money from venture capitalists. Or they can be creative and evolve and figure out other advantages."

Let's be clear. It's not that companies like Verizon or Google are the bad guys for trying to establish some sort of tiered access to the Internet, and those that defend net neutrality are the good guys that defend freedom of information and consumer rights. They defend net neutrality, because they built their businesses on an "open access to Internet model." So both sides are defending their own business interests. Nothing wrong with that, but let's set the record straight, it goes both ways. Everyone in the Internet business is there to make money.

So the question is whether or not net neutrality will make more business sense in the long run. Deregulation is what has transformed the communications industry for the past decade, enabled mobile access for over 5 billion subscribers worldwide and affected the lives of millions of poor people worldwide, including Africa. There's even a proven correlation between economic development and mobile growth (see my previous columns on the TM Forum leadership blog for more information on this subject).

So the question actually is what model will ultimately encourage more innovation, benefit a lot more consumers and create more winners than losers? I've pretty much made up my mind. What about you?

(Source: Monica Zlotogorski, Vice Chair, TM Forum's Latin American Advisory Board, and Editor, Inside Latin America)

Playing Musical Chairs in Communications

2011-07-19T05:57:00.001+07:00

Verizon Wireless confirmed last week that it will dump its unlimited smart phone data plans. New smart phone customers will be able to choose from one of three options: $30 for 2GB, $50 for 5GB or $80 for 10GB, with an overage charge of $10 per GB of data. The mobile service provider will also charge $10 for 75MB per month for feature phone users. Verizon is the latest mobile service provider to switch from unlimited data pricing to a tiered price model for smart phones. AT&T started the trend last year and T-Mobile followed. Sprint Nextel is the only Tier 1 mobile service provider in the U.S. that has not made a move toward usage-based smart phone data price plans.

Yes, we all know why this would eventually happen. It’s a much-needed move due to the huge growth in traffic, which will only increase in the near future. I welcome this move. I happen to agree with Forbes blogger, Adam Thierer that most average consumers will do better under the new scenario. “With the average smart phone user using less than 500MB, they’ll easily qualify for the 2GB entry tier that most carriers offer for $20-$30/month…95 percent of current Verizon Wireless customers use less than 2GB a month.”

Let me be straight here. I’m quite happy that the era of ‘all-you-can-eat’ is over for two main reasons. First, I want to only pay for what I actually ‘eat’. Second, I’m also quite happy that, at last, everyone will begin to pay for what everyone is actually ‘eating’. In other words, once my current two-year contract expires next year, I’ll begin to pay for what I actually want and use. Nothing less, but also nothing more.

See, at the end of the day, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are not doing anything different than any other utility company (yes, I’m aware I called them ‘utility’). In my building, we don’t subsidize what other residents consume in terms of water, electricity or gas by paying an unlimited high price for those services. We pay for what we use. So if my neighbor upstairs loves to take long bubble baths, good for her! But I’m not paying for her water. If my neighbor downstairs wants to have his air conditioner on all day long, so be it, but I’m not paying for it.

Why people think that communication services should fall under a special category just because we are so high-tech is beyond me. But I know that many of you reading this column will probably have a different view and, as always, I welcome your comments, but isn’t it time that we view the communications business like any other business?

This leads me to another point. An additional change soon to be announced in my opinion is something that has been cooking in Europe for a while. Some service providers are looking to charge content providers for delivering high-quality video content to end users, and others want to charge according to how much content is being pushed over their networks. Apparently, that’s a problem for many, and it’s linked to all this discussion going around on net neutrality.

I have expressed my opinion on the topic of net neutrality in an article published by TM Forum last year. I’m still sticking to what I said back then. It's not that companies like Verizon are the bad guys for trying to establish some sort of tiered access to the Internet, and those that defend net neutrality are the good guys that defend freedom of information and consumer rights. Those that defend net neutrality built their businesses on an open access to Internet model. Both sides are defending their own business interests. Nothing wrong with that, but let's set the record straight, it goes both ways. Everyone in the Internet business is there to make money.

Yes, we all have not so nice things to say about our mobile service or pay-TV provider at times (or most of the time), we all love to talk about the Netflix phenomenon, and some of you (not me) are in love with the Apples of the world. But let’s be fair, and here’s a reality very few are actually talking about. We have been living in an era of covered subsidies for way too long, where some have clearly benefited.

Mobile service providers have been subsidizing companies such as Apple for their smart phone business, or Google and Facebook for their content, some mobile consumers have been subsidizing other consumers for their network resource consumption (via the unlimited mania), pay-TV operators are subsidizing their OTT competitors via their contracts with the content providers and, we, the subscribers are subsidizing the content providers through our subscription fees, content that is then sold to the likes of Netflix at a lower price, which then the happy Netflix subscribers can consume on the backs of the pay-TV operators at a much lower price.

In other words, there’s an added pressure and cost being transferred to CSPs from the OTT business that would eventually need to be openly addressed. “With five out of every six people on the planet having a phone, subscriber growth is slowing – while competition is rising and new services are going ‘over the top,’ delivering cost, not revenue," said Keith Willetts, Chairman, TM Forum, in a blog he recently wrote for Forbes.

The other pressure is coming from a brand perspective. “Increasingly, the consumer is seeing Android or Apple as their telecom brand. Buy a Kindle and the network is bundled – you see Amazon, not AT&T,” said Willetts.

I also agree with Roman Friedrich, Michael Peterson and Alex Koster (and I have said the same myself in the past) that “customers are shifting their consumption patterns, and their loyalties, away from the traditional telecom operators and toward application and service providers such as Google, Apple and Facebook, as well as any number of smaller players”.

That’s true. Moreover, we’ve all been saying that communications service providers have been focusing on safeguarding their existing sources of revenue for too long, rather than working on generating new, innovative sources of revenue. We’ve all been calling for organizational changes and business models. And we’ve all been saying that communications services providers should understand their customers more and offer more tailored, personalized offerings.

All of it is true. Change for communications service providers is necessary and it’s urgent, and a lot of what’s going on has been part of the CSP business myopia and OTTs have only taken, wisely, business advantage of it.

But, isn’t it also time to look at the OTT business and start asking them, when are you going to stand on your own feet, without the benefits of the subsidies that both operators and their customers have been giving you, so that once and for all we can all stop playing the musical chairs game in the communications industry and begin to play a more fair game –for everybody?

The future is not about CSPs or OTTs; it's not a zero-sum game. It's about healthy coopetition, where both parties sit at the table to figure out how they coexist. So let’s put all the cards on the table and begin a new game.
(Source: Monica Zlotogorski, Vice Chair Latin American Advisory Board, and Editor Inside Latin America, TM Forum)

How Telcos Can Contend with Cloud-based Computing

2011-07-19T05:21:00.003+07:00

“We’re going to move the center of our digital life to the cloud,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said recently when launching iCloud and joining the mushroom of cloud services driving the next big step in the growth of the digital economy.

It’s become clear that cloud services will have a profound impact on every business. All of the ingredients for rapid take-off are now in place as smart phones and tablets rapidly proliferate, networks expand and services go virtual. You’d think that would make telecom operators smile – but actually, many are crying in their beer over the investment needed to cope with the massive growth of information coming just when their traditional high-margin voice and messaging services are declining. With five out of every six people on the planet having a phone, subscriber growth is slowing – while competition is rising and new services are going ‘over the top,’ delivering cost, not revenue.

Communications services are now following Moore’s Law, which originally described the doubling of computer power and halving of its price every two years. But just as Intel made a fortune out of that law through innovation and economies of scale, so can communications companies if they get smart.

There are more than 1,000 telecom operators worldwide, each with their own geographic footprint. After years of regulators pushing network competition, basic economics is now making market consolidation inevitable. As we’ve seen in the U.S., telcos everywhere are merging, sharing infrastructure and joining forces to leverage buyer power. Those who don’t get it will be left in the digital slow lane.

But network economics aren’t the only issue for operators. While telcos have billions of customers and strong brands, those strengths are offset by the growth of smart phones, tablets and digital services. Making calls and sending texts are just a small part of the growing digital mix. Increasingly, the consumer is seeing Android or Apple as their telecom brand. Buy a Kindle and the network is bundled – you see Amazon, not AT&T.

So where does that leave the telcos? Margins squeezed, costs rising rapidly, brands dumbed down and stock prices unexciting. But this $1.5 trillion industry still generates cash faster than a printing press. And while it’s easy to be gloomy, there’s plenty of life in the digital dog yet. But the dog needs to wake up fast and start barking.

To succeed, telcos have to move in two simultaneous directions. They have to look inward, rapidly exploiting economies of scale and making major shifts in operational efficiency. And if they want to avoid purely becoming a wholesale ‘behind the scenes’ player, they also have to simultaneously look outward to the market and strengthen their brands, their customers and their products.

The digital economy works by simply and cheaply exploiting a truly global marketplace – not just billions of people but trillions of devices. Cost and reach will drive this consolidation with a few, bold operators becoming very large, multi-geography carriers providing the 'central nervous system' of that economy with ubiquitous, fast, reliable communications backed by security, authentication and services like payment handling, billing and customer care. Despite the best efforts of net neutrality dreamers, we will see the emergence of different levels of service at different prices for those people who are prepared to pay for it.

But what is the role for communications players in developing digital services to ride across that infrastructure and leverage their customer bases and brands? Outrunning Amazon, Facebook and Google is not an easy task, so what position should they take?

The answer is fairly simple. Phone companies enable billions of conversations every day, but they don’t do the talking. The digital economy is going to be about trillions of commercial transactions every day from downloading your newspaper to your car telling the repair shop that it needs more oil. The role of the digital telco should be the same enabling role; not trying to invent all the services but providing an easy-to-use, go-to-market platform for huge numbers of digital service partners.

To do that, telcos need to see digital service providers as their partners, not the enemy. They have to learn how to bundle those services into appealing packages and see both the end user and the digital service provider as customers. Above all they have to think globally and figure out how to provide cloud-based services anywhere, anytime.

Operators cooperate every day in the phone business – calls reach billions of customers seamlessly and everyone gets paid because internationally agreed standards allow many piece parts to be federated into one seamless end-to-end service. A global digital marketplace requires the same standards, openness and transparency or it just won’t work. Remember pre-Internet email systems or SMS where you could only send a message to someone on the same system? Only the nerds used them.

Defining those standards is pretty straightforward, provided there is willingness to do it, but right now too many players have their heads down and think that being different gives them an advantage. They differentiate on the wrong thing: open up a digital marketplace and everyone makes money; make it closed and only a few platform players like Google and Apple will play.

Nobody owes the telcos a living, but with a vibrant, forward-looking industry, the economic and human benefits of communications – now reaching almost everyone on the planet – will seem to be just the first baby step in the development of the global digital marketplace. But it must be open, it must be innovative, and it must get a move on.
(Source: Keith Willetts, Chairman, TM Forum )

Innovation: The Trillion Dollar Question

2011-07-19T05:13:00.003+07:00

At a very diverse and animated T8 debate among more than 30 top communications industry executives held at Management World 2011 in Dublin this past May, there was general agreement that change is necessary and urgent and that innovation is the key.

This was underlined in a report published by Juniper Research the week after the Dublin event. It stated that revenues billed by operators will be more than $1 trillion annually by 2016, but that mobile network operators’ costs will exceed revenues within four years unless they take action.

Against this backdrop of soaring costs, we are moving into an era where “users will want any type of information at any time on any device they choose, sometimes while doing 140 km [almost 90 miles] an hour on the autobahn or freeway – it’s our jobs as engineers and technologists to be ingenious and figure out how we are going to enable this,” was how the CTO of one of the world’s largest telecom groups put it. No doubt the speaker’s CFO is equally exercised about how they are going to make a sustainable profit from doing it too.

This report seeks to look at barriers that are preventing progress, present some different approaches to this trillion dollar question, suggested by some of the industry’s most eminent executives and other sources, and some general principles of innovation.

One key topic is the barriers to innovation within operators. They largely seem to come down to corporate culture, which particularly with the financial crisis that started in 2008, appears to have exaggerated the conservative, inward-looking corporate culture, to have even more emphasis on the work ethic of ‘keep your head down’ rather than do anything to draw unwanted attention to oneself by putting forward ideas that run contrary to day-to-day operations or corporate trends.

Grand corporate plans and the boardroom are rarely the birthplaces of innovation, but if properly run, they should, one way or another, provide an environment in which innovation is possible and nurtured. Ideas that are massively successful are often incidental or accidental or just plain lucky, and timing is all.

The point is not to worry that you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, just to have the wits to recognize the possibilities of a good idea when you see one and have the courage to try it out. In particular, realize that putting out ‘work in progress’ is a great idea (Google+ being a great example), if it is described as such – you’ll never get a bigger lab than the outside world or better feedback than from the general public. It might not be polite or what you were expecting, but that doesn’t matter.

A great example of user feedback spawning a massively successful business is how one of the world’s largest payments-handling companies grew out of a single-currency, premature, e-commerce initiative after it became clear from early-adopter, overseas users (who were not even the intended audience) that there was huge demand for a cross-currency processing facility. As one financial services industry veteran observed wryly, any of the banks “could have set up such a service on a single PC” at that time in the mid-1990s, “but they didn’t because they were institutionally unable to grasp the opportunity – and promptly lost out on a multi-billion dollar market.”

The ideas of failure being good, if handled in the right way (that is fail small, fail quickly and learn well) and not to worry about knowing exactly what you are looking for are supported by two powerful books published in the last year by heavy-hitting economists John Kay and Tim Harwood. After all, SMS and prepay are great examples of hugely successful services that got massive, if unexpected, support from customers that operators were savvy enough to adopt and adapt to underpin the more than $1.4 trillion business that is telecom today.

There are different possible approaches to succeeding in the next phase of the industry, from running a ‘dumb pipe’ business, which is far from a ‘dumb’ or simple undertaking – it will require massive scale, great operational agility and innovation to keep costs down low enough to make a profit, at least in the short term – to what network operators have to offer as enablers, in terms of scale, experience and services they can provide to over-the-top providers (who the industry needs to stop seeing as the enemy, and embrace as creators of traffic it’s possible to make money from) from billing, to identification and authentication services.

As one attendee pointed out, “As most of our economy moves to a digital base over the next five to 10 years, all those capabilities, not just moving bits, but all those transactions, all those customer relationships, all those identification and authentication pieces, if you only took a fraction of a penny for each of them, you’d be a very rich company, hoping and praying for more Googles to come along, because they would create more traffic for you."

Also critical is the successful use of incubators, protecting those with ideas from the potentially stifling parental culture, and at very successful uses of social media-type internal communications that are paying dividends, in one instance to the tune of $50 million in the first year, in part from simply listening to employees and disseminating information, fast, across the entire organization which spans 17 countries and territories.

Another interesting area considers general principles regarding innovation, starting with the old joke, “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?” The answer is “None, it has to want to change itself”. And so it is with service providers; innovation will only come if they create the conditions to allow it. The recurring theme throughout is that service providers have many fantastic options open to them, but they will only translate into success if they are prepared to embrace innovation.

(Source: Annie Turner, Managing Editor, TM Forum Research & Publications)

Four lessons in IT disaster recovery planning from an FAA outage

2011-07-16T04:18:00.002+07:00

What can CIOs learn about IT disaster recovery planning from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) recent computer problems, which caused flight delays and cancellations at airports across the country? Plenty, say disaster recovery experts.

"Here we have a system that is vital to the flow of air traffic in the United States. It is hard to imagine how many dollars are riding on people getting to their destinations on time," said Gene Ruth, who covers disaster recovery (DR) at Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group Inc. "You have a failure in the network and there is no ability to [set] up a disaster recovery site immediately? That is completely unacceptable."

The root cause of the FAA outage, which lasted nearly five hours, was reportedly the failure of a circuit board inside a router at the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure (FTI) facility in Salt Lake City. Details on why the backup router did not engage are still unavailable. The failure brought down a flight management system, forcing air traffic controllers to rely on faxes and emails to communicate flight plans.

You have to know you can deliver the service at some minimal level to keep you limping along and hopefully not, as in this case, stop air traffic for a third of the country.
Gene Ruth, analyst, Burton Group Inc.

The FAA attributed the outage to a software configuration problem, suggesting the single-component failure was compounded by a configuration management failure.

But the details of the incident hardly matter, DR experts said, compared with the IT disaster recovery planning lessons it holds. As CIOs make their annual pitch for IT DR funding -- a hard sell in any economy -- Ruth and others advised they keep the following four points in mind:

1. Equipment failure is the No. 1 reason for disaster recovery declarations.

Most IT disasters have nothing to do with the type of disaster that wipes out a facility, which is what many organizations consider when doing their IT disaster recovery planning. "This is a message I drive home to clients, especially when they are trying to justify DR to senior management," said analyst John Morency, a certified information systems auditor and research director at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc.

A recently published study from DR provider SunGard Availability Services LP showed that of the 2,250 disaster events SunGard handled in 2008, hardware failure accounted for 500 of them. That was well ahead of the second- and third-leading causes, hurricane and weather events (275) and power outages (213).

2. Equipment malfunctions compounded by change or configuration management failures are a double whammy.

"When you look at equipment malfunction, it is more than just hardware failing. Sometimes you have misapplied a change," Morency said. "It may be entirely possible that although the circuit board in the primary router went down, the [protocol] backup may not have been configured correctly, so it never took over." This indeed seems to be the case in the FAA incident.

"There has to be a lot stiffer penalties for production changes, be it for configuration or data, that are not rigorously tested prior to being introduced into production," Morency said.

Any upgrade or alteration of an existing system needs to be accompanied by an impact statement on the business continuity or DR plan, Burton Group's Ruth agreed. "Perhaps this FAA incident will turn out to be somebody making a change they thought was innocent -- fiddling with a database -- that brought the system down. But the lesson here is you don't allow technicians to go and make changes without including project management-like people to make sure there is an assessment of an impact on the operations of the business."

3. Testing for capacity is critical in IT disaster recovery planning.

"It sounds like one of the problems [in the FAA outage] is that the site that was left standing did not have the capacity to run the application. And that is startling, if folks had not put the analysis into whether the remaining site could handle the load," Ruth said.

Testing capacity and performance is "basic block and tackling," Ruth said. "You have to know you can deliver the service at some minimal level to keep you limping along and hopefully not, as in this case, stop air traffic for a third of the country."

4. But foolproof testing is sometimes impossible.

"In organizations where you have [a] merger and acquisition, where you have new production apps going through turnover, the scope of what needs to be tested keeps getting bigger and bigger. All of a sudden, the resources one would need, in terms of facilities, of support staff and business unit staff to perform those tests, also gets bigger," Morency said.

Even if the organization follows testing best practice, the amount of change in the data center can put it at risk, according to Morency. "The configuration that needs to be recovered may only require minor changes. But there could major differences," he said, "which is why a lot more organizations are asking the failover question versus the manual recovery question."

Let us know what you think about the story; email: Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer.

Alcatel-Lucent intros TPSDA 2.0, targeted ad solution

2011-07-13T14:53:00.002+07:00

By Traci Patterson
CedMagazine.com - September 29, 2008

Alcatel-Lucent has announced enhancements to its Triple-Play Services Delivery Architecture (TPSDA) and has introduced a new advertising delivery solution for IPTV networks at the Broadband World Forum 2008 in Brussels.

The enhancements, according to Alcatel-Lucent, offer a more cost-effective and flexible platform for high-bandwidth services such as high-definition television (HDTV), offer an improved IPTV user experience with immediate channel changing, and help facilitate targeted advertising insertion.

The enhanced platform ― dubbed TPSDA 2.0 ― is powered by enhancements to the Alcatel-Lucent broadband access and IP/MPLS portfolios that will be available starting in early 2009. The enhancements add application-layer intelligence to the TPSDA network elements, enabling them to cache, store, stream and splice video content, as well as to characterize application layer content, the company said.

“With the move to digital, high-definition content, combined with a boom in video consumption and increased demand for personalization and interactivity, service providers are evaluating their service delivery architecture and business models with an eye toward the delivery of premium digital content,” said Michel Rahier, president of Alcatel-Lucent’s carrier business activities. “Alcatel-Lucent’s TPSDA 2.0 provides IPTV operators with a proven, cost-optimized foundation for the delivery of a next-generation, interactive HDTV television experience – giving those operators a genuine opportunity to eclipse the quality of experience enabled by traditional broadcast technologies. It also helps lay the groundwork for the introduction of targeted advertising, which ultimately will help add a new dimension to the TV business model.”

The enhancements in TPSDA 2.0 also help to support Alcatel-Lucent’s newly introduced Targeted and Interactive IPTV Advertising solution, which is designed to increase IPTV revenue by making it easier for advertisers to reach customers with ads that are more timely and relevant. The solution also offers interactivity features that enable consumers to view additional information about products that interest them.

The solution gives IPTV operators the ability to insert ads into TV programs that are aimed at particular communities of interest, and even specific households, Alcatel-Lucent said. The ads are delivered using anonymous subscriber profiles based on service usage and demographic data authorized via an “opt-in” process, the company said, and they are retained in a secure, privacy-protected repository by the service provider.

The solution incorporates subscriber data analysis and management capabilities – to support ad targeting – and audience measurement features to analyze the effectiveness and return on investment (ROI) from particular campaigns.

"Alcatel-Lucent . . . has assembled an end-to-end IPTV advertising proposition that brings the best characteristics of the lucrative online advertising model into triple-play networks," said Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for IPTV and next-generation OSS/BSS at Infonetics. "By building ad targeting and interactive capabilities into their triple-play network architecture, service providers gain the advantages of exceptional scale, flexibility and cost-effectiveness, as well as a platform for targeted advertising across multiple screens."

More Broadband Direct:

• Sprint launches Xohm WiMAX in Baltimore

• AT&T to go exclusively with DirecTV

• Cisco, Adobe team up to deliver Web TV to Telecom Italia

• Nero, TiVo hook up to bring DVR look to PCs

• JDSU intros NetComplete Home PM

• House Reps. Eshoo, Deal urge FCC to establish 'quiet period'

• RCN's 'Analog Crush' rolls into Washington, D.C., area

• Alcatel-Lucent intros TPSDA 2.0, targeted ad solution

• T-Mobile: M2Z unqualified to judge AWS interference

• Prime Wave Media starts program to keep track of subs' moves

• Broadband Briefs for 9/29/08

Zynga ups game with local mobile app firm

2011-07-12T16:38:00.001+07:00

Zynga Inc., a pre-eminent social games presence on Facebook, is buying Toronto mobile applications developer Five Mobile Inc. to expand from desktop and laptop computers to mobile devices.

“The Five Mobile acquisition fits with Zynga’s strategy for world domination,” London-based analyst Carmi Levy said.

One of Five Mobile’s latest products is an application for the BlackBerry PlayBook that gives sports fans real-time scores, news, live blogs and original video.

It has also developed products for Walt Disney Co., Sony Pictures Entertainment and MapQuest.

Five Mobile was formed in 2008 by five employees of another app developer that went under during the Wall Street financial crisis.

It has about three dozen employees, who are expected to be retained following the takeover.

Five Mobile officials wouldn’t talk Friday, referring all questions to Zynga — which also remained tight-lipped. Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed.

Zynga, founded in 2007, has 2,000 employees and filed an initial public offering earlier this month. The offering seeks to raise anywhere from $1 billion to $2 billion.

It has grown meteorically, from $19.4 million in revenue in 2008 to $597.5 million in 2010.

It has developed games like FarmVille, in which participants cultivate a virtual farm and invite Facebook friends to help out with the chores, or co-operate to grow crops and raise livestock.

Zynga has been on an acquisition tear: Five Mobile is its 15th acquisition in 13 months.

While relatively small, Five Mobile can help boost Zynga in two ways, Levy said.

Zynga’s strategy to date has been to hook users using Facebook on their laptop or desktop computers.

Instead of simply visiting Facebook a few times a day to check up on their friends, the games keep users on the site for hours at a time.

That’s a great thing for attracting advertisers, says Levy.

“Facebook doesn’t just get more users, it gets more engaged users which it can sell to advertisers and charge more for.”

But the laptop market is mature, so future growth is likely to come from mobile devices, where Five Mobile operates.

Five Mobile also gives Zynga some cachet, says Levy.

Games like Zynga’s FarmVille don’t give the players high status, he said.

It’s something of a guilty pleasure, like watching soap operas — lots of people do it, but they don’t necessarily admit to it.

While small in size, Five Mobile has done “some really impressive work with some really impressive clients,” Levy said.

205m Indian workers will go mobile by 2015

2011-07-12T12:09:00.002+07:00

Enterprise Innovation Editors | June 30, 2011

Enterprise Innovation

Thumbnail:

India’s mobile workforce is slated to grow by an overwhelming 53% in the next four years, despite the fact that enterprise adoption of mobility strategies is still at an infantile stage.

A Springboard Research report states that “With today’s consumers becoming increasingly mobile and well informed, enterprises must follow suit. A mobile enterprise can experience a range of business benefits including operational efficiency and enhanced customer interaction and engagement. The resulting upside in productivity, revenue and market share cannot be ignored by Indian CXOs.”

“We are in the post-PC era where the most important apps are being developed on mobile platforms first. Sales, customer service, marketing, finance, HR – teams need access to real time information to meet the demands of today’s business environment,” said Steve McWhirter, SVP of enterprise sales at Salesforce Asia Pacific.

The new report titled, ‘Moving Towards a Mobile Enterprise – Journey of India Inc.’ suggests a four-phased roadmap for companies embarking on a mobile enterprise strategy.

1. Conventional Mobility: basic apps such as e-mail, messaging, contacts, and calendar.

2. Automated Workforce: critical apps like ERP, CRM and salesforce automation. This allows mobile workers to minimize paperwork, reduce back-to-office visits, improve productivity, and achieve higher sales closing ratio.

3. Always Connected: apps that extend real-time communication and collaboration capabilities to employees anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

4. Pervasive Mobility: apps that integrate function-specific applications to enhance brand image and bring efficiencies in internal operations such as finance and human resources.

“Today's new environment is characterized by social media, smart devices and instant conversations. This changed backdrop demands that we have access to real time data to seize business opportunities on-the-go,” said Essae Technologies managing director Narasimha Subrahmanian.

205M Indian workers will be going mobile by 2015

Source:

Enterprise Innovation

Enterprise Innovation Editors

Original Article URL:

205M Indian workers will be going mobile by 2015

Facebook, Skype, Microsoft Draw Closer Through Video Chat Feature

2011-07-12T06:06:00.004+07:00

Facebook made some significant announcements July 6, all important to the company and to the online social networking market. First, Facebook announced that it has surpassed the 750 million-member mark, with a cool 1 billion clearly within reach. The last time Facebook talked about its membership last October, it had just passed 500 million.

Secondly, Facebook started up its group chat feature, one that had been requested by users for a long while. Along with that, Facebook made a few site design changes that will make it easier to use the chat and group-chat functions. Finally, the company revealed a new partnership with Skype, the world's largest peer-to-peer video service which is on track to become the property of Microsoft. Finally,

Facebook launched its long-anticipated video chat service—powered, of course, by Skype. The Facebook, Skype and Microsoft (Skype's future owner) dynamic will be interesting to watch in the coming months and years, since the world's largest software company will have substantial investments in both companies.

(Chris Preimesberger on 2011-07-07)

Maxis, Axiata profits fall in Q1

2011-06-07T02:47:00.000+07:00

Malaysia-based operators Maxis and Axiata have each reported declines in first quarter profit.

Maxis's Q1 net profit dipped 2% year-on-year to 540 million ringgit from higher finance costs.

The carrier said revenue for the quarter had dipped slightly due to a reduction in takings from voice, interconnect and international gateway services.

The company recorded ebitda of 1.09 billion ringgit, up 0.7% from a year ago. Maxis ended the quarter with 12.7 million subscribers.

Non-voice revenue comprised 42.1% of mobile revenue and grew 22% to 857 million ringgit. Maxis’ wireless broadband subscriptions almost doubled to 602,000 from 313,000 a year ago, with revenue from this segment growing to 115 million ringgit from 59 million ringgit a year ago.

Competitor Axiata reported a 40.5% decline in year-on-year net profit for 548.4 million ringgit for Q1, due to a drop in other operating income to 7.5 million ringgit.

The group said in its quarterly report that the apparently large dip in year-on-year profit was due mainly to a one-off gain from share sales at its Indonesian unit in Q1 last year.

Group revenue grew 3% to 3.94 billion ringgit on the back of improved results from its subsidiaries in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. However, operating costs at its subsidiaries increased 3.5% to 2.2 billion ringgit.

CEO Datuk Seri Jamaludin said the appreciating ringgit had resulted in a poorer showing for the company.

Source: Telecomasia.net

Bakrie Swings to Q1 Loss

2011-06-07T02:46:00.001+07:00

Indonesia-based CDMA operator Bakrie Telecom has reported a 41.12 billion rupiah ($4.8 million) net loss for Q1 this year on rising investment costs.

The results stand in contrast to the 29 billion rupiah net profit the firm reported during the same period last year.

Operating revenue for the quarter stood at 717.94 billion rupiah, a 1.27% increase year-on-year, while operating expenses grew 16.5% to 704.96 billion rupiah, while financing charges had increased 127% to 200.5 billion rupiah.

Ebit therefore fell 87% to 12.96 billion rupiah.

According to Indonesia Today, Bakrie invested $400 million to expand and upgrade its broadband network between 2009 – 2010 period, including an upgrade to 1x-EVDO Rev A. The firm plans to spend $200 million on network upgrades this year.

Bakrie had 13.6 million customers at the end of Q1, a 23.2% year-on-year increase.

Source: Telecomasia.net

The New Realities: Cyber Army and Cyber Warfare

2011-05-30T15:44:00.000+07:00

Recent news out of China and the US has driven home the growing threat of cyberwarfare.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin and the US Department of Homeland Security on Saturday confirmed that the company had come under a cyber attack, Priyo said.

On Sunday, CFO Sondra Barbour revealed the company was a frequent target of attacks from around the world, stating that this had become “the new reality.”

But the company, the Pentagon's main supplier, stated it had responded immediately to the latest attack, and that no customer, program or employee data was lost.

The confirmation comes after reports on Friday that Lockheed Martin systems were experiencing a major disruption due to a network security issue.

Also last week, China acknowledged the existence of a cyber security squad, described as an Online Blue Army, to defend state systems from online attacks.

The organization, which has a budget running into the tens of millions of yuan, is believed to have existed for at least two years. It employs 30 staff with advanced security training.

China Post points out that while the unit has been portrayed as primarily defensive, the news could increase tensions with foreign governments such as the US, Australia and Germany, which have already alleged that Chinese hackers are carrying out systematic attacks on foreign governments.

China already raised eyebrows in the US this month by unveiling a video game designed as a recruiting tool for the PLA, which appears to pit the player against US troops.

While no state was involved, Sony was also taken to task by a security expert last week for not taking seriously threats that the company would be targeted in a cyber war of revenge from hacker collective Anonymous.

Western Australia to get 16Tbps cable to Singapore

2011-05-16T13:34:00.003+07:00

It’s been a long time coming but a second cable connecting Australia’s west coast to South East Asia is
finally getting built. Following the aborted plans by Matrix and Ochre to build a similar cable from Perth to Indonesia and Singapore, Leighton Contractors Telecommunications and its subsidiary Australia-Singapore Cable (International) Ltd, has finally announced concrete plans to construct a Western Australia to Singapore
cable.

Leighton announced this week that it has contracted Alcatel-Lucent to build the 4,800km cable that
will now become the second link between South East Asia and Australia. The new cable will bring online up to 16Tbps of capacity to a route currently served by the legacy Sea-Me-We 3 cable with 960Gbps of design capacity. According to Leighton, ASC will initially be built with two fibre pairs supporting 80 wavelengths operating at 40Gbps for an initial design capacity of 6.4Tbps.

With a 100Gbps upgrade option, the system will eventually be able to support more than 16Tbps, the
company said. The design, survey and planning phase of the project is already underway, with commercial services expected to go live in 2013. During the initial phase of the contract, Alcatel has dispatched its own survey ships to check the planned route.

In the construction phase, slated to start in the first quarter of next year, the vendor will manufacture
the cable itself in France, along with the dry-land electronics; it will then deploy its cable- laying vessels to
install the link itself. Once the cable lands, ASC will take over with a separate contract to connect it to
data centres in Perth and Singapore; the firm has already secured the land for the Perth facility, and an-
other Leightons Telecoms company – Metronode – is pushing ahead with its construction.

ASC chairman and Leighton Telecommunications executive GM Peter McGrath told CommsDay that
the firm was in productive discussions with potential customers. “At this stage, we have a strong level of interest in terms of pre-commitments from key customers, both domestic and international,” he said. “We’ll look at funding in terms of the levels of pre-commitment that we can get, and that involves customers saying that they’ll pay for an Indefeasible Right of Use... so they pay upfront and they get to use the capacity for, say, sixteen years. That’s an important source of funding, and to the extent that we do need additional funding, we will obviously look at our current providers.”

“The capacity that’s been built in recent years has mainly been linking into the US... there really hasn’t
been any significant capacity built out of the West coast since Sea-Me-We 3 was put in, and that’s proba-
bly fifteen years ago,” he added. “We identified demand for a cable off the West coast of Australia proba-
bly two years ago... we initially looked at doing a partnering arrangement, [but] in the end our customers
were telling us that they’d like to go to Singapore on one cable.”

McGrath also noted that the new cable, combined with terrestrial Australian infrastructure operated
by ASC’s Leighton Telecoms stable mate Nextgen Networks, would provide “the lowest latency, highest
capacity... connection from Singapore to Sydney.”

“The big international telcos do need redundant paths through Asia; most of their paths today go
through Singapore, Hong Kong, across to Japan. And what they’ve been looking for is a southern route
to provide redundancy in the case of earthquakes and the like,” he said.

While the Australian telecoms community has focused on building international cables out of Syd-
ney – including Pipe Networks’ PPC-1 system to Guam, Telstra’s own Endeavour cable to the US, and
more recently, Pacific Fibre’s trans-Pacific system connecting Australia, New Zealand to the US – the
route for the new ASC system gives it a unique path to the rest of Asia. More importantly perhaps, the
construction of the new system correlates with the influx of bandwidth within Asia, enabling it to tap
into onward connectivity from intra-Asia systems such as the Google-backed, Singapore Japan Cable, as
well as the Asia Submarine-cable Express, being jointly built by a NTT Communications-led consortium
as well as Telekom Malaysia.

It also positions the new cable in close proximity to new India to Europe systems such as EIG and
IMEWE.

While there is a still a dearth of capacity between Singapore and India to support this utilisation
model, the situation may change in the near future. Already industry insiders have told CommsDay of
at least one proposal by a regional operator to build a new cable system spanning the Bay of Bengal to
Malaysia and Singapore.

HIGH-CAPACITY TECH: Meanwhile, Alcatel won the turnkey contract for ASC after a competitive
tender; McGrath said that the vendor clinched the deal on pricing, scale, and their commitment to lat-
est-generation technology – including the exclusive use of D+ fibre.

“ It’s a type of glass which has what’s called positive dispersion... which means that coherent transmis-
sion technology works particularly well,” explained Leighton Telecommunications CTO Phil Martell.
“Traditional cables use a cocktail of positive and negative dispersion fibres that balance out the disper-
sion over the route; in a coherent system you don’t need to do that, and therefore you can use a D+ fi-
bre which can achieve lower losses across the whole route.”

That helps to make possible the upgrade to 100Gbps wavelengths, and although this is not sched-
uled to take place until some time after the cable’s planned commercial launch in 2013, ASC is posi-
tioning the upgrade as a key advantage of the new link. “It’s our understanding that this is the only ca-
ble to be announced globally with that capacity,” said McGrath. “When you’re looking at the potential
growth from, say, the NBN... when you look at what the large corporate and multinationals are demand-
ing... we’re seeing strong growth in demand over time, and at some point we’ll move to the 100Gbps
transmission.”

“So it’s future-proof; whereas virtually all of the cables being built today, with the D+ and D- [fibres],
will not allow that.”

The two companies are staying tight-lipped on the value of the deal, which has been estimated in the
millions of dollars, but expect to reveal more details once the construction phase gets underway.
(source:Petroc Wilton and Tony Chan)

WiFi Gaining Traction in India

2011-05-14T14:55:00.003+07:00

Wi-Fi is becoming steadily more popular in India, thanks to the falling cost of devices and the immaturity of alternative technologies in the market.

Prices of data-capable smartphones have dropped steeply in the region to about 3000 rupees ($67) today, while a large number of Indian mobile handset brands such as Olive, Karbonn, Micromax, Lava and others are unleashing more smartphone choices for less.

On the upper end of the device spectrum, Samsung Galaxy Tab now retails its new version 2 for only 24,000 rupees, down from 29,000 rupees just four months ago, and is flying off the shelves.

From the networks side, you will notice that the stars are aligning for a perfect take off of Wi-Fi. As of May 2011, it will be a full year that the 3G / BWA spectrum auctions and its infamous investigation aftermath were initiated and not a single BWA network has seen the light of day, let alone launch of service.

While 3G licensees have attempted to light up select towns with 3G, there is no single new service the user can connect with and claim a high quality experience which was otherwise not available. In this vacuum Wi-Fi appears to be a great alternative.

Wi-Fi service providers are therefore scrambling to expand coverage. Thus Ozone, Zylog, Tikona and MetaMax have stepped on the gas and are enhancing build-out adding more POPs, expanding coverage and increasing footprint.

Ozone is exploring to tie up with Vodafone and Idea while a technology collaboration agreement with Alcatel-Lucent is already in place.

Down south, Zylog’s Wi5 is making waves with a 100% pre-paid model which has a combined subscriber base of over 30,000. Tonse believes that Zylog probably has cracked the Wi-Fi base station pricing model better than anyone else and is able to setup a POP at the lowest cost per subscriber, using a combination of own software plus third party hardware.

Zylog has even penetrated tier 2 towns and if offering fail-safe Wi-Fi in over 150 locations. Plans are afoot to grow to 179 locations and 100,00 subscribers by year end. Zylog Wi-Fi generated a top line of about $5.15 million.

Indian cellular operators have suddenly more respect for the relatively smaller Wi-Fi counterparts. While initially these free-to-air spectrum operators were considered yet another enterprise customer who would buy bulk bandwidth, the relationship is now more symbiotic.

Wi-Fi ISPs are now more likely to carry access traffic from larger captive Wi-Fi base than pricey data plans from cellular operators. Besides, retail outlets are willing to make room for Wi-Fi gear as the added attraction of offering Wi-Fi soon becomes a ‘must have’.

But perhaps an even bigger opportunity lies shrouded under clouds: wholesale Wi-Fi offload. Instead of creating multiple small regional Wi-Fi PoPs and creating several bilateral relationships with individual mobile operators, a large scale, carrier-class wholesale Wi-Fi model should emerge in India.

With only a fraction of 3G sites just lit up, none of the TD-LTE / BWA offerings live and mobile data traffic beginning to grow in volume, it is but a matter of months before a large scale data explosion becomes a reality.

If a large nationwide Wi-Fi network is built out and a ‘LightSquared-like’ wholesale model is launched, it should have plenty of takers.

After a BWA spectrum auction that generated billions in revenues to the government a business model around unlicensed spectrum that is non-retail suddenly seems lot more appealing for this bandwidth hungry nation.

Sridhar Pai runs wireless research & consulting businessTonse Telecom from Bengaluru, India

Mommy Blogger Heather Armstrong earned $1 million a year

2011-02-26T04:17:00.004+07:00

O.K., then, I say, almost begging at this point, almost to the point of tears, is there anyone I can talk to who might see what I’ve been through and understand? And here’s where I say: “Do you know what Twitter is? Because I have over a million followers on Twitter. If I say something about my terrible experience on Twitter, do you think someone will help me?” And she says in the most condescending tone and hiss ever uttered: “Yes, I know what Twitter is. And no, that will not matter.” AUG. 28, 2009, Dooce.com

The washing machine at Heather Armstrong’s Salt Lake City home — as millions of her followers already know — is a Maytag. To be specific, it’s a Performance series 4.4-cubic-foot-I.E.C.-capacity front-load steam washer that retailed for $1,599 and that she and her husband, Jon, bought on sale for $1,300, plus the 10-year warranty. They made the purchase near the end of her second pregnancy, a pre-emptive strike against the mountain of soiled onesies that accumulate when a newborn joins the family.

As her followers also know, that machine stopped working a week after it was installed. Instead of washing clothes, it produced electronic error messages. By that time, the summer of 2009, the baby was home, the laundry was piling up and 10 days of waiting for a part turned into 10 more days of waiting for another part, and June became July which became August, which is when Armstrong threatened to bring the wrath of the Internet down on Maytag.

She is one of the few bloggers who wield that kind of clout. Typically, there are 100,000 visitors daily to her site, Dooce.com, where she writes about her kids, her husband, her pets, her treatment for depression and her life as a liberal ex-Mormon living in Utah. As she points out, a sizable number also follow her on Twitter (in the year and a half since she threatened Maytag, she has added a half-million more). She is the only blogger on the latest Forbes list of the Most Influential Women in Media, coming in at No. 26, which is 25 slots behind Oprah, but just one slot behind Tina Brown. Her site brings in an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 a month or more — and that’s not even counting the revenue from her two books, healthy speaking fees and the contracts she signed to promote Verizon and appear on HGTV. She won’t confirm her income (“We’re a privately held company and don’t reveal our financials”). But the sales rep for Federated Media, the agency that sells ads for Dooce, calls Armstrong “one of our most successful bloggers,” then notes a few beats later in our conversation that “our most successful bloggers can gross $1 million.”

By talking about poop and spit up. And stomach viruses and washing-machine repairs. And home design, and high-strung dogs, and reality television, and sewer-line disasters, and chiropractor visits. And countless other banalities of one mother’s eclectic life that, for some reason, hundreds of thousands of strangers tune in, regularly, to read.

I lost my job today. My direct boss and the human-resources representative pulled me into one of three relatively tiny conference rooms and informed me that the company no longer had any use for me. Essentially, they explained, they didn’t like what I had expressed on my Web site. I got fired because of dooce.com. FEB. 26, 2002

Today the sleek headquarters of Blurbodoocery Inc. — the corporate identity of Heather and Jon Armstrong’s company — is on the 1,000-square-foot third floor of their sprawling six-bedroom home on a cul-de-sac in Salt Lake City, where they have lived since June.

In one corner is the glass-walled office of their newest employee, John LaCaze, who came aboard a few months before that move, and whose job description — everything from answering e-mail to ordering lunch to making sure that time is not wasted because, after all, it is money — has earned him the nickname “Tyrant” on Heather’s blog. Next to LaCaze’s office is the studio, equipped for audio and video. In the center are Jon and Heather’s work spaces, each dominated by two enormous computer monitors and an array of cartoons and kitsch.

Next to the door of the office is etched “Heather B. Armstrong, President,” but by her desk is a nameplate that reads “Heather Hamilton.” That was who she was in February 2001 when she wrote her very first Dooce post. She was 25, with a degree in English fromBrigham Young University and a job at a start-up in L.A. “In those days when you said you had a blog, people thought you had a venereal disease,” she says now.

Dooce was a nickname that grew out of an inside joke — a takeoff of “dude.” Unlike many bloggers (particularly women) whose initial goal was to update family living far away, her postings were never meant for her relatives. She wrote of the liberation she felt leaving her parents’ Mormonism behind, of sex and caffeine, of dating and work. In the summer of 2001, Armstrong’s site was receiving 58 hits a day. On a whim she e-mailed Jason Kottke, one of the earliest online aggregators (whose own site was still a hobby and had not yet become kottke.org) and asked him for technical advice. He linked to Dooce, and her readership leapt to 2,000 daily hits.

Kottke also warned Armstrong that her family would eventually find out. Despite her certainty that they were as likely to search the Net as they were to vote for a Democrat, her brother did wander onto her site on Sept. 13, 2001. The first post he saw was one she describes as “a martini-fueled diatribe against the Mormon Church” that she wrote in anger about the attacks on the World Trade Center, committed in the name of religion. Tears, screaming and weeks of silence followed, and for a time Armstrong thought her family would never speak to her again.

Soon she would be in trouble for something else. Venting about work, she nicknamed her co-workers (as she would later nickname Tyrant) — things like That One Co-worker Who Manages to Say Something Stupid Every Time He Opens His Mouth — and, in what she considered the safety of her blog, she dished amusingly (and disparagingly) about them. “I hate that the Tech Producer doesn’t know how to use e-mail,” she wrote one day. “He’s the goddamn TECH Producer, for crying out loud. I hate that one of the 10 vice presidents in this 30-person company wasn’t born with an ‘indoor’ voice but with a shrill, monotone, speaking-over-a-passing-F16 outdoor voice. And he loves to hear himself speak, even if just to himself.” (source: The New York Times)

Gartner Survey: Open Source Software have been adopted by more than 50% Organizations

2011-02-21T09:24:00.003+07:00

STAMFORD, Conn., February 8, 2011—
A recent survey by Gartner, Inc. found that more than half of organizations surveyed have adopted open-source software (OSS) solutions as part of their IT strategy. Nearly one-third of respondents cited benefits of flexibility, increased innovation, shorter development times and faster procurement processes as reasons for adopting OSS solutions. However, the survey revealed that only one-third of responding organizations had a formal OSS policy in place.
Gartner conducted a primary research survey of 547 IT leaders in organizations in 11 countries from July 2010 through August 2010. The goal was to determine current and future OSS adoption and usage habits.
"Gaining a competitive advantage has emerged as a significant reason for adopting an OSS solution, suggesting that users are beginning to look at OSS differently — if they can customize the code to make it unique to their company, they have created a competitive advantage," said Laurie Wurster, research director at Gartner.
"As external service providers emerge to support commercial offerings, OSS is and will continue to be used in both non-mission-critical and mission-critical environments," Ms. Wurster said. "With greater in-depth understanding and access to the necessary skill sets, end-user organizations will continue to find new deployment of OSS. Although a search for reducing costs by adopting OSS continues to be a major driver, with this survey we see more respondents looking at OSS as having much-greater value than simply getting something for free."
Gartner's survey indicated that just over one in every five responding organizations (22 percent) was adopting OSS consistently in all departments of the company. However, a much-higher number of respondents (46 percent) used OSS in specific departments and projects. In addition, 21 percent of respondents revealed that they were in the process of evaluating the advantages of OSS usage.
The top corporatewide Gartner-defined key initiatives supported by the use of OSS were: data management and integration; and application development, integration, architecture, governance and/or overhaul. Other key initiatives supported by OSS werebusiness process improvement or re-engineering; security, risk and/or compliance; data center modernization and consolidation; and virtualization.
"Based on these results, we see that OSS components and building blocks are utilized together with internally developed software to augment and enhance existing systems through integration and automation, as well as to improve business efficiencies and security," said Bob Igou, research director at Gartner.
With each Gartner OSS survey taken in the past five years, the amount of OSS that makes up responding organizations' portfolio has increased, from less than 10 percent five years ago to more than an expected 30 percent within the next 18 months. In that same period, the rate of proprietary software has decreased at about the same rate as OSS usage has increased. However, internally developed software has also increased, suggesting that OSS is used most often in conjunction with internally built software rather than as a complete replacement for proprietary software.
Additional information is available in the Gartner report 'Survey Analysis: Overview of Preferences and Practices in the Adoption and Usage of Open-Source Software.' The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1528219.

After 50-years in exile, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi returned to Egypt

2011-02-19T22:03:00.001+07:00

On the same day, other signs of a changing Egypt emerged. The military warned restive workers that it would stop what it declared were illegal strikes crippling Egypt’s economy, declaring “it will confront them and take the legal measures needed to protect the nation’s security.”

It also allowed two Iranian Navy ships to pass through the Suez Canal — a first since the 1979 Iranian revolution and a move that some Israeli officials called a provocation. Egyptian officials reportedly said the ships did not contain weapons.

Sheik Qaradawi, a popular television cleric whose program reaches an audience of tens of millions worldwide, addressed a rapt audience of more than a million Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square to celebrate the uprising and honor those who died.

“Don’t fight history,” he urged his listeners in Egypt and across the Arab world, where his remarks were televised. “You can’t delay the day when it starts. The Arab world has changed.”

He spoke as the authorities in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were waging violent crackdowns on uprisings inspired in part by the Egyptian revolution. The sermon was the first public address here by Sheik Qaradawi, 84, since he fled Egypt for Qatar in 1961. An intellectual inspiration to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Sheik Qaradawi was jailed in Egypt three times for his ties to the group and spent most of his life abroad. His prominence exemplifies the peril and potential for the West as Egypt opens up. While he condemned the 9/11 attacks, he has supported suicide bombers against Israel and attacks on American forces in Iraq.

On Friday, he struck themes of democracy and pluralism, long hallmarks of his writing and preaching. He began his sermon by saying that he was discarding the customary opening “Oh Muslims,” in favor of “Oh Muslims and Copts,” referring to Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority. He praised Muslims and Christians for standing together in Egypt’s revolution and even lauded the Coptic Christian “martyrs” who once fought the Romans and Byzantines. “I invite you to bow down in prayer together,” he said.

He urged the military officers governing Egypt to deliver on their promises of turning over power to “a civil government” founded on principles of pluralism, democracy and freedom. And he called on the army to immediately release all political prisoners and rid the cabinet of its dominance by officials of the old Mubarak government.

“We demand from the Egyptian Army to free us from the government that was appointed by Mubarak,” Sheik Qaradawi declared. “We want a new government without any of these faces whom people can no longer stand.” And he urged the young people who led the uprising to continue their revolution. “Protect it,” he said. “Don’t you dare let anyone steal it from you.”

As the uprising here intensified in recent weeks, Sheik Qaradawi had used his platform to urge Egyptians to rise up against Mr. Mubarak. His son, Abdul-Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is an Egyptian poet who supported the revolution, and, though Sheik Qaradawi is considered a religious traditionalist, three of his daughters hold doctoral degrees, including one in nuclear physics.

Scholars who have studied his work say Sheik Qaradawi has long argued that Islamic law supports the idea of a pluralistic, multiparty, civil democracy.

But he has made exceptions for violence against Israel or the American forces in Iraq. “You call it violence; I call it resistance,” said Prof. Emad Shahin of the University of Notre Dame, an Egyptian scholar who has studied Sheik Qaradawi’s work and was in Tahrir Square for his speech Friday.

“He is enormously influential,” Mr. Shahin added. “His presence in the square today cemented the resolve of the demonstrators to insist on their demands from the government.”

Egyptians streamed back into Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolution, for a rally that was part prayer service, part celebration and part political protest. State television put attendance at two million.

A raucous spirit of flag-waving celebration prevailed. Women in full face veils painted their daughters’ faces in the colors of the Egyptian flag. Young men danced to thrumming drum beats on balconies, lampposts and trucks. There were many signs bearing the dual images of a crescent and cross, the symbol of Muslim-Christian unity.

(source; The New Tork Times)

2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

2011-02-19T07:26:00.002+07:00

On Feb. 15, 1965, a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeared as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and the panelists — they included a comedian and a former Miss America — had to guess what it was.

On the show (see the clip on YouTube), the beauty queen did a good job of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200.(See TIME's photo-essay "Cyberdyne's Real Robot.")

Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself — a desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter. The panelists were pretty blasé about it; they were more impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They were ready to move on to Mrs. Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif., whose secret was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade teacher.

But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. To see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial intelligence.

That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it. Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. When that happens, humanity — our bodies, our minds, our civilization — will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this moment is not only inevitable but imminent. According to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.(See the best inventions of 2010.)

Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster — that is, the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.

True? True.

So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might conceivably come a moment when they are capable of something comparable to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they create consciousness — not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethical decisions, appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.

If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer. It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.

Probably. It's impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which (with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you'd be as smart as they would be. But there are a lot of theories about it. Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciousnesses into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.(Comment on this story.)

The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about the future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.

(source: time.com)
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138,00.html#ixzz1EMNPE86F

Could Facebook replace Government Websites?

2011-02-18T05:29:00.003+07:00

It’s all the rage for ministries and agencies to have a Facebook or even MySpace page these days. Governments are going where their citizens are. So why bother having a web site at all? The idea may seem farfetched. But as officials from Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and the Netherlands reveal in interviews with FutureGov, government web sites could disappear into the ‘social cloud’ sooner than we think.

“We can’t do community outreach programmes sitting inside Parliament House. The same applies online,” Craig Thomler (pictured), the Online Communications Director for the Australian Department of Health & Ageing, said at the FutureGov Forum Hong Kong this month. “If Facebook is where the audience is, we need to be there too. It’s about engaging sensitively in the right avenues.”

Government operates too many web sites, and most are difficult and expensive to maintain. Consolidating them makes sense, Thomler said. “You need to think carefully about what you’re trying to achieve with a web site, and how you’re trying to engage. There are lots of incidences where you need to engage community with community, and it is difficult for a web site to do this.”

Datuk Arpah bt Abdul Razak is the Director General of Local Government in Malaysia, where Facebook is the most popular social network. “Will Facebook pages replace our web sites? Nothing is impossible,” she told FutureGov. “Our leaders are blogging and using Facebook heavily, gaining friends and supporters. The more social media is used, the more likely it is to replace the traditional means with which government communicates online.”

But government web sites will not disappear altogether, reckons Mark Medwecki, the Superintendent of the Hong Kong Police Force. While popular social platforms (Facebook ranks top in Hong Kong too) are useful for quickly disseminating information on crimes and giving relevant advice for citizens, Hong Kong police has given no consideration to replacing the structured web sites which give access to crime information online. “The use of social media is more likely to be a supplementary online activity, not a replacement,” he said.

The Netherlands is one of Europe’s largest consumers of social media, and the government has been a particularly active user. Matt Poelmans, the Director of Citizenlink at the Dutch Ministry of the Interior, told FutureGov that a new engagement model is emerging which raises new challenges for government.

“The mixed model [using social media pages and official web sites] raises debate on a compelling issue: how to reconcile the requirements of accessibility with the innovative use of social media. Government web sites are strictly regulated. Private websites are not. Should one allow freer access to public information than the other?”

Another big issue concerning what observers are calling the ‘social cloud’ is information security. Security emerged as the overwhelming concern among Hong Kong government officials at the FutureGov Forum, and Sophos research released in February gives officials good reason to worry. Spam and malware on social networking sites increased by 70 per cent in 2009, with Facebook the worst effected site. (source: Robin Hicks)

Nokia's fate: Booming or Bust?

2011-02-17T12:45:00.004+07:00

"Nokia and Symbian was the last of the European software business, it's gone overnight. That's depressing," an industry veteran told me on Friday afternoon.

As I wrote several years ago, Nokia was a company that could set global standards for consumer electronics, and do so from a cold and remote corner of Europe, using its own R&D. Americans thought this claim was either cute or hyperbolic - but with its central role in mobile communications, and its deep pockets, I didn't think it was far-fetched for Nokia to rival Sony across the home. With a Microsoft partnership, that's not impossible, but it's unlikely - and Nokia won't be putting its own vision to the market, but putting its badge on somebody else's.

For me, the most remarkable part of Nokia's decline is how deeply it thought about the future, for so long. Nokia had prepared for the shift away from commodity voice phones many years ago. In the late 1990s it handing out copies of The Innovator's Dilemma for its management to read. Anyone looking for a single scapegoat or a defining moment should be disappointed, however. What slowly strangled Nokia was its inability to execute its plans effectively.

Let's look at the problems Nokia was confronted with, and its responses.

The masterplan

As Charles Davies pointed out in our Symbian retrospective, the late Noughties were the first time that an outsider could break into the top tier of phone manufacturers. Packaged chipsets allowed new entrants to the make reasonable 2G (not yet 3G) phones by 2007. Nokia had pioneered high functionality consumer smartphones in 2002, starting with the 7650. This looked like great timing: GPRS networks were coming online and 3G not far behind. Every 18 months Nokia could produce smaller, more integrated electronics. From a producer's point of view, it was perfect. From the punter's point of view, all was not well, though.

Symbian smartphones became increasingly complex and buggy. They brimmed over with features, but users had to pay a premium to add a data plan to use them fully. The features were hard to find, too. So smartphones remained a niche for technology enthusiasts. (Symbian was turning a tidy profit by 2006).

Then Apple entered the market with a device that was a merely-OK phone, but offered something radically new: a new user interface that made much of the functionality manufacturers like Nokia had built into their devices quite usable. And Apple had a bundled data plan, so trying it all out was risk-free.

At last, here was an integrated mobile device that didn't suck. Pure-play PDAs had disappeared, but their replacements left a nasty taste. Both reading and writing about these were no fun.

"After years of writing about smartphones, I've seen the established players become lazy and complacent, go down blind alleys, or standardize on horrible designs and feature sets," I recall. "So the iPhone should focus minds wonderfully - it should raise the bar for everyone." Believe it or not, that was one of my more Unpopular Opinions.

Conventional wisdom decreed that this vanity exercise would be quietly snuffed out by the operators - possibly ending Apple's ambitions in the mobile business.

So Nokia wasn't alone in dismissing the iPhone, and its usability, as a gimmick. This gave Apple the time it needed to catch up. Demand was overwhelming, allowing Apple to relax its one-operator-per-market policy, and gradually work in the many missing features: an app store, 3G, and MMS for example. Nokia simply thought producer-power would crush the users' revolt. (source: The A Register)

RIM's Jim Balsillie: 'Our PlayBook shames the You Know What

2011-02-17T12:29:00.003+07:00

MWC 2011 Never has anyone spent so much time talking about Apple without saying the ‘A’ word than RIM CEO Jim Balsillie as he showed off the company's upcoming PlayBook tablet at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Playing to the gallery of operators – a congregation that booed when the iPhone 4 won ‘best handset’ at last night’s GSMA awards – he talked about how the PlayBook does things the unmentionablepad doesn’t, and how those things will make money for networks.

Balsillie was on stage with fellow CEOs Stephen Elop of Nokia, Dr Paul Jacobs of Qualcomm, and Ryuji Yamada of NTT DoCoMo. The topic: “Connecting the Dots - A 360° View on Consumer Electronics”. Given that this was a pants thing to ask them, they all wisely gave a nod to it and then talked about what they wanted to talk about.

What Jim Balsillie wanted to say was: “Hey, you know that sexy new tablet? We can do that too. You know that sexy new handset/operator alliance aimed at operators? We can do that too.” But he was more subtle.

RIM is now a Consumer Electronics company because it has a tablet. Embracing the Consumer Electronics element, he talked of a “constructive alignment” of Consumer Electronics companies with carriers – an alignment that was the difference between going through the operators' billing systems and going over the top and disintermediating the carrier.

What makes the PlayBook great, he said, is that it supports real-time multitasking with symmetric multiprocessing. It’s also open – although everyone has different measurements of ‘open’ and no mention was made of OS openness.

Who pays the piper

What is open is the choice of dev systems: you can use HTML5, Dreamweaver, JavaScript, and CSS. This is what the CEOs of the carriers want. Support for various flavours of 4G will also make carriers salivate. In deference to the GSMA hosts, he didn’t mention WiMAX. But the PlayBook can do that.

Balsillie went on to look at mobile devices for payments. This starts with carrier billing for BlackBerry App World offerings, a brave thing to highlight because RIM only has agreements with a handful of carriers while Nokia has over 100 such agreements. But Stephen Elop was too much of a gentleman to point this out.

Carrier billing is ostensibly about a seamless experience for the user, buying your Angry Birds Mighty Eagle without having to type in a credit card number in the middle of the game. In truth, it’s about getting operators to buy your kit because there is ongoing money in it.

Treading delicately on the toes of financial regulation, Balsillie announced the ability to send operator credit from one BlackBerry to another with BlackBerry Messenger, gifting airtime and applications. He needs to be careful with this as it won’t be legal in some countries, and if there were ever any hint of turning that credit back into cash, the financial might of most financial regulators would descend on him.

He confirmed the rumours that there will be an NFC-enabled device, going further by saying that it is possible that all future BlackBerry devices will have NFC, mirroring an announcement Nokia made last November for all smartphones.

Is Facebook planning to have Fb SIM card and Facebook Phone?

2011-02-15T21:53:00.004+07:00

Facebook wants to be everywhere. They’ve made this very clear. They want to be on you desktop, on your laptop, on your smartphone, on yourtablet, and on your dumbphone. The latter, they directly addressed today with a new SIM cardmade in conjunction with Gemalto which magically gives basically every dumbphone — aka “feature phone” — a simple entry point to use the social network: SMS. It’s a great idea, and very cool for emerging markets. In fact, you could make a case for it sort of being a “Facebook Phone”. But it’s obviously not the mythical one which Facebook absolutely wants you to believe doesn’t exist.

Nor are the phones that HTC may be releasing tomorrow at Mobile World Congress.PocketNow was apparently able to snag some images of these Android-powered HTC devices that carry a special Facebook button at the bottom. Again, potentially cool and useful, but not the Facebook Phone. And that INQ-built Facebook phone? Also cool, but also not the Facebook Phone.

Now, the only thing we know for absolute certain is that Facebook hates talking about the concept of a “Facebook Phone”. We’ve had this argument with them in the past. They seem to think that a Facebook Phone with a capital “P” would only be a device with both hardware and software designed and developed by them. Or, at the very least, an OS written by them from the ground up. They’ve stated time and time again that they’re not working on such a project. At least not yet. And we buy that. What we don’t buy is that they don’t have some sort of project to take Google’s open source Android OS and inject it with Facebook DNA. That’s what we believe the Facebook Phone is going to be. And from what we’re hearing, it’s still coming.

Ever since we wrote the first Facebook Phone story last September, whispers have not stopped about what Facebook is doing. In particular, we had heard that two key employees, Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos, were working on the project. But we’ve since heard that Facebook’s head of mobile, Erick Tseng, has taken command of the project. And that yes, it continues to be a project to customize Android to make it, and the apps that run on it, more social at their cores. “Instant personalization” and all that. You may remember Tseng as the senior Android manager who jumped over to Facebook last May.

We’re also hearing that Tseng is pushing Facebook’s Platmobile team to be ready to have something to show off at Facebook’s f8 conference later this year. Judging from previous years, this should take place in April. You may recall that the Platmobile team is the onethat was hard at work on eliminating the need for mobile password entry. Clearly, any Android Facebook Phone project would feature this as a hallmark.

You may recall the rumors that Facebook was working with Apple to bring this deep level of social to the iPhone last year. That project was apparently very real and may have been codenamed “Spork”. But apparently, that project was scrapped — perhaps after Facebook and Apple could not come to an agreement on terms for such features. Whatever the reason, work began on the Android project shortly thereafter (which was around the time we first heard about it).

So, Facebook apparently continues to not work on a phone in the same way that Google was not working on a phone for all those years. Will we see the fruits of such non-labor at f8 this year? Perhaps. Will it be a physical phone? Unlikely. A totally new OS made by Facebook? Probably not. But instead, we may see a version of Android with very deep Facebook integration. One that phone-makers would be welcome to use. A Trojan Horse for Facebook to make smartphones truly social.

(source: techcrunch.com)

Nokia is standing on a burning Mobile Platform

2011-02-13T20:57:00.005+07:00

An explosive memo purportedly penned by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has left the internet ablaze with speculation that Nokia may adopt a platform developed by rivals such as Microsoft or Android.

The memo, which was allegedly leaked to Engadget, describes Nokia as “standing on a burning platform.”

The plaintive missive describes Nokia's market woes as Apple encroaches on its business at the high-end, Android in the mid-range and cut-price Chinese handset makers at the low-end.

It states that Nokia is years behind these rivals, and that if Nokia continues with its strategies for MeeGo and Symbian it will only fall further behind.

“Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem,” it says.

Partly as a result of the memo, there has been intense speculation that Nokia might embrace a new operating system at its strategy day on Friday. The most likely candidate is Windows Phone 7, but some analysts have urged the Finnish giant to back the winning horse, Android.

But according to reports, several large operators have called on Nokia not to adopt Android. Many cellcos may be happy to sell Android phones to eager consumers, but do not want Google to gain any more power over the mobile web agenda.

According to the Financial Times, major cellcos such as Vodafone, Telefonica and Orange have stated that they hope Nokia will rule out adopting Android, when CEO Stephen Elop outlines his new strategy this week. Instead, they are urging him to build up MeeGo as an alternative to Android and iOS.

The three cited carriers are also leading lights, along with T-Mobile and Telecom Italia, in a shadowy group of European mobile players, which have reportedly created an informal group to 'keep an eye on' Google and Apple, their business practices and their ability to shift the mobile model.

These carriers have expressed the view that Android and iOS are "Trojan horses" to make Google and Apple the direct point of contact for mobile users, relegating the cellcos to dumb pipes.

TeliaSonera's CEO was the latest to warn against the rising power of Google and Apple in the wireless market. Lars Nyberg told the Financial Times that his firm had benefited from the boom in smartphones and mobile data, but he was increasingly worried that alternatives to Android and iOS would be eclipsed, leaving a duopoly that could dictate terms to the whole industry.

Saying that smartphones now account for 90% of the handsets Telia sells in Sweden – one of the highest figures in the world - he called on Nordic consumers to support Nokia and Sony Ericsson against US-based rivals like Apple (though, of course, Sony Ericsson has recently moved away from Symbian to focus only on Android).

Nyberg commented on Nokia: “I would not count them out. It looks like Android and Apple right now, but things can change very fast in this industry.” (source: telecomasia.net)

Indosat mulling spin off of CDMA unit

2011-02-10T21:28:00.001+07:00

Indosat, the nation’s second largest telecommunications company, is considering spinning off its CDMA (code division multiple access) unit, StarOne, to make the company more competitive.

President director Harry Sasongko said on Tuesday that Indosat was currently conducting an internal assessment to gain momentum as the sector has shown an upward trend with most of the nation’s 230 million people having access to a mobile phone.

“The spin-off is just an assessment. This is part of an ongoing process in the company’s internal activity for StarOne,” he told reporters at his office in Jakarta.

“We continually assess and see profitable opportunities, such product marketing strategies to win a place for our products in the market,” Harry added, as quoted by Antara news agency.

The telecommunications sector led the nation’s sectoral economy in 2010, growing by 13.5 percent, higher than Indonesia’s overall 6.1 percent economic growth in 2010.

A constant slide of subscribers from StarOne has reportedly hampered Indosat’s overall growth, which was dominated by its cellular business. The telecommunications giant’s plan to spin-off its StarOne business unit has been under consideration since 2008.

“We will finalize a decision as soon as the assessment is done,” Harry said, adding he expected the best possible result after the assessment.

Indosat’s net profits plunged 63 percent to Rp 531 billion as of September from Rp 1.45 trillion a year earlier as a stronger rupiah increased the costs of hedging.

Indosat, listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Indonesian Stock Exchange, is 65 percent owned by the Qatari state-controlled Qatar Telecommunications (QTEL).

On Tuesday, an extraordinary Indosat shareholders meeting agreed to appoint a new commissioner: State-Owned Enterprises Ministry deputy for business services Parikesit Suprapto.

Hanz C. Motiz was also appointed the new director for the telephone company, and was expected to replace Stephen Edward Hobbs as of April 30.

— JP/Esther Samboh

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange on Extradiction Trial

2011-02-09T03:27:00.002+07:00

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has today begun his fight against extradition to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault.

The leader of the whistle-blowing website, which hit the headlines late last year after publishing thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, has been held under house arrest in the UK after being bailed at an earlier hearing in London.

Assange denies assaulting two women in Sweden, claiming the charges are a backlash from the revelations made in the leaked cables.

Lawyers are fighting the extradition to Sweden on the ground that it may then send Assange to the US, where he is regarded as a potential terrorist threat, the BBCreports.

They also argue the extradition would breach Assange’s human rights the news site said.

Separately, the Anonymous ‘hacktivist’ group last week began targeting sites in Egypt, following anti-government riots in the country.

Anonymous mounted a series of distributed denial of service attacks on firms including Amazon, MasterCard and Visa after the firms withdrew support for Wikileaks in the wake of the cable row. (source: telecomasia.net)

Indonesia's Uncertain Future

2011-01-27T03:17:00.001+07:00

HONG KONG — Nothing could be more symbolic of the rise in Indonesia’s status in the world: Garuda, the national airline named after the sacred, mythical bird that is its national emblem, is being marketed to global investors. It has been reaching out to global investors as the government seeks to raise at least $1 billion by selling a large stake in what was long an accident-prone carrier shunned by passengers and airports alike.

This caps a year in which Indonesia’s international stock rose faster than probably any other Asian country.

Foreign perception of the nation’s progress had long lagged behind its actual, quietly-impressive political and economic development in the dozen years since the Asian financial crisis and the overthrow of the Suharto regime. But the now bullish perception may have run ahead of reality, perhaps setting both foreigners and newly confident locals up for disappointment. (Source: International Herald Tribune)

First, it’s worth reviewing the good news. The stock market was Asia’s top performer in 2010. The economy grew about 6 percent, and the same is expected in 2011. The budget position is strong; debt is low; trade in surplus and foreign reserves is high. Foreign commentators have suggested that it be classed with China, India and Brazil as one of the group of large, fast-expanding economies identified as the spearhead of global growth.

Internationally Indonesia is now viewed as stable and strategically important. It is a member of the Group of 20 and, like Brazil, beginning to play a role beyond its immediate neighborhood. President Barack Obama has underlined its achievements, as a Muslim-majority country with a secular Constitution, democracy, pluralism and religious tolerance. It is now making an effort to reduce forest destruction and carbon emissions.

Yet the sustainability of these positive developments is questionable. Economic success owes a great deal to the near record prices fetched by most of its export commodities — coal, palm oil, copper, rubber and others. These in turn have underpinned strong growth in consumption without pushing trade into a deficit. How long this cycle will last is anyone’s guess, but a sustained retreat of prices is going come with a sharp downgrading of Indonesia’s growth prospects.

If economic worries are for the future, governance worries are here now. Investors may like stories like the success of Garuda, the national airline, but local media have been focused on a very different tale — an amazing saga that has stunned even Indonesians accustomed to graft — involving a corrupt tax-inspector and his deals with senior judges and firms linked to senior politicians.

Some of the blame for a lack of government reform lies with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. He has failed to use his 2008 electoral mandate to press on with administrative reforms or act decisively against the corruption. By putting his instinct for political compromise ahead of the law, Mr. Yudhoyono risks the governance reform vital for sustained development. Corruption among parliamentarians is rife so little legislation is passed as members jostle for favors.

Mr. Yudhoyono set a poor example last year when Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati was forced out after clashing with vested interests, including one of the nation’s richest men and the head of a major party in Mr. Yudhoyono’s coalition.

Media freedom and diversity thrives so the populace knows about a lot of the sleaze. But without leadership from the top little cleaning is possible. The government vigorously pursues Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terrorist network, but Indonesia’s traditions of religious tolerance have been damaged by failure, for political reasons, to confront localized harassment of Christians and Ahmadis (an Islamic sect regarded by some as heretical).

These problems do not suggest that Indonesia should once more be ignored. But foreign awareness of its problems, as well as opportunities, is needed and could help Indonesia achieve sustained reform rather than copy the Philippines’ record of democracy marred by weak, corrupt governance.

Yahoo's Income increased, but growth still very small

2011-01-27T03:02:00.003+07:00

SAN FRANCISCO — Anyone looking for signs of a Yahoo turnaround will have to wait a bit longer, after a lackluster fourth quarter and a disappointing forecast.

Carol A. Bartz, who joined Yahoo as chief executive two years ago, has been trying to revive the growth after several years of sluggish results and an inability to capitalize on the rise of social networking, now dominated by Facebook.

She has cut costs, largely through a series of layoffs, while Google, for example, has added employees. She has outsourced services and plans to eliminate unsuccessful products, including the Delicious bookmarking service.

Her strategy has been to focus on Yahoo’s strengths, which include editorial content, display advertising and online communications like e-mail. Still, she says it will take time before Yahoo shows signs of major progress. The earnings report seemed to support that view.
(Source The New York Times)
Display advertising — banners and other graphic ads — was the one bright spot. But a first-quarter revenue forecast that was below analysts’ expectations sent shares down in after-hours trading.

Yahoo reported that net income in the fourth quarter, which ended in December, doubled to $312 million, or 24 cents a share compared with the year-ago quarter.

The company said revenue fell 12 percent to $1.53 billion. Virtually all the decline came from the sale of the HotJobs career site and changes to Yahoo’s search business.

The income was slightly above the adjusted income of 26 cents a share beat the 22 cents a share that was expected by analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Excluding payments to advertising partners, revenue was $1.21 billion, or modestly higher than the $1.19 billion that analysts had expected.

Display advertising increased 14 percent to $635 million.

In a conference call with analysts after the report was released, Yahoo executives repeatedly referred to what they described as the company’s good momentum, and talked of their confidence that Yahoo will turn the corner in several important areas during the second half of this year. They pointed to the growth in profits and cast the decline in revenue as a natural consequence of their strategy.

“We just completed a very encouraging quarter and year for Yahoo,” Ms. Bartz said in the call. She went on to say that “we are making clear progress on our plan.”

The first-quarter revenue forecast was for $1.02 billion to $1.08 billion, compared with analysts’ expectation of $1.13 billion. In after-hours trading, shares fell more than 2 percent, to $15.64.

Youssef H. Squali, an analyst with Jefferies & Co., said that he was still waiting for Yahoo to show some signs of progress. Cutting costs is fine, he said, but what investors really want is for the company to restore growth, and that management will be intense pressure to do so later this year, as they have promised.

“As far as growth is concerned, it’s a show-me story,” Mr. Squali said. “The jury is still out on this one.”

In a sign of Ms. Bartz’s cost-cutting, Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., said on Tuesday that it would eliminate 1 percent of its work force, or around 140 jobs, mostly in marketing. That follows cuts last month of another 600 jobs, most of them in the product group.

Yahoo’s layoffs contrast sharply with Google, which said on Tuesday that it would add more than 6,000 employees this year. Although Yahoo said it will continue to hire in certain areas, the disconnect between the companies and their trajectories is striking.

Not only is Google hiring, it is growing quickly, reporting a 26 percent rise in fourth-quarter revenue last week.

Yahoo has bet a big part of its revival on its search partnership with Microsoft, which has taken over its search engine and associated advertising in North America. The switch in Europe and Asia will take place this year.

But Ms. Bartz indicated that there are still issues to be worked out in terms of the financial benefits of the search partnership. Important measurements of its financial performance, including revenue per search, were below what was hoped for during the quarter, although she voiced confidence in an improvement during the second half of the year.

The Quixotic Quest to Block Pornography

2011-01-22T21:51:00.003+07:00

The controversial and conservative minister of communications and information technology, Tifatul Sembiring, has recently made his view about BlackBerry devices pretty clear. According to him, the popular devices aren’t smartphones, they’re smutphones — pocket-sized portals to porn, dangerous, deviant devices that routinely corrupt poor, unsuspecting Indonesians with a deluge of X-rated filth and indecency.

“The government is obliged to protect its citizens who use BlackBerry,” Tifatul said recently, referring to his campaign to get the Canadian-based maker of the devices, Research in Motion, to block all access to pornography on the smartphones in Indonesia or risk having its business license yanked. The company said it had put the filters in place as of Thursday.

While Tifatul’s campaign may have helped him make headlines, the fact is, even with the ban in place, people will still be able to find adult entertainment without much difficulty.

And while we don’t condone pornography, there can also be no doubt that, for better or worse, it will remain readily available to the public, with or without the help of a BlackBerry. Here’s why:

The Unblockable Internet Beast

The battle against Internet porn started a few months back, when the government attempted to block all pornographic Web sites in what proved to be a futile effort.

Proxies have been shown to easily bypass government filters, making the effort seem like a major waste of time and money.

Though a few proxy Web sites were themselves blacklisted, there are clearly far too many to be completely eradicated.

The other method for beating the system is to simply find one of the many Web sites not yet added to the government filters, of which there are plenty. It is also worth noting that many of the previously filtered Web sites are now freely accessible.

Image boards still let users post various verbal and visual messages, many of them pornographic, anonymously.

Some of the more popular image boards, such as Japanese-based 2chan, were also blocked a few months ago, but are completely accessible today.

Fajar Ai, a university student who frequents image boards looking for “cool” illustrations, pictures and “politically incorrect jokes,” says image boards provide safety because they host posts only for a short time, until they are replaced by newer posts.

“You can’t ban something, a link or a file, if it’s only up for a few minutes,” he said.

Downloading through community forums, both local and international, is also a common means of trading and acquiring materials of a dubious nature.

Though a few large local forums, such as Kaskus, have already banned the trade of pornographic materials, other still operate without much of a fuss.

Trading and acquiring files is still common through file-hosting Web sites such as Rapidshare and peer-to-peer networks that have existed for more than a decade.

These days, a more sophisticated form of peer-to peer sharing, known as “torrents,” is often used to trade large files.

The sheer volume of these Internet mainstays makes filtering attempts seem a bit ludicrous, if not utterly quixotic.

Many of these mediums cannot be totally blocked since, like BlackBerrys, they provide access to a wealth of important information – most of which is completely unrelated to nude, oiled-up bodies.

Porn on the Streets and in the Shops

Although raids on street stalls have become common throughout the city, DVD merchants continue to peddle their wanton wares by relying a little more heavily on guerilla tactics to evade officials.

Though not all DVD merchants sell pornographic films, there are a sizeable number who will happily oblige you with a hidden stash if asked.

One vendor in a trade center in Jakarta, who asked that his name not be used, said selling X-rated DVDs was easy.

Pointing to a clearly visible row of DVDs with provocative covers, he said selling soft-core DVDs — which are allowed — helped to draw people in and let them some something a little more raunchy was only a nod and a wink away.

“Soft-core is kind of like bait for guys who want X-rated films,” he said.

Noviar Akbar, who was looking through some soft-core DVDs, said purchasing porn was a breeze. “What do you mean difficulty?” he said. “X-rated DVDs are easy to buy, and they are everywhere.”

On-Demand Delivery of Adult DVDs

More than a few local Internet merchants sell their collections of X-rated films online without much hassle.

Denny, whose online “shop” (essentially a blog with a list of titles) said the process was simple.

“[Potential buyers] look at the DVD list on the Web site, then they e-mail or text us the order. No phone calls,” he said.

“After that, we send them our bank account information. When they’ve paid in full, including shipping costs, we send them their order.”

“Bob,” a 29-year-old graphic designer and adult DVD peddler, who did not want us to use his real name, said the business “is pretty rewarding financially, especially because there is no promotional cost. You just keep updating your titles on the [online] forums and Web site. You can also post ads for free on marketplace Web sites.”

So even without BlackBerry access to pornography, the routes to smut remain many.

But politicians will continue to say what they need to say, and people will continue to look for what they want to see. (Source: Jakarta Globe)

Larry Page the new Google CEO for making company more agile and innovative

2011-01-22T07:50:00.006+07:00

SAN FRANCISCO — Google made the biggest managementshake-up in a decade on Thursday, handing the reins of the company to one of its co-founders in an effort to rediscover its start-up roots.

As it has grown into the dominant company in Silicon Valley, Google has lost some of its entrepreneurial culture and become a slower-moving bureaucracy, analysts and insiders say, in contrast to Facebook, Twitter and other younger, more agile competitors.

To counter this, the company announced that Larry Page, its 38-year-old co-founder, would take over as chief executive from Eric E. Schmidt, a technology industry veteran who was brought in a decade ago to provide adult supervision, as Silicon Valley calls it.

Mr. Schmidt, 55, will remain executive chairman of the company, which had a market value of $200 billion at the close of trading on Thursday, up from $27 billion when it went public in 2004.

“One of the primary goals I have is to get Google to be a big company that has the nimbleness and soul and passion and speed of a start-up,” said Mr. Page in a telephone interview on Thursday. He will start his new role in April.

The shake-up comes at a time of major upheaval in Silicon Valley. The company, and the search industry, face challenges on several fronts.

Google remains immensely powerful and successful — as demonstrated by the stellar quarterly financial results it reported Thursday.

But the sudden rise of Facebook has exposed Google’s failures in areas like social networking and threatens its vast share of the online advertising market. Meanwhile, although Google has had success in new areas like mobile and display advertising, it has struggled to branch out into other businesses like television.

The unspoken fear within Google is that it could become like Microsoft, a once-dominant technology company that seems past its prime and perceived as stodgier, despite successes like XBox and Kinect. Indeed, for all its financial success, Google, which has 24,400 employees, is no longer considered by many top engineers as the most desirable place to work in the Valley; a new generation of start-ups has taken that place.

And in recent years, Google has lost scores of engineers and a string of high-profile senior executives, including Sheryl Sandberg, now chief operating officer at Facebook, andTim Armstrong, now chief executive of AOL.

Mr. Page led the company in its early days but relinquished that role in 2001, when it was still private. In tapping him to return to the post, Google becomes one of the few major companies in the Valley to be put under the control of a founder after being run for so long by a professional manager. To some, the move signaled a kind of coming-of-age for Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, who were in their late 20s when Mr. Schmidt took over. Even Mr. Schmidt characterized it as a moment for the training wheels to come off.

On his Twitter account, Mr. Schmidt wrote: “Day-to-day adult supervision is no longer needed.” Later, on a conference call with analysts after Thursday’s earnings report, he said, “I believe Larry is ready,” adding, “It’s time for him to have a shot at running this.”

The management move ends an unusual experiment in which Google, the world’s largest Internet company, was run jointly by a troika of Mr. Schmidt; Mr. Page, who was president of products; and Sergey Brin, 37, the company’s other co-founder and its president of technology.

In the interview, Mr. Page also explained the move as an effort to streamline, saying the three had selected him as the top decision-maker because of “the pace of decision-making and the scale of the company.” Mr. Brin, who joined Mr. Page and Mr. Schmidt in the interview, said the three-way process confused employees.

“We wanted to make it clear to all the executives and the managers who report to us where they should send an e-mail,” he said.

Mr. Page and Mr. Schmidt said the decision was mutual. “I don’t think there’s another person in the universe that could have done as good a job as Eric has done in the company,” Mr. Page said.

The relationship between the founders and Mr. Schmidt was rocky during its early years, as the founders frequently undercut Mr. Schmidt’s decisions. Although they worked well together for the last several years, there remained recurring strains.

Ken Auletta, the author of “Googled: The End of the World As We Know It,” said in an interview that while Mr. Schmidt may simply have been ready for a change after 10 years, he may have received some encouragement to step aside.

“I don’t think he was pushed aside, but he may have been nudged,” he said.

Under Mr. Schmidt’s helm, Google has prospered, but over the years, it has become less attractive to some engineers, who say it has become harder to develop new ideas while working there. The problem is one that all big companies face, but it is more pressing in Silicon Valley, where the most talented engineers tend to have the strongest entrepreneurial drive. Google has tried to retain dissatisfied employees with perks like giving them time to work on new projects. But some insiders say those incentives have lost effectiveness.

The news of the change rocked Silicon Valley, with analysts and company insiders offering varying theories. Some said Mr. Schmidt was tired of the day-to-day hassles of management. Mr. Schmidt said in the interview, “I would tell you, frankly, a decade is a long time to be a C.E.O., and Larry will discover this.”

Others say Mr. Page always planned to re-assert his authority at some point.

“Larry has wanted to be C.E.O., so that’s not a surprise,” said a former Google sales executive who would speak only anonymously to preserve his relationship with a powerful company. “But the timing — I’ve talked to people at Google today and they were just flabbergasted.”

Esther Dyson, a veteran Valley investor who has long known the Google founders and Mr. Schmidt, said, “It is unexpected but it makes a lot of sense.” She added: “Larry and Sergey have grown up. They want to run their own company.”

After the management change, Mr. Brin will concentrate on several new products, which he declined to name, while Mr. Schmidt will focus on external business partnerships and government outreach, including fighting regulators’ concerns about Google’s growing power.

Mr. Page and Mr. Brin co-founded Google when they were graduate students in computer science at Stanford in 1998.

Mr. Page is aloof, cerebral, intensely private and occasionally brusque. While Mr. Brin is more gregarious, the two didn’t trust outside investors and sought to keep control of the company.

The co-founders and Mr. Schmidt all have controlling stakes in the company. Forbes magazine recently estimated that Mr. Page and Mr. Brin had a net worth of $15 billion each, and Mr. Schmidt, $5.5 billion.

The former executive said the change might be a welcome one if it helps launch products more quickly. “In that respect, getting one of the co-founders in place might be just the energy charge folks need.” (Source; The New York Times)

Temasek and 9-Indonesian Affliates to Pay Total Rp 150 Billion

2011-01-19T11:50:00.004+07:00

Indonesia has fined Singapore investment firm Temasek Holdings and nine affiliates 150 billion rupiah ($16.5 million) for allegedly behaving anti-competitively in the country’s telecom market.

Indonesia’s antitrust agency had ruled in 2007 that Temasek breached an anti-monopoly law due to its then-dual ownership of the country’s two largest cellular operators – Telkomsel and Indosat. Temasek had been accused of using its stake in both companies to fix prices.

The investment firm lost its final appeal in Indonesia’s Supreme Court in May last year, and risked having its assets in Indonesia seized if the fines were not paid.

Temasek and nine of its affiliates will each pay a fine of 15 billion rupiah. Reuters reported that Telkomsel’s payment had been received Monday by the antitrust agency.

Temasek expressed regret with the Supreme Court ruling and maintained its innocence, despite agreeing to pay the fine. “Temasek is disappointed that its application for civil review has been rejected as it has not contravened Indonesia’s anti-monopoly laws,” its senior managing director of strategic relations, Goh Yong Siang, said in a statement.

Temasek has since sold its share in Indosat for $1.8 billion to Qatar Telecom in 2008, in compliance with an earlier district court ruling. The firm now holds a 35% stake in Telkomsel. (source: telecomasia.net)

Steven P Jobs leave from Apple caused a drop in Share Price

2011-01-19T10:22:00.002+07:00

Apple’s shares showed some resilience on Tuesday after the chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, announced he was taking a medical leave of absence just ahead of the release of the company’s quarterly earnings.

The announcement on Monday that Mr. Jobs, 55, would take a leave of absence a year and a half after his return from a liver transplant raised some questions about the long-term prospects for Apple, given the influence and inspiration that he has wielded at the company he co-founded three decades ago.

But analysts have said they expected a strong earnings report later on Tuesday

“The stock has performed quite well this morning in view of the news,” Charles Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company said, adding that the stock prices reflected a buying opportunity.

Apple’s shares fell more than 4 percent at the open but regained ground as the day went on. Even with the decline, the company’s shares were almost 6 percent higher for the year.

“The reality is the stock was not very expensive to begin with,” Mr. Wolf said. “It was downright cheap by any measure of valuation. That served to contain the decline.”

Michael H. Abramsky, the managing director for RBC Capital Markets, said that Apple’s fundamentals have not changed.

“Clearly Steve is a huge part of Apple,” Mr. Abramsky added. “At the same time Apple has great products in the pipeline.”

The company has seen strong sales across almost all of its products, and analysts have forecast earnings of $5.47 to more than $6 a share, with sales of 4 million Mac computers and 15 million iPhones. Most analysts forecast first-quarter revenue at $24.4 billion.

Mr. Jobs, who recovered from pancreatic cancer after surgery in 2004, has not appeared at public events since October, and has looked increasingly frail in recent weeks, according to people who have seen him. He also took a leave of several months in 2009, when he left Timothy D. Cook, the chief operating officer, in charge.

Mr. Cook, who will take over day-to-day operations, joined Apple nearly 13 years ago and is otherwise responsible for the company’s worldwide sales and operations. He kept the development of products like the iPhone 4 and the iPad on track, increased Macintosh computer sales and improved Apple’s financial performance during an economic downturn.

Mr. Wolf said that Mr. Jobs had a talent for bringing “disruption” to the industry with Apple products, and then building an “ecosystem” around the products that drew in customers, like with iTunes and Apps stores. He agreed that to some extent these developments have made the company self-sustaining.

“The reality is nothing is going to happen at the company for years,” he said. “The next several years’ performance is going to be absolutely identical to what it was in the past. Steve didn’t care how the stock performed.”

“The reality is I did not see any new product coming out in 2011 and possibly 2012,” he said.

Mr. Wolf said the timing of the announcement just ahead of the results report was cause for reflection. “I don’t think they would have announced it yesterday unless they had a blockbuster quarter,” he said.

“I think investors are concerned but cautiously optimistic that this situation will not be deeply negative for Apple,” he said.

“Clearly Steve is a huge part of Apple,” he added. “At the same time Apple has great products in the pipeline.”

Craig Berger, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Company, said there would “naturally” be some investor concerns about Mr. Jobs’ leave “given his importance in the company and his hands-on managerial style.”

But Mr. Berger, who analyzes companies that provide chips for Apple products, said those manufacturers were still set to supply chips for millions and millions of iPhones and iPads in 2011.

“So from that perspective this news doesn’t change anything, and the refreshed iPhone and iPad products in queue are going to launch regardless,” he said in an e-mailed statement. (source: Christine Hauser -NYT)

Australian NBN Co awarded A$1.6 Billion in FO deals

2011-01-19T03:36:00.004+07:00

Australia's NBN Co has awarded A$1.6 billion ($1.58 billion) worth of infrastructure contracts for the government's A$39 billion national fiber network rollout.

The company set up to oversee the NBN buildout has announced passive optical infrastructure deals with Corning, Prysmian and Australia's Warren & Brown.

NBN co said the agreements will create at least 450 new jobs and result in the expansion of each company's Australian presence.

Corning, a US-headquartered manufacturer, won a deal worth up to A$1.2 billion over five years to supply aerial cables and cable sheathing for the project.

The company will invest in expanding its Australian operations, including A$25 million on developing its Melbourne facility, and expects to hire up to 300-400 new staff as a result.

Milan-based Prysmian scored a $300 million deal to provide underground cabling for the project, and plans to build a new A$13 million plant in Australia which will be able to manufacture high volumes of fiber optic cables.

Prysmian said it planned to employ up to 50 new production staff, which would also create new jobs in transport, logistics, training and administration as a flow-on effect.

Warren & Brown has been tipped to provide optical distribution frames and sub-racks in an up to $110 million deal.

NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley said a key benefit of using an Australian supplier “is the ability for Warren & Brown to fill orders within short timeframes to meet [our] rollout requirements.”

The NBN is a $39.3 billion federal government project to connect 93% of Australia's population with fiber connections of up to 1Gbps, and serve the remainder of the country with wireless and satellite technologies.

The government late last year won a key political battle by passing legislation required to split Telstra and pave the way for the operator's participation in the NBN. But the project still has some hurdles to pass in 2011.

(source: telecomasia.net)

Indian BWA interest shifted to TD-LTE

2011-01-17T16:08:00.002+07:00

The second half of 2010 in India was abuzz with discussion of several possibilities for BWA licensees regarding whether to deploy TD-LTE, Wimax, or a hybrid-type network (supporting Wimax in the initial stage with a migration path to TD-LTE).

These speculations have been laid to rest with license holders now leaning towards TD-LTE. Indian bigwig Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) has selected TD-LTE for rolling out its nationwide BWA network.

Ever since RIL issued its first press release mentioning “a single 20 MHz TDD spectrum when used with LTE has the potential of providing greater capacity when compared with existing communication infrastructure in the country,” Maravedis predicted it would deploy TD-LTE; there was no reference to Wimax in the press release.

In November 2010 RIL showcased the results from its first field trial of TD-LTE technology using ST-Ericsson dongles. The operator said it had achieved 80 Mbps downlink and 20 Mbps uplink speeds during the trial.

It also reported full mobility with delivery of applications such as HD multimedia streaming; LIVE TV was demonstrated with on-the-go speeds of 50 and 70 kilometers per hour, as well as a seamless handover among the number of LTE base station sectors.

RIL is reported to be testing kits from Ericsson, Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent, although it is not yet clear if it intends to select a single vendor or split the contract between multiple partners. It is close to selecting the vendors for a $1 billion TD-LTE rollout, with a decision anticipated in the next
couple of months.

Maravedis predicts RIL will have a tough time launching a commercial BWA service using TD- LTE in India until the end of 2011. The fundamental question is whether there is a TD-LTE solution that can go into deployment today to meet the broadband needs of Indian consumers at an affordable price?

Current prices of LTE devices are way too high (starting at $100 for USB dongles) for the average Indian consumer.

The curve of device prices to reach below $30 (the price an Indian consumer can afford) would be on par as that witnessed by Wimax, and thus may take up to 18-24 months to reach that level. Because of this, Indian operators are expected to develop an initial strategy of targeting
business users.

From an economic perspective Chinese vendors (Huawei & ZTE) are usually cheaper, but they have faced some legal trouble when entering the Indian market due to security concerns from the government and competition between the two countries.

When price is a concern and the most price competitive vendors face roadblocks entering the market, TD-LTE adoption may evolve even slower than expected.

It will be interesting to watch – at least in the beginning – how chipset vendors manage to offer cheap LTE chipsets so the resulting device price is suitable for the Indian economy. Qualcomm is not the only chipset vendor, so the results of efforts made by the company to foster TD-LTE adoption in India will also be enjoyed by other players.

RIL's decision to deploy TD-LTE rather than Wimax is likely to be followed by the other major BWA spectrum holders, such as Bharti Airtel and Aircel. One of our industry sources has informed us that Augere, another Indian BWA licensee, has decided to go with LTE. Tikona, which bagged five circles in the BWA auctions, has already revealed that it will adopt LTE.

It will be in BWA license holders’ best interest to opt for vendor financing. Although major operators like RIL and Bharti Airtel can fund deployments, vendor financing arrangements provide additional confidence that the vendor will deliver networks that work well. It can also result in a substantial cost advantage over the duration of the financing. This tends to lock in the supplier, which is the obvious objective during this formative stage of TD-LTE trials and deployments.

Given the latest HSPA evolutions announced and the maturity of that technology, 3G licensees in India can directly compete with BWA licensees, since TD-LTE devices will be more expensive and it will take another few months for the first ones to appear in the worldwide market.

Tata Communications, by complementing its 3G deployment with residential Wimax offload, could have the opportunity to attract customers early and engage them by developing appealing value-added services – in particular, voice, since VoLTE is still far from becoming a reality in that market.

After the 2G scandal in India, providing voice services over 3G is a good way to attract and secure new customers.

There is a possibility that nationwide licensee RIL can sell wholesale services to other BWA licensees like Augere and Tikona who would be willing to expand to other circles. Augere won spectrum in one circle, while Tikona obtained spectrum in five circles in the Indian BWA auction.

Augere has funding from Orange and is in a good position to expand to other circles in India. On the other hand, Tikona received approval to increase foreign investment in the company up to 74% in March 2010. Tikona’s investors include Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, Indivision India Partners, Oak India Investments, and L&T Infrastructure Finance.

With RIL opting for TD-LTE, Wimax advocates are now betting high on the BSNL’s Wimax plans in India. BSNL is set to receive a $524 million grant to complete the rollout of a Wimax network in rural areas, having informed the government that it would only continue the buildout with additional compensation for the project. (source: Basharat Ashai/Maravedis)

BSNL, which acquired the BWA spectrum almost a year ago, has not been able to take advantage of the lead it had over private players due to delays in finalizing the tender.

BSNL has made its franchises contractually commit to converting to LTE in the event that the other operators in the country support the standard.

There certainly does seem to be cause for concern for Wimax advocates now that RIL has decided to deploy TD-LTE. However, considering that BSNL is the only operator in India who has been very active rolling out Wimax, and that it has major plans and government support, we expect it to be a late entrant (no earlier than 2012) to the LTE market.

RIM delivers BlackBerry Monitoring System for India

2011-01-14T20:01:00.004+07:00

RIM has developed a BlackBerry monitoring solution for the Indian government it says fulfills the nation's surveillance requirements – but one which still can't decrypt corporate emails.

The company said it had completed development of an access system for its Messenger and public email services that will allow carriers to meet legal obligations on lawful interception.

RIM, which had been under pressure to enable state surveillance of its services by January 31, said in a statement sent to the media that it was pleased to have completed the solution before this mutually-agreed deadline.

But the company said the solution does not apply to its highly-encrypted corporate email service, reiterating that it is unable to provide access to these messages as it does not retain a copy of customers' decryption keys.

It said setting up an email server in India, the suggested solution to the impasse, would not work because the security architecture on its BlackBerry Enterprise Server is identical worldwide.

In an update to customers, RIM said it had been assured that all its competitors will be pressed to provide the same lawful access capabilities if they had not done so, Press Trust of India reported.

It is currently unclear whether the government, which had originally demanded complete access, will be satisfied with RIM's partial solution. India has already reportedly rejected at least one of RIM's draft monitoring proposals.

RIM last week revealed it could take 18-24 months to deliver an effective enterprise email monitoring solution.

The company, which this week was forced to agree to develop a porn-blocking solution for BlackBerrys in Indonesia, recently revealed it is currently under no pressure from India to filter any internet content.

RIM agrees to Filter porn in Indonesian BB Network

2011-01-11T13:07:00.004+07:00

RIM has agreed to develop a solution to filter porn in Indonesia, in a bid to stave off a ban on BlackBerry services in the large market.

But the government is also pressing RIM to enable Indonesian security officials to monitor BlackBerry services, a demand that could be harder to satisfy.

Indonesian officials want RIM to to block porn browsing on BlackBerry smartphones from within the nation, in order to comply with local anti-pornography laws.

RIM has revealed it will develop a system as quickly as possible, Dow Jonesreported, marking the first time the vendor will apply internet filtering to any country.

The government will meet with RIM and six mobile operators on January 17 to discuss the matter. It has warned it may ask RIM to shut down its browser service, in advance of a potential blanket ban, if RIM does not satisfy.

RIM, which has an estimated 1.5 million BlackBerry users in Indonesia, said in a statement to Reuters it was working with local carriers to develop a compliant filtering solution.

But in response to RIM's comments, Indonesian communications minister Tiffatul Sembiring said simply, “so do it.”

The communications ministry is simultaneously pressing RIM to enable lawful interception of BlackBerry messages, through the establishment of a local server in Indonesia.

RIM has so far been unable to come up with a surveillance solution for its heavily encrypted corporate email service that satisfies the Indian government, and last weekrevealed it could take another two years to develop one. Indonesian lawmakers could prove just as hard to please.

Indonesia has been pressuring RIM to enable BlackBerry monitoring since mid-2010. (source: telecomasia.net)

Japanese Government pressed Apple on Content Filtering

2011-01-06T12:09:00.002+07:00

The internet is abuzz with speculation that the Japanese government plans to order Apple and carrier partner Softbank to install content filtering controls for all iPhones sold in the nation.

Tech blogs and news sites have picked up on a Japanese report claiming that Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will notify the companies to implement filtering software as quickly as possible.

The ministry reportedly feels the existing parental control options for mobile browsing are insufficient to protect children, and may contravene Japan's strict laws regarding safe mobile internet usage for minors.

But Softbank believes installing filtering software for the iPhone would be impractical, as it would require users to share personal data including credit card numbers at point of purchase.

Apple has been involved in a long-running tussle with the Japanese government over 2008 incidences of exploding iPod nano devices. In August last year, Japan ordered Apple to publish a statement explaining how concerned nano users can receive replacement batteries under Apple's swap program.

The Differences between 4G and 3G

2011-01-04T21:36:00.002+07:00

The discussion about how 4G is different or enabling compared to 3G should start with a few guideposts.

It's important to note that 4G is built upon advancements in both wireless and wired networks. The link technology of Wimax and LTE is different than 2G and3G because it uses MIMO-OFDMA rather than CDMA/W-CDMA. OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Domain Multiple Access) works in the frequency domain, which makes it more efficient and easier to take advantage of evolution of smart and distributed antenna technologies.

The most authoritative definition of real 4G comes from the ITU. Both 3GPP LTE-Advanced and IEEE 802.16m (Wimax2) were last month officially granted admittance by the ITU's Radiocomms sector into the IMT-Advanced family.

The standard sets out stringent requirements, covering spectral efficiency for various MIMO configurations and deployment scenarios. Also included are latency and jitter, channel size and aggregation, and other criteria that impact the delivery of a wide range of communications from low-duty cycle M2M monitoring to applications that support real-time video and voice. The standard pushed the envelope of performance with the result now showing up in commercial trials that demonstrate sub-50ms end-to-end latency and high bandwidths.

Wider focus

What is also important is that 4G network standards are being developed to incorporate "intelligent" or "smart networking" methodologies. In fact, the ITU describes IMT-Advanced in terms of ICT, which is more comprehensive than simply describing this as the 4th generation of wireless networks.

Where do the innovations, improvements in performance, and enabling of new types of services come from that can make 4G much different than 3G? Both 3G and 4G have much in common in terms of technologies, product designs and manufacturing methodologies, and in the evolution of commercial markets.

LTE refers more to the evolution of commercial markets than the strict evolution of wireless technologies. 3G devices and prior equipment can't be used on the same frequency bands as LTE networks and vice versa. Newer equipment is often based on SDR/SCR (software defined/configurable radio) platforms that can be software upgraded from 3G to LTE or Wimax (Wimax being unlikely).

Much of the innovation comes from the combining of benefits and new capabilities that stem from convergence of wireless broadband with wired networks and computing methods. This impacts both the highly visible consumer device level and the various levels of the network and computing environment.

I leave the discussion of device and applications innovations as this is more a step-wise improvement over 3-3.9G. The new networks will deliver much lower latency and jitter, resulting in better performance for video conferencing and other real-time streaming applications than 3G.

However, even that gets blurred because HSPA+ adopts, even at a high cost and as a dead-end strategy, many of the MIMO and self-forming network (smart network), technologies. Users will not see a startling difference in speed between networks. However, 4G provides another 10- to 20-year roadmap for improvements.

Major advances will be made over the next 20 years or so in smart distributed WBB networks (SDWN). What that represents is the evolution of smart storage, routing and computing both from central servers, mostly the model of today, to more dynamic distributed ICT topologies. The evolution pairs with that of systems on a chip, distributed processing, smart DRM and other advances.

What is different about 4G is that it is an ICT rather than strictly a wireless platform. There are distinctions that will help lead to greater use of microcell and multiple-node aggregate base stations that are more easily deployed and help deliver greater capabilities at lower cost per bit. Overall, that is compelling.

(source: Robert Syputa, Maravedis)

Google VoIP will still be Free of Charge in 2011

2010-12-28T15:43:00.001+07:00

Google Dec. 20 said it will continue to make its Gmail calling capability free through 2011, a sign that the company wants to make sure more of its Webmail users embrace the technology.

Google launched its Call Phones from Gmail feature in August, leveraging the company's popular Google Voice phone management software.

Google said the tool would let U.S. users call anywhere in the U.S. and Canada for free through 2010 and make international calls for pennies per minute. Gmail users took up the service with gusto, logging 10 million calls through the first week.

"In the spirit of holiday giving and to help people keep in touch in the new year, we're extending free calling for all of 2011," Google software engineer Robin Schriebman said in a blog post.

To access the feature, users must download Google's voice and video plug-in. Gmail users may then click the "Call Phone" tab in the chat section in the left menu bar.

This action will pop open a window with a virtual keypad to the right of the screen. The feature will display Google Voice users' numbers in outbound calls.

Gmail calling is certainly one way to get more users to use Google Voice. AllThingsDigital's Liz Gannes said she uses the feature as her primary landline at home.

What Google should do, in addition to making Google Voice available to its Gmail users all over the world, is layer the phone calling capability across all relevant services, including Google Docs, Sites and all other Google Apps.

Moreover, adding calling across its dozens of consumer Web services could help the company as it looks to build out its social networking communications capabilities in 2011.

This would alsocounter Facebook's integration with VOIP giant Skype.

(source eWEEK Des 2010)

Analog TV antennas deliver rural broadband

2010-12-21T21:51:00.001+07:00

As the GSM Association and the Wimax Forum lobby for LTE and Wimax as the top option for bringing wireless broadband to areas underserved by DSL (or not served at all), there is at least one other option in the works: converting old analog TV antennas into wireless data receivers capable of 12-Mbps download speeds.

Australian government research body CSIRO - one of the pioneers in Wi-Fi that won a patent battle last year over the 802.11 wireless standard against IT heavyweights such as Microsoft, Intel and Dell - last month unveiled a wireless technology that does just that. It's called Ngara, and it combines OFDM-based Wi-Fi and beam-forming transmission techniques.

CSIRO says any rural property capable of receiving an analog television signal today would be able to use the technology through a new set-top box and a slightly modified version of their existing TV aerial.

Ngara enables multiple users to transmit simultaneously without compromising individual transfer rates of 12 Mbps, as the beamforming technology allows the towers to focus beams on individual homes, explains CSIRO ICT center director Ian Oppermann.

"Someone who doesn't live near the fiber network could get to it using our new wireless system," Oppermann said in a statement. "They'd be able to upload a clip to YouTube in real time and their data rate wouldn't change even if five of their neighbors also started uploading videos."

Ngara offers more than ten times the spectral efficiency of the industry's minimum standard, Oppermann says. Six users can be served with 12-Mbps connections in the space of one 7-MHz television channel, representing an efficiency of 20 bps per Hz.

CSIRO developed the technology under its Broadband In The Bush project with the proposition that it could be used to provide connectivity to the 7% of Australia's population that are too remote to reach via fiber via Australia's NBN rollout. NBN Co plans to use both wireless and satellite technologies to connect these places.

Analog television services in Australia are currently being switched off in phases, with the last signal due to go off in late-2013. That process will free up a contiguous block of spectrum from 694 MHz to 820 MHz.

However, regulator ACMA plans to follow ITU guidelines and use most of this frequency range for LTE.

The GSM Association is pushing hard to have digital dividend spectrum worldwide allocated for LTE usage. Its latest argument for "spectrum harmonization" cites a report co-authored by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) that projects that turning digital-dividend frequencies over to mobile could increase Asia-Pacific GDP by $729 billion and tip $131 billion in taxes into government coffers by 2020.

CSIRO acknowledges that most digital dividend spectrum will be used for mobile networks but says it's developing Ngara "on the reasonable assumption that, in regional and rural areas, these services are not likely to take up all the available spectrum."

Meanwhile, wireless access is just the first phase of Ngara's development; CSIRO is also developing wireless backhaul using the same technology, aiming to combine isolated available channels into a single link ten times faster than the current 150-Mbps microwave backhaul links serving Australia's rural towns.

Source:

Telecom Asia

Dylan Bushell-Embling and John C Tanner

Why rush to LTE if there is no Handset for LTE?

2010-12-21T21:30:00.003+07:00

3G was a huge disappointment for customers. It took seven to eight years for what many operators are calling the "true 3G experience" to be delivered via HSPA+. Two upgrades later. And what happened to video telephony, promoted as a key capability of "3's" first 3G models back in 2004.

The iPhone homepage states prominently that "video calling is a reality" with FaceView. But not with 3G! Read the fine print -- that of course is over Wi-Fi. So there's still a ways to go there.

It's hard not to get that "oh, here we go again" feeling as operators rush toward LTE.

Adrian Scrase from the 3GPP said yesterday at the LTE Asia conference in Hong Kong that 22 operators are due to launch commercial LTE networks by the end of the year. With only three rolled out to date, that's 19 in less than 17 weeks.

At lot of it is about being first in a market. But that doesn't make for a very good business case.

Voice-centric LTE handsets are still two years away, according to Ovum's consulting director for Asia Pacific, CW Cheung.

3G device shipments are now just starting to surpass those of 2G.

Lars Bandelind, Huawei's VP of wireless marketing, asked the audience: "Why launch if there are no handsets?" (Soure:Joseph Waring -telecomasia.net)

The challengers to APAC IPTV market

2010-12-21T21:19:00.001+07:00

Apple has upgraded its Apple TV device, dropping the price to $99, with the intention of developing a larger installed base. Apple's strategy is to take a share of video on demand (VoD) revenues. This contrasts with Google's TV aspiration, which is primarily aiming for the broadcast advertising market.

Unlike Apple's first-generation device, the new Apple TV has no internal hard drive, being purely a streaming media receiver for content from other computing devices on a home network, or from Apple's (and selected partners) own walled-garden service. Apple TV allows sharing of content from iDevices (iPods, iPhones, iPads) which Apple hopes will help drive demand for Apple TV. Apple has consequently moved to a rental model for content within the Apple TV store in conjunction with Netflix, a partner with existing content rights.

Google's approach to the market is to capture a greater share of total adverting revenues through indexing all the services vying for audience attention on the TV screen, providing a single unified UI and controlling the advertising. Google is already making progress expanding into the mobile market with Android, and this is the next step in its strategy to leverage its data analytics and advertising targeting across multi-screens.

The existing traditional TV broadcasters and IPTV players in the Asia-Pacific TV market need to watch Apple and Google very carefully. Two bellwether Asia-Pacific markets with very different local market structure and competitive dynamics are Hong Kong and Singapore.

Two models

PCCW in Hong Kong was a world pioneer in IPTV services, introducing the service in 2003 and transforming the traditional telco into a dynamic convergence player. Its IPTV service is posing a significant threat to the cable-TV service and surpassed them in terms of customer numbers mid-2009. A very competitive market, both in telecom and TV, Hong Kong has achieved a higher than 50% household penetration of IPTV.

PCCW built its early customer base with innovative packaging and pricing options, rather than restricting customers to pre-determined bundles. From its launch, PCCW focused on capturing the rights to key content, placing strong pressure on its rivals. PCCW has also been able to tie content and services across its quad-play bundles, reusing the same premium content with its mobile services.

Even Google and Apple will find it challenging to enter such a strongly competitive market with high existing IPTV take-up, with customers already having set-top boxes and tied into packages. They will need to focus on extending and working around the existing services rather than direct competition.

In Singapore, StarHub had dominated the pay-TV market until SingTel launched its IPTV service in mid-2007. SingTel's strategy was to use the IPTV service to strengthen its position as a converged player. Conversley, StarHub has expanded from its cable-based pay-TV service, into converged pay-TV and telecom services.

The IDA in Singapore has developed its NGN initiative to deliver an open access high-speed network due to reach 95% completion by 2012. This network will assist in accelerating bandwidth intensive services such as high-definition IPTV.

Additionally, IDA and MDA are consulting with industry to foster an open access video delivery platform, NIMS, including common standards and interoperability. The importance of this project is that it will improve competition in interactive and video services by both lowering the barriers to entry for a new player through access to the wholesale platform as well as removing customer lock-in.

This means that new players to the Singapore market, such as Google and Apple, will find it easier to enter, providing more competitive pressure to the existing IPTV players.

Craig Skinner is a senior consultant with Ovum

Source:

Telecom Asia

Craig Skinner/Ovum

Surging Data Traffic will strain 3G Networks in 2011

2010-12-21T06:38:00.005+07:00

1. Surging mobile data traffic will continue to test 3G network capacity

As we predicted at the end of last year, 2010 was the year in which the surge in mobile data traffic, driven by the consumer smartphone boom, began to place the 3G networks under severe strain. A number of network operators have responded by introducing tiered data pricing – a trend which will undoubtedly increase – but as smartphone adoption continues apace, network capacity will be sorely tested in 2011. Tiered pricing (and the use of WiFi as capacity relief) may serve to alleviate the problem to a certain extent, but until we see mass deployments of LTE networks (and, equally important, devices that are LTE-capable), then operators face a nervous period while attempting to manage the transition.

2. Augmented reality to enhance mobile games and retail

Augmented Reality, or AR, has largely been used in local search and reference applications thus far, but is now attracting the attention of the retail industry. Given its potential to geotag products or locations with brand/campaign-specific information, as we near the end of 2010 a raft of major retailers and brands are releasing apps with an AR element. Brands on the bandwagon include eBay, H&M and Carlsberg. With Apple opening its accelerometer and gyroscope APIs to mobile Safari developers, there is also an opportunity for AR-enabled web-based apps. Also expect to see an increasing number of AR-based games – THQ Wireless’ forthcoming Star Wars Arcade: Falcon Gunner likely to be the first of many such titles.

3. Cloud-based operating systems will launch

So far mobile operating systems have followed their PC-based cousins, the structure for which was formulated when the web was in its infancy. Consequently, with the web having taken-off, for some time now industry figures have been talking about the potential for applications to run from a “cloud”. Google announced the start of new project, the Chrome cloud OS in 2009; and the latest is that it will be launched in early 2011. With network reach and reliability reaching a point where cloud-based solutions can be considered viable, and remote servers already being used to allow the mobile internet and email, we believe 2011 will see the launch of the first cloud OS for mobile.

4. Mobile banking will become a “must-have” when opening a new account

Banks in developed countries will harness the power of the app and the smartphone to provide their customers with a much improved and personalized service experience. The sign-up process will be a simple box to tick in account opening processes from banks that are keen to make life easier for customers by proving the ability to manage their money on the move in what might otherwise be dead time.

5. Mobile devices begin to replace credit cards

In some countries at least, using your phone as a credit card for lower value purchases will in 2011 become a reality. Google recently announced that NFC (Near Field Communication) technology will be supported in the next release of Android – 2.3 or “Gingerbread”; a natural step, given it already offers several mobile commerce apps and services including shopping, coupons and products search. Also, Nokia’s C7 handset has an NFC chip included, which will be activated in 2011, and rumors of Apple’s next iPhone including NFC refuse to die down. A word of caution: it won’t all happen at once. Stores need to deploy contactless readers, and more problematically, it is dependent on user preference. However, as with Bluetooth and cameras, we will see NFC in new devices whether we want it or not.

6. Mobile handsets become even more sensitive

Locational and sensory features on smartphones - such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and GPS - have been key drivers in application development. Handset manufacturers will be keen to add more “killer” features to their devices to give them that edge. With the aforementioned features becoming standard, vendors are already looking to incorporate others, such as, proximity, temperature, biometrics, 3D displays, and projectors, into their handsets.

7. Mobile lottery tickets sales to soar

With lottery sales from traditional distribution channels in decline in many developed markets – notably the US – national/state lottery organizers are anxious to explore new means of distribution. Juniper Research believes 2011 is the year when mobile lotteries will hit the mainstream. As consumers across all age ranges become more comfortable with browsing for content and making purchases via the mobile handset, this major hurdle to mobile lotteries will begin to disappear. We expect a raft of mobile lottery launches across the US and Europe, while VODone’s existing service in China (which already has more than 10 million registered users) is likely to experience further significant growth.

8. Mobile-specific threats lead to demand for mobile-specific security

With the growing number of open WiFi networks, and antivirus vendor Kaspersky reporting the first virus designed to disrupt Google’s Android operating system, the risks for smartphone users will increase in 2011. Antivirus and firewalls have been a “must-have” for PC users for some time, and with mobile handset featuring a wider array of connectivity options – and less secure ones – the lure for vigilantes and criminals is even greater. In light of this, anti-virus software vendors such as Kaspersky and McAfee are likely to make a concerted effort to sell into the mobile space in 2011.

9. Buyouts take social purchasing to a new level

Google is heavily rumored to be keen on purchasing Groupon, a company which sends users offers on products and services. But rather than providing a coupon, it manages the transaction, taking a share of the proceeds. We expect a Google acquisition to have similar impact on this model as we saw in mobile advertising, when it purchased AdMob.

10. More vendors develop a GreenHeart

Sony Ericsson’s GreenHeart mantra lead to the Sony Ericsson Elm, a handset made from recycled plastics and free of hazardous chemicals, and comes with a low power consumption charger, reduced packaging, some eco-aware apps and an e-manual on the phone instead of a printed guide. Given this move, we expect other vendors to go down a similar route, in order to appeal to the increasingly-environmentally conscious consumer. (Source: Juniper Research)

Lesson from Wikileaks: Cyberspace is Lawless

2010-12-21T05:14:00.001+07:00

The most telling release from the State Department this week was not a leaked cable but its “World Press Freedom Day” announcement.

Just as the rest of the US government was hounding companies not to do business with WikiLeaks, the department hailed the ability of new media to empower citizens in “environments sometimes hostile” to freedom of expression.

“At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information,” it went on to say.

You gotta love that.

But as well as the unembarrassed hypocrisy, it reminds us that internet freedom is severely vulnerable to attacks by governments, and not just the usual culprits such as China and Iran.

A month ago the flap about China “hijacking” web traffic pointed to the fragility of the BGP routing infrastructure which underpins IP traffic management.

The WikiLeaks saga shows how the DNS system is a chokepoint and thus also vulnerable.

The DDoS attacks on WikiLeaks forced its registrar, EveryDNS, to cancel its domain registration in order to protect its other 500,000 customers.

Then the retaliatory attacks this week by hacktivists on Visa and Mastercard further demonstrated the power of DDoS to take websites off the air.

WikiLeaks is online thanks to hundreds of mirror sites, but that’s not an option for other websites that come under attack.

The lesson from WikiLeaks is that cyberspace is a lawless zone where the weak are prey to the strong.

What we need is a cyberspace police force to protect the rights of legitimate sites, and an effective judicial forum to settle disputes.

Obviously that would require the cooperation of the world’s powers, and for the US to cede its dominance. Obviously it ain’t going to happen soon. Or ever.

But the US assault on WikiLeaks has exposed giant cracks in web governance. They will only get bigger.

Enterprise Mobility: Apple, Google, Sprint Among Winners in Yankee`s 2011 4G Predictions

2010-12-21T02:31:00.004+07:00

Prediction: '4G Will Be a Drop in the Ocean'
By the end of 2011, only 25 percent of North American consumers will understand what 4G means, says Yankee Group. Incumbent operators, such as Vodafone and AT&T, will win out, as they'll "be able to align 4G investments with pragmatic adoption forecasts." Pictured: A new Vodafone ad campaign starring F1 driver Jenson Button, indie rock darling Florence Welch and supermodel Lilly Cole.

Prediction: 'A Denial-of-Service Attack Will Take Down a 4G Network'
Speeding to deployment, some security corners may be cut that will cost operators in the long-term. AT&T's struggle, says Yankee, is "particularly poignant," as it works to rollout 4G while supporting its iPhone customers on 3G.
Prediction: 'Chinese Vendors Will Beat 3G Incumbents'
Tier 1 players shouldn't dismiss Chinese vendors as offering inferior solutions, says Yankee. The competition they pose over the next five years will be considerable. Pictured is China-based Huawei's testing center.
Prediction: '4G Users Will Spend Twice as Much Time on the Mobile Web as Their Non-4G Counterparts'
By the end of 2011, 4G users are expected to spend more than 36 minutes a day browsing the mobile Web. The new Microsoft ad campaign for its Windows Phone 7 phones, features the tag line: "It's time for a phone to save us from our phones." Pictured: the WP7-running Dell Venue Pro.
Prediction: 'Mobile Video Will Not Drive Consumers to 4G'
Mobile video is constrained not just by bandwidth but how much attention users can spend on video. Instead, mobile apps and Web browsing will for now lead 4G use.
Prediction: 'The Web Will Not Save Operators in the Mobile Apps Market'
Unfortunately for operators, says Yankee, "Apple and Google own the most popular mobile Web browsers and are well-positioned to optimize these for app discovery and search." Pictured is Apple's new store in Shanghai, China. (Image courtesy of Apple.)
Prediction: 'MVNO Hype Will Build, but Most of It Will Lead to Nothing'
In theory, the 4G MVNO business should be a successful one, says Yankee, "but it won't be." To succeed, the MVNO can't compete with its host in any meaningful way. The Kyocera Loft, pictured, is offered by the MVNO Virgin Mobile.
Prediction: 'Pricing Will End in Tiers'
Goodbye, flat rates. In 2011, 4G mobile data plans are expected to be tiered. Where the business model supports it, however—as with the Amazon Kindle—connectivity will come as a built-in standard.
Prediction: 'Carrier VOIP Will Still Be AWOL, Despite 4G'
Most operators are still planning their 4G networks and won't support VOIP on 4G in the short-term. Only T-Mobile and other operators using HSPA+ offer voice support on their "4G" networks. The new T-Mobile myTouch 4G is pictured.
Prediction: 'Google Will Take the Wheel in Mobile Data'
More bandwidth means more data traffic, says Yankee, and "Google is the most successful company at monetizing that traffic." Pictured is Google's Dublin office.

Google upgraded the Google Voice application it wrote for the iPhone to enable phone-management capabilities on Apple's iPad and iPod touch.

2010-12-21T01:58:00.001+07:00

Google Dec. 14 said it augmented its Google Voice phone-management application for the iPhone to run on Apple's iPad and iPod touch.

U.S. users may download the new version of Google Voice to send and receive free text messages and enjoy voice mail transcription, listen to live messages left on voice mail and other communications perks.

Users cannot make calls with the Google Voice application from the iPad and iPod touch, which lack calling capabilities. However, users may still manage their Google Voice inbox and enjoy the Click2Call feature.

This feature will trigger Google Voice calls from the iPad and iPod touch devices to mobile, home and work phones users have set up to work with Google Voice. Google Voice will call the line that users select and connect the call.

Google finally saw its native application for Apple's iPhone approved for Apple's App Store in November, putting an end to a 16-month rift between two companies competing in the mobile phone market.

Apple had blocked Google's original Google Voice application submission from its App Store because it competed with its iPhone features.

To mitigate the lack of Google Voice support on the iPhone, Google launched a Web version of Google Voice for iPhone based on HTML5 in January. However, the Web application lacked push notifications to alert users to new voice mail or text messages.

The new native version of Google Voice for the iPhone, which Apple blessed after easing its developer terms of service, offers push notifications. These alerts have just been improved.

As of today, when iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users turn push notifications on in the Google Voice application, Google will automatically disable text forwarding so users don't see duplicate notifications.

Users may also send all callers straight to voice mail by turning on the “do not disturb” function in the settings tab.

Users can also place calls from the address book more conveniently by adding a dedicated contacts button to the dialer tab.

The Google Voice application is available to download from Apple's App Store now for the iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch running iOS 3.1 or later. The application requires users to have a valid Google Voice account, available only in the United States.

The introduction of Google Voice for the iPad and iPod touch comes one day after Google launched a native Google Latitude friend-finding application for the iPhone.

Will PT TELKOM buy CamGSM Cambodia's largest mobile Operator?

2010-12-17T04:50:00.004+07:00

PT TELKOM Indonesia will be holding its Special Shareholders' Meeting today, Friday, December 17, 2010. The company will appoint new executives for the next 5-year period, its new Board of Directors and Board of Commissioners. Among its Meeting Agenda, includes the decision to sell its subsidiary division, Telkom Flexi CDMA Semi-fixed Wireless Division, and the acquisition of Cambodia's largest GSM Operator, the CamGSM for a value about US$500 million. The following is the latest news from telecomasia.net :

Jakarta. Telekomunikasi Indonesia, Indonesia’s biggest telecommunications company, said on Wednesday that it was in talks to acquire a majority stake in Cambodia’s largest mobile operator CamGSM in a deal that could be worth over $500 million.

The planned acquisition, which values CamGSM at about $1 billion according to a source with knowledge of the deal, would be Telkom’s first major acquisition overseas after a failed bid to acquire Iran Telecommunication Company last year.

“I hope that the process of acquisition will be completed by the first quarter next year,” said Tanri Abeng, Telkom’s chief commissioner.

“We’ve made it through the bidding process and we’re now in talks to get financial details done, but we are surely going to take a majority stake,” Abeng said, declining to give any financial details.

CamGSM, established in 1996 between Millicom Group and Cambodia’s Royal Group, is the largest mobile operator in Cambodia through its Mobitel and Cellcard brands.

Mobitel’s CEO David Spriggs declined to comment on the deal.

Millicom sold its 58.4 percent stake in the firm last year to Royal Group for $346 million in cash.

Telkom’s plan to acquire a majority stake in CamGSM is part of the company’s strategy this year to find acquisition opportunities in the region as the once-buoyant Indonesian market is starting to mature

ID-WIBB launched Indonesian Broadband Roaming Facilities

2010-11-25T05:19:00.002+07:00

November 23, 2010 – To encourage WiMAX™ growth in Indonesia, ID-WiBB, an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to promote national vision through the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products in Indonesia, announced today the launch of an Indonesian broadband roaming facility to serve the many wireless broadband service providers throughout the region.

This will enable roaming between WiMAX and Wi-Fi and possibly future LTE operators, creating a unified 4G wireless network across the nation.

“Our goal is to encourage further wireless broadband adoption and growth of the broadband ecosystem by establishing an automatic networked ID authorization that will allow anyone – regardless of their service provider – to tap in to the benefits of wireless broadband from anywhere, at anytime,” said Kanaka Hidayat, ID-WiBB. “Today’s announcement takes us one step closer to uniting the Indonesian market under one wireless broadband umbrella.”

To date, three operators awarded WiMAX derived Wireless Broadband licenses in Indonesia have signed up to become roaming partners.

Aptilo Networks, the global leader in integrated solutions for control of billing, user services and access in wireless networks including Wi-Fi, WiMAX and LTE, has been selected by ID-WIBB to enable this multi-access roaming. The award-winning Aptilo Service Management Platform™, which will serve as a AAA proxy for the authentication, authorization and accounting of roaming users between the different WiMAX and Wi-Fi service providers. The Aptilo solution will keep track of roaming subscribers’ consumption of resources (time and/or data) in any visiting network and provide the required statistics to allow ID-WiBB to serve as a neutral accounting party. The addition of LTE support to the Aptilo platform in 2011 will expand opportunities for ID-WiBB for future revenue streams.

“Aptilo is dedicated to full compliance with wireless standards, and is unparalleled in our commitment to interoperability testing with vendors in the wireless broadband arena including WiMAX,” said Jan Sjonell, Managing Director Asia/Middle East, Aptilo Networks. “We are proud to have been selected for this important project. We look forward to working hand-in-hand with ID-WiBB in encouraging growth of the wireless broadband ecosystem in Indonesia.”

ITU Ratified LTE-Advanced as IMT-Advanced

2010-11-24T05:32:00.001+07:00

4G Americas Applauds 3GPP and ITU

November 23 2010

BELLEVUE, Wash. –

4G Americas, a wireless industry trade association representing the 3GPP family of technologies, today applauds the final ratification of LTE-Advanced as an IMT-Advanced technology by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

In its October meeting, ITU’s Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) Working Party 5D, which is responsible for defining the IMT-Advanced global 4G technologies, completed the assessment of six candidate submissions and reached a milestone by deciding on LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced for the first release of IMT-Advanced. Final ratification of the full IMT-Advanced technology family took place at the ITU-R Study Group meeting on November 22 and 23 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The future is bright for LTE, with nine official commercial launches already in 2010, and an additional 11 expected before the end of the year. More than 250 companies have publicly expressed interest in deploying LTE networks, including Greenfield, CDMA, WiMAX and GSM operators. LTE is expected to be the leading choice for next-generation OFDMA networks over the next decade for all wireless carriers.

As the future evolution of LTE, LTE-Advanced will be poised as a pre-eminent ITU-sanctioned 4G mobile broadband solution for information, communications and entertainment. By offering a full suite of integrated 3G (IMT-2000) and 4G (IMT-Advanced) ecosystems, the 3GPP technology family supports the evolving and expanding mobile broadband needs of the expansive international base of mobile operators and their customers. IMT-Advanced provides a global platform on which to build the next generations of interactive mobile services that will provide faster data access, enhanced roaming capabilities, unified messaging and broadband multimedia.

“This day is a milestone to remember for mobile broadband connectivity,” said Chris Pearson, President of 4G Americas. “4G Americas is excited about this new era of wireless communications and extremely pleased that 3GPP Release 10 and beyond – LTE-Advanced – mobile broadband technology has been approved by the ITU. The future for mobile broadband technologies has never been brighter to help progress societies in the Americas and throughout the world.”

LTE-Advanced technology will now move into the final stage of the IMT-Advanced process, which provides for the development in early 2012 of an ITU-R Recommendation specifying the in-depth technical standards for these radio technologies.

Pearson added, “Congratulations to ITU, 4G Americas’ member companies and 3GPP for their great work efforts in making this moment a reality.”

4G Americas is a Market Representation Partner of 3GPP.

For more information on LTE-Advanced, download the Rysavy Research white paper, Transition to 4G: 3GPP Broadband Evolution to IMT-Advanced.

###

About 4G Americas: Unifying the Americas through Mobile Broadband Technology
4G Americas is an industry trade organization composed of leading telecommunications service providers and manufacturers. The organization's mission is to promote, facilitate and advocate for the deployment and adoption of the 3GPP family of technologies throughout the Americas. 4G Americas contributes to the successful commercial rollout of 3GPP mobile broadband technologies across the Americas and their place as the No. 1 technology family in the region. The organization aims to develop the expansive wireless ecosystem of networks, devices, and applications enabled by GSM and its evolution to LTE. 4G Americas is headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., with an office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Dallas. More information is available at www.4gamericas.org.

4G Americas' Board of Governors members include: Alcatel-Lucent, América Móvil, Andrew Solutions, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, Ericsson, Gemalto, HP, Huawei, Motorola, Nokia Siemens Networks, Openwave, Powerwave, Qualcomm, Research In Motion (RIM), Rogers, Shaw Communications, T-Mobile USA and Telefónica.

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