IPTV wars and WiBro truce ?

The Korean telecom regulator awarded IPTV licenses to KT (mega TV), Hanarotelecom (HanaTV), and LG Dacom (myLGTV). Trials start next week, and negociations with broadcasters are still raging.

Up to now*, the trio mostly competed on VOD exclusivities (price for myLGTV), but after an intensive summer of lobbying, they expect to propose real-time TV from major broadcasters from October on.

Korean authorities are also considering Voice over WiBro, the very day KT announced a MOU with a Japanese player.

But UQ Communications Inc is not likely to roll out WiBro : it is supposed to launch a WiMAX service next year, and recently inaugurated its first WiMAX trial base station. Besides, Intel owns part of its shares (other investors : KDDI Corporation, Kyocera, East Japan Railways, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, the Bank of Tokyo, and Daiwa Securities Group).

The MOU is about finding roaming solutions at the hardware and middleware level, so that WiBro users (mainly pro users) can somehow use the same device when they travel to Japan.

Korean players making the first move, and the regulator giving a push to the techno... combined the same day, these two pieces of news don't sound that positive for WiBro


* see "IPTV in Korea" (20080508)

MVNO frenzy and extreme hangovers

Sprint welcomes another MVNO, and the utterly bankable KDDI Mobile brand has a crystal clear ambition : selling more Kyoceras in the US.
Meanwhile and closer to Japan, Google Phones are being made in Taiwan by HTC and cobranded by the MNO. The utterly bankable Google brand is definitely not meant to become a MVNO. Yet.
The so nineties Blyk concept is gathering an impressive pool of advertisers for its pan-European launch on Orange networks.
The so eighties Sonopia's DIY MVNO / MVNE concept is gathering an impressive media coverage. Get cool calling cards with your company's logo, grow as big as AT&T in less than two weeks... ego will sell this summer.
But the so Y2Ks WiFi - 3G PC Card concept doesn't sell : Helio Hybrid ends a partnership with Boingo going airbuso...
The MVNO primaries are definitely not over, but Amp'd clearly feels a Joementum - I don't have New Hampshire's figures (nor Canada's, for that matter), but this natural born winner is approaching the 200,000 subs mark (100,000 EOY 2006), with a 84% postpaid customer base (just slightly down from 89%), and ARPU remains strong at $100. Do you want the sign that says "purchase me right now" or the one that reads "wanted : Vegas wedding chapel" ?
Someone must clean this crowded place one way or the other, even the most extreme. Fortunately, ExtremeMob (extrememob.com) is not the mafia's MVNO but the result of a deal between Xebra Limited and Vodafone UK. This fall, Extreme Mobile Limited will target the X generation with all the Weapons of Mass Disruption of the Extreme Media Group (extrememediagroup.com) : Extreme Sports Channel, Ex Publishing, Extreme Entertainment (content), Ex Events, Extreme Retail and even Extreme Hotels, Extreme Parks, or Extronics. "ExtremeMob is more than just about extreme sports, it’s about being an integral part of the lifestyle of under 24’s". The handset shown in the press release goes with an extreme headset, and the said "under 24's" may go with an extreme hangover thanks to Xebra's Extreme Drinks.
ExtremeMob can claim the Pole position : Xebra was recently purchased by Centernet / NFI Midas.

J:COM's quadruple play - within the fence

"J:COM Mobile powered by WILLCOM" will start on March the 1st, 2006. J:COM customers will naturally get a discount fee, and the second line will cost them 2,000 yens instead of 2,500. "WILLCOM Flat-Rate" and "Toku-Toku Talk" plans are also meant to boost multiple subscriptions and intra-customer base traffic. Handsets are of course provided by Kyocera, a major Willcom shareholder.
J:COM aim for a "grand slam" on a relatively medium sized ball park ; a little more than 2M subs overall end of 2005 (3.5M for Willcom) : TV 1.8M (of which 650k digital), internet 911k, telephony 970k. Their homes-passed potential stands at 7.89M.
DoCoMo & co are not facing a power hitter either : J:COM Mobile are a 2G PHS M-VNO. A few hundreds of thousands of subs and a local flavor could mean a sustainable business model. For J:COM, that is : in the long run, WILLCOM must find a way out of 2G... or rather into 3G.
Japan's new 3Greenfield operators should be open to partnerships with wireless players bringing a few million customers along. After being awarded their licenses, IPmobile have remained relatively silent while the other two didn't seem to waste their time.
Significantly, Fidelity Investments Japan Limited just took 11.41% of eAccess last January. A few weeks earlier, eMobile would welcome aboard another financial partner : Goldman Sachs Group. But other players joined too, including Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., Ltd, a specialist in entertainment contents. eMobile keep the same TTM target : data services by the end of next fiscal year and voice services one year later.
BB Mobile Corp (Softbank) announced a nationwide mobile broadcasting service by 2012. That will be 5 years after 3G launch but content has already been locked : Softbank's Yahoo! BB are massively doping their movies, music and games portals for IPTV and other screens.
And yes, both BB & e keep talking about WIMAX... Obviously, a xDSL-3G TDD combo is not enough.
But still, there's no shame in drafting minor league cable-PHS customers for pre-season training.

See also : "3Greenfield Japan" (20051113)
J-Com : http://www.jcom.co.jp
eMobile : http://www.emobile.jp

Livedoor to incumbents : you've got mail

What's up in Japan ?
Nothing spectacular as far as incumbents are concerned. As their 3G lead is shrinking, KDDI seek new growth engines through CDMA-GSM roaming ; NTT DoCoMo try to think positive despite gloomy news (i-mode struggling even in Australia) ; and after posting a first non disastrous month in a long time (+5,000 subs in June), Vodafone KK seem eager to play a role in the VNO frenzy to come in Japan.
More exciting : three new 3G licences are to be awarded by the end of this year ; two in the 1.7 GHz band (FDD) and one in the 2.0 GHz band (TDD). The first two should land in the hands of Softbank and e-Access, while IP Mobile Inc are betting on VoIP & TD-CDMA. They have the techno thanks to their partner IPWireless but their hunt for new investors seems sterile and they lack the marketing know-how. Another TDD competitor, Willcom Inc, proves to have both the technological know-how (Kyocera is a shareholder with 30%) and the deep pockets (the highly controversial Carlyle Group is on board too with 60%). KDDI Corporation hold the last 10% : can the regulator allow this cdma2000 player in the W-CDMA arena ?
There's clearly a window of opportunity for a new player with money, ambitions, and the potential to fill the pipes. With or against the other competitors.
Unsurprisingly enough, Livedoor Co. Ltd recently expressed their plans to apply for a 2.0 GHz licence. They seem to have all it takes, even if their President & CEO, Takafumi Horie, scares the hell out of the Japan Inc establishment since he tried to take over Nippon Broadcasting System (Livedoor are suing Fuji TV for a potential illegal poison pill).
So the company previously listed as Livin' On The EDGE and then EDGE eventualy decided to bid for 3G. If not as famous as Softbank, Livedoor managed to build a fairly impressive interactive / marketing empire in Japan and across the globe. Should they make it in Japan, they could very well make it elsewhere, starting with China or the Americas. Among their jewels :

• Livedoor.com : the third portal in Japan and #40 in the World. One should notice a strategic partnership with SKYPE...
• Livedoor Mobile : founded in 2004 in order to boost the creation of mobile sites, this wireless side of the portal should become the base of the future mobile operator.
• MyRice.com : formerly Lycos China and now a leading convergent portal - in the World's top 100 thanks to 5M daily visitors and 35M daily hits. Livedoor can also leverage on their Dalian unit, China Livedoor Software Development. They even have a subsidiary in Thailand (EDGE Siam).
• interactive marketing is clearly a major asset, going glocal through subsidiaries and partnerships with ethnic marketing specialists. mailcreations.com (a subsidiary of Livedoor Inc, their US branch) claim over 200M opt-in e-mails worldwide : 85M in the US (2,5M hispanics), 22M in LatAm, 16M in Europe and 33M in Asia thanks to such initiatives as melma!, a portal devoted to e-mail news : melma! Spain was created after the original Japanese melma!. by Livedoor Interactive / Cyberclick Agent, the Spanish unit located in Barcelona (also a specialist in WAP & i-mode sites). Livedoor also owns EX Marketing and ValueClick Japan.

Among Livedoor's other assets : SeekOver (a US search engine), Cázalo.com (a Spanish search engine based on the ODP), Innovation Lab (the Group's R&D arm), EDGE Telecom, Joboon (formerly Livedoor Career), Turbolinux (Penguin Inside ?), Livedoor Factoring...

Also to be noticed :

• Livedoor Finance : this is Japan, and any player can turn out to be a potential banker.
• Contents : if they failed in taking over NBS, Livedoor are clearly focusing on contents everywhere. In Europe, their Berlin unit (Livedoor Europe) licenses local software mobile contents. In the US, they clinched a licensing deal with WAU Móvil, a mobile content provider working with 20 operators across Latin America ; Livedoor's True Tones will cover 8 countries for a start. Livedoor also holds AlienQuest.com (a game portal), and an intriguing Broadband Pictures Inc... Consistant, but Livedoor arrived late after the Japanese mobile content wars and remains a dwarf in contents. Their strength seems to lie more in their swiftness or their ability to deliver. Well, that's something.

Up to now, Softbank has been quite a disapointment in the wireless arena, but they're much stronger now. Can Livedoor take the helm ? Can both succeed at the same time ? Can a non-Japanese player make a surprise 3G late check-in ? How will 2G incumbents deal with Mobile Number Portability next year and new competitors soon after ? To be continued.

Flux your muscles, watch your wallet - music for a song ?

Viacom's MTV selected Japan and KDDI for their first subscription based music video service over 3G (Vids over 3G EVDO, then). I don't care if it raps, rocks or rolls but this rather sounds like classical music to my ears.
The other side of the East / West Sea, Korea's Daum are about to offer music for free to all their customers. Well, you can LISTEN to up to 3 songs a day within Musiccity's 400,000 song library, but the service usually costs W3,000 per month. All you have to do is being one of Daum's 35+ million subs. Obviously, the former leading portal seems allergic to MelOn, a key factor of success of SKT's Nate nowadays, along with Cyworld, the leader in homepages, a serious competitor to the Bank of Korea thanks to their quasi-currency loyalty program, and one of Musiccity's big customers. Because Musiccity is into "background music" and this kind of music seems likely to be heard far beyond its original mobile devices (elevators) : even if you can't podcast it, you can have people hear it wherever you post things (personal pages, blogs, e-mail ?). You don't even have to buy the latest 2.5 Gb-mp3-7-megapixel-4WD-phone to enjoy it*.
And what do the music majors think of this ? The Korea Music Copyright Association just gave their blessing, considering Daum already pays W125 / month / user.
Well. Once again, Korea's leading major is now a 60% SKT subsidiary.
A smarter combo ? Amp'd offers more than background music : back-uped content. I like the "safe haven" approach (for each download on your mobile phone - including mobisodes shot at Amp'd's brand new studios or your own content-, the US 3G EVDO MVNO will provide a simultaneous remote download), but I wonder if Amp'd can deliver before the big league players tune in, especially when they also envision ambitious multiplayer experiences with InfoSpace. Anyway : more hype announcements for Motorola and Kyocera, the suppliers supposed to release nice new handsets for Amp'd this fall. Remember lads : the word "fall" is zweideutig, and Moto have also been supposed to deliver ipod phones soon for a while... Verizon could hold the best spot for a takeover, being Amp'd's host through Verizon Wireless, but also a major US LLO.
Whatever the outcome, at the age of many-stop-storing and collaborative purchasing, at the age of Snocap and Mercora, you need a considerable reach by yourself and through your partners, but also more and more through not so loyal endusers.

Stephane

* You'd better invest on iRiver's latest player for your kid (ReingCom are now targeting the babies - I guess they'd better diversify beyond portable multimedia players). Anyway, any device will be more fun than Movida's : even in Puerto Rico you can't make people believe a Nokia 2270 will mobile-ize their life ("Moviliza tu vida" / "Get moving with Movida"). Talking about a revolution and an innovation... heard about Virgin Mobile's "disruptive" new service with BT Livetime ? TV over radio and an exciting EPG (Electronic Program Guide). That's DAB and SMS alerts... Radio Definitely Killed The Video Stars.