In Memoriam Minitel

Tomorrow, they pull the plug. At long last, Minitel will finally be put out of its misery.

This box materialized France's Videotex service Teletel, arguably the world's most successful predecessor to the web. Imagine, in the early 80s, elder citizen in rural areas connecting every day to consult their bank accounts, to purchase train tickets, or to chat in (sometimes naughty) fora. Imagine, in the early 80s, a thriving online ecosystem full of editors, developers, service providers, online advertising agencies... The loser was the enduser, of course, who was charged heavily for every minute online. But down the road, the pedagogy of the market was done (complete with the strident sounds of dial-up connections).

Minitel turned out to be both a blessing and a curse for France. In the early 90s, the Minitel lobby managed to prevent the French government from investing in the internet because the business model was highly profitable for the operator (then the PTT monopoly, now France Telecom), as well as for the biggest service providers (fellow public owned companies like SNCF, the banks...). But internet laggard France would catch up once its ecosystem migrated to the web, rich of a long experience in online services. Heck. Even a short one did the trick for me: working for France's leader in online gaming back in 1993-94 bulletproofed me for the madness that followed. And because I experienced the last throes of the Minitel, I could tell why such media darlings as AOL or NTT DoCoMo's i-mode would eventually fail (the latter even benchmarked the Minitel's business model and proprietary system).

We frogs loved to hate this French-Franc-guzzling old timer, with its screen and keyboard stuck in the 80s, stubbornly squatting next to our cool new DECT phones.

Now we'll long for the quaint touch of Minitel's rectangular keys each time we visit the museum of ancient communications.


mot-bile 2012

TeliaSonera 4G LTE, with a little elf from my friends

mot-bile 2009 - TeliaSonera launched commercially 4G LTE in Stockholm (Ericsson network) and Oslo (Huawei network) with a Samsung 4G USB key. Roll out will continue over 2010 : the 4 biggest cities in Norway, the top 25 cities and vacation areas in Sweden.

Of course, handsets are not ready yet, and the MNO makes good use of this technical and PR stunt to draw new partners : "Evaluation of suppliers for TeliaSonera's common 4G core network and radio networks in the Nordic and Baltic countries is in progress and vendors will be selected in the beginning of 2010*"... Too late to save the face of a well known Finnish vendor called Nokia. Sonera comes from Finland and TeliaSonera was awarded a license there last month, but the group is based in Sweden and proceeded with the Chinese champion along with Ericsson.

Of course, TeliaSonera is likely to select buyers as well as vendors. And the likes of France Telecom could also feel the 4G acceleration.

This operation has been smoothly run for months, without overhyping. TeliaSonera even launched ahead of schedule. No big deal. A non-event, almost.

Far from the complex launch of 3G by NTT DoCoMo but then again, technical, commercial, and political challenges were completely different.

And back then, NTT DoCoMo was claiming the world and calling smaller fishes to join his big pond. Here, TeliaSonera is clearly calling a bigger fish : hey Santa, please hire me in your workshop ! look, been a good elf, uh ? I showed you the goods, now show me the money.


* "TeliaSonera first in the world with 4G services" (20091212)

France files TMP

France's national broadcasting authority, the CSA, selected the happy not so few DVB-H winners : 16 channels for 13 spots and 11 players, including 1 total newcomer in the broadcasting / mobile field : Luc Besson's EuropaCorp TV. TMP (Television Mobile Personnelle) echoes TNT (Television Numerique Terrestre), the free DVB-T package, and a 30% coverage is expected by EOY 2011 (TNT reaches 95% then). TMP packages should range between 3 and 6 euros, not including premium channels.

New slots will be awarded next year. Not necessarily from the pack of losers.

And the winners are :

France Televisions (3 channels to be determined later by the CSA)
TF1 Group (Eurosport - a pay TV - and TF1).
Canal Plus Group (Canal + - the premium channel - and i tele)
M6 Group (M6 and W9)
France Telecom (Orange Sport TV may join the pack of pay channels after clinching part of French Ligue 1 soccer rights – anyway, FT confirms its big league status)
Next Radio TV (BFM TV)
Groupe Bollore Medias (Direct 8 Mobile)
NRJ Group (NRJ 12)
AB Groupe (NT1). TMC channel (a JV with TF1) didn't make it.
Lagardere Active (Virgin 17)
EuropaCorp TV (EuropaCorp)

In predictable moves :
- the CSA denied a spot to TF1's LCI news pay TV (unlike free competitors i tele and BFM TV) but did the same for Canal Plus' s Infosport (vs Eurosport)
- Groupe AB saved only its top channel, already on TNT. NT 1 Remix and TMC (a JV with TF1) didn't make it. Ditto for Nextradio (RMC Sport and Business 24/7 failed) and FT / Orange (no to O'TV).
- Lagardere Active secured only the Virgin / music brand for the first round (Elle TMP, Canal TMP, Gulli, MTP 1, MCM Top also failed)

16 + 12 = 28. 7 more projects were refused :
- MCS / Ma Chaine Sport (Numericable)
- E3TV (L'Equipe + Les Echos + Equidia)
- Life BAC (Lifebac)
- Tele Melody (Cofites)
- TVSF (Association TVSF)
- Aprod TV (Adamique Production)
- One TV Plus (Mobibase)

FT, Telia, Sonera - back to the nineties

Didier Lombard clearly prefers dealing with former CNET coopetitors rather than coping with entertainers or content providers, especially after the departure of Quillot for Lagardere Group.

The Telia-Sonera opportunity looks much prettier than Alitalia for Air France - KLM. Of course, Scandinavia is no more leading innovation in mobile as it did in the early nineties. And Nokia's favorite lab Sonera didn't survive the change of scale of the industry. And overall this deal doesn't look like a major disruption for FT which recently claimed such emerging markets as Africa were priorities.

Telia-Sonera will strengthten FT in Northern Europe and open new East Block opportunities. It's also an interesting entry point for Scandinavian silicon valleys, but FT already owns centers in the region, local start-ups don't need local MNOs to go international, and the Orange brand doesn't necessarily need Orange as a MNO. The fact is competition is much tougher in the Asia Pacific region where FT also owns R&D centers but no networks.

This deal would only make FT an even more powerful European and "tech / IT" player, retarding the overall evolution of its business model, whilst Orange World needs contents. Orange did invest a lot in digital rights and multiaccess contents in France, but the strategy demands a lot of money, especially when you intend to have a global reach.

Canal+ can made fun of this new "mini TPS" (deals with Warner and the French Soccer Federation), Orange is a small national competitor on its core business, but the Canal+ part of Orange is only a side dish for that major multiaccess multiservice provider.

Vivendi is feeling the heat and starting to leverage on Streamezzo, its JV with Vodafone : neuf cegetel (now back to SFR, another Streamezzo platform user) just launched everyworld.fr. As the name tells us, it is suppose to bring you a less monochromous world Orange World. There, you can hand pick your apps and follow them on any device. Which reminds me of BLOKKS and BRIKKS. A nice looking system where a friendly UI... but back then there was no broadband access on one end and no content on the other. Framfab Labs did that and guess what ? They were from Sweden... and the late nineties (definitely pre-9/11).

Next thing you know, Orange will get the exclusivity for Bjorn Borg's games.

M6 Mobile and Orange celebrate

2 years after launch and one year ahead of schedule, M6 Mobile by Orange hits the 1M mark (767,000 subs EOY 2006) and claims a new target of 1.5M EOY 2008. France's most succesful MVNO is not a MVNO but a JV wrapped around a licensing agreement targeting the younger generation (15-25).

France Telecom's Lombard and M6's Tavernost confess today to Le Figaro they have other plans in mind, but not in the soccer rights field. Yet. More good news for Canal+, under pressure by France's Pro League : the LFP wants to maintain its contract at a high price in spite of the recent merger of TPS with Canal Sat, but was recently deterred (by a court ruling) from switching from a 3 to a 5 year contract in order to attract more bidders. M6 recently snatched rights for not so minor events, including part of FIFA World Cup.

M6 just developped new threads to an already impressive web (M6 Web manages over 50 sites including M6.fr, the country's second audiovisual website in audience after TF1), both in the small ads field :

• atonservice.fr : students jobs focused on services to individuals, likely to feed M6 Mobile's core target, already under the spell of the M6 Group for music.
• a 34% participation in PagesJaunes Petites Annonces (a PagesJaunes Group subsidiary), bound to boost another of their major verticals : cars and motors.

The fun doesn't come from Orangeworld but from a partner more fit for the job and that's OK for FT : keeping youngsters is a tough job and the Orange brand is there, ready to help them switch to more serious applications when the time comes.

UNOMobile, COOP and TIM : mobile sells in Italia

"Parlare di più, pagare di meno". Talk more, pay less ; that will be UNOMobile's moto. Is this Carrefour unit a full MVNO or only an ESP (Enhanced Service Provider) ? Anyway, another retailer is launching a MVNO in Italy : COOP will propose CoopVoce to its 6.5M members and their families (18M people overall), aiming for 1M subs in 3 years with a EUR 200 M turnover. CoopVoce will be hosted by TIM.

"Talk no more, unless I pay less". That could be the reason why AT&T declined the same TIM (through the Olympia-Pirelli-Telecom Italia cascade). But American Moviles and France Telecom (now with Morgan Stanley) remain in a shopping mood. For them, it could be "Parlare di più, pagare di piu".

"Parlare di più" ? Vodafone seems to perfectly understand the Italian MVNO dialect : Vodafone Italia will host both UNOMobile and Poste Italiane, and it is even using the same language to talk to fellow brits (BT aims at 10% of the biz market with its convergence offer, but needs a godfather to enter it).

* branded 1Mobile - with the same 1 as the group's trademark logo for its first price products (see unomobile.it - still at the "coming soon" stage).

MSN, Mobile Centric, Mobisud

In the latest Orange - Microsoft deal, France Telecom's DNA prevailed over Hans Snook's. France Telecom the incumbent and former monopoly, not France Telecom, the brilliant innovator and solutions provider, father of the CNET (now France Telecom R&D).
Competitors can worry now that two major predators team up in the convergence arena. They're meaning business, market share and furthermore, share of client.
Bouygues Telecom remains a Microsoft partner, but with a less exciting revenue sharing deal and a smaller pie to share. And don't count on i-mode for a long lasting differenciation. Convergence ? Sorry lads, rival SFR keeps an eye on your pal Neuf cegetel (as a strong minority shareholder and a friendly M-VNO host for Neuf Mobile) while building an ADSL offer on the ashes of Tele2 France.
"Mobile Centric" SFR also promotes its own SFR Messenger and a teletubby-sounding Happy Zone. Cute, but will this stop pervasive MSN and ubiquitous unik ?
In a cross continental move, Vivendi is building a telecommunity MVNO on SFR's network through another subsidiary, Maroc Telecom. MobiSud* will naturally serve France's strong Moroccan community as a start, but Telefonica should expect quite a few skirmishes accross the Mediterranean ring.

* dot fr or dot com ? Both have recently been locked, the latter by the adco JumpFrance.

Wanadoo wannabe Orange

France Telecom's ugliest brand is dying and not many will be mourning. The future is bright, the future is Orange, the future is convergent and France is eventually experiencing the true launch of the Brand. By a simple change of name, Orange the 3G runner-up MNO will claim the broadband lead and Wanadoo the anti-competitive incumbent will be absolved from his sins.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm still mourning VoiLa, a beautiful brand created by beautiful minds from the Belle Province and FT R&D labs. Now that was a global brand (try launching Orange in catholic Ireland), a brand meant to offer something to the multitude, not to press the juice from millions of customers.

NTT - DoCoMo : remerge, split-up, disrupt ?

You don't want 65% of your group's profits wandering too far away. So NTT want DoCoMo back. But new entrant MNOs strongly disagree. While announcing the selection of Ericsson as eMobile Ltd's main 3G network provider, CEO Sachio Senmoto asked for an AT&T-like split-up of the whole shebang, including DoCoMo because of their 56% market share. NTT is already a patchwork of regional units, but who would dare touch m-Japan Inc's champ ?

eMobile's extreme request was mainly meant to prevent the reconstitution of NTTsama Bell. Even DoCoMo can be a struggling leader... but with the full back-up / backhaul of its mother company, no competitor could ever dream of annoying them.

I'd like to know what DoCoMo's top execs think about a remerger with NTT. The cultural gap with the fixed dragon has been widening for years, the group would be under even more scrutiny, and the "everything mobile / pervasive mobility" vision would badly suffer the contradiction... But shouldn't they somehow be asking themselves how much they need a truly convergent profile to remain at the top ?

Orange are logically adopting France Telecom's integrated vision and even at Vodafone, former Mannesmann - Arcor people keep pushing for a descent in the "fixed" arena (again, the other day, at the CeBIT, a Vodafone DSL revival). If I were DoCoMo, I would at least consider reviewing my 10 year old vision. And why not, seize the opportunity : escape the risk of NTT dragging down the company and demand a formal and final split-up. I want my liberty back, I want to deal with any fixed player I want or why not, build my own.



* More about eMobile : in "J:COM's quadruple play - within the fence" (20060210) and in "3Greenfield Japan" (20051113)

CeBIT unnovations

More than ever, the wireless circus focused on Barcelona rather than Hannover. That was Barcelona's first year and the CeBIT goes far beyond mobility, but still.
Samsung's 10 megapixel picturephone is no more a disruption than Sony Ericsson's 4 GB W950. xandros added UMTS to their Linux laptops but the technology was already a commodity. Microsoft eventually unfolded their Origami* but the UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computer*) looks so much like the PDA all Samsung employees have been carrying everywhere in Korea for a couple of years. At the government's level, UK goes NGN and the EU goes RFID, but that's about time. I don't know how DVB-H is doing up there but France Telecom R&D seem to bet on Far East Asia (especially Korea and China) for mobile TV. What else ? Samsung will deliver DMB handsets in Germany on time for the World Cup, as expected**. With debitel as the entry point ; quite a disappointment. The industry eventually realize genuine VoIP over mobile requires HSUPA and a more mobile world requires more fiber. That was CeBIT CeLEBRATING 20 years of innovation.

Europe may remain the heart of GSM / 3GSM but for the rest, everything is being decided somewhere between Asia and America.


* see "Origami Project - a crush for paper tigers ?" (20060302). Before the take off, MS decided to nest their UMPC in the Windows XP environment : http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc.
** see "Play it again, Samsung ?" (20060216).

Bells ringing - Vivendeals ahead

Baby Bells grew up since Ma Bell died. AT&T Jr and Verizon should snatch BellSouth and Qwest, and three years from now max, they somehow will have built an international stronghold in the wireless area.
Vodafone will sell (Verizon, Vodafone KK), but also buy. As rumors revived, the French government released a report on potential targets from France's CAC40 companies. Among them, Vivendi Universal are enjoying their own headline news : the "Universal" part is dropped, and SFR's lifetime ad agency, Publicis, just snatched the France Telecom - Orange budget. Maurice Levy can split his teams but not his own self. The new budget can definitely mean bigger money, but the risk should be taken only if Levy is sure of getting the whole Orange (especially after a Wanadoo rebranding), and not so sure of keeping the SFR business away from Vodafone adcos.
Vivendi could sell their cash cow but if they want to fight as a European leader in broadcasting an increasing competition, the timing looks perfect.

DoCoMo 4G The Wizard of Hz - Orange Landline Landmines - BT's FRED for free - Swisscom's 5in1 for 99

Bubbles start popping again. Vodafone concede their assets were overevaluated, Florentino Perez concedes the wealthiest club on earth may not the healthiest, and BT concede their disruptive "broadband dialtone" concept won't be free.
Following an interview in "Mail on Sunday", some believed BT would invest big sums in their 21st Century Network (21CN), plus £12M just for VoIP, just to offer broadband to anyone who wants to plug in. Make that "unlimited" instead of "free". Cardiff will go live by the end of the year and the rest of the 21CN (some 30 countries) in 2008, one year ahead of schedule. The aim of the game is for people to meet with FRED (BT's Fantastically Really Easy to use Device concept). Just like in your mid-90s slides, FRED sells convergence, optimized consumer experience, or seamless multidevice environments.
The difference is FRED does sell : BT Movio (to Virgin Mobile), BT Fusion handsets (BT Broadband at home, your MNO on the go - 13,000 units sold to date), BT Equinox (fixed-line SMS), internet radio (PC based and soon an enhanced TV based version with teleshopping, televoting and telewhatevering thanks to a new red button)... FRED will even launch - this spring - the already cult Bluephone (see "Bluephone : a 2,005 pound gorilla or a GNOME ?" 20050316).

Another former PTT keeps talking convergence and furthermore, acting accordingly. Swisscom's HSDPA coverage will reach 20% of the population mid-2006 and about 40% by the end of the year. That's the equivalent of Switzerland's main cities : it will cover more surface on the industry's newspapers than on the local maps but far enough for the operator's new devices to make sense. Less glamour than FRED, but truly "ready to use" : there is a Swisscom Unlimited PC Card 5in1 (GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA and WLAN) with a CHFR 99 / month plan, but also an Unlimited Laptops solution developped with Fujitsu Siemens and Acer (embedded SIM, one touch connection, various plans including a CHFR 5 / hour concept, TTM June 2006).

Orange are a former PTT too, through France Telecom's DNA. As expected, they now claim to be "an integrated communications provider" and intend to become "the total communications provider". Orange Landline for Business means fixed line service for SMEs with one stop shopping and billing, simplified supply chain and service support models, convergent packages and bundles, discounted rates between Orange fixed and Orange mobile number ranges or to 'Business Circle' numbers (top 10 landline contacts), Orange Business customer service with a Landline Performance Promise...
But Orange Landline for Business also means Orange Landmine for Partners : the F/MNO controls the whole chain and intends to lock the customer's entry points as fully as it does in France.

How about the mother of all PTTs ? NTT DoCoMo have been talking 4G even before releasing 3G. We knew from the start they meant business because of their capacity problems : even HSDPA / HSUPA cannot solve them and DoC is bound to lead once more in commercial TTM. From time to time, the Alchemist skillfully displays a few glimpses of his witchcraft : "by increasing the number of MIMO transmission antennas from four to six and by using 64-QAM (NB : Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), data volume per transmission was increased from four bits to six bits. As a result, DoCoMo achieved a maximum speed of 2.5Gbps, which is faster than the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R)'s proposed standard". The Wizard of Hz also pushed frequency spectrum efficiency to 25 bps per Hertz, the limit as defined by WINNER (the EU's Wireless world INitiative NEw Radio). In other words : I've been working on 4G on my own according to the rules and the guidelines of standardization bodies, but I've already beaten their expectations. So you'd better follow me if you want to go further and quicklier.
Technology's always been the MNO's main hobby, but they have some 50 million consumers to please and a few technologies to sell before they get obsolete (i-mode, V-Live, i-motion, FOMA...). So the DoCoMo - Nippon Television Network Corporation JV (each partner injecting 5 bn Yens) will start on April 3 under the D.N. dream partners LLP name. What's in a name... the Master Of DYI finally understanding what kind of partnerships he really needs to succeed ?

Free WIMAX and quadruple play

Iliad remains a great wonder in the ever consolidating telecom world. When the minitel specialist launched its disruptive None Networks in the late 90s, I must confess I didn't think they could last very long. Freesbee (now the triple-and-soon-quadruple player Free) looked like the kind of free ISPs the founders would sell right before the bubble burst.
But they're damn good at what they do and since they're actually free, they don't have to cope with international partners and don't care about standardization* : they can go straight to the point with the solution they need, even if they have to develop it for themselves. The Freebox was the ultimate proof of their ability to deliver the goods - even technically tricky ones - with a very aggressive TTM. From an ADSL2+ basis, they recently reached 174 / 18 Mbit rates with a home made "F-ADSL". "Asynchronous" ? You bet, from a competitor's point of view. And it shows in the "Digital Subscriber Lines" : two thirds of Free's 1.5M ADSL customers (France Telecom's main challenger) can enjoy TV over DSL (Europe's leader). Following the deal with Altitude Telecom, Free enjoys a nationwide Wimax license and announces disruptive quadruple play offers... nothing seems to stop them. Hell, thanks to Michaël Boukobza's well deserved aura, Iliad even survived a nasty scandal involving its founder Xavier Niel.
2006 looks like another make or break year and could turn out to be both the best and the worst year to confront France's big guys : the 3 MNOs have just been heavily fined for anti-competitive behaviors and the broadcasting landscape is being totally reshuffled after the CanalSat - TPS deal.
Guess what ? All could face yet another disruptive new entrant.

Eurasia Inc - Linux with China, DMB and WiBro with Korea

Korean players eventually made a DMB scenario feasible in Europe (despite the preference of SKT and co for their own S-DMB instead of the free T-DMB - which badly irritates the MIC). Now they're also making a case for WiBro : TIM picked Samsung for their 2006 trials during the Torino Winter Olympics.
France Telecom have been courting Korea Inc for a few years and it starts showing. Yet, they're not forgetting the rest of the world, thanks to their impressive R&D network. Much has been said regarding their partnership with China's ZTE about Linux over 3G, but don't forget India...
How about the US ? They're doing fine on their own, thank you : Cingular Wireless launched HSDPA with Sierra Wireless AC860 and Novatel U730 PC cards (unlimited usage for $59.99 / month - data rates : 400-700 K uplink and over 1M downlink - handover guaranteed ???).

Bridging T-DMB & DAB, Hallyuwood & Bollywood, Korea and the UK

April 2006 : digital broadcasting trials will start in the UK with an explosive DAB-Combo bringing together an impressive crowd from Europe's leading media country and the world's leading broadband country :

• From the UK : Orange, BT Livetime, Ariqva, Frontier Silicon, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Virgin Radio, GCap Media, Emap, Celador, and even SMG Television (producers vith a Bollywood flavor)...


• From Korea : the twin towers (Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc.), the ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute), a few start-ups specialized in DMB / video solutions (Perstel Inc.*, Timetek Inc. / WithUSTech, Pixtree Technologies Inc)...

UK logically brings a key MNO (whose interest in DMB seems consistent with France Telecom R&D's vision as exposed last January), but no European manufacturer. I'm not so sure Nokia are enjoying this after the T-DMB trials announced in France (this year) or Germany (next year).

Diplomatically and smartly** enough, T-DMB is presented as an application of the WorldDAB Eureka 147 standard, the DAB designed by UK researchers. So the trial users will receive European "DAB" digital radio and video on their mobile handsets.

Food for thought for those who considered the UK and Korea as traditional entry points for US technologies in Europe and Asia...

* sponsored by Samsung Venture Investment Company and STIC Ventures, established a UK subsidiary 3 years ago
** nothing to do with Ireland's new entrant Smart Mobile (UMTS 'B' license - 53% coverage by October 2011 - the equivalent of the country's top five cities).

Virgin Mobile - Carphone Warehouse : joint adventure ?

The announcement of a new Virgin Mobile M-VNO operation in France means quite a lot.
First, France is at last becoming the exciting market for convergence it was meant to be : home to FT/Orange (from the beginning the ultimate vision of convergence) and key players in multimedia (ie press, radio, TV, movie, music, minitel/internet...) as well as in retail or commerce-finance (ie Carrefour, banks & insurers...), the country is Europe's TV over DSL leader but still enjoys a significant potential for growth in the mobile and pay TV fields. Here, the Orange vs Vodafone battle has a very specific flavor and historical / capitalistic ties between MNOs and TV operators have to be taken into account (Bouygues Telecom / TF1, SFR / Canal+, Orange / France Television and now M6...).
Second, a JV between Virgin Mobile Holdings (UK) PLC, The Carphone Warehouse Group PLC (The Phone House in France), and Virgin Management Limited proves both how desperate Virgin were to enter the market and how ambitious they are for the future. The Virgin group isn't a big player in the country and clearly, VirginMega.fr seems too weak an entry point as M6, NRJ & co are locking positions. They couldn't deal directly with a MNO and they had to find a partner with a retail background. Since they cannot wait, they're pushing their brand and TTM over control. In the wireless field, that is : they're bringing the multimedia touch The Phone House didn't have (sorry AOL - whatever happened to MVIVA and Steve Case's Revolution ?). Now that they've secured a 5M customer base in the UK, Virgin are attacking continental Europe.
Third, how far can CWH and Virgin go together ? CWH is more a reseller than a M-VNO, even if TPH could learn the trade locally through their Omer Telecom / Breitzh Mobile outfit (49,000 customers to date). There is a point of sale overlap in the UK but elsewhere... CWH need both content and a brand and VM badly need a brand new telecom-aware distribution system...

TDD & TDMB, not so TDous

After all, TDMB still has a chance in Europe. Part of the lobbying I mentioned about LG is about the easiness of piggybacking on existing DAB networks, whilst DVB spectrum remains to be seen. And LG are starting this month a T-DMB trial in Regensburg, Germany, supposedly under the helm of the EU IST CELTIC Project, CELTIC standing for Cooperation for a European sustained Leadership In Telecommunications. I guess Nokia appreciates the joke, especially since they are part of CELTIC's Core Group (the same can be said about BT, FT or Telefonica). And CELTIC's "Call 2 projects tackling convergence" still includes WingTV, a program devoted to Nokia's DVB-UMTS integration. Fixed incumbents are already involved in such trials, but they are also busy taking shares of IPTV market as quickly as possible in a competitive DSL world. France Telecom's MaLigne TV could go international with a more colorful branding (the color of a juicy fruit, for instance), and Telefonica's Imagenio could leverage on the operator's reconquista of the Americas. Mobile broadcasters will be stronger if they already are strong IPTV leaders...
TD-CDMA have been back from the dead for months : Orange in France, T-Mobile in the Czech Republic, Nextel in Washington D.C.... even Japan reserved the 2GHz spectrum for IP Wireless' beloved technology. TDD could prove a quick fix for such US players as Sprint-Nextel or T-Mobile : W-CDMA is on its way (in different bands) and the HSDPA -HSUPA have the favor of many GSM players, but TDD could deliver earlier and cheaper coverage without major spectrum hurdles (especially compared to demanding HSUPA). Beyond data cards or dongles, handsets are yet to be found, and the industry needs more than IPW partnerships with Atmel or Teleca to solve this.

The past was bright, the future is Orange Telecom

Once upon a time, France Telecom held a high potential brand and a valuable set of brains in Voila, the pride of the CNET. Then they snatched a bigger brand and another valuable set of brains in Orange, the bride of Hans Snook. As a result, Voila got fired, Orange castrated, and the "France Telecom" brand resurrected as a safety net for gallic customers - an umbrella as disgracious and noxious as a nuclear mushroom some brilliant Kommunikator decided to hide behind a swootch wannabe ; the not-at-all-orious esperluette (the & the self proclaimed net company couldn't even build a website on). As a result too, at the end of year 2004, Hans Snook held a comfortable #950 spot on the UK wealthiest list (£40M) and neither Orange nor even Vodafone were in Interbrand's Best Global Brands Top 100.
Now that rebranding is so passé, France Telecom is considering switching for "Orange Telecom". The metonymy won't be much challenged by the regulatory body which swallowed the FT-Orange fusion without a whisper and almost welcomes its daily anti-competitive abuses.
Will Orange win back its so bright future as easily as the group behind will win back market shares through household shares ? Can the brand that carried so much actually become what it was bound to be - something far beyond the brand of a carrier ?

Bluephone : a 2,005 pound gorilla or a GNOME ?

One year behind schedule, BT's Bluephone Project may give birth to the piggyback phone : your handset sniffs some open network and connects to it wirelessly. It's a phone, and it's "blue" because it sounds like some short range techno which happened to be all the rage a couple of years ago.

As usual, there are glitches with the branding : BT was good at "creating" the i-mode brand, but other people took the bluephone domain names long before the Project was even initiated. They need to hurry if they plan to launch such byproducts as the "steal a ringtone / ringtune" concept (Bluebell ?) or the "sniff & snatch some snuff / adult content" concept (Blueballs ?).

You can already perform such calls (i.e. with a Skype + laptop + wifi combo) and wifi handsets are on their way but this is about providing a better customer experience and making things happen. From the team that definitely knows how to bring people closer to each other to produce hot air : the Fixed-Mobile Convergence Alliance (FMCA - BT, Brasil Telecom, Korea Telecom, NTT Com, Rogers Wireless, Swisscom) and the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA - Alcatel, AT&T Wireless, BT, Cingular, Ericsson, Kineto Wireless, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel Networks, O², Rogers Wireless, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile US)... early Wi-Fi birds, mobile players eager not to miss the next big thing plus the usual niche start-up waiting to be purchased by any of the former). Yet these empty shells may turn into something interesting - see how the NFC Forum came alive !

Right now, Bluephone is so small it's called a gnome. According to Sourceforge, "BluePhone is a GNOME applet to allow you to remotely administer a bluetooth-enabled mobile phone from your desktop and also to control your desktop from your mobile phone". MNOs and ISPs are gonna hold each other so tight the adult version could come to life ahead of schedule... Especially if you are both a MNO and an ISP. Expect some move by France Telecom (Wanadoo - Orange).