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 ?

BeautifulPhones, cheesecakes, greenfees

A few weeks after BT's BT Fusion, neuf cegetel are trying their WiFi - GSM handsets, dubbed BeautifulPhone. That's about 10 years after cegetel* tried dual mode homezone DECT - GSM handsets, but the continuity of the multimedia / office spheres could succeed where voice only failed to sell.
Swisscom should sell too, or at least be fully open to strategic partnerships : Switzerland are abandoning their 66.1% share of the cheesecake. TDC / easymobile could grab more than a few crumbs of this jewel airline, but why would Vodafone turn their own cheese into a gruyere ?
Elsewhere in Europe, H3G Italia will broadcast DVB-H next year (H2) after taking over Channel 7 and their digital TV frequencies. The only truly pure greenfield 3G player eventually understood profits would come from 3G voice and mobile TV wasn't a 3G application.

* then the no-yet-born long distance subsidiary of the no-yet-born Vivendi, but already with SFR

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).