The ultimate wireless killer app ? Ask Stephen King

Since you are a cellular network operator, worrying about health issues is part of your daily job and responsibility. You also have to cope with irrationality and urban legends but come January 24, 2006, you will regret those peaceful days.
The launch of the year has of course something to do with entertainment but not with TV. Yet.
Stephen King is releasing "Cell" on January 24, 2006, and you don't want to consider that a minor event. We're talking millions of fans reading about a genuine killer application : over the air signals that turn your dear customer into something even scarier than a churner. You'd better prepare your hotlines for this crisis.
Otherwise, the King of ARPU (Average Reader Per Universe) could become your worst nightmare.

At the count of 3, Hutch disappears and FOMA turns 20

3 added one million subs between Oct. 7 and Jan. 7, reaching a grand total of 11M : +10% over last quarter, the sales department can be proud... but how about the CFO ?
Hutchison Whampoa Limited are giving up the lead in Hutchison Telecom International Limited : Orascom Telecom* took 19.3% of it, leaving HWL right under 50% (49.8%). They may want to strenghten their wireless activity, they obviously don't want to consolidate it anymore.
Especially after HWL and HTIL secured (two weeks ago) a 5.1 bn rupee loan supposed to "enable the companies' two indirect non-wholly owned units, JayKay Finholding (India) Pvt Ltd and Usha Martin Telematics Ltd, to acquire shares to be issued by Hutchison Essar Ltd (HEL) pursuant to a rights issue"...
Now liberated from the Orange brand, Hutch Essar (formerly known as Hutchison Max) claim 10M subs and push their own new brand : "Hutch", symbolized by an ugly drooling dog. The name definitely has something to do with HWL, but the logo doesn't look 3ish at all. Furthermore, the color switched from orange to pink. Now whenever T-Mobile wants to make it into India, they'll have to tame this pet from HEL.
Vodafone badly wanted to make it into India and that made sense : Arun Sarin wasn't born in Helsinki, India is all the rage for investors worrying about a reverse Chinese syndrom, and Master Voda just loves winners (see how they dumped ManU for McLaren ?). So after wolfing Telsim down, Vodafone take another small slice of another big cake (after China Mobile, 10% of Bharti Tele-Ventures).
NTT DoCoMo with they could rule over China and India as well as they rule over Japan : they reached the 20M FOMA users mark right after reaching the 50M subscribers plateau. As expected, they will soon take over KDDI as the 3G leader at home : their 40% migration rate** should be compared to KDDI's 95%+ (nevermind Vodafone KK's 15%).
What wasn't expected from the beginning was the time it took them to catch up : they lost about 6 months to glitches that could have been avoided. And there, I'm not talking about the baby steps. Oh, by the way... did you notice how DoCoMo now claim they launched FOMA in October 2001 instead of May 2001 ? Another example of revisionism this side of the "Sea of Korea"...

* The Egyptian operator is growing ambitions : 14.5M subs 12/2004 end of 2004, 17,5M on March the 31st, 30M end of 2005. They keep advertising on CNN International, target 50M subs end of 2006 and should open new joints after Egypt (MobiNil), Algeria (Djezzy), Pakistan (Mobilink), Iraq (IraQna), Bangladesh (Banglalink), Tunisia (Tunisiana) and Zimbabwe (Telecel Zimbabwe).
** Also : 45.4M i-mode subs (90% of all customers) of which 32.5M have i-appli enabled kentais (70% of i-mode customers).

CES2006 - beyond Gates, real openings

Billy Boy's pathetic remarks about Google's tendency to overhype future announcements (look who's talking) made the headlines, but I'm eager to see how T-Mobile performs next march with their HSDPA laptops. Less glam but more subs ?
Quite impressed also by Samsung's massive nextgen overload : Blue-ray, MPEG4, Wibro, MediaFLO, GPRS/EVDO S/T-DMB, DVB-H... you name it ! Plus another striking partnership : after Vodafone in the mobile world (by the way, Sammy just demonstrated HSDPA at 3.6Mbps), Comcast and set-top boxes.
They're starting 2006 at the top, but can they keep the pace ?

Happy birthday, happy new year of the foxy dragon

History tells us Tim Berners-Lee invented the WorldWideWeb back in 1989 at the CERN.
Headline news tell us the first web page was published 15 years ago on time for Christmas 1990. The first web page could be published because the key to the web had been created.
15 years later, competition seems to revive in the browser area. Thanks to mobile access but also thanks to a cute penguin and a foxy dragon.
My stats for december 2005 show that Firefox snatched 15% of the traffic for this excuse for a blog (+ 1% for Mozilla). Safari hunted another 2,5% while Konqueror ruled over 1%. Opera charmed yet another 0.3% to which Netscape added 0.2%. MSIE claimed 80% of this humble pie. Down from 90% 3 months ago.
If Netscape is almost dead, Mosaic is still alive. Behind the question mark on your Internet Explorer toolbar, that is. MSIE was not brought to you by Microsoft inventors since Microsoft never invented anything but virtual cash cows ; IE is based on NCSA Mosaic (TM), the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
I happened to visit the Urbana-Champaign campus back in 1989 on my way from Chicago to New Orleans. Instead of trying a few lousy pitches in the stadium that Fighting Illini built, I mighta coulda shoulda... sent better pitches.
But I waited till 1993 to use the web on a regular basis and join a online gaming company.
The thing is OS and browsers are not much fun to me. Even with a cute penguin or a foxy dragon.

Wetband-CDMA and Season's Greetings

Every year in Europe, about 300,000 handsets fall down a toilet bowl. LG Telecom (the MNO, not the handset manufacturer) being in deep gimchi, they decided to release Casio's water-proof phones to lighten up their season's greetings. These Wetband-CDMA beauties are quake-proof as well, but LGT are not likely to shake the country next year. Unless they bring a new player into the game, that is.
Korea Telecom took a much more political path announcing the first inter-korean phone service since the War. Mercifully enough, they dropped the Dok-do line.
Korea' national post services surfed yet another wave revealing a brand new set of stamps : the heroes of the day are video games characters. Welcome to the country where virtual monsters are more likely to end up on a stamp than one-term-presidents bound to lameduckood as soon as they're elected.
But Samsung took the nicest slice of the cake : following their deal with Vodafone Group Plc and Qualcomm, they can expect a happy new HSDPA year. I would advise them not to expose any wetphones come next 3GSM World Congress : with all those waves around them visitors always get a perm while roaming the show, but you wouldn't want any of them to be hydrocuted.

I wish you a happy new year too. You've been reading this excuse for a blog from over 120 countries (though more often from San Mateo County than from Ulaanbaatar or Ouagadougou, I must confess) and your comments are always very much welcomed.

IPTV and happy TV

Korea already enjoys 12M broadband connections ; about 80% of all households or 25% of the population, compared to about 45% and 80% for fixed and mobile lines. Yet, genuine IPTV cannot be launched, limiting Korea Telecom to a few symbolic demos despite their ambitious plans for 2006 ($300M). Now they're talking Q2 2006 for an actual launch.
The Korean Broadcasting Commission, backed by the country's powerful cablecos, plays it "over my dead body" : IPTV is broadcasting stuff, not to be regulated by a telecom body.
Elsewhere, Mobile TV is still struggling. We're not hearing much about TuMedia stats and SKT officials are more verbal about MelOn (600k paid subs out of 4M).
Anti-competitive issues notwithstanding, Korea's MNOs would certainly love to put a few wons in classic TV channels. And I guess with higher stakes than NTT DoCoMo in Fuji TV.

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.

DoCoMo's Xmas : Fuji and KT Freetel

2.6%. That's as far as Ebeneezer Scrooge DoCoMo will go for Fuji Television Network, Inc. Google took a slice twice thicker from AOL but hey, that's much better than what Livedoor was allowed to grab.

NTT DoCoMo and Fuji TV are not preparing Xmas but April fool's day : "The agreement precedes the launch of "One-segment" terrestrial digital broadcasting on April 1, 2006, which will present new opportunities for linkages with mobile services."

I'm much more interested in their deal with KT Freetel : 10%, that's a little more ambitious, but DoCoMo used to ask for more... remember their strategic bravado with AT&T Wireless ? Beyond the financial and technological failure, they couldn't even launch the i-mode brand in the US.

Roaming agreements were one thing (SKT eventually preferred TIM, SFR & Vodafone for W-CDMA roaming in Europe), boosting FOMA and DoCoMo-style HSDPA is quite another... and building a Manga-Hallyu pool yet another : "and also this can be a good opportunity for both countries' content providers and solution providers to extend their reach to overseas market". Message to SKT : keep strengthening your ties with the US, China and Europe.

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 ???).

CAPEX and the city - curb your enthousiasm or six feet under

Cheers : Vodafone had to release some exciting news to their shareholders ? Welcome to their global mobile TV service ! The content looks fine (top HBO series, the UEFA Champions League...), but we're talking 3G W-CDMA TV and this isn't likely to solve their capacity troubles : if you want to watch Sex And The City on your mobile phone, your operator needs to play Capex And The City first (or better : switch to DVB / DMB). Farrington Road Films understood so well how much work had to be done they named their m-soap "Brick' it". Who knows ? there are more 3G network operators in the UK than there were little pigs in the tale, and more than one could have a house made of stone.
Fewer fireworks for the launch of ALDI Talk ; the hard discounter doesn't care about 3G nor mobile TV yet : Medion mobile simply target 750,000 subs interested in the cheapest voice money can buy (5 cents a mn or a SMS among Aldi Talkers, but triple that if you want to reach anyone else). EPlus are supporting this MMinus, which could outperform USA's Movida despite the impressive Wal-Mart - Cisnero Group combo (it's the economy, stupid - who cares about services ?).
Remember Vivendi's Xfera ? The Spanish 3G greenfield MNO will as initially planned launch for the World Cup in June and draft 600,000 customers by the end of that year. Too bad our Don QuiXfera went for the 2006 World Cup windmill instead of the 2002 one. Hutchison Whampoa are considering taking over this X-file.

Branson vs Murdoch : Virgin Mobile + NTL in the UK, and more to come

Since Sir Richard confessed in China, Virgin Mobile had to get specific today : "The Board of Virgin Mobile Holdings (UK) plc (‘Virgin Mobile’ or ‘the Company’) confirms that it has received an approach from NTL Incorporated that may or may not lead to a formal offer being made for the Company."
UK's leading cableco (after wolfing Telewest down) could help Virgin build a significant competitor to BSkyB, which had already been hunting for preys in the telecom sector (some game with a little more flesh than OneTel).
NTL already purchased Virgin.net a few years ago. They need a brand and should offer more than their initial $1.4bn to please Virgin shareholders.
From Branson's point of view, focusing on such core assets as branding or retailing could make sense. And this partnership should lead to other ones, even more devastating for the competition. The sooner the better : new M-VNOs are popping up across the world and Sir Richard is bound to harrass Sir Rupert the other side of the Atlantic, not to mention Australia or even China.

Blockberry ? RIM vs NTP, to be continued

Will Judge James Spencer order your BlackBerry service to be shut down ? Research In Motion want to go up to the Supreme Court for their patent trouble with NTP Inc. As if losing all previous trials and increasing at each step the fine didn't deter them.
Whatever the CrackBerry equipment rate within the Supreme Court, I guess Judge Roberts will be listening to RIM's main argument : "you cannot abort our kid, especially that late in the process".
To which NTP Inc. may answer "hey, this is my kid, and DNA tests proved it !" but RIM could then switch to another tender spot, such as "that's Darwinian rubbish - we're facing a miraculous case of immaculate conception ! We don't have a Chief Internet Evangelist on board but we just hired a Chief Creationist".

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

TiVocasting on iPod and PSP - from TVNO to M-TVNO

Apple are eyeing Nokia' Series 60 platforms, but I've been also interested by TiVo's extension from TV-VNO to Mobile TV-VNO : DirecTV Group Inc.'s jewel decided to format directly for iPod and PSP.

Radios and TVs have been pushing podcasting, taking liberties with their own schedules and programmings. TiVo had to jump in the broadbandwagon and this defensive move could position them better than ever : instead of a remote TV, they could become a central hub for all devices.

Problem : everything has to pass through the DVR and paradoxically, the remote operator happens to be the most dependent on home networking... Sorry, but this is not "TV your way" all the way yet.

Hello HELIO - here comes the sun

SKT released their Q3 data. Since January the 1st, they've spent 50% of their overall CAPEX target ($1.5bn), but 60.7% of their W-CDMA CAPEX target ($359M for the first 9 months). That's for the MNO part of the job.

Regarding the virtual part, SK Telecom are also over-mega-hyper-teasing the future services of their SKT-Earthlink JV, which they branded Helio in honor of the young god of sun Helios. The drop-shaped logo and the website's iconography rather remind me of an utility company, but the company is claiming futility for the younger generation : innovative devices, entertainment, movies, music, you name it. Thanks to innovations 2 year ahead of the competition, no less than 3M of 18-32 year-old are supposed to bring a $2 bn annual turnover by the end of 2009. Well... that's what HELIO staff members have been selling to potential partners during a ten day roadshow across the US. Who said I was overhyping ?*

I'm not worrying about technology, nor about marketing know-how. I'm just anxious to hear about their key content partnerships. I understand not much of their $440 M will be invested in networking... but for social networking, that is.

To be continued, as usual.


* see "SKT-Earthlink - Postponing and podcasting" and "From Hallyuwood to Hollywood" or "2005 : how about Europe ?".

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).

CDG : you can't beat demographics

The CDMA Development Group announced on november that the 200M 1x subscriber mark had been reached last september. And that EV-DO claimed 2.2M subs within 3 months to reach 18 M overall (20 M by year end). A far cry from W-CDMA's 35M, but "the broadband solution equivalent to 1xEV-DO will not be commercial until 2006". So HSDPA is the real competitor to EV-DO now... Which release are we talkin about, doc J ? Calling HSDPA the competitor instead of joining the band - as a few CDMA players will do - doesn't look like a smart move to me. If you agree with CDG's definition of 3G, CDMA is already 73% "3G" while GSM only stands at 2% : there are over 1.5 bn GSM fellas out there, and CDMA figures at the end of the year will be 20 M for EV-DO out of 220 M for cdma2000 out of 300 M for CDMA. You can't beat demographics.
The truth is cdma2000 is losing its momentum and 2005 was the year, as scheduled from the beginning*. Qualcomm definitely aren't playing fair these days ; they should focus on innovation trials instead of legal ones. The problem is, just like Microsoft, their vision of innovation focuses on the annihilation of competition. This can't last in an open environment.

* actually, back in 2001, I would say 2006 but W-CDMA can thank 3 for boosting its share of "voice"

3Greenfield Japan

So Livedoor eventually didn't get a 3G license in Japan (see "Livedoor to incumbents : you've got mail"), and the winners are IPMobile, Softbank BB & eAccess. Actually, I'm not so sure one can talk about "winners"...

• IPMobile are already looking for M-VNOs to fill their TD-CDMA pipes (Roll-out : 3,000 BS by end 2007, 8,500 by end 2012 - QoS : 5.2 Mbps downlink, 858 Kbps uplink - TTM october 2006). M-VNOs can be turned down by DoCoMo (network saturation) and Vodafone KK (coverage), but will they really invest in UMTS TDD instead of IPMobile rivals' W-CDMA / HSDPA or KDDI's CDMA2000 ? The good news for IPWireless is their orders are up. The bad news is they might have to pay for them.
• eAccess branded their greenfield MNO eMobile, which sounds like immobile (fixed, unmovable). The fact is they don't seem in such a hurry : they didn't even complete their business plan before getting the license and their TTM is only March 2007 for a regional launch (National coverage is supposed to be completed by March 2008). eMobile aim at 5M subs after 5 years of operation but even after purchasing AOL Japan last year, eAccess only claim 2.1M subs - besides, dial-up still represents one third of their turnover. TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting Systems, Inc) bring an interesting media / broadband / broadcasting flavor, but they just take 14% of the responsibilities. New partners are welcome but who wants to fight with DoCoMo at home, where even Master Voda struggles for his life ? If no one shows up soon, at least there will be some spectrum for sale.
• Among the three, Softbank looks like the little pig with the house made of stone : if the Yahoo! deals were already good clicks, Japan Telecom brought actual mortar and unlike Livedoor's Takafumi Horie, Masayoshi Son is now part of the Japanese establishment. TTM is not as aggressive as for IPMobile and one can smile at BB Mobile's "mobile triple play" (voice, video and data !) trials with LG Electronics and Nortel ("pre-WiMAX (802.16e)" + HSDPA), but no one should take TV Bank for a new gadget : this new venture will open early 2006 in East-Asia's leading hubs (Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo). And beyond Japan, Son opened a promising front in China through Taiwan.

NTT DoCoMo are claiming they fear no one and they could be right. But the chances of disruption remain unnerving enough.

http ftth pfft

While Qualcomm are suing Nokia as a retaliation against a very much needed EU investigation on Doc Jacobs' licensing practices, DoCoMo are caught copying SK Telecom : they're taking a 42% stake in a record company (Tower Records), launching a credit card brand (iD™), and even contemplating investing in Asian MNOs. Taiwan and Hong-Kong look ripe enough but an assault on Korea would be a spectacular move (unless they manage to convert LGT to W-CDMA, they'd have to claim KTF).
Competitors badly need a boost, and both seem to focus on bigger pipes. Vodafone KK are trying as hard as they can to catch up, flexing their muscles in the wireless field (Ericsson just completed a big wave of HSDPA upgrade), but other kinds of fibers are expected to be needed. KDDI decided last month to absorb PoweredCom Inc, a TEPCO subsidiary (Tokyo Electric Power Company). We're talking about Fiber To The Home (FTTH), we're talking about convergence, we're talking about a born again MNO competing not only with the leading MNO but with the fixed incumbent. Sparks will definitely fly. Concentration is on the way this side of the Pacific Ocean too.

Li cashing : it's now or never

UMTS TDD Alliance members will hold a meeting around Nov. 9-11 and NFC Forum members around Nov. 7-11 but don't expect the latter to have twice as much fun. Sprint and T-Mobile's Czech unit, who recently joined the Alliance following their trials at home, must have appreciated the interesting way an other IPWireless customer, UK Broadband, found for cashing in from their 3.5GHz spectrum or, as Vodafone would put it, to "Make the most of now".
This PCCW Ltd subsidiary expects £100M from their competitor : UK Broadband rebranded Netvigator "now", a word at the core of Voda's new advertising campain.
The fact is "now" is the brand at the core of PCCW's new strategy : in Hong-Kong, Netvigator is the access service provider's brand and now TV the media / content brand. Almost 2/3 of all Netvigator customers subscribe to now and PCCW are thinking globally. They merged their international section with BtN Access, Inc, a wholy owned subsidiary (that's for Beyond the Network, which sums it up) in order to create a new vehicle, PCCW Global.
And right now, this vehicle takes only two roads outside of Hong-Kong : Asia through China Netcom or Unihub IT, and "Europe" through UK Broadband. Plus Victor Li's group re-entered mobility through Sunday and MobileOne.
But Victor has also been confirmed as Li Ka-shing's successor. UK Broadband looks so small compared to his dad's flamboyant Oranges and Threes. Beyond Trinity Time Investments Inc, you want to watch how Cheung Kong Holdings and Hutchison Whampoa could evolve in Europe. And we're not only talking about shopping at Marionnaud's.