Friday, April 25, 2008

Ideas for increasing ARPU

Internet access, email, and messaging are among the applications that are pumping up data revenues in general. Lehman Brothers analyst Inder Singh writes in a research note issued Wednesday that the operator's users of "integrated devices" -- of which the Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL - message board) iPhone is arguably AT&T's flagship -- deliver twice the data revenues generated by customers using other phones.

http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=151734

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Internet - Who should pay the price?

I think that Internet should be part of infrastructure of a country and Govt. should pay for it same like they do for roads, railway and other utilities.
Value add services can be provided by Service providers. There are a lot of success stories for Service providers buying a wholesale infrastructure service and doing retail to the customer. In this way a service provider can really concentrate on service and customer instead of infrastructure.
This also provide fair open market for main telco companies without going in to regulatory problems of monopoly.

IPTV or Video as service

We have seen during last months that TV Channels start providing content directly over internet. This trend will goes on further and soon we will see most of the TV channels will be available online with option of VOD and new features. In future it will be a great challenge for Telco to position IPTV solutions with customer. Why an eye bowl will go to Telco if the content can be available from first hand?

Few examples:

USA:

NBC Universal

Fox Broadcasting Co.

CBS Corp.

ABC Inc.

Germany:

www.zdf.de (ZDFmediathek)

www.rtlnow.de

www.premierleague.com (offer for the subscriber)

UK:
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer (Currently available for UK only)

Most of the big media companies opening their content over Internet. Some of them have restrictions that the content is only viewable in a specific country but this will also change in future. International Intellectual property copyright is one reason for the content not available all over the world, which might also change with time.

Telco companies have to look for some other way to get in the video market. One of the other problem most of the Telco companies face is lack of experience with end customer in video content market. I think that closed network video will have a short life span as previously thought or predicted. Their will be users subscribe to pay-TV services but they can get the content directly over Internet or with legacy technology. Premier league (Football) is one of the examples.

Young audience with high-speed connection to internet is increasing rapidly and most of this audience use Internet only for their free time entertainment.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Bionade vs. Beer / Innovation vs. Commodity

BIONADE Corporation is a young, innovative and privately owned German company producing and distributing organically manufactured non-alcoholic refreshment drinks under the BIONADE trademark.
The company was established in 1995 on the occasion of the invention of BIONADE, the world’s first and still unique non-alcoholic organically produced refreshment drink. Borrowing from age-old brewing techniques, BIONADE is produced through a completely organic fermentation process.

The inventor of this drink had a brewery and seen that Beer is getting a commodity and with just decreasing prices or increasing production will not bring enough revenue. Invention of BIONADE is an example how out of the box thinking brings new products.

I think this is a good example for any Telco/IT/Internet company to re think about their ideas and start thinking different in order to produce new and innovative services.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

IPTV on its best

Slowly but IPTV is getting reality. France is leading as country for IPTV deployments and acceptance from customers. TV and Video content will come over IP transport it is just mater of time and innovation on productizing side. Following table have a top ten list:

Table 1: Global IPTV Top 10 Carriers (by subscribers)

Ranking

Carrier

Country

Number of IPTV subscribers*

IPTV middleware platform by vendor

1

Iliad (Free)

France

2,170,000

Homegrown

2

France Telecom

France

975,000

Thomson SmartVision

3

PCCW

Hong Kong

818,000

Homegrown (Cascade, owned by PCCW)

4

Neuf Cegetel

France

600,000

Homegrown

5

Telefonica

Spain

469,067

Homegrown (Imagenio, now managed by Alcatel-Lucent)

6

Chunghwa Telecom

Taiwan

358,000

Orca, Alcatel-Lucent

7

China Telecom

China

310,000

UTStarcom

8

Belgacom

Belgium

249,434

Nokia Siemens (Myrio)

9

TeliaSonera

Sweden

216,000

Homegrown

10

Fastweb

Italy

170,000

Homegrown

* Most recent available data from carrier


Source: Light Reading

Silicon chips stretch into shape

Silicon chips can be starched find by US scientist. Is this is the possibility to use silicon chips in human body or other movable objects?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7313203.stm