Facebook and Yahoo news

Facebook identity management service

There are a lot of different consumer websites now offering login via facebook identity. Could be a good idea to have a single login but at the same time lose your personal data to facebook.

Skype offer internet over WLAN

Pay for internet view Skype account. This was experience on a BTOpenzone WLAN access point in UK.

T-Mobile: Google, Apple should pay us more to carry their services

OTT = Innovation = Users love it
SP (Mobile/Fix) = Defending them self = Users don't bother

The chief of T-Mobile's parent company Deutsche Telekom, Rene Obermann, argued in a German interview today that Apple and Google should pay more for higher-quality mobile data. iPhones and Android smartphones use much more data on the network, the executive told Manager Magazin, and should carry an extra surcharge if they need an especially fast or reliable network for music or video. Talks are already underway with at least Google. more......

Connected Planet analysis. more....

New Services from Service Providers

Comcast Plots OTT Stealth Attack

Telefonica VOIP over Mobile with Jajah

Networked address book game-changers: Microsoft Outlook, Facebook and more

Transparent Proxy/Cache

Known HTTP Proxy/Caching Problems RFC3143

Level 3 Slashes CDN Prices

Level 3 Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: LVLT) is lowering prices for content delivery network (CDN) services to match the same price customers pay for high-speed IP transport. more......

Level 3 Slashes CDN Prices

Some interesting news

Skype on Symbian Smartphones

Skype an advantage for Mobile phone

Is TV the next domino to fall?

ZTE Overtakes AlcaLu in Broadband Battle

Navteq Preps India Ad Launch

Mobile SP - Apple's appstore and IMS Dilemma

Until now the Mobile SPs was successful to hold their value added services and earn good money from their business. SMS was the biggest success but not an innovation, rather a by-product. As most of the voice tariffs are going flat Mobile providers are looking for alternatives. Currently almost all Mobile SPs are unanimously thinking that IMS (IP multimedia system) will provide additionally services for future earnings. Billion of dollars are planned for investment in this area. It is petty that this will be useless investment as the future of services will be coming from Internet based platforms and Mobile will face the same problem from OTT as today's fixed network.

Apple iphone was steroid for some of the Mobile SPs. Apple's appstore is the side effect of the steroid. Few more popular app stores like this and no body will care about the services from the Mobile provider. It is quite possible that in short time period Nokia, Samsung, Google and other mobile manufacture will follow the path of Apple. Some of the European Mobile providers are thinking about appstore as well but it will be same as the IPTV services offered from fixed network providers.

If Mobile and fixed network providers want to stay in the value chain they need follow a different path.

Future Telco services

Telefónica, Wikimedia Team Up
Wikimedia Foundation and Telefónica today announced a strategic partnership to improve access to Wikimedia educational and informational content in Latin America and Europe. The agreement will expand the reach of Wikimedia's projects, including Wikipedia, on multiple platforms through the development of customized applications for Telefónica's web portals, wireless handsets and television properties.

DT, Continental Develop Car Apps
The aim is to make the Internet and specific applications (apps) for drivers part of the standard equipment in all categories of vehicles.

Qwest bets on OTT with ZillionTV investment
Telco Qwest Communications (NYSE:Q) has always been an IPTV holdout, exploring hybrid video options instead. Today it added clarity to its video strategy with a $10 million investment in start-up ZillionTV in return for exclusive rights within its footprint to offer its video on-demand service to subscribers.

Cable Providers are going to be OTT

Cable Providers are going to be OTT, Comcast Provide their service to all broadband users

Who needs IMS ???

Telefónica Buys VoIP Player Jajah

Verizon to Offer Skype on Smartphone

Skype expands mobile push with Symbian support

Service Provider Cloud Based Services

There is a huge potential for service providers to provide cloud based services. Specially SMB market will benefit from the services they can get from an SP. Saas like email or small database and Iaas for some special server applications. One other example is hosted voice solution.

Few early examples:
Orange Unveils Cloud Formation

Verizon debuts cloud computing service

BT and Cisco Deliver on Cloud Computing Vision with Launch of Pioneering Hosted Unified Communications Services

Video and Telco's future

Some interesting articles about OTT video and Telco:

Verizon to Hulu: You’ll be dead in two years, anyway

The challenge for large media companies — and Verizon with its FiOS service now sits squarely in that camp — is whether they can keep up as smaller competitors innovate away at the next new thing. The real problem for incumbents is that such upstarts can be incredibly disruptive to the status quo without really having any chance to survive and thrive as an independent company.

In the end, though, it doesn’t matter if Hulu — or Roku or any other video start-up — actually survives. What matters is whether the innovations they introduce stick and how those innovations change, or in some cases shatter, the industry status quo.

Perhaps even scarier is whether or not true innovators get bought up by larger competitors. It’s easy to laugh off a Silicon Valley start-up. It’s not so easy when they get acquired by Google or Cisco or some other giant and become the status quo.

Watch out Hulu, Facebook is taking over video

Top 10 Online Web Brands Ranked by Total Streams
Video Brand	Total Streams (000)	Unique Viewers (000)
YouTube	6,632,964	105,923
Hulu	632,662	13,472
Facebook	217,765	31,594
MSN/WindowsLive/Bing	183,556	17,301
Yahoo!	173,482	24,265
Fox Interactive Media	160,698	13,142
ABC Television	136,348	5,642
Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network	119,850	5,741
ESPN Digital Network	109,799	8,625
CBS Entertainment Network	103,741	6,973

Source: Nielsen VideoCensus (via newteevee.com)

Najam Saquib

Iliad Reports Q3 2009

ARPU to € 36.1 per month (excl. VAT)
The growing usage of added value services available to Free and Alice subscribers. Revenues generated by these services thus totalled more than € 348 million to 30 September 2009, an increase of close to 36% over the period.

Iliad Reports Q3 2009

Najam Saquib

Amazon links cloud to enterprise data centers

The new Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) service, available today in a limited beta, lets companies combine their existing IT infrastructure with Amazon’s cloud capabilities as if it were part of their own data center. Initially, the offering works with Amazon’s EC2 compute service, but will work with other Amazon Web Services – such as cloud storage – in the future. more.......

Orange Services Converts Siemens

Orange Services Converts Siemens

Interesting stuff for Telco 2.0

Aepona adds monetization to open networks:
Operators continue to generate revenue from downstream, retail markets, but they can augment that revenue with new sources from upstream – people that use their network to deliver services, using the network capabilities to enhance the services, if you like.” More....


Using the cloud to broker small-business outsourcing:
8K Miles, which takes its name from the diameter of the Earth, launched three months ago with $1 million and a mission to help small businesses outsource tasks by connecting them with a community of service providers that specialize in everything from software development (expected to be the lion’s share of transactions) to legal and accounting advice. More....

IMS for Telco

IMS is a wrong investment for a fixed line or wireless telco. In future a more light weight platform from Telco will be required for new services based on standardize approach. I think an ALTO (IETF) like architecture will be the best way forward.

Generating new Revenue streams - Internet Service Providers

The toughest questions today most of the internet service providers are facing is to how they can increase their ARPU. Easy going solution they are currently doing is to reduce costs, a part from saving on infrastructure and a part from decreasing employ numbers to make their investors happy.
Following are few ideas to increase ARPU:

• End user will get free or subsidies access (dsl,FTTH etc) service if they agree to share their storage and home CPU for a SP cloud. SP cloud than can sale these resources to the interesting parties. A part this is already done by some of the P2P and video distribution companies, but an SP have much better position to do this due to the ownership of transport infrastructure.
• Providing Internet based High Def. Video services for home users (The main business will be webcam ladies)
• Providing billing for end customer for online shoping
• Location services for search and advertisment
• IPTV platform for media companies, no wall garden approch
  

Main target for a Service provider should be to build a platform for the end user and e-comerce companies without getting in to wall garden services provided by itself. I will add more to this list as new stuff come in mind.