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New EU Data Protection Proposals: what you need to know
“Today, 25 January 2012, the European Commission unveiled its proposals for far reaching changes to EU privacy legislation.
We foresee the Regulation being in force by 2015. Every aspect of an organisation’s compliance obligations will increase – and there will be fines of up to 2% of global turnover for breach. We highlight the top three immediate action points to consider. We also provide seven further action points to address in the months ahead. More...
Peak Telephony - why voice has to be about more than phone calls
[Note: I don't know "Samuel" who defends the phone call, but by an interesting coincidence there's someone on LinkedIn who's a "technology analyst" with the same age & academic background].
Google Fiber Trouble
For a number of weeks now, we've been hearing that Google has entered some troubled waters when it comes to its Kansas City Fiber project. The first customers were supposed to be connected in early 2012, and that's clearly not the case. Furthermore, local newspapers report that the fiber network deployed by the Mountain View giant is far from being ready for commercial operations. The delay, it seems, is due to Google and local stakeholders disagreeing on the conditions and rate at which Google should be able to access the poles to attach its fiber to.
Reading between the lines, it seems that Google thought, or hoped, that because of their brand name and because of the visibility of the project for Kansas City, they would be able to speed up normal procedures and get preferential rates. More...
Thinking Long-Term
I was reading the november issue of Wired on the plane this week (the beauty of digital copies on tablets is that you can catch up on past issues!) and something struck me while reading the article on Amazon and Jeff Bezos entitled Jeff Bezos Owns The Web In More Ways Than You Think. I wanted to share that short quote (and strongly recommend reading the interview; it's a clear illustration that the Apple model is not the only option...) because it's relevant to infrastructure discussions:
More...Our first shareholder letter, in 1997, was entitled, “It’s all about the long term.” If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people.
Tesco profit warning - how much was Clubcard responsible?
If they say a picture is worth a thousand words then the following graph is no exception.

Using Tesco market share data from TNS/Kantar Worldpanel, there seems to be an interesting correlation between changes in their market share and changes in the reward value of Tesco Clubcard.
With declining market share in 2007-2008, Tesco implemented the Double Points Promotion which gave customers a huge lift in loyalty value and in response, Tesco didn't just stem the decline in market share, they lifted it 5.5% from 2008 levels.
In 2010 the double points promotion was changed to make it less generous, reducing reward deals from 4x value to 3x. More...
800+ providers of telephony services in a shrinking market? Consolidation to Telco-OTT, not federation, is the answer
Every telco, fixed or mobile, operates its own telephony service. Some operate two or more - either with separate enterprise platforms, IMS (mostly fixed, but VoLTE for some in the future), or OTT-style VoIP.
This is ridiculous.
The conventional telephony market is peaking, and in various areas declining. Apart from emerging markets with new users, even mobile telephony is reducing in price and popularity, as people switch to messaging or in some cases Internet-based VoIP alternatives. Pricing regulation, and accounting changes, are also driving down the measured market size.
Yes, we see some consolidation in terms of networks for various reasons, but really, given that data use is growing and voice telephony is falling, it makes sense to decouple them. More...
Wireless Churn, Metrics and Big Data
Outside In is Essential
I've just returned fom a drive along the Mallerstang Valley where not a single property has anything approaching broadband, despite NWDA wasting £60k on a non-functional wireless solution (on top of the abject failure that was Project Access) to try to live by the spin that Project Access actually achieved *anything*. More...
Bezeq plans for FTTH in Israel

Bezeq, the Israeli incumbent plans for a field trail of GPON FTTH. As part of a several months long trial in Petach Tiqva the operator will connect hundreds of GPON FTTH subscribers. These are surprising news from Israel where no serious FTTH seemed not to be considered by any major provider. There’s an article with more details about the project in Hebrew.
The BlackBerry that wasn't; is it industrial design or service design?
A BlackBerry design concept from 2009 has been leaked and divides opinion at Telco 2.0.
Perhaps the really interesting question is whether the state-of-2009 BlackBerry OS, hardware, and service experience would have benefited that much from more exciting industrial design. After all, a very big chunk of the iPhone's appeal has been concentrated in the software and in the supporting cast of iTunes features and services.
While other vendors (naming no names) came up with some very complex streaming models, Apple concentrated on keeping your content in sync between different devices and making sure you could get it from any of them to any playback device that might be hanging around. More...
Free Mobile: Very Telco 2.0 Indeed
The web is agog about the launch of Free.fr's mobile network, long awaited. Om Malik interviews CEO Xavier Niel, and it's quite impressive how much Telco 2.0 comes up.
"Since it is our own set-top box, we can innovate around it," he says. "In the U.S., they buy their set-top boxes from other providers." That's a mistake and lost opportunity, Niel says and proceeds to outline how pivotal these set-top boxes are for his company and its future.
They're referring to the Freebox Revolution devices Free pushed out last year. We've long been arguing the importance of better CPE, and pointing to Free as a case study of how to do it (they engineer them in house, based on open-source software). More...
CES 2012 Preview - What to Expect at the Show
Ovum has shared some pre-show trend predictions as follows:
Consumer Market Related Trends at CES 2012
Media Tablets: Expect more Google Android "Ice Cream Sandwich" devices, as well as Samsung's Windows 8 tablet. OEMs will pursue the high-margin enterprise tablet market -- as well as the consumer market --so expect to see Mobile Device Management capabilities and partnerships. More...














