Convergence Conversation

Once upon a time there were three little pigs - FTTC, Docsis 3 and FTTH.

The first little piggy set off into the wide world of broadband and built himself a cabinet. He was pretty confident that he could do everything required from there but along came the mean old big bad wolf – the consumer - and blew all of his plans out the water with apps and services he had never even heard of. FTTC simply couldn't do what everyone needed to. He ran to his friends and told them he'd underestimated the consumer, I mean, the Big Bad Wolf. His cabinet plans were in tatters.

Out went Docsis 3, confident he could resolve the problems and he told everyone he was doing it over fibre optics. More...

Following the announcement of the Final Third First Campaign last week, there have been many conversations about what FTFC is about, who are founders, who are observers.

The reality is that we are all consumers where the 4th Utility is concerned -

from the chairman of BT

to the grandparents wanting to keep in touch with family in New Zealand,

to the children anxious to avoid detention for not completing their homework online,

to the person with health problems wanting to live independently in their own home with the aid of advanced tele-healthcare

to Government Departments that want to cut the costs of transactions with the General Public. More...

Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, bedazzled the 2010 GSMA Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona. In his keynote address he told the industry exactly which parts of their lunch that Google will eat, simultaneously appeared to offer peace, showcased mesmerising new technologies, effortlessly took 45 minutes of questions from the floor, and then disappeared to widespread applause.

Don't get us wrong - we were impressed too. It was a great speech and a great show. Dr. Schmidt is a very, very capable and inspiring person, and there is no doubt that Google is brimming with ideas, vision, and ability to make things happen. More...

Sorry, really shouldn't do that do the English language.

Another great post on the 5tth blog here

To paraphrase, if we collaborate we can revolutionise. That's what the Colloquium is all about and that is why you should come.

I hope to see you there.

Quick post on some thoughts from Day 1 here in Barcelona:

As predicted, offload and data traffic management are top-of mind. Too much cheap traffic transiting expensive networks. Yes, people are paying for mobile broadband on laptops & smartphones, but shoehorning gigabytes of Internet-destined data across a network designed for in-house, data-sipping operator-controlled apps is clearly a recipe for disaster. What's striking, though, is that the "offload industry" hasn't yet mapped the various solutions onto a matrix of use cases and deployment scenarios. More...

‘THE FUTURE OF BROADCASTING'

Date:               Thursday 25 February 2010
Time:              18:00 - 20:00
Venue:            Intellect Offices, 10-12 Russell Square, WC1B 5EE
Chair:              Ved Sen, founder and CEO, ThinkPlank
Speakers:      Daniel Singer (Ofcom), Gina Fegan (South East Media Network), Julian McGougan (Arqiva) and Iolo Jones (TV Everywhere)

At this next Convergence Conversation we’re set to look at ‘The Future of Broadcasting’. More...

David Isenberg and Geoff Daily have organised Fiber Fete in Lafayette, LA in April. It is invite only, and it is one event you really want to attend!

I visited Lafayette on my recent trip to the States, and the work done there to progress FTTH on a community (municipal) ownership model is inspirational, educational, and also offers the opportunity to learn many lessons to bring back to your own country/region/community.

However, this event is not so much about Lafayette as about bringing together global innovators, thinkers, entrepreneurs, policy experts, community activists and more in the FTTH and fibre sector. More...

Mobile advertising is starting to come of age. Agencies are beginning to build successful campaigns based on a growing understanding of the strengths of the channel, and opening interesting new business model opportunities for telcos in the process.

That was the view of David Lang, President Mindshare Entertainment, speaking at the 8th Telco 2.0 Brainstorm held in Orlando in December. He said that agencies and clients are starting to use its two-way capacity to build communities and content and therefore creating alternative value chains in which telcos can play more than just a distribution role. More...

I came about this today and I thought you might want to know. WIK Consulting is organizing a 1.5 day event (26-27 April in Berlin) to discuss some of the most debatable topics of the FTTH world:

• What are the key objectives, elements and instruments of the different national broadband strategies?
• What is the actual role of the state across the different national broadband strategies?
• What are the key elements of public and PPP-operator models?
• What role can “universal service obligations” play to reach national broadband coverage
  objectives?
• Which options are there to secure “openness” of high bit rate broadband infrastructures? What role does “separation” play in this context?
• What do we really know about costs and benefits of a (near) ubiquitous national high bit rate broadband infrastructure?

These are some serious issues and if you are interested go and check more on their web site. More...

Top Stories

• Broadband and Fibre: BT: all right, have those ducts
• Strategy and Finance: T-Mobile USA merger rumours - mmm, spectrum
• Online Video Distribution: Everyone loves WLAN managed offload
• Advertising: Apple: they're planning something location-based
• Technology: UFO spotted among the Google clouds - what is 1e100.net?

Potentially seismic news in the UK: BT changes its mind on duct-sharing. Both OFCOM and the Conservative Party are keen on the idea - OFCOM had a survey of some ducts carried out, and discovered that a surprisingly large percentage of the UK's telecoms infrastructure is full of raw sewage, and the Tories have threatened to legislate to force BT to provide ducts if they win the election. More...