Convergence Conversation

Just seen at London's Victoria station - a (Sandisk-branded) vending machine selling memory cards, phone acessories... and mobile broadband USB dongles. Shrink-wrapped, no cumbersome sales or registration process, no annoying salesperson trying to upsell you.

Just data connectivity, on a stick.
Like memory, on a stick.

Yes, there's still absolutely a role for contracts, retail stores, expert sales executives and so on. But solely going that route leaves money on the table when someone wants a quick transactional purchase. When I get to Victoria, I want to hail a taxi, not sign up for a cab account. More...

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...

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...

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...

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...

I'm noticing an increasing use of the term 4G to describe either WiMAX or LTE networks.

It makes me wince, (although I've probably fallen into the "convenience trap" myself a couple of times).

Yes, they're both different to current versions of 3G, and use techniques like OFDMA - but so what? That doesn't make them 4G any more than it made EDGE (part of GSM) into 3G.

From a purist point of view, 4G doesn't yet exist. 3G refers to the families of technologies covered by the ITU's definition of "IMT 2000". 4G is expected to be the term used for the forthcoming "IMT Advanced" specifications currently being thrashed out by ITU, for which there are two prospective main candidates - LTE Advanced and WiMAX variant 802.16m. More...

Following from the success of the Cloud Computing sessions at the recent Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorms, we'd recommend the Fifth Annual Parallels Summit to those looking to deepen their knowledge. It takes place on 22-24 February at the Fountainbleu Miami Beach Resort, Miami Beach, Florida. Parallels are offering free places (worth $3000) - see below.

Making money from, and best practices in, cloud services are the focus of the Summit, which aligns well with Telco 2.0's agenda.

Please visit the Parallels Summit 2010 web site to learn more here or register now here.

More details on agenda, features and benefits below (from Parallels): More...