Convergence Conversation

The webinar that Yankee Group held today with myself and my colleagues Camille Mendler and Declan Lonergan was very well attended, and I decided to share the replay with you here. It's all very interesting (I think) but for those interested mostly in issues covered by this blog, you will find here some research related to a number of recurrent topics, namely what would happen if Google shared some of its revenues with telcos, how collaborative network deployment models might work and how demand for fiber services might be kickstarted.

Ericsson announced this morning that it has won one of the largest deals for deployment of GPON in India with Radius Infratel. I talked about their collaborative pilot project in the past but it was hard at that time to look at this as more than a drop in the ocean. In the 18 months since this pilot was launched, Radius Infratel has confirmed the viability of their model and - perhaps more importantly - has proven that an offering to landlords combined with an open access service model could be designed to get real estate people on board.

The result of this is the announcement we heard about this morning, that Ericsson won a deal for a 600k household deployment of GPON in India with Radius Infratel. More...

This is kind of last minute, but I wanted to mention that in a couple of hours Yankee Group will be holding a free webinar on the topic of Telco Growth. Here is the official presentation:

Will wireless kill wireline vendors? Will Google kill telcos? What is next-gen? The idea of strategic growth conjures up dozens of questions—and no specific answers. Mobile traffic is rising, and consumers and enterprises are constantly demanding more bandwidth, content and speed. The communications industry must work to keep up by both evolving traditional business models and building the capacious, ubiquitous network needed to satisfy demand.

HKBN's ad creativity is a big part of the success. This new one ads a new twist, but it's just as funny and in your face as their previous endeavours:

Some might argue that it had never really started, but in any case BT has announced that they were resuming FTTP deployment starting this month. Apparently the delay in deploying FTTP was due to other FTTP trials providing a lot of things to learn. Reading between the lines, and on the basis of the experience of other incumbents in Europe, I suspect what this really means is that they hit some major issues in the smaller trials they have begun, and wanted to solve those before expanding further. Makes sense, I guess. 

It'll be really interesting to see not only if BT delivers on its promises regarding FTTP, but perhaps more importantly the differential in success between their FTTP and their FTTC. More...

This morning, Ars Technica publishes a really interesting article on the cost structure underlying wireline broadband service and its sensitivity to data usage entitled Should broadband data hogs pay more? ISP economics say "no".This article looks at financials publicly reported by cable operator Time Warner and concludes that despite usage growth, broadband service is profitable, and even increasingly so.

Mostly, that gels with my own experience in the matter and with discussions I've had - off the record - with many telcos. Of course, there's an underlying assumption in the conclusion of the article which is that pricing that isn't based on cost is immoral. More...

I'm coming back to a topic I dicussed already a few months ago, namely video-communication and the role that telcos could play in it. As you probably know if you read me, I'm convinced that TV6centric Video-Communication is as close as a killer app of FTTP we'll ever find, and I'm repeatedly frustrated and astounded that telcos who are moving towards FTTP are not looking at bringing this on the market anytime soon.

I already mentioned that Skype's move into that field represented a serious threat, but in recent weeks, we have seen a much more serious one emerge: Apple. I admit I was stunned (in a good way) when I first saw the iPhone 4 video-communication ad (it's called Facetime by Apple, by the way). More...

When I was in US last, I heard that Google had organised a fiber trenching contest in a parking lot in Mountain View, and I just found out today thanks to my friends at sonic.net that there was a video released of the 'event' if you can call it that:

It's an interesting (and fun) way to select a provider for trenching work, butit doesn't alleviate a particular concern of mine which is that in the context of their FTTH trial, Google focuses too much on the technical side of things and too little on getting the business model right and the ecosystem aligned.

Then again, it's harder to do a video of a business model contest... More...

Following on the heels of the IDA video yesterday, the FTTH Council Europe just released its own promo video for FTTH. Enjoy!

This is a photo of a couple of San Francisco taxis taken back in late April. I hadn't processed them until now. I'm a little puzzled about the advertising efficiency of such a campaign even though I understand that the B2B market is significant for Citrix, and that this is San Francisco and maybe wouldn't even be attempted elsewhere.

Still, there it is: mainstream virtualization.