Convergence Conversation

So you can now make telephone calls from within Google Mail. Well, among other things this is a fine example of something we said back in 2008 in the Consumer Voice & Messaging 2.0 strategy report. Jamie Zawinski said that every program tends to expand until it can read e-mail - we said that the same was now true of telephony. Everything expands until it can place phone calls. As a result, although total minutes of use keep rising, the market is deconcentrating, with the total spread across an increasing diversity of players - games, Voice 2.0 companies, enterprise VoIP networks, mobile apps, perhaps even the odd telco. More...

Vodafone 360 was meant to be a new, social-network centred approach to managing the customer interface. Unfortunately, it was also bug-ridden and dogged by a lack of clarity of purpose. Now, its availability on Android Market and iTunes may create a strategic opportunity for Vodafone to access more customers. More here.

[Ed - we will be discussing issues raised in this article at the Telco 2.0 AMERICAS (27-28 October, LA) and EMEA (9-10 Nov, London) events, as part of the 'Managing the Co-opetition/Facing up to Facebook' sessions.]

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Telco 2.0 Top Stories

• Voice & Messaging 2.0: Google voice (if not Google Voice) in your Google Mail is here!
• Technology Disruptions: Let Google control your life with Priority Inbox
• Online Video: BBC iPlayer Mobile - 230,000 viewers on iOS
• Broadband Connectivity: DTAG LTE surrounds the cities from the countryside
• Developer Communities: Apps that heal, kill, and govern

It's heeere...Google integrates voice into GMail. At the moment, they're offering cheap international calls to US customers (which may imply that this shares common infrastructure with Google Voice), although some UK users (including this one) saw a phone icon briefly appear in the GMail window. More...

Telco assets and capabilities could be used much more to help Film, TV and Gaming companies optimize their beleaguered business model. There's an extract here from our new 38 page Executive Briefing report examining how.

These themes will also be examined and discussed at our Oct 2010 Americas and Nov 2010 EMEA Executive Brainstorms.

We're delighted to be signing up some excellent 'stimulus speakers' for the upcoming Telco 2.0 events in Los Angeles (27-28 October) and London (9-10 November). Here's a sample:

· Steve McGaw, SVP Corporate Strategy, AT&T
· Georges Penalver, SEVP, Strategy & Development, Orange Group
· Olivier Baujard, Group CTO, Deutsche Telekom
· Albert Hitchcock, Group CIO, Vodafone
· Sean Williams, Managing Director Retail Strategy, BT
· Stephanie Comfort, Chief Strategy Officer, Qwest Communications
· Frank Boulben, CMO, LightSquared
· Von Wright, VP Consumer Marketing, AT&T Mobility
· Joan Fitzgerald, VP TV, Comscore
· Jennifer Byrne, Director, Business Devt, Verizon Wireless
· Stacey Schulman, SVP Ad Sales Research, Turner Entertainment
· Thomas Fellger, CEO, Iconmobile
· Anthony Rose, CTO, Project More...

Telco 2.0 Top Stories

• Strategy & Finance: Apps to pass voice by 2013? That's...brave
• Broadband Connectivity: Fibre tax going up
• Voice & Messaging 2.0: VZW launches mobile Skype for BREW gadgets
• APIs: RIM launches App World 2.0, BlackBerry ID
• Cloud Computing: Google's King of the Data Centres - don't go over the top on cloud

[Ed:Telco 2.0 is signing up a strong group of 'stimulus speakers' for its Autumn events in Los Angeles and London. Details here]

A survey of mobile operators for The Economist says that they expect revenues from apps to pass revenues from voice by 2013. Really? If valid, that's certainly the most radical prediction we've heard in a long time - you might almost consider it a marker of the existence of a bubble in apps. More...

OFCOM's annual Communications Market Review is out (pdf, charts and spreadsheets here), and it is of course packed with chewy data. Taking a first look into the 379 page behemoth, we've noticed a couple of interesting points about the industry and the customers of the future, the people who took centre stage in our Serving the Digital Generation strategy report.

Before we get to that, though, here's a very important chart indeed.

First point - spending on communications is falling as a share of household income, dropping from a peak in 2005. Further, as you may have noticed if you aren't leading an extraordinarily sheltered life, this isn't because household incomes are surging upwards faster than we can devise products to absorb them. More...

Telco 2.0 Top Stories

• Regulation: Google and Verizon - net neutrality plot, giant CDN deal, or just more spin?
• Broadband Connectivity: The heaviest data users are on VZW
• Devices: Android will catch up with and outstrip iPhone
• End-User Services: Vodafone grasses a catch - 360 for 'Droid goes wrong
• Tech Disruptions: The week they hacked the iPhones

No prizes for guessing the lead this week; the deal-that-wasn't between Google and Verizon, and the follow-up "seven principles". The EFF's opinion is here; Robert Cringely's take on the original proposal is here. It seems reasonable to think that the original deal was something along the lines of a mammoth CDN contract, taking advantage of the operator's physical footprint to deploy Google servers close to users. More...

Telco 2.0 Top Stories

• Strategy & Finance: Amazon & Google pour in CAPEX, buy more data centres
• Devices: Nokia: ex-exec says fire the fashionistas for radical change
• Technology Disruption: MeeGo picked for Linux-for-Lancias standard
• Broadband Connectivity: Why don't we charge for data usage in the busy hour?
• Regulation: Tech/telco lobbying - who spends the most, and where do these people come from?
• The Sixth Bullet: Taking the hype cycle hype out of the hype cycle

[Reminder from the Telco 2.0 Team: don't forget to check out the 40 leading-edge online video presentations on 'Best Practice' Telco 2.0 strategies, case studies and use cases now available on demand, including: More...

Telco 2.0 Top Stories

• Devices Strategy: concerns raised on Windows Mobile 7 Preview
• Technology Disruptions: The week Apple dropped the iBall
• More Devices: Mixed news for Android: Droid X panned, HTC Evos sell faster than Samsung can make touchscreens
• Security: Android accidentally hacks entire AT&T voicemail userbase
• Broadband Connectivity: Sprint, Intel, Alvarion look at LTE, Motorola wants out of networks

Reflecting the intensive competition in the mobile devices and OS world, as analysed by Telco 2.0 partners Arete Research in their Telco 2.0 'Best Practice Live!' presentation here (you'll need to register), a strong theme of this week's news is that many of the main players in the arena are experiencing their own 'worlds of pain'. More...