Last throw of the dice for WiMAX

Like it or not, this is the year that will prove whether there is a business case for mobile WiMAX. If it doesn’t take off in a substantial way in 2008, I think you can safely proclaim it another broadband wireless niche platform that has come and gone, similar to the likes of LMDS, MMDS and some of the proprietary stuff that came before it. It will live on for providing fixed “DSL-equivalent” broadband in remote areas and emerging markets, but it will have missed its chance of becoming a ubiquitous broadband technology for the roaming masses.

If it hasn’t solidified its base by the end of the year, then it will be because carriers have chosen to stick with HSPA and wait for LTE, which will by then be just around the corner. And that will mean that WiMAX has been pushed down to become yet another footnote in wireless broadband history at the expense of the GSM juggernaut. (And the same goes for the other proposed 4G standard, Qualcomm’s UBM, by the way.)

Of course, it could be that WiMAX really does prove itself in 2008 and there are already some encouraging signs. In Japan late last year the government awarded two licences in the 2.5GHz band to consortia headed by KDDI and another to Willcom, with equipment vendors already lining up to provide gear. One thing to bear in mind, however, is that in the case of KDDI, trials are only expected to kick off in February 2009.

Similarly, 2009 is expected to be the year that another potential WiMAX market, Taiwan, really gets underway. Taiwan also sees itself as a major supplier of WiMAX equipment to the world, and it is interesting that there are already grumblings over there about the cost of WiMAX compliance testing. According to Digitimes sources, it will cost about US$25,000-31,250 for the makers to complete the certification testing of a single fixed WiMAX item. In addition, the WiMAX Forum is charging US$10,000 per mobile WiMAX product to use the WiMAX Forum certified mark compared to US$5,500 per fixed WiMAX model. The news report also noted that a fee of up to US$200,000 is being estimated for the testing of some items.

The WiMAX camp also got a generally favourable report from Juniper Research last week suggesting that the mobile WiMAX 802.16e market will grow to $23 billion by 2013, with half of that total coming from Asia. However, that will still only represent “a single digit proportion of the Asian mobile broadband base by 2013,” according to the report.

The Juniper report also warns that both the availability of suitable devices and the awarding of licences will be important factors in determining the success of Mobile WiMAX 802.16e, both in Asia and globally. Interestingly, it also tips licences in India and Thailand as being crucial to the WiMAX camp. Warning bells should ring right there, given the two countries’ notoriously slow licensing regimes. In the case of Thailand, you can almost guarantee that it won’t be issuing licences for WiMAX this year, given the political environment and the need to create a new regulatory body.

When it comes to devices, one of the WiMAX camp’s trump cards is the backing of Intel, which will see it become standard in every new notebook computer, much the same as Wi-Fi is today. The only problem with this is that if there is no network to connect to, it doesn’t really matter if the notebook is WiMAX-enabled or not.

In contrast, if the push to include HSPA in new devices takes off, the HUGE advantage they have is that the networks and service are widespread already. And the momentum to include HSPA chips in notebooks is likely to happen this year. Throw in all the HSPA-capable mobile phones, and the economies of scale certainly don’t favour WiMAX and won’t any time soon.

Despite some vendor claims to the contrary, WiMAX needs the Sprint rollout in the US to succeed, and it will need to succeed wildly in 2008 if it is to give any vote of confidence to carriers in the rest of the world wanting to roll it out. If it doesn’t, then the GSM/HSPA/LTE camp will have won the battle for mobile wireless broadband supremacy for the foreseeable future. – Geoff Long

Do we want our IPTV?

Video is clearly the “in” thing on the Internet, with new peer-to-peer television offerings, user-generated video services, Internet video channels and telco interest in IPTV. So it was a shock to see such a low turnout at last week’s IPTV World Forum Asia in Singapore. You’d think every telco in the region would have sent out a delegation to find out what the latest thinking is and how the pioneers are doing. Or perhaps it’s in everyone’s too hard, too costly and too much government meddling basket?

Let’s face it, Asia hasn’t realised its promise when it comes to IPTV, particularly given the much touted high-density, high-bandwidth economies like Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. The region was at the forefront thanks largely to PCCW’s Now offering, which first started more than four years ago, but since then there’s largely been a vacuum. PCCW/Now still accounts for the majority of IPTV subscribers in Asia with its 850,000 signups, and it was only a few months ago that it was joined by a serious telco IPTV offering – Singtel’s Mio.

In the meantime, it seems there’s now more IPTV activity in Europe and the US, particularly in conjunction with some of the new fibre rollouts. The Asian numbers haven’t been helped by some world-class dithering by regulators, which continue with 20^th Century models to regulate Internet and new media. South Korea, for example, should be an IPTV showcase by now if it wasn’t for the insistence by regulators that they can’t broadcast in real-time and other hobbling policies. Most of the other regulators around the region seem not to understand the new digital media landscape either.

Nevertheless, there were still some interesting lessons to be had from last week’s IPTV event, first and foremost that it will remain a very expensive business to enter into and one that will have a very long return on investment. Speakers from PCCW/Now and Singtel/Mio both stressed that they viewed the business as a pay TV service – meaning it required all of the various agreements with content producers, advertising and a reliable platform rather than an Internet “best effort” platform.

In the case of PCCW, it’s yet to turn a profit after four years and has recently ploughed US$200 million into getting the broadcast rights for English Premier League football. Singtel has also been sourcing original content and is not expecting to turn a profit on its IPTV service for 10 years. Low Ka Hoe, the director of Mio TV and content, also pointed out that nothing less than a 20Mbps connection (or ADSL2+) was good enough for delivering the service given that they wanted it to be seen as reliable as regular satellite/cable TV.

For all the talk of “video 2.0” and user-generated video content, most of the big telcos seem to think they need to be a pay TV operator first, then add the social networking/user-generated content frills later. This could well be the case because, let’s face it, everybody across the whole media landscape seems to be still playing a guessing game when it comes what consumers want and are willing to pay for. The real convergence hasn’t happened yet – consumers still go to a TV set to get regular shows and head to the Internet/PC to get niche content. Whether the two come together remains to be seen.

Content producers are also still guessing. Yew Ming Lau, VP of business development for Turner Broadcasting Asia Pacific, said Turner and other original content producers were still working out how to tap into the “long tail” of niche content by experimenting with various web channels and other delivery models. Telcos would be happy to hear that he believes they are better placed to deliver the niche stuff in conjunction with the regular programming, but then again this could be just because both the telco and the content producer see this as the best way to monetise user-generated and other new content forms.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room that few people want to draw attention to – the web-based and peer-to-peer players like Joost, Babelgum and the newly-announced Knocka TV (from the founders of ICQ). Some might even call it the over-the-top elephant that may come crashing through to spoil the party. One surprising voice to acknowledge it at last week’s IPTV gathering was Hou Zi Qiang, an independent director of China Netcom who stressed he was presenting his personal views rather than those of the carriers.

According to Qiang, “the basic business model of new media is the Internet business model” and “video should be on the Internet, not on the private network of an operator.” In other words, IPTV is ripe for disintermediation like every other media. And perhaps that explains the low turnout at last week’s IPTV World Forum Asia last week – everyone’s tuning into what’s happening on the Internet before they commit to expensive IPTV rollouts. – Geoff Long

UPDATE: ITU not planning a 'boring' show for Bangkok

A while back I was critical of last year's ITU Telecom event in Hong Kong (and a lot of trade shows generally), provocatively labelling them as "boring". Well, in the ITU's defence, they've decided to do something about it (and admit they were getting a bit stale). Needless to say, one good strategy is to confront your critics and give them the lowdown on your plans for improvement. That resulted in me meeting ITU Telecom executive manager Fernando Lagrana in the Bangkok airport Novotel, on a four-hour stopover, for an update on their "exciting" plans for ITU Telecom Asia in Thailand next year. Here's the lowdown as first published in Commsday last week.

The ITU Telecom Asia event scheduled for Bangkok next year could get a significant boost with the addition of a high-level government-industry summit similar to the recent Connect Africa meeting being considered, ITU Telecom executive manager Fernando Lagrana has revealed exclusively to CommsDay.

A “Connect Asia” Summit would likely be held back-to-back with ITU Telecom Asia and a decision will be made before the end of the year and even as early as this week, he said. ITU deputy secretary-general Zhao Houlin is in Bangkok on Friday for the opening of the annual Bangkok International ICT Expo.

Lagrana pointed to the success of Connect Africa, held at the end of last month in Kigali, Rwanda, where US$55 billion was committed by government and businesses over five years to improve the broadband infrastructure across Africa. He said similar expectations could be held for a Connect Asia summit.

The idea of holding a high-level summit to coincide with ITU Telecom Asia was one of a number of ideas for revamping the event when it is held in Bangkok in September 2008. Other changes being proposed will include more interactive forum sessions that are less geared towards major sponsors, and the addition of a “theme” to the programme – with possibilities including emergency telecommunications, social responsibility and cyber security – in addition to the more “generalist” exhibition.

Lagrana said that more open and informal forum sessions, using a professional moderator from the BBC, were first trialled last month at Connect Africa with great success. Of the seven sessions held, only one used a traditional format of a speaker delivering a speech from a podium, and according to Lagrana the open sessions were better received.

As a result, the ITU will adopt the more interactive formats for future events starting with ITU Telecom Africa to be held in Cairo next May. The forum committee will also reject presentations that are deemed too commercial. However, he said in addition to the regular forum there will be a parallel sponsored section where vendors could deliver their commercial messages.

The format changes stem from a new organising team, with 80 percent of the forum committee changed along with changes at the management level since last year’s ITU Telecom World in Hong Kong.

The forum committee has also been studying other successful event formats and is co-operating with groups including the World Economic Forum that will lead to a forum that is “more substance and less status”, according to Lagrana. Other groups are also being invited to set up sessions that extend the reach into other “communities” involved in the industry.

Patrapee Chinachoti, president of the Trade Exhibition Association of Thailand and one of the key people in bringing ITU Telecom Asia to Bangkok, told CommsDay that the event would also utilise Thailand’s position as a key hub in Indochina to bring in delegations from neighbouring countries.

“From the Thai side we want to show that we are ready to organise an international show and attract more regional events to the country,” he said, adding that a government-level delegation will most likely visit neighbours such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and invite them to highlight their future infrastructure plans to an international audience. – Geoff Long

Search site for breaking news

I came across a great new search site by the makers of Fon -- they're the guys that are bringing the social networking concept to Wi-Fi, where users share their access points. It's called Unfolding News and as the name suggests it's for keeping track of breaking news stories. It's still in beta but from the few times I tried it seems stable and quite useful.

Interestingly, Fon founder Martin Vasavsky said he came on the idea for the service because the likes of Google and Technorati weren't good enough for his "vanity searches". Apparently he likes to keep track of stories that mention him. Well, if you happen to read this one Martin, perhaps you can add me to your blog roll ;-) And it will also mean your search service is working!

That's also him on the cover of CNBC magazine above.

RSS hijacking??? . . .

. . . Or trouble at Ovum??

I'm a huge fan of Google Reader (and before that other RSS readers, but Google the first for purely online reading). As a result, I rarely go to web sites or blogs directly, I just skim read the headlines in Google Reader and then delve further if something takes my fancy. I also have a huge list of RSS feeds that I subscribe to.

I was adding Ovum to my RSS list today when a strange thing happened. When I added the address (www.ovum.com/rss), Google Reader responded by telling me I'd subscribed to a feed called ARmadgeddon. WTF, I thought, so I tried again. Same response. End result is if you subscribe to Ovum's RSS feed you will end up reading ARmadgeddon.

The really interesting thing is that it's not a bad result -- ending up at ARmadgeddon. According to its own blurb, it "has been set up by IT Analyst Relations professionals to relate tales of a symbiotic community: real stories, analyst gaffes and (un)predictions, analinguo, rumours, gossips and more."

Or from my short browsing session, it seems to be an insider's take on the telecom and IT analyst community, complete with gossip, movements, rumours, speculation and everything else that makes for a good read.

While I'm happy to keep it in my feed list, I'm still wondering how Ovum's RSS link manages to take you to ARmadgeddon. A disgruntled Ovum staffer perhaps? Try it out for yourself -- go to www.ovum.com and near the top you'll see a link "Latest comments available via RSS". Put that in your reader and see where it takes you (just clicking on the link doesn't work, you have to put it in Google Reader or something similar). And do leave a comment if you get the same result or have any insights . . .

Telecom and the Burma crackdown

There’s been a lot of talk and reports of how Internet and technology have managed to focus world attention on the protests and subsequent crackdown in Burma (Myanmar). Whether it’s via cell phone, blog, picture sharing sites or old-fashioned email, the consensus is that more news got out, and got out a lot quicker, than during the last big uprising and crackdown in 1988.

Since then the military junta has cut off the Internet connection, but still there were some reports still getting through via mobile phone cameras, although it seems they have even tried to shut down the cell network as well. That leaves some satellite connections at private companies and embassies, and perhaps some roving satellite phone subscribers. Let’s hope they don’t succeed in closing the last remaining view into the country completely.

As it turns out, I happened to be tracking a story on the junta’s plans for its very own cyber city just before the protests began. There had been quite a few reports of a 10,000-acre (4,050 hectare) “Yadanabon cyber city” project about 70 kms east of Mandalay, the country’s second largest city. According to Xinhua news agency, not only was it going ahead, but the first stage would be officially opening in January 2008 and with some big-name tenants from China, Russia, Thailand and Malaysia.

The Irrawaddy, probably the best news source about Burma, did a story back in June that panned the grand ICT plans of the junta. In particularly it quoted Reporters without Borders, which labelled Burma an Internet black hole and suggested that no foreign company in their right mind would risk going there.

Yet according to Xinhua last month, the list of companies signed up to be anchor tenants in the cyber city included the likes of ZTE and Alcatel Shanghai Bell (ASB) from China, Thailand’s Shin Satellite, IP Tel from Malaysia and Russian software outfit CBOSS. It also claimed that an airport had been built “in” the cyber city and that “various systems including ADSL, CATV, Triple Play and WiMax are being installed, experts said, adding that the present stage before the soft opening deals with fiber cable installation.”

That’s quite a detailed list of development. As it turned out, I was at a satellite conference in Bangkok the same week and had a chance to ask a number of people at Shin Satellite directly, including the company president. Not one person had even heard of the Yadanabon cyber city, never mind being an anchor tenant. I then contacted Alcatel about the Alcatel Shanghai Bell (ASB) involvement and got the same response – there were no plans to invest in the cyber city project.

Obviously the military dictatorship had simply made up stories to give their ICT project some credibility. They’ve got the patch of cleared jungle for the site, but now they are desperate to get foreign investors to part with their money so they pretend that companies are already moving in. I’m also guessing that the likes of Shin Satellite and ASB were named because they do have activities within Burma. Shin has an agreement with the Myanmar Posts and Telecommunication to provide satellite services throughout the country, including VoIP and Internet access via satellite, while ASB has in the past been involved in mobile and fixed network projects there.

One group that picked up on ASB’s involvement thanks to the Xinhua report was Corporate Social Responsibility Asia (CSR Asia). It noted in a posting on its web site that Alcatel Shanghai Bell was Alcatel-Lucent’s flagship company in China, and that Alcatel Lucent had a portion of its web site devoted to the topic of CSR, including its commitment to the UN Global Compact. The GC requests companies to avoid complicity in human rights abuses, yet as CSR Asia noted, with an investment in Burma there is sure to be some questioning of how they intend to ensure that.
That’s quite a contentious issue, and as no other media had followed up on it, I decided to question CSR Asia and at the same time let them know that the original news source on the main companies’ involvement in Yadanabon cyber city was probably incorrect. However, there was still their involvement in general telecom projects within the country to consider.

Stephen Frost, a founder and director of CSR Asia, started off by suggesting there may well be a role for the likes of Alcatel and Shin Satellite to invest in Burma from a CSR perspective. “Sanctions are clearly failing and the junta looks no more likely to relinquish power today than when the sanctions were applied. Moreover, engagement hasn’t worked either,” he told me. Frost also suggested that it might be time for a serious discussion on whether investment with “CSR strings attached” could play a role. “I’m not suggesting companies should invest; just saying it really needs to be discussed outside of the confines of the ‘Burma sanctions lobby’,” he noted.

On the subject of Alcatel specifically, however, he said the issue isn’t so much that Alcatel invests, but rather the disconnect between its CSR position (as stated on the web site) and its actual practice. “The statements on the parent company’s web site re the Global Compact point to laziness at best,” he noted, adding: “I think the company is mis-managing its brand by failing to engage with the Burma issue fully and transparently.”

Frost also pointed out that around the same time as the cyber city news stories were surfacing, Alcatel-Lucent had announced that it had been accepted onto the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. Yet other companies were in the past “essentially thrown off that index” over their Burma investments, he pointed out.

There are no easy solutions here, but as the world lauds the fact that the Internet was able to play a small role in getting information out on the junta’s brutal crackdown, it also needs to be aware that the technology also aids and abets that same junta. And if it eventually does go ahead with its cyber city, companies need to be very certain that the investments they make really are going to be beneficial – both to them and the people of Burma – in the long term. – Geoff Long

Who needs a phone company?

A while back I suggested that the phone company of the future will most likely look a lot different to that of today. In fact, you might not make calls through a phone company at all, but rather it will be just one of many services that you can access when you’re on the network. That day looks like it’s coming sooner rather than later.

A perfect example is Swedish mobile VoIP provider Rebtel, which has come up with a Facebook application called Reb Me. From what I can gather it allows Facebook users to call each other via Reb Me for the price of a local call or in some cases for free. Okay, it’s not that different to the likes of Skype and all the other VoIP offerings out there, but the fact that you can call outside users from within Facebook adds another dimension.

There’s also a bunch of other applications that allow you to do voice communications within Facebook, listed on Dan York’s disruptive telephony blog. Examples include WalkieTalkie, which provides private voice chat for Facebook groups, and Chatterbox, which allows users to leave voice messages on your Facebook profile. There are already a few others, but you can expect a lot more in the coming months given the way application developers are flocking to Facebook.

Another more recent voice app for Facebook is FWD, which used to be called Free World Dialup and which has been around for years. This one is particularly interesting given it has some high-profile backers: Tom Evslin, former co-founder of VoIP provider IXTC is an investor and board member; the CEO of the company is Dan Berninger, a VoIP pioneer and founder of the VON Coalition; while Jeff Pulver, the original founder of Free World Dialup, is chairman. Not a bad pedigree.

According to Evslin, the initial service will allow FWD members to exchange voice mail with each other as well as with Facebook members who install the FWD application. After that they will aim to connect users of other social networks with each other and with the many SIP-based VoIP networks that peer with FWD.

And he says voice mail is “just an interesting opening wedge for FWD on social networks.” Other services that can be expected are real-time communications, messaging and presence management, all of which are existing services on FWD itself.

According to Evslin, the end goal will be to link all of the islands of communications that exist in the VoIP world and within social networking and connect them altogether. “At FWD we believe that real-time Internet-based communication including voice is ready to move from islands of service – think of Skype and Facebook as big islands – to universal connectivity,” he wrote in a posting on his web site. “We think that off-island service will be as free of incremental costs as on-island service is today. This Internet-based communication – unlike today’s islands of VoIP service – is a much more capable replacement for, not an evolution of, the current tolled phone service.”

And of course FWD won’t be the only company out there trying to tie all of the various networks together. If you think the VoIP space is busy now, it will only get more congested.

Just as a small sampler of what the future may hold, imagine if anyone could embed VoIP into their own Flash-based applications. That’s what a company called Ribbet Phone is doing. It has a “phone component” that developers can put in any standard Flash-based browser app, so you can make telephone calls directly from a browser, as well as add other communications services.

Yep, phone service – not to mention your phone company – is going to look a lot different in the next couple of years, if not sooner. – Geoff Long

ITU Telecom Asia heads to Bangkok in 2008

HUGE news: the ITU's Telecom Asia event, held every two years, is coming to Bangkok. Actually Thailand has been trying to land this event for quite some time, having made a bid to be the 2004 host, which went to South Korea, and also the last event in 2006, which was eventually held in Hong Kong.

I've been critical of the ITU events in the past, but I still believe they can put on a good gig if they listen to some of the criticism and go past the stale formats. Hopefully they will, because punters are going to love to come to Thailand.

Actually, the country has been growing as an events destination for some time. The old 3G Congress (now Mobility World) did a stint in Bangkok before scampering off back to Hong Kong, while the tech-focussed APRICOT event has also been successfully held here.

And this week, I've been attending the Asia Pacific Satellite Communication Council annual conference here in Bangkok. In case you don't subscribe to CommsDay, the big news is that the satellite sector is expecting a slowdown because of the sub-prime loans crisis. You can read the story on the Commsday web site now. Actually I'll be taking part in the final day's golf tournament tomorrow at Alpine golf course - looking forward to that one!

So Bangkok can put on an event. Still, was a surprise that the city got it, particularly given the current political situation and the insurgency problem down south. I'm going to write a column about this for next week, so eventually it will make it's way here. Stay tuned!

The ITU's press release is also available if you're interested.

ITU Telecom World needs some disrupting

This is an article I wrote for CommsDay Asean after attending last year's ITU extravaganza in Hong Kong. As you can read, I wasn't exactly overenthused by the whole thing. But there's room for improvement and it's coming to Bangkok. Yes, to Bangkok, Thailand!! More coming . . .

As the 23 tons of temporary trusses came down and the 28,484 sq meters of carpet up from the floors that housed ITU Telecom World last week, I did the only sensible thing on offer: I went camping. Yep, after all the well-meaning but meaningless talk of bridging the digital divide (yet again), I decided I’d rather be on the other side of it. So it was goodbye IP-TV, ciao mobile TV and into a national park that was blissfully free of any TV or Internet.

For those who went to Hong Kong last week, I’d be really interested to know what you thought of the ITU’s three-yearly telecoms extravaganza (email me at geoff.long@gmail.com if you like). Personally, I was both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the sheer size (in terms of square metres) of the event, but also the scale of the commercialisation of it all. Underwhelmed because, frankly, it’s just another very large trade event – and not a particularly inspiring one at that.

Anyone who managed to check out all 695 stands spread out over the 41,000 sq meters of exhibition space was either a fitness freak or desperately giving out marketing material. As for the ITU’s claims that this is a not-for-profit event, that’s a question of semantics. It’s certainly a money-generating exercise and in that regard it’s no different from any other trade show around the world.

I ended up spending most of my time in the forums, but I couldn’t help noticed that a lot of the keynote speakers were top brass at some of the major exhibitors. While some did have something to say, others delivered little more than a corporate spiel, and what they did say was uninspiring. In particular, many Asian CEOs, from some of the world’s largest companies, really need to work on their presentation skills if they’re to be taken seriously.

Some of it can be put down to speaking in their non-native tongue, or having to go through a translator, but many non-English speakers from other parts of the world can get around it. In fact, the best presentation I came across was from a Spanish-speaking South American but delivered in English. He had something to say so people were prepared to put in the extra effort to listen.

In the airport lounge before flying home, I came across an article by Kumiko Makihara in the International Herald Tribune that went some way to explaining the poor English among the Japanese elite (and it’s presumably similar in other parts of North Asia). “In this extremely conformist society, even children are reluctant to stand out by speaking better or worse than their peers,” he wrote, noting that there is still a stubborn insular mentality among Japan’s elite. Like it or not, fluency in English and presentation skills are essential in today’s global business world, and as Makihara noted, the country cannot expect to thrive despite the lack of English as it did in the past.

But back to ITU Telecom World: I sometimes wondered what the point of the event was supposed to be. Is it a snapshot of the industry and intended to look at current and future trends? Or is there some sort of altruistic, UN-style goal that is pushing everyone to look at and provide a solution for the unequal spread of communications? Let’s face it, the hot topic of IP-TV isn’t going to help wire up Africa.

Yet connecting the unconnected was what Fernando Lagraña, executive manager of ITU TELECOM, summed up as the goal of the event in a closing statement issued by the organisation: “As well as the innovation, the lively debate, the busy halls and the fun, I hope its real legacy is as a milestone in our commitment to bridge the Digital Divide together”.

One of the problems I found is that the event is trying to be all things to all people. It’s trying to show off the latest and greatest while at the same time finding basic solutions for the unconnected. It’s trying to be a showcase for the mobile world when the mobile world has its own focussed event in Cannes/Barcelona every year. In fact, all of the various segments are best served by their own focussed events, whether it’s about security or wireless broadband.

It’s also trying to latch onto trends such as social networking when these groups are better represented in cyberspace or their own informal meets. In other words, the communications industry is not the same as it was in 1971 when the first Telecom World was held. It has fragmented and segmented and specialised and moved on. Yet the ITU seems to be still catering to the telecoms model of old with an event to match. Maybe the ITU and its events needs to face some of the same disruption that the telcos are facing? – Geoff Long

Do we really need broadband handouts?

We’ve supposedly got cheap and standardised networking components that can allow countries to leapfrog generations of technology. We’ve got concepts like user-generated infrastructure where shared connections are being tied together to form one global hotspot. Competition between not only service providers but also different technologies should be bringing affordable and fast communications to everyone.

So with all of this at our disposal, why does it sometimes seem that we’re regressing to a time when governments took the lead in providing communications infrastructure? Even in the most capitalist country in the world they’re calling for government intervention and more funding to improve the US’s poor showing in the broadband rankings.

Has the market really failed so spectacularly that the only way to get communications infrastructure rolled out is for governments to throw money at the problem?

The regression to government-led infrastructure is not confined to the US, however. In Thailand, for example, the rate of regression is probably world-class. A recent proposal was for the state-owned TOT to take control of all of the country’s networks, pool them together and then lease it back to the access providers.

It’s the sort of suggestion that makes you check that the date isn’t the first of April, and unfortunately it’s a suggestion that’s still on the agenda somewhere. It’s about the only time that it seems an advantage that the country is in a state of legislative paralysis.

When it comes to throwing money at the problem, however, Australia would seem to be leading the pack. I think most of the world doesn’t realise just how much money both sides of government are talking about giving out to build broadband. The incumbent government is offering $600 million for regional broadband, while the opposition says it would provide funding of some $4.7 billion if elected. Those are serious sweeteners.

There’s nothing wrong with governments having the goal of attaining world-class infrastructure. I just wonder if the paybacks will be as good as they’re expecting. Obviously the thinking is that the country will be more competitive as a result of blanket broadband coverage. Would be interesting to measure though. You could also argue that it’s just ensuring that everyone has equal access to digital entertainment.

Many people seem to agree that pervasive and super-fast broadband connections lead to economic growth. I’d like to see the data to back it up. If places like Stockholm, Paris, Hamburg and others now have widespread access to 24Mbps connections and higher, in some cases 100 Mbps pipes, have the citizens or businesses in those places become better off financially? Or do they just have better movie collections?

As well as serious studies into the economic flow-ons of superfast broadband, I’d also like to see another type of study – whether funding or regulatory reform is the best way to improve infrastructure. For example in the U.S., there are many who would argue that the problem lies with the power of Big Telco. Their lobby armies ensure that the vested interests of the big players are protected.

Similarly, in developing countries like Thailand it’s often the regulators that are stopping infrastructure from being built. But if they would allow outside competitors to enter the market, and allow new technologies like WiMAX and so on to flourish, they could probably have world-class infrastructure in a relatively short period of time. And all without the government having to open the public purse.

Let’s applaud the goal of wanting to have world-class infrastructure. But let’s also see if world-class competition and regulatory policies are a better way of delivering it. – Geoff Long

The mobile Internet buzz

It would be easy to dismiss the whole mobile Internet buzz as nothing more than, well, buzz. After all, we've been through it all before with WAP and other hype cycles. But it would also be a mistake.

Mobile infrastructure looks finally ready to be a prime access mode for getting onto the Internet and some of the indicators indeed look promising. Certainly there's a ton of investment dollars being funneled into it. While this column has been negative about the iPhone since its introduction, it did serve to show the potential of the mobile Internet. And its introduction has also focussed attention on the capabilities of some of the other device makers and at the same time injected a healthy dose of new competition into the mix.

Recently, for example, I was shown a new Nokia device that could send photos to the Flickr image sharing service with just one-click. And the fact that the device's software pointed the user to the feature automatically, perhaps guiding them to a service that they didn't know existed, was also encouraging.

Video is also another rising capability, with CNN using the latest Nokia N series phones to do coverage that was later broadcast to its regular TV viewers earlier this year. And in Africa, a continent normally seen as on the wrong side of the digital divide, they are also doing reportage via mobile devices.

The Voices of Africa project has three mobile reporters in different countries filing stories for the Africa News web site (www.africanews.com). Since May this year they have been testing and getting experience in uploading texts, photos and videos - all via GPRS networks. Imagine what they could do on 3G.

Here in Asia, we're lucky that mobile networks are being upgraded to provide faster uploads and downloads. StarHub in Singapore, for example, will be offering one of the region's first HSPA (high-speed packet access) networks, with touted download and upload speeds of 7.2Mbps and 1.9Mbps respectively (even though we all know in reality that users won't be actually getting anywhere near those speeds).

And think what you will about the relative merits of WiMax versus 3G, the fact that both standards are competing and pushing each other can only be good for consumers and content providers alike.

Behind the scenes things are also moving along as well. For example at this year's JavaOne event in May, Sun released a new open mobile development platform called JavaFX Mobile, which it expects to lead to more innovative and sophisticated (and open) services on mobile devices. (The technology was actually developed by SavaJe Technologies and acquired by Sun this year.)

Some of the types of services that might be envisaged by Sun and others have already arrived. While most of the major social networking sites and the likes of YouTube are planning on porting their capabilities to the mobile world, other lesser-known names have already made progress in this direction.

In Japan, for example, social networking sites for the mobile are probably well ahead of anywhere else in the world. Take the example of mobagetown, a mobile social networking site that had over 6 million users as of June this year. And the icing on the cake: it's apparently turning a nice profit.

As a result, similar services are popping up regularly, with Media Groove planning the launch of "Chipuya Town" next month, according to Infinita. It reported that it will be a mobile Flash-based 2D version of real-world Tokyo youth hotspot Shibuya and include things such microblogs, communities, friends and chat as well as its own virtual currency.

There are a legion of other examples out there, but I'm sure you get the picture. While there will no doubt be a lot more hype to come, not to mention a decent spreading of both the instantly filthy-rich and some belly-up companies, this time the mobile Internet looks like the real thing.

Your right to tinker

Australian carrier Telstra was last week forced to remove some television ads for its Next G mobile network after industry watchdog the ACCC deemed them misleading. But the ACCC should know that it has been on-going for some time, as evidenced by its earlier online adverts that feature a Volkswagen Kombi engine. As any VW nut will point out, that ain’t no Kombi engine.

For those that haven’t seen the ads, they feature an animated Kombi van that then switches to a close-up of the engine, somehow suggesting that it’s got a lot of grunt, therefore you’re 3G connection will have a lot of grunt. But as everybody who’s ever owned one knows, Kombis (particularly the split-windscreen model depicted) are just about the slowest thing on the road apart from perhaps a Honda Scamp.

Aside from questioning why you’d use a Kombi van to hint at a fast connection, you’d also have to ask why you would show an engine that was as far removed from a Volkswagen engine as you can get, particularly as people who own them tend to be nuts. I know because I used to be a fanatic myself. At least they could have shown a horizontal piston stroke, which is one of the most distinctive, and fundamental, things about most of the old VW engines.

I was discussing this with a fellow journalist recently who also happened to be an old car nut and we got to reminiscing about all of the things you could do with engines of yore. Like adjusting tappets, using feeler gauges to set points and other details I won’t bore you with. And then he suggested that the ability to tinker with things was lost. What would teenagers do today with cars controlled by sealed electronics and stuff that you tend to throw away rather than fix?

Actually, I don’t think he need worry. Probably they’ll be designing or modifying widgets for their web sites or reprogramming their robot or even unlocking an iPhone, as one young guy did last week. It’s another case of “it was better when I was young”, but most probably there’s more potential to modify and tinker with things now than there ever has been.

A good example of the potential is the O’Reilly magazine Make, one of the few tech-oriented magazines to arrive and survive in the US in the past couple of years (it launched in 2005) and which is all about pulling things apart and rebuilding them. As they describe it, “this is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.”

Another backer of the idea that we’re moving into an era where there’ll be more tinkering is Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, who believes that hardware will be the next major area to go open source. In other words, the hardware designs, diagrams, parts and so on can be opened up and shared. Anderson is also an avid builder of DIY drones, the unmanned aerial vehicles, even taking one of his creations for a recorded mission over Google’s headquarters.

And earlier this year we got what was claimed as the first open source car. It was unveiled at an auto show in Amsterdam in March and goes by the name of “c, mm, n” (apparently for “common”). You can get all of the technical details and its blueprints at http://www.autoindetoekomst.com.

A similar site is theoscarproject.org, which came about because German founder Marcus Merz found himself in a state of “seminar consciousness” during an Internet event, and decided he needed to do something more concrete. “I wanted to do something specific, something physical . . . something distinctly non-virtual . . . something worth investing even more of my time,” he wrote in a manifesto available online. “It should be something that every number-cruncher, engineer, or creative with a little bit of common sense – man or woman – who has ever played with Lego, Construx, or a computer, could relate and contribute to . . . We will develop a car in the Internet. We will develop a car via the Open Source concept –free and community oriented . . . without copyrights and restrictions.”

So perhaps next time Telstra is looking for a car to represent their networks, they can freely tap into the open source model. Then again, that might imply they’re willing to open up their network -- on second thoughts, better not.

Imitate Skype or die

Earlier this year I was informed that I could make free calls to China, mobile or fixed, over the Chinese New Year. Aside from the fact that most Chinese were too busy eating to pick up the phone, it was quite an offer. In fact, I’m getting so many of these freebies of late that I could do the bulk of my communications for almost no cost. Of course it’s not quite that simple, but the message is appealing nonetheless.

I’d had a similar offer of free calls from AsiaXPAT if I signed up for its web site. Turns out that both offers were via the same company, a VoIP provider with the obligatory odd-ball name, in this case ZoIPPE. Zoippe, a subsidiary of Hong Kong’s e-Kong Group, was only launched at ITU Telecom World in December last year, so no doubt the flurry of activity is to boost its membership base in a very crowded market.

Skype wasn’t the first free VoIP provider on the scene, but somehow it had the right ingredients to catch the public’s eye (or ear, in this case) and succeed. Ever since then its imitators have come thick and fast. Zoippe also has a “Zoippe Out” category in homage to Skype Out, where users pay VoIP rates rather than get free calls. It’s not the only one to flatter Skype with the imitation either, with Italy’s Skypho also fairly blatant about where its influences came from.

Another provider that has cropped up on my radar is the Gizmo Project, although in this case it was being recommended by other users who wanted to communicate with me – always a good indication that it’s catching on. Like Skype, Gizmo is being praised because of its better-than-average voice quality. And both are also moving into the mobile world, with Gizmo partnering with Nokia on its N80 devices.

These are just some of the new offerings that seemingly sprout up every other week in the alternative telecom patch. Another I’ve mentioned here in the past is Fon, which is backed by the likes of Skype and Google and is rolling out what it calls the world’s largest wireless network through a concept dubbed “user-generated infrastructure.” Users buy a Fon wireless router, then agree to share their home broadband connection with other users. In this way, Fon users have free access anywhere they go in the world, or at least anywhere there is an open Fon router.

The latest news on the Fon front is that it might be teaming up with BT in the UK. According to one report, BT users would be able to use Wi-Fi phones at any Fon hotspot. Whether that happens or not, Fon already has a new challenger in the form of Meraki Networks. It’s using a similar “user-generated” concept but it’s based on wireless mesh routers. Another similarity with Fon is that it got backing from investment firm Sequoia, announced last week, and yet another is that they both could as well fail.

Wireless and VoIP are both sectors with fairly high attrition rates. In the case of VoIP, I stumbled across an interesting list dubbed the VoIP Graveyard recently. With almost 100 deceased VoIP providers, it’s a fairly obvious warning to others that Skype is the exception rather than the rule.

Perhaps one way that providers could tap into new markets is to attract user communities – the way Zoippe is doing with the AsiaXPAT portal. Also in the case of Gizmo, it’s derived from the SIPphone platform, which was developed so that groups such as communities, universities and telcos could offer VoIP themselves. Today, partnering and peering is still one of the main aims of the Gizmo Project.

And then look at Skype, which has recently found its own user community thanks to new parent company eBay. So maybe providing branded services to different user constituencies is the way forward. We’ll keep an ear on Zoippe to find out, but in the meantime let’s hope it doesn’t end up in the VoIP Graveyard.