[1st-mile-nm] Fwd: Circuits: Are U.S. Cellphone Carriers Calcified?
Steve Ross
editorsteve at gmail.com
Thu Jul 5 17:47:00 PDT 2007
Cellular service overseas is vastly better than in the US,
although usually at a higher price -- I travel with an
unlocked GSM phone and use local SIMs regularly.
BUT there are some neat things happening. T-Mobile, for
instance, just introduced a combo wifi and GSM phone. For
the $10 extra per month (on top of whatever plan you have),
you get a new wifi router for your home. Your phone also
latches on to any other wifi hotspot that does not require a
web registration, and latches onto hotspots that are
exclusively t-Mobile (like starbucks, but not like hotels
and airports) even if they Do require web registration.
unlimited calling on the wifi. If you begin a call on wifi
and wander out of the hotspot area and back onto cellular,
if the call isn't dropped you get the remainder free as
well. free calling from overseas t-mobile and open hotspots.
Nice in our NYC apartment, where cell strength is lousy but
the wifi router becomes a local hotspot.
Right now, the two phones they offer on the plan aren't as
good as my 18-month-old razr, but I suspect new models will
quickly become available.
Steven S. Ross
Editor-in-Chief
Broadband Properties
steve at broadbandproperties.com
www.bbpmag.com, www.killerapp.com
SKYPE: editorsteve
+1 781-284-8810
+1 646-216-8030 fax
+1 201-456-5933 mobile
Tom Johnson wrote:
> No, what's below is not directly about 1st Mile --The Three 100s issues,
> but it does directly related to the communications environment and how
> starved for resources we are in the U.S. (Will Americans ever get over
> this "We're No. 1" crap?)
>
> -tom
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *The New York Times Direct* <NYTDirect at nytimes.com
> <mailto:NYTDirect at nytimes.com> >
> Date: Jul 5, 2007 2:03 PM
> Subject: Circuits: Are U.S. Cellphone Carriers Calcified?
> To: tom at jtjohnson.com <mailto:tom at jtjohnson.com>
>
> If you have trouble reading this e-mail, go to
> http://www.nytimes.com/circuitsemail
> <http://www.nytimes.com/circuitsemail?cir>
>
> Circuits <http://www.nytimes.com/circuits?8cir&emc=cir>
> E-mail Preferences <http://www.nytimes.com/mem/email.html> Circuits
> <http://www.nytimes.com/circuits>
>
>
> In Today's E-mail Thursday, July 5, 2007
>
> *THIS WEEK IN CIRCUITS:* Lost? A Personal Locator Beacon Could Save
> Your Life <#11397c438ff97e29_1>
>
> From the Desk of David Pogue
> *Are U.S. Cellphone Carriers Calcified?*
>
> Last week, I spoke at a cellular-industry conference in Lake Como,
> Italy. (Yes, I know, life's rough. And no, I did not spot George Clooney.)
>
>
> Continue reading. <#11397c438ff97e29_continue>
>
> Advertisement
>
>
> My topic was the increasing number of cool services that tie together
> the phone and the Internet. I've reviewed a number of these service in
> The Times recently: GrandCentral, which makes all your phones ring at
> once so people don't have to hunt you down (and was just bought by
> Google); Teleflip, which turns your e-mail into text messages on your
> phone; SimulScribe, which turns voicemail messages into text that
> arrives on your phone or in e-mail; and so on.
>
> The talk went well, but in the end, I wound up learning as much from the
> attendees as they did from me.
>
> The cellular industry is going through insanely rapid change. Almost
> everyone there - 800 attendees from 200 phone companies in 65 countries
> - was running scared of VOIP. That's voice over I.P., better known as
> Internet phone. VOIP includes cheapo unlimited home-phone service like
> Vonage, as well as absolutely free computer-to-computer calling with
> programs like Skype. It's all growing like crazy, which is making a huge
> dent in these companies' ARPU.
>
> Oh, yeah - that's Average Revenue Per User. Telecom companies live and
> breathe ARPU. The talks at this conference were all about "Improving
> Your ARPU." (They *love* acronyms in this business. Typical seminar
> description: "Learn how ISM and FSM can decrease your OPEX and CAPEX and
> boost your ARPU!")
>
> Most of these carriers intend to fight off VOIP by growing into a Double
> Play, Triple Play, or even Quad Play.
>
> What, you don't know those terms either!?
>
> If you're a single-play company, you just provide landline service. Add
> cellphone coverage, and you're a double play. Add Internet service and
> TV, and you're a quad play. You can see the same syndrome here in the
> U.S., too, as cellphone companies try to deliver TV service, cable
> companies roll out phone service, and so on.
>
> On the exhibit floor, companies were demonstrating very, very cool
> next-generation services for the onrushing era of unified
> communications. FastWeb, a company that started only in 2000 and is now
> a $365 million quad-play company in Italy, lets its customers watch any
> TV show that's aired in the past three days, on any channel, whenever
> they like. It's like retroactive TiVo.
>
> Other demos included upcoming services that let you text messages to and
> from characters inside Second Life, the virtual-reality game; a software
> module that brings your phone's incoming text messages onto your
> computer screen, so you don't miss them and can reply with your
> keyboard; and various systems that unify your communications (voice,
> text messages and chat, for example), giving you a single address book
> and mailbox for all of them.
>
> You know how young people are spending $10 billion a year on ringtones,
> just because it lets them express themselves? The next big thing, I'm
> convinced, will be avatars. This feature, too, was on display: You
> design your own little character, or avatar, choosing a hairstyle,
> clothes, facial features and so on. Then, whenever you call people, your
> character appears on their cellphone screens. I'll bet avatars will be
> the next huge teen fad in 2010 or so.
>
> But don't look for any of these goodies here in the United States.
>
> I get the distinct impression that American cellphone carriers are
> calcified, conservative and way behind their European and Asian
> counterparts. (For one thing, I wasn't aware of any cellphone companies
> from the United States at this conference.)
>
> One guy at the conference told me that his company, which sells software
> modules to cell carriers, had developed visual voicemail - a highly
> touted feature of Apple's iPhone, in which your voicemail appears on the
> phone like e-mail messages - *three years ago.* It had no takers among
> American carriers. ("This week, our phones are ringing off the hook," he
> told me sardonically. "We're digging the CD's out of storage.")
>
> I also remember hearing friends on the Palm Treo team tell me what a
> nightmare it was to sell their early phones to the American carriers,
> who traditionally wield veto power and design control over every feature
> of the phone. The Treo team had all kinds of great ideas for improving
> the design and software of cellphones - but those carriers turned up
> their noses with a "we know what's best" attitude.
>
> As you can imagine, the iPhone was a primary conversation topic at this
> conference. Lots of grudging admiration and amazement at what Apple
> pulled off.
>
> Not just technologically, either. The biggest impact of the iPhone may
> be the way Steve Jobs managed to change the phone maker/cell carrier
> relationship for the first time in years. "We'll give you an exclusive,"
> Apple told AT&T, "and you'll let us do whatever we like. We're going to
> handle the billing. We're going to take the signup process out of your
> stores and let people do it at home. You're going to redesign your
> network so that it works with our visual voicemail system." And so on.
>
> Stan Sigman, president and chief executive for wireless at AT&T, is on
> record as saying that he had no idea what Apple's phone would be like
> when he agreed to this-a deal that would have been unthinkable in the
> pre-Jobs era.
>
> If the iPhone becomes a hit, then, it could wind up loosening the
> carriers' stranglehold on innovation. Maybe phone makers' imaginations
> will at last be unleashed, and a thousand iPhone-like breakthroughs
> might bloom.
>
> The cellular executives at the conference didn't seem to oppose this
> development; indeed, several were thrilled by the shift, as though
> they'd been feeling just a little uneasy about the whole
> "we're-the-gatekeeper" thing themselves. That's really exciting stuff.
>
> Note to the cell carriers: Go with this new flow. You'll only improve
> your ARPU.
>
> (P.S. ... As longtime Pogue's Posts readers know, my biggest cellular
> pet peeve is the endless recording you hear when you reach someone's
> voicemail: "To page this person, press 2 now. You may leave a message at
> the tone. When you finish recording, you may hang up. Or press 5 for
> more options" - and so on.
>
> At the conference, I asked one cellular executive if that message is
> deliberately recorded slowly and with as many words as possible, to eat
> up your airtime and make more ARPU for the cell carrier. I was half
> kidding - but he wasn't fooling around in his reply: "Yes."
>
> The secret's out.)
>
> /
>
> This week's Pogue's Posts
> <http://www.nytimes.com/technology/poguesposts/index.html?8cir&emc=cir>
> blog.
>
> Visit David Pogue on the Web at
>
> /DavidPogue.com <http://www.davidpogue.com>.
>
>
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> --
> ==========================================
> J. T. Johnson
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> www.analyticjournalism.com <http://www.analyticjournalism.com>
> 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
> http://www.jtjohnson.com tom at jtjohnson.us
> <mailto:tom at jtjohnson.us>
>
> "You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
> To change something, build a new model that makes the
> existing model obsolete."
> -- Buckminster Fuller
> ==========================================
>
>
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