It's called Antennagate. Why?
Why is this a scandal? Is this a tip-of-iceberg crime that is part of conspiracy? Dead bodies? People's life's saving wiped out? How does this scandal compare to Enron, BP, WorldCom, World Savings and Loan, Country Wide, Goldman, Madoff (and literally thousands of smaller scale Ponzi schemers)? We could add the corrupt politicos - let's not.
Or is this journalist excess? (Others can debate what is journalist in today's world.) The story is that there is no story.
Return rates are about .5 percent.
Was there cover-up? Apparently concerns were raised earlier. I'm sure people raised concerns. This happens in all product teams (or any other team effort.) If you want to amaze people with innovations, you take some risk. You cannot solve all the problems, eliminate all the risks and then start the project.
But back to journalists, or bloggers or ... Remember the press stories about Palm being the iPhone killer? This was an obvious PR ploy by Palm and many in the press fell for it. Now we have Ballmer boasting about his tablet. Publicly confessing that 'he' missed this. So what? What is the story? The new ruling on jailbreaking applies to all phones, but the press features the Apple angle. Again, the story is there is no story. A few months ago, the company in China that produces products for HP, Apple and others reported the high suicide rates. The headlines featured Apple - almost as though it was their factory. Now this is a real story. The tragic side of China's economic miracle. Indeed 1000's die annually in coal mining accidents. This story is never told.
We have the on-going armeggedon stories of the 'platform wars' iPhone vs Android. It seems some people see replay of the PC wars. Do they think that Apple/Jobs have learned nothing in the last 30 years? But Apple have. They now have control of the chip roadmap. Dependence on Motorola nearly killed Apple. Today, Apple's leverage of ARM is a key advantage. Apple invented the concept of 'software evangelism' - recruiting ISVs to your platform to drive sales. It is working fabulously today. Sure there are many developers and applications in the Android ecosystem. But, when I see a SmartPhone app in the generic press, it's an iPhone app. I sincerely would love to hear about how the Android ISV ecosystem is maturing, i.e. producing high revenue applications. I would especially like to see a big success story about an App that came on the Android before the iPhone.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Old New Business Model for MNOs
Mobile Operators can sell their bandwidth to advertisers. This New Business Model is the same old 1950's TV business model. (Same model as Radio, Newspaper, Magazines, and Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.) Same as "caller pay".
Why not? The MNO's dumb pipe is not dumb. It has all kinds of information about the subscriber. They can do Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), super granular billing, traffic routing and shaping, and more.
1 in 5 users does not have DSL. Surely these are the younger users. Youth defines the future.
Win-win-win: 1) Advertisers target their audience more precisely. Thus each eye-ball/impression they pay for, is worth more. (Mobile bits cost more to deliver.) 2) Users get free entertainment (plus the ads) without over subscribing to bundled mobile data plans; or paying painful overage charges. 3) MNOs get more revenue. Tada FINALLY they see increasing ARPU. The advertisers subsidize the massive upgrades needed to support the massive growth in Packet data.
What else? Just like TV (HSN) or catalogs, the user can shop on line. But unlike HSN, the user controls the experience. The on-line merchandiser can offer much smarter catalogs, gender or age specific if the viewer is the cell phone user.
More? Time of day. Another old idea. Phone companies used to vary rate plans based on time of day, day of week. Users hate this because they don't like to manage these details. Merchandisers can use time-based charges to maximize their ROI. Or, MNO can use dynamic bidding like Google does.
Why not? The MNO's dumb pipe is not dumb. It has all kinds of information about the subscriber. They can do Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), super granular billing, traffic routing and shaping, and more.
1 in 5 users does not have DSL. Surely these are the younger users. Youth defines the future.
Win-win-win: 1) Advertisers target their audience more precisely. Thus each eye-ball/impression they pay for, is worth more. (Mobile bits cost more to deliver.) 2) Users get free entertainment (plus the ads) without over subscribing to bundled mobile data plans; or paying painful overage charges. 3) MNOs get more revenue. Tada FINALLY they see increasing ARPU. The advertisers subsidize the massive upgrades needed to support the massive growth in Packet data.
What else? Just like TV (HSN) or catalogs, the user can shop on line. But unlike HSN, the user controls the experience. The on-line merchandiser can offer much smarter catalogs, gender or age specific if the viewer is the cell phone user.
More? Time of day. Another old idea. Phone companies used to vary rate plans based on time of day, day of week. Users hate this because they don't like to manage these details. Merchandisers can use time-based charges to maximize their ROI. Or, MNO can use dynamic bidding like Google does.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Smart Bit Pipes use Internet Offload
The mantra from Mobile Service Providers is "We don't want to become dumb bit pipes".
We all know the issues: 'Over the top' services; Network Neutrality; Unlimited data plans; Support for all their legacy radio interfaces / protocols; And nearly flat ARPU. To make matters worse, MSPs are heavily leveraged.
It used to so easy to watch ARPU climb based on basic stuff, ring tones, wall paper, and SMS. It's tough when they take away your punchbowl.
Instead of being Dumb bit pipes, become Smart bit pipes.
Firstly, the MSPs already are Smart bit pipe providers. The Core Network and Base Stations are doing much more than passing bits. They're handling hand-offs, authentication, security, location, billing, management, and much more.
Really the challenge is how to become Smarter bit pipes. At first this looks tough. Mobile Service Providers have to support legacy phones, networks, services, etc. These are built with old CPUs, meaning uni-core, hot systems that don't take advantage of the multi-core, multi-threading in CPUs and software that is now available. The Radio Access Networks, Base Stations and Backhaul consume the bulk of the CAPEX. This leaves little CAPEX for massive upgrades of Core Networking.
One smart think can be done right now. Install Internet Offload. These systems bypass the expensive old uni-core Core Network and take Internet Packets directly to the Internet. Internet Offload systems are built with new multi-core, mulit-threaded HW and SW with massively higher throughput per $$, per watt, per cubic inch. Some Internet Offload products support Deep Packet Inspection can be used to enforce policies and prevent abuse.
Internet Offload can save CAPEX now, by avoiding upgrades on expensive legacy Core Networks; and can be used with "4G" as these deployments roll out.
We all know the issues: 'Over the top' services; Network Neutrality; Unlimited data plans; Support for all their legacy radio interfaces / protocols; And nearly flat ARPU. To make matters worse, MSPs are heavily leveraged.
It used to so easy to watch ARPU climb based on basic stuff, ring tones, wall paper, and SMS. It's tough when they take away your punchbowl.
Instead of being Dumb bit pipes, become Smart bit pipes.
Firstly, the MSPs already are Smart bit pipe providers. The Core Network and Base Stations are doing much more than passing bits. They're handling hand-offs, authentication, security, location, billing, management, and much more.
Really the challenge is how to become Smarter bit pipes. At first this looks tough. Mobile Service Providers have to support legacy phones, networks, services, etc. These are built with old CPUs, meaning uni-core, hot systems that don't take advantage of the multi-core, multi-threading in CPUs and software that is now available. The Radio Access Networks, Base Stations and Backhaul consume the bulk of the CAPEX. This leaves little CAPEX for massive upgrades of Core Networking.
One smart think can be done right now. Install Internet Offload. These systems bypass the expensive old uni-core Core Network and take Internet Packets directly to the Internet. Internet Offload systems are built with new multi-core, mulit-threaded HW and SW with massively higher throughput per $$, per watt, per cubic inch. Some Internet Offload products support Deep Packet Inspection can be used to enforce policies and prevent abuse.
Internet Offload can save CAPEX now, by avoiding upgrades on expensive legacy Core Networks; and can be used with "4G" as these deployments roll out.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
EPC means MultiCore, massively multicore. The Evolved Packet Core, EPC, for 4G networks requires all Core Network Elements to move to massively multicore (and multithreaded) architectures. This applies not only to HW. In these applications, Software cannot take the 'free ride' offered by virtualization and cloud computing. The EPC Network Elements must be built on robust commercial multithreaded software and hardware.
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