Thailand, SE Asia iPhone Deal?

It doesn't appear to be a done deal. In fact, it might be premature to say the deal will get done, but Thailand’s Advanced Info Services is collaborating with shareholder Singapore Telecom and Australia’s Optus to win the right to bring Apple’s iPhone to Thailand and the southeast Asia-Pacific region.

AIS Chief Marketing Officer Sanchai Thiewprasertkul says " up to 60,000 iPhones have been smuggled into Thailand so far," according to TeleGeography.

Google to Build Own Trans-Pacific Cable Network?

Up to this point, it has been local telcos, mobile providers, newspaper publishers and others in the media business who have had to ponder what Google might be up to. Trans-oceanic fiber providers might be next. Google apparently is planning to lay its own multi-terabit undersea communications cable across the Pacific Ocean, to be lit in 2009, according to Communications Day.

The Unity cable has been under development for several months. As envisioned, Google will join with other carriers to build the new multi-terabit cable. Google would get access to a fiber pair at build cost.

Partners haven't been announced, but rumors indicate Telekom Malaysia and Verizon, each involved in rival new cables, won't be part of the Google consortium.

There's not necessarily any broader agenda beyond securing low cost bandwidth on a major and growing oceanic crossing. Aside from that, the new capacity helps Google peer directly with Internet Service Providers in Asia.

Google's move still could be disruptive to the capacity industry, though. Obviously, Google's new capacity will take some revenue out of the retail market place.

TeleGeography Research says existing trans-Pacific cables provide on average 3.3 tbps of capacity and that carriers have increasingly been upgrading their existing cables or planning new ones. Trans-Pacific bandwidth demand has increased 41 percent between mid-2006 and mid-2007.

Is Voice the Killer App for IMS?

You have seen this story before: a new service rolls out and providers look for the "killer app." Then it turns out the killer app is something people already do, but the innovation allows them to do it in a new way, or maybe a better way.

To some extent, voice is a bit of that sort of thing for broadband Internet access, as email was something approaching a killer app for dial-up Internet access. Though the initial "killer app" for broadband was fast Internet access, voice becomes a very important incremental value.

"We are seeing a pattern in Europe of VoIP being delivered by companies that control the broadband infrastructure," notes Stephan Beckert, TeleGeography analyst. "It's an add-on feature to broadband."

So what is the killer app for fixed-mobile services? It's voice again, allowing legacy providers to hang on to more of their fixed-line business than otherwise; allowing mobile providers to displace landline traffic with mobile; or new providers to displace business phone systems.

So what is the killer app for IP Multimedia Subsystems? Wouldn't it be surprising if it turned out to be voice?

So what's the logic? Assume wireline carriers might lose as much as $13 billion in annual revenues by 2011, in part because 34 percent of U.S. households might elect to go "mobile only." So enter IMS, allowing mobile users to take advantage of cheaper Wi-Fi-based calling over their broadband lines.

Assume the landline carriers then lose just $8 billion in revenue to cord cutters. That's a $5 billion annual revenue stream. So put that in perspective. All U.S. multichannel video providers put together earn about $4 billion a year from pay-per-view and video-on-demand services.

So if wireline carriers just prevent landline erosion, they make more money than the whole U.s. VOD and PPV providers put together.

SunRocket, Vonage Not the Whole Story

As much as people think VoIP providers (other than cable) have got traction problems in the U.S. market, that is far from the case elsewhere. In western Europe, for example, independent VoIP providers are not only the market share leaders, but their share of market might actually be increasing, even though major incumbent telcos are actively in the market as well.

And where U.S. cable providers including Comcast, Cox, Time Warner and Cablevision are the new driving force for VoIP-driven POTS replacement, that is hardly the case in western Europe, where cable operators still have relatively slight market share.

Still, there is no denying the traction problem. According to analysts at TeleGeography, VoIP growth already has hit a plateau in the U.S. market. In western Europe growth rates not only have accelerated but might not hit a peak until 2008, says TeleGeography.

Hence the interest in VoIP 2.0, the integration of voice services with Web and enterprise applications, portals, email, documents, gaming and other end user experiences.