at&t, Verizon, Time Warner Telecom Top Ethernet Providers

Two of the top three providers of U.S. retail business Ethernet services gained port share for mid-year 2007 as compared to year-end 2006 results, according to Vertical Systems Group. In addition, a formerly cable company affiliated contestant entered into the top tier for the first time. Time Warner Telecom, started as an affiliate of Time Warner Cable, has been spun out on its own.

At&t, Verizon Business and Time Warner Telecom are the top three U.S. retail business Ethernet services providers, as measured by ports in service, says Vertical Systems Group.

At&t, including the former BellSouth market share, holds the leading position with a 19.5 percent share of mid-2007 ports. Still, at&t’s share declined compared to the combined year-end 2006 shares for at&t (13.6 percent port share) and BellSouth (8.5 percent) separately.

Verizon Business is second overall with a 15.8 percent port share, up from 12.2 percent at year-end 2006. In third position is Time Warner Telecom with 13.7 percent of ports, a jump from 10.7 percent in 2006, says Vertical Systems Group.

Cox Business, holding a port share of 8.9 percent, now is in fourth position—and is the first U.S. cable company to climb to the top tier of metro Ethernet providers.

Cogent is fifth with an 8.6 percent share of the market, an increase from 8.2 percent at year-end 2006. Qwest (including OnFiber) is sixth at 8.4 percent, down from a 9.9 percent port share.

Yipes is seventh with a share of 4.6 percent, a decline from 5.4 percent at the end of 2006. Yipes recently announced its acquisition by Reliance Communications and will operate as a business unit within the company's FLAG Telecom operations.

Other Business Ethernet Services providers comprise an aggregate 20.5 percent of the market, including AboveNet, American Fiber Systems, Alpheus Communications, American Telesis, Arialink, Balticore, Bright House Networks, Charter Business, CIFNet, Cincinnati Bell, Comcast Business, CT Communications, Electric Lightwave, Embarq, Expedient, Exponential-e, Fibernet Telecom Group, FiberTower, Global Crossing, Globix, IP Networks, Level 3 (including Broadwing), LS Networks, Masergy, Met-Net, Neopolitan Networks, NTELOS, NTT/Verio, Optimum Lightpath, Orange Business, RCN, Savvis, Spirit Telecom, Sprint, SuddenLink, Surewest, Time Warner Cable, US LEC, US Signal, Veroxity, Virtela, Windstream and XO Communications.

New Yahoo! Mail Launches

Yahoo! Mail has launched in the U.S. market. The updated former email client expands the Web mail service into a "social communication" tool, adding the ability to send text messages to cellphones directly from e-mail. The latest update also illustrates a trend: "communication" and "content" apps are blurring and blending. At the same time, communications are shifting, in part, into the context of social networking sites, where communications is a "background" feature always available, and where the current willingness and ability to communicate is known to each social network "buddy."

Yahoo! also has tweaked the interface to make it easier for people to go back and forth between email, instant messaging and text messaging, and to access content from inside the client itself.

The new service includes two real-time communication features that are the first of their kind from a leading Web mail service. These include the ability to send free text messages from Yahoo! Mail to mobile phone numbers in the US, Canada, India, and the Philippines, and the ability to send instant messages (IM) from Yahoo! Mail to members of the world's largest combined IM community, including users of Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger2.

The new Yahoo! Mail enables people to select how they want to communicate with their online contacts: by e-mail, instant message or text message to a mobile phone number.

U.S. users now can right click on underlined dates, names and keywords within messages and take additional action, such as adding events directly to their Yahoo! Calendars, adding friends to their Contacts, immediately viewing a Yahoo! Map of an address or performing a Web search on a keyword.

Yahoo! says the client will operate with the speed and responsiveness of a desktop application. A co-branded version of the new Yahoo! Mail will also be available in the fall to customers using the following broadband Internet services: AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet, Verizon Yahoo! and Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet. The new Yahoo! Mail will be available this fall to Yahoo! Small Business Mail users as well.

100 Percent Mobile Penetration by 2013

SNL Kagan now estimates that 84 percent of the U.S. population, including consumer, business and double users, will have mobile phones by the end of 2007. By 2013, penetration will be over 100 percent. It might not even take that long. U.K. mobile penetration is something like 116 percent already, according to Ofcom, and has broken 100 percent in a number of western European countries.

A First for Google Mobile Usage

Google has seen a spike in usage of its mobile services since May, partly offsetting the traditional summer slump in computer-based Web surfing for the first time, says Marissa Mayer, Google VP.

Traffic to Google's maps, e-mail and mobile searches on mobile phones and wireless handheld devices rose 35 percent between May and June. That reversed the previous annual pattern in which both mobile phone and computer use declined, Mayer says.

Credit Apple's iPhone, at least in part. The iPhone launch apparently lead to a jump of 40 percent to 50 percent in use of Google Maps on mobile phones.

Mobile use remained high into August, even as overall traffic searches surged then fell in the summer months. The traffic traditionally drops by 20 percent to 40 percent between May and June, as computer users in the Northern Hemisphere go on vacation.

Mayer says the numbers suggest growing acceptance of mobile Web applications.

Overall growth in the usage of Google services has begun to pick up again in the current week, as U.S. students go back to school and vacationers begin to return to work, Mayer says.

Unlocked Phones?

Perhaps we will have to hope for Google to win the right to build a national wireless broadband network before we see unlocked phones on a wide scale. To this point, wireless carriers have argued they have to lock phones for several reasons, including some that are technical, but also to subsidize the handsets and control monthly recurring costs. Up to a point, that's reasonable.

But carriers could dispense with the objections some customers have to locked devices in a pretty simply way: create separate plans for unlocked phones. Sell the phones for full retail price and charge different prices for access. Warn users that some features might not work, or work in the same way, as they do on "locked" devices.

Carriers might just find out that most users don't care whether their phones are locked or not. Others will be passionate about using their own devices, and might not mind higher device prices or even higher monthly access fees.

Of course, one significant reason for locking phones is to prevent use of data connections for mobile VoIP. But people already can do this, even on phones that don't run the Symbian operating system. Sooner or later, unlocking will happen. As is always the case, it probably won't until somebody really dangerous convinces the legcy carriers to move. That somebody has to be Google.

GrandCentral Number Porting Affects 434

GrandCentral has had a few number porting issues of its own. CEO Craig Walker says GrandCentral had issues with 434 customers whose numbers could not be seamlessly transitioned from one underlying supplier to another.

What happened is that a supplier of numbers and connections "sent us a notice that they’d be exiting certain markets and disconnecting some phone numbers in 30 days," says Walker. GrandCentral immediately began porting the numbers to a larger carrier partner. But 434 couldn't transparently be moved.

Those users had to be assigned new telephone numbers in the same area codes they already were using. Going forward, GrandCentral is emphasizing working with large, reliable providers committed to providing these services long term.

"Although this affected only 15 of the local areas where we offer services, out of nearly 8,000, we take this matter seriously and have done everything to make the disruptions as limited as possible," says Walker.

That is the way to handle an unplanned outage.

Wells Fargo Outage Yesterday

Wells Fargo, the fifth-largest U.S. bank, had an outage of its own on Tuesday, taing down knocked the company's Internet, telephone, and ATM banking services for at least an hour and 40 minutes. Five nines? Not likely.

U.K. VoIP Provider Also Has Outage

U.K. VoIP provider VoIP.co.uk had an outage of its own last Monday. Users could call other VoIP.co.uk users, but were unable to place or receive calls from users on the public telephone network. Service was out for the better part of a day.

Microsoft OCS Starts to Disrupt

Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 is going to disrupt market share in today's business phone system market. It also is going to take share and rearrange markets in other areas you might not expect, such as the test and measurement space. Huh? Isn't voice quality testing, on both qualitative (subjective) and quantitative (mean opinion scores, for example) dimensions, something that specialized test and measurement firms do? Well, yes.

But Microsoft also is bringing to market its own "quality of experience" server that automatically tracks end user voice quality no matter where a call is placed--from inside the enteprise or at a hotel. No network test probes are required.

That's just one more example of how incumbents are finding their core businesses under threat of rearrangement from upstarts with deep pockets, strategic motivation, different visions and deep expertise in software and networking.

Microsoft OCS Managed Service for SMEs?

Microsoft's Office Communications Server hasn't begun shipping in general release. But that hasn't stopped OCS from garnering significant mind share among enterprise information technology managers. Some recent surveys by the Gartner Group and Wainhouse Research show OCS in the top spot among unified communications providers, according to Gurdeep Singh Pall, Microsoft corporate VP.

Pall positions OCS as an alternative to private branch exchanges (business phone systems) in either the time division multiplex or Internet Protocol or hybrid flavors. But Pall also notes that OCS obviates the need for a PBX of any sort, though it interoperates with IP and TDM systems. That's one reason Microsoft is introducing a new line of desktop phones that work with OCS.

Less attention has been paid to the issue of how small and mid-sized enterprises will some day be able to use OCS. Warren Barkley, a principal group program manager at Microsoft, says a hosted service ulitmately will be made available to SMEs.

Barkley simply noted that small organizations generally lack the IT resources to set up and run an OCS style unified communications system. It wouldn't be the first hosted service Microsoft offers.

Microsoft already offers a hosted collaboration platform, LiveMeeting, and is moving to offer applications such as customer relationship management as services.

Linked In is Like Email; Facebook is Like IM

I've never been a fan of LinkedIn (I'm not a "head hunter," and it undoubtedly is a useful tool for people who do that for a living). It might be a nice utility for updating contact information for a small subset of the people you actually know and communicate with. Beyond that I've never had occasion to use it.

Facebook seems like a better version of LinkedIn, though. I was able to get my son's new address when he went back to NYU without using LinkedIn. To be sure, the information wasn't pushed to me. I had to go view his Facebook page. But I got what I needed without emailing or calling.

So why is LinkedIn like email? It's a tool "older" people use for work. Why is Facebook like IM? It's a tool "younger" people (and increasing numbers of "not so young") use to keep up with other people they actually care about. In some important ways, IM also is a "richer" experience, as Facebook is.

Skype: The Ultimate Windows Externality

"On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption triggered by a massive restart of our users’ Windows-based computers across the globe within a very short time frame as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update," Skype says.

Not everybody buys that explanation. But, if true, it has to rank as the most massive, unexpected software interaction Windows ever has inadvertently caused.

The high number of restarts apparently caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction, Skype says. Some have argued that the outage proves peer-to-peer networks are inherently unstable.

It's hard to test that assertion since Skype uses a modified P2P architecture with a sign-in process that is more "client-server" and centralized than most other P2P networks.

Some think there was some sort of hacker attack, but Skype denies it. "We can confirm categorically that no malicious activities were attributed."

If the Microsoft routine updates were, in fact, contributory or causal, it would rank as the most significant network-wide interaction anybody ever has seen. Just another example of the way applications are reshaping the way global networks perform.

As some of you know I have recently been dealing with interactions caused by a Vista upgrade, mostly of the "we don't talk to Vista" sort. I will say one thing, however. Vista seems to be much more robust than XP was about handling "hibernation" operations. XP used to become unstable after several hiberation operations, at least on my machines. I have not found that to be the case with Vista.

Is Wireless Cable's Achilles Heel?

In the early 1990s, Comcast and other cable partners invested in an earlier version of "SpectrumCo," a business that would eventually become Sprint PCS, only to pull out later in the decade when the going got tough. Cablevision, for its part, also flirted with creating its own PCS network, but ultimately decided against it.

In 2005, Comcast, Time Warner Cable (TWC), Cox (COX), and Advance/Newhouse Communications banded together with Sprint Nextel to creat the "Pivot" service.

Sprint CEO Gary Forsee says that it took longer than expected to get Pivot off the ground and subscriber numbers haven't been released. That logically suggests uptake has been slow.

Recently, Sprint abruptly withdrew from SpectrumCo, the entity that in late 2006 snapped up $2.37 billion worth of licenses to wireless airwaves. The acquisition had spurred speculation that together, Sprint and cable companies were planning their own wireless network.

All of which might suggest wireless continues to be the platform telecom competitors can use to parry cable's wireline thrusts. It is, after all, a simple line extension to add voice and broadband access to a cable network. It is a discontinuous jump to offer wireless services over a completely distinct network. And cable execs dislike discontinuities as much as any other exec.

And the evidence is growing that mobile is way people "do voice."

BitTorrent Throttled by Comcast

Internet Service Providers don't like BitTorrent because it basically destroys their business model (flat rate access) and stresses the very part of their network most vulnerable to high usage (the upstream). Many ISPs simply limit the available bandwidth for BitTorrent traffic. Cable operators that now seem to include Comcast go a bit further and disupt the "seeding" process that allows BitTorrent peers to act as better upload nodes. In Canada, Cogeco and Rogers Cablesystems also "step on" BitTorrent traffic.

If P2P traffic keeps growing the way Cisco predicts, and if no changes are made in the dominant retail pricing model, throttling of P2P applications will happen on a wider scale. P2P attacks network capacity at its weakest link.

Cisco Predicts Exabyte Networks

Cisco's recent forecast of global IP bandwidth consumption suggests a 37 percent cumulative average growth rate between 2006 and 2011, or about five times the 2006 level. That's aggressive, but you might expect that. You might even have expected the prediction that consumer usage will outstrip business usage, though business dominates at the moment. You wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that video will drive overall global usage.

You wouldn't necessarily be surprised to learn that Cisco forecasts at least 60 percent of all traffic will be commercial video delivered in the form of walled garden services. And a significant percentage of the remaining 40 percent of IP bandwidth will be consumed by IP-based video applications.

The next network, in other words, will be a video network that also carries voice and non-real-time data.

That would be a stunning change from the originally envisioned view of the Internet. But I think we have to recognize at this point that virtually none of the key developments in communications technology have developed as industry insiders, public policy proponents, technologists or entrepreneurs had supposed.

To be sure, all of the diligent work on Session Initiation Protocol will have a significant payoff. But that didn't stop Skype by rocketing past SIP using a proprietary approach.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was supposed to lead to an explosion of innovation by dismantling restrictions on "who" could be a provider of Class 5 switch services. Instead, innovation came from the Web. Perhaps despite the Telecom Act, all sorts of innovation has happened.

VoIP was supposed to transform the nature of communications. Instead, mobility, instant messaging and social networks are doing so. One might arguably look to all manner of text communications as the disruptive communications development of the past several decades, not voice.

And then there's electronic numbering and voice peering. Perhaps these approaches still will have some dramatic impact on global voice communications prices and ability to circumvent the "public network." But it's starting to look as though ENUM might be a next generation to provide the signaling system 7 function. That's not to say it is unimportant: only to say it was not what many had intended or expected.

So far, it would seem that the most disruptive impact of the whole basket of new technologies has been to disrupt our ability to predict the future. We've been wrong more than right, as we always are. IP networks are not now, and never will be, as closed as the old public network was. Neither are IP networks going to be "open," any-to-any networks in the old manner, with no intelligence or policies operating in the core of the network.

Lots of things can, and should, be done "at the edge." But increasingly, lots of things cannot. The transition of the global IP network to video also means a shift to real time services (and we aren't even talking about the same process at work for voice and visual collaboration). That spells the end of the completely "dumb network."