Tesco Cuts the Cord

UK supermarket chain Tesco is building its own GSM network, an unusual step for any enteprise to take. The retailer will construct a private GSM network to replace its existing fixed-line phones at about 1,500 locations, CommsDay reports. Cable & Wireless will provide the backhaul and Ericsson will design, build and manage the network for five years.

Inside buildings and on Tesco campuses, mobile handsets will act essentially as cordless phones. But those handsets also will roam to the public GSM network off campus or outside buildings.

In many ways, the Tesco network is one of the more significant enterprise fixed-mobile converged networks so far. Tesco will use its existing IP network for voice trunking, while replacing tethered phones with mobile handsets that double as traditional mobile phones when outside the office.

By doing so, Tesco eliminates desk phones and all the maintenance,moves, adds and changes associated with use of those phones. To the extent that unified communications and FMC are at least in part about reducing the number of devices or phone numbers or mail boxes any single user must interact with, Tesco's network eliminates all support requirements for one of the two voice services it used to support.

Cisco Buys Jabber

Cisco Systems is acquiring open-source instant messaging software maker Jabber. Cisco will embed Jabber in its on-premise unified communications suite and and its WebEx Connect application.

Jabber provides integration of presence data across different devices, users and applications, allowing multiple instant messaging to communicate with each other, an obvious advantage for any unified communications service or application. 

More than 10 million users, including workers in AT&T, Bank of Ireland, BT, Department of Homeland Security, Earthlink, FedEx and JP Morgan, license software from Jabber.

300% Jump in Bandwidth Use by 3G iPhone Users

AT&T had expected about 500 percent growth in data consumption by 3G iPhone users, but has found bandwidth consumption jumped only 300 percent, according to AT&T CTO John Donovan.

It isn't clear whether this is because of end user behavior or some other element of the experience, such as users not being able to use their devices as much as they might have wanted to. Battery life issues, coverage issues or other impediments might have contributed. Nobody really knows, yet. 

What Convinces Cord Cutters to Buy Landline Voice?

Nielsen Mobile has found that about 17 percent of U.S. households say they have no landline voice service and rely on wireless services instead. But the Nielsen study also found that 10 percent of U.S. households are former wireless-only users who now have returned to wired voice service for one reason or another. 

About 17 percent they are required to have a landline voice connection in order to use some other important service, such as an alarm service, digital video recorder service, Internet or fax. 

About 12 percent say it was too expensive to make all their calls using a mobile.  

About 11 percent say the value and price of a bundle convinced them a landline voice account was worth having. Another 10 percent cited the convenience of a bundle as the reason to move back to buying landline voice. Basically, 22 percent said a bundle including voice was what got them to move back. 

Vodafone to Offer Dell Ultra-Mobile PC

Vodafone and Dell have announced that Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 ultra-mobile device will be sold with built-in mobile broadband, exclusively through Vodafone stores and online, and directly from Dell, in key European markets.

Available from late September, the Inspiron Mini 9, featuring built-in mobile broadband from Vodafone. There is no word yet whether Vodafone plans to take the plan a step further and directly bundle the mobile PC with service in the same way that mobile phones are bundled with mobile service.

But that is a logical step, if EU regulators will allow it.

$40 billion private line services market

The $40 billion private line services market is posting solid growth for a third straight year, say researchers at Insight Research. 

Mobile Not Up to Emergency Tasks

"SMS is touted as being able to deliver critical information during disaster events, and such services have been purchased by universities and municipalities hoping to protect the general public," says industry association 3G Americas.

 "Unfortunately, such systems typically will not work as advertised." 
 
New research conducted for the association indicates that there are serious limitations in third party Emergency Alert Systems (EAS).

In particular, because of the general architecture of CDMA, TDMA and GSM cellular networks, such systems will not be able to deliver a high volume of emergency messages in a short period of time.

Current systems not only cannot widely disseminate such messages quickly, and the additional traffic created by third party EAS solutions may disrupt other traffic such as voice communications, including that of emergency responders or the public to 9-1-1 services, the analysis suggests.

Surprise! Teens are Heavy Videogame Players

You could have guessed this would be the case, but researchers at the Pew Internet & American Life Project say a recent survey confirms that video gaming is pervasive in the lives of American teens. When asked, half of all teens reported playing a video game “yesterday.” Those who play daily typically play for an hour or more.

Fully 97 percent of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games. About 86 percent of teens play on a console like the Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii while 73 percent play games on a desktop or a laptop computer.

Some 60 percent use a portable gaming device like a Sony PlayStation Portable, a Nintendo DS, or a Game Boy.

About 48 percent  use a cell phone or handheld organizer to play games.

Further Enterprise IT Slowdown, Dell Says

When Dell announced its second quarter financial results on Aug. 28, 2008, it reported continued conservatism in IT spending in the United States, which had extended into Western Europe and several countries in Asia. The company now says it is seeing further softening in global end-user demand in the current quarter. Something must have happened over the last several weeks to change Dell's thinking, and one suspects the financial turmoil on Wall Street has at least a little to do with the new thinking. 

ChangeWave finds the same trend. 

Which Analogy for Satellite Radio?

It's hard to know precisely what to make of the recent plummeting of SiriusXM's stock to less than $1. In current circumstances, investors clearly are worried about the company's ability to refinance its debt. In a broader context, it is hard to figure out the size of the opportunity.  In February 2007 about 3.4 percent of radio listening was garnered by satellite radio.

In some ways, the value proposition is simple enough: "satellite radio will do for radio what cable TV did for television choice." These days, some appear not to be so sure, as Arbitron and Edison Media Research shows continued growth in usage and ownership of various forms of digital audio platforms, including online radio, iPod/MP3 players, and podcasting, for example. 

 

That study shows 13 percent of the U.S. population age 12 and older have listened to online radio in the past week; up from eleven percent in 2007.  On a weekly basis, online radio reaches more than 15 percent of 25- to 54-year olds.

But iPod and portable MP3 player ownership now is up to 37 percent of respondents. 

Audio podcasting usage continues to increase, with 18 percent of respondents reporting they have, at some point, listened to an audio podcast; up from 13 percent in 2007.  About nine percent say they have listened to an audio podcast in the past month.

Radio is more than music, but there is growing evidence that the Internet is gaining on radio as the medium to learn about new music. In 2008, radio is mentioned as the medium “you turn to first to learn about new music” by about half of consumers (49 percent), with Internet at 25 percent.  In 2002, radio was mentioned by 63 percent as they way they learned about new music, while only nine percent said the Internet provided that function.

So in a broad sense, the headwinds satellite radio is facing might include a change in the way people listen to music, something that has happened many times in the past. 

That still does not speak to the other major function of radio, which is news and other non-musical programming. It still does appear that satellite radio has an opportunity there. Today's satellite listeners are heavy listeners to radio in general including AM and FM radio. Satellite listeners spent an average of 33 hours a week with radio compared with the typical listener who listened approximately 19 hours a week to radio. Also, people who listened to satellite spent more time with AM or FM radio (14 hours) than they did with satellite radio (10 hours 45 minutes) or Internet (8 hours 15 minutes).

Still, one has a disquieting sense that some of the entertainment function once provided by radio now is supplied by other media, ranging from Internet-delivered radio, MP3 players or even non-music or non-news pursuits such as gaming, social networking and other diversions. 

The point is that the "satellite radio will do for radio what cable TV did for television" analogy might not be quite apt. The satellite radio analogy might instead be likened to a scenario where cable TV launched after Internet-delivered video already had begun to take hold in the market. The answer is not completely clear yet, but unlike cable TV, satellite radio has several other competitors for the music delivery portion of its business. 

Verizon Open Devices: Not What You Might Think

About 90 percent of the devices now in certification process for the Verizon Wireless network are intended to be used for "machine to machine" communication, not traditional voice or mobile data, reports Unstrung. That includes sensors, tracking devices, temperature monitors, and other devices of an "instrumentation" sort. The first two devices already approved are a storage tank-monitoring device from  and a prisoner-tracking electronic ankle bracelet, Verizon VP Tony Lewis says. 

Other devices close to final certification are a wireless router for the insurance industry and a $69 speech and texting device. Verizon thinks the reason is simply that there has been pent-up demand for such devices, but up to this point would-be providers likely have been deterred by uncertainty. 

"The promise of 'machine talking to machine' was always there, but the question for vendors was 'what network' and how to get on it quickly and cheaply," notes Lewis. In-home sensors and health care-related products, as well as in-home sensors for heat regulation, energy mangement or security are obvious areas of opportunity as well.

Lewis argues that Verizon's open network plan now offers vendors a straightforward and affordable way to do so.

That's one reason some observers and Verizon itself now believe "mobile penetration" ultimately could climb to the multiple hundreds of percent range, though current U.S. penetration is under 100 percent. 

Harvard Documents Media Bias

If you have been in the journalism business as long as I have (I was in a graduate journalism program in 1982 and have been writing professionally since 1983), a new report by Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government is no surprise. 

The study found that Democrats got more coverage than Republicans (49% of the stories vs. 31%). It also found the "tone" of the coverage was more positive for Democrats (35% to 26% for Republicans), reports Investors Business Daily.

"In other words," the authors say, "not only did the Republicans receive less coverage overall, the attention they did get tended to be more negative than that of Democrats. And in some specific media genres, the difference is particularly striking."

The problem has gotten worse over the past decade or so, it seems. Part of the training routinely reminded journalists that they should not join voluntary associations or even have investments under their own control in any companies they might write about. To be sure, the media environment has changed since the advent of 24-hour news channels, blogging and the Internet. Not in a good way, my professors would likely say.

Those "genres" include the most mainstream of media — newspapers and TV. Fully 59% of front-page stories about Democrats in 11 newspapers had a "clear, positive message vs. 11% that carried a negative tone."

For "top-tier" candidates, the difference was even more apparent: Barack Obama's coverage was 70% positive and 9% negative, and Hillary Clinton's was 61% positive and 13% negative.

By contrast, 40% of the stories on Republican candidates were negative and 26% positive.

On TV, evening network newscasts gave 49% of their campaign coverage to the Democrats and 28% to Republicans. As for tone, 39.5% of the Democratic coverage was positive vs. 17.1%, while 18.6% of the Republican coverage was positive and 37.2% negative.

Researchers have been studying such biases for quite a long time, since  the early 1970s at least. In 1972, "The News Twisters" by Edith Efron analyzed every prime-time network news show before the 1968 election and found coverage tilted 8 to 1 against Nixon on ABC, 10 to 1 on NBC and 16 to 1 on CBS.

In 1984, Public Opinion magazine found that Reagan got 7,230 seconds of negative coverage and just 730 seconds of positive; Mondale's positive press totaled 1,330 seconds, vs. 1,050 negative.

In 1986, "The Media Elite" surveyed 240 journalists at virtually every major media outlet and found that in presidential elections from 1964 to 1976, 86% of top journalists voted Democratic. A 2001 update found 76% voted for Dukakis in 1988 and 91% went for Clinton in 1992.

A 1992 Freedom Forum poll showed 89% of Washington reporters and bureau chiefs voting for Clinton in '92 and only 7% for George H.W. Bush.

A 2003 Pew survey found 34% of national journalists called themselves liberal and 7% conservative. By 7 to 1, they also felt they weren't critical enough of President Bush.

Euro Broadband Grow Rate Drops by an Order of Magnitude

It looks like the second quarter was sluggish for European broadband access providers, as it was for major U.S. telcos. European broadband providers added just over five million new subscribers, compared to nearly eight million in the prior quarter, say researchers at Strategy Analytics.

In the last 12 months, European broadband access providers added an about 30 million new subscribers, implying a quarter over quarter growth rate of 34 percent. In the second quarter, the top 10 providers, who account for just over 50 percent of the total European market, averaged a three percent sequential growth rate.

AT&T "Might" Target Ads in Future

Might AT&T monitor the Web-surfing habits of its customers to target advertising at them? Maybe, says Jeff Bounds, Dallas Business Journal staff writer. But not without giving customers control over their information, protecting their privacy, giving them value and ensuring “ransparency, AT&T says. Customers would have to opt in to the targeted ad program. 

AT&T made the remarks in a letter to the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is looking into Internet advertising tailored to the viewing habits of specific customers. The letter from AT&T executive Dorothy Attwood, dated Aug. 13, says the company does not currently monitor the surfing habits of its users. But the company says it is considering that option.

It is fairly clear that incentives will have to be offered to users to gain their consent to be tracked online. Opt-in programs typically do not get high penetration without inducements of some sort, and one tactic that typically works is providing some clear sort of financial inducement. Users might be offered "no additional cost" access to desired content that otherwise would be purchased. 

And behaviorally-targeted ads would fit with that scenario, as one complaint most users have is that advertising they see is not relevant. Behavioral targeting would increase the likelihood that delivered ads have more relevance, reducing the irritation factor. 

Nobody knows yet how big targeted advertising will become, but just about everybody thinks it has nowhere to go but up. Still, lots of privacy and "control of data" issues must be resolved beforehand. 

Mobile Versus Fixed WiMAX?

Nobody yet knows what percentage of WiMAX customers will use the access technology in fixed mode, compared to mobile mode. If Motorola is right, about equal numbers of each, with a smaller percentage, perhaps up to 20 percent, operating in both fixed and mobile mode. 

Globally, it seems likely that fixed access will be much of the demand. In the U.S. market, though virtually all current users are in fixed mode, the new Clearwire operation should result in a growing percentage of mobile users.