What's the Problem? Us.

Members of Congress have now surpassed corporate CEOs as the least favorably regarded profession in the United States, says Rasmussen Reports.

Just 25 percent of Americans have a favor opinion of members of Congress. Of course, shamefully, journalists are viewed favorably by just 43 percent of poll respondents, as are 42 percent of lawyers. Just 41 percent have favorable opinions of stockbrokers and financial analysts.

Bankers are viewed favorably by just 48 percent.

At the top of the ranking are small business owners, viewed favorably by 94 percent of respondents, and entrepreneurs, viewed favorably by 92 percent of those polled. Pastors and religious leaders are seen favorably by 70 percent of people polled.

Is it unreasonable to argue that those of us in any of those professions have seriously damaged our reputations with the general public by sins of commission as well as omission? Is it unreasonable to argue that ethical shortcomings, greed, corruption and even simple unfairmess are widely perceived to infect many professions?

And isn't it obvious that only dramatic changes in personal and business behavior can restore levels of trust? Isn't it obvious we are not the people we are supposed to be? Maybe it is time we stop pretending that "somebody else," or "the system" is the problem? Isn't it obvious we are the problem?

Most people in these damaged professions actually seem to believe they are behaving ethically, morally and in good faith. Obviously, people do not believe that. Time for change, indeed.

7 Useful Medical Vertical IP Telephony Apps

Some IP telephony suppliers, as well as many larger system integration companies, focus on the health care vertical. How to pitch IP telephony value to medical vertical buyers isn't so obvious to many retailers, though.

But here are seven concrete features medical vertical users might appreciate. Patient screen-pops can be used when a patient calls, providing a dashboard with general demographics, appointments and recent encounter summaries, says Houston Neal, of Software Advice.

IP faxing through the IP-PBX can be useful for primary care physicians sending a patient record to a specialist.

Appointment reminders that automatically call the patient to remind them of an upcoming appointment or the need to schedule an appointment are other examples.

Find me, follow me can be used to prioritize after-hours calls based on the urgency of the situation. Emergencies could be immediately forwarded to 911. Calls from patients that recently had an ambulatory procedure might be forwarded to the physician’s mobile phone. All others might receive voicemail or the answering service.

How to assess "urgency" is an issue, of course, but perhaps some combination of user input or recency of content or types of procedures can be part of the algorithm. A patient that recently had surgery likely is a higher priority than a call from a patient who has not had a history of severe or serious illness, or who hasn't been seen very recently.

Automated collections messages are a touchy but sometimes necessary business function for any medical practice.

Routine authorization of on-going prescriptions might be another application. Patients might call a specific number, then interact with an interactive voice response system to refill a routine prescription.

Patient-specific voice messages also are conceivable, allowing existing patients to access customized scripts related to billing, appointments or other information.

New Net Neutrality Rule Impact: Good and Bad

More use of network-delivered applications (software and applications as a service), more over-the-top VoIP, more mobile VoIP, more over-the-top video services, higher prices and more-stringent usage caps are among the likely new trends if the Federal Communications Commission extends wireline network neutrality rules to wireless companies as well, a move that seems nearly certain as the FCC begins a rulemaking on further network neutrality rules.

If traffic-shaping mechanisms cannot be used to manage congestion by selectively slowing some applications on either wired or wireline networks (the FCC already bars this practice on wired networks), service providers might have few tools to regulate use except by raising prices to discourage bandwidth-intensive use.

That likely would include a mix of new usage caps and higher prices for users who really want to use video and other bandwidth-intensive applications heavily.

What remains unclear is whether any new rules would also restrict the ability to create enhanced tiers of service that a customer wants to buy. For example, a user might want a service that prioritizes his or her own video or voice services over software upgrades or Web surfing. Business users, for example, often can buy services or appliances that allow setting of business priorities.

Sometimes those priorities include setting priority for voice traffic from desktop phones instead of Skype, for example. It isn't clear whether "positive" innovations (additional things users can do) will be prohibited by any new rules, as "negative" regulation ("thous shalt not") is put into place.

In any case, it is likely that providers of over-the-top applications in the voice, conferencing and multimedia communications areas, not to mention other forms of "software as a service," will be better placed to sell their wares.

The issues are quite tricky, though. Though the FCC rules ostensibly are aimed only at ensuring that users have access to all lawful applications, the rules also step over into the realm of business models and permissible marketing innovations.

It is not clear that network neutrality allows creation of enhanced services that work by prioritizing applications of any sort, even when that is what the consumer wants, and the service provider wishes to sell.

Most observers would agree that it is a proper regulatory effort to allow competing applications and services to have a chance to compete fairly with service and applications owned by the IPS itself.

The unknown danger is that laudable efforts to ensure competiton then overstep and retard competition and innovation by prohibiting positive innovation (new things people have the right to do) by prohibiting all forms of application acceleration.

About 1-2% of Text Messages Marketing Messages?

Some 25 percent of U.S. firms involved in interactive marketing also are using one form or another of mobile techniques, says Neil Strother, Forrester Research analyst. In 2009, about half those firms will have increased their mobile marketing spend.

Text messaging likely is a key part of most programs, in part because it reaches nearly every mobile phone. VeriSign, for example, says that in the second quarter of 2009, it delivered a total of 94.8 billion messages across its combined mobile messaging platforms for an overall growth of more than 82 percent from the second quarter of 2008.

VeriSign delivered 178.8 billion messages worldwide in the first half of 2009. To put this volume into perspective, it translates to 26 messages for every person in the world (roughly 6.7 billion).

The daily average number of messages enabled by VeriSign's combined mobile messaging platforms broke the one billion mark with approximately 1.04 billion messages per day, on average. This represents a 12 percent increase from the previous quarter and an 83 percent rise from the second quarter of 2008.

In total, VeriSign delivered 93 billion person-to-person and 1.8 billion application-to-person messages in the second quarter of 2009. As a rough calculation, if one assumes half those messages were "marketing" messages of some sort, while perhaps the other half were "informational" messages not strictly of a marketing nature, then about one percent of all text messages were of the "marketing" sort.

If one assumes all the application-to-person messages are business messages--content delivery, reminders, notices and so forth--then a bit less than two percent of all text messages had some direct business purpose.

Exclusivity Not a Problem, Time Limits Might Be, Sprint CEO Says

Sprint Chief Executive Dan Hesse says it is fair for the U.S. government to ask whether handset exclusivity deals should have time limits. But he insists that exclusive carrier deals with handset vendors are important for promoting innovation in the industry, according to Reuters.

"The legitimate question is how long the exclusivity periods need to be," Hesse says.It's a fair question."

Salvatore Tirabassi, a partner at M/C Venture Partners, agrees. Exclusivity does not harm consumers, he argues. "A lot of innovative handsets wouldn't exist without strong carrier partnerships," he argues.

There is a lot of risk for manufacturers when new handsets are introduced and the result is that preferential relationships with carrier partners are needed, he says.

Also, larger carriers get devices before smaller carriers for logical reasons. "Vendors want volume," he says. "Why do so many vendors work with Costco rather than a smaller retailer?" he rhetorically asks.

"If you want to argue that a small carrier in a rural market hasn't benefitted because of iPhone exclusivity, because they can't get it, you have to peel the onion," Tirabassi says. "There are alternatives."

Also, for practical reasons, a longer ramp is needed to recover marketing dollars, for either carrier or handset providers, he argues. Exclusivity provides time to recover marketing investments.

"Apple, for example, does not want a half committed partner," Tirabassi says.

FCC to Launch Net Neutrality Rulemaking

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to announce next Monday (Sept. 21, 2009) a proceeding on new "network neutrality" rules that will prevent Internet service providers--both mobile and fixed--from selectively blocking or slowing Web traffic, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The FCC currently has four net neutrality principles, which call on ISPs to treat all legal Internet applications equally. That so far has been interpreted to mean no blocking or slowing of traffic based on business considerations such as the origin of the traffic, with some exceptions.

ISPs are allowed to filter for spam and viruses, for example. Where matters always have been tricky is where traffic shaping in general is used to maintain reasonable network performance at times of peak congestion.

The biggest impact likely will be on wireless networks, which for a variety of reasons have more constraints than wired networks. Initial reporting by the Wall Street Journal, though, suggests the FCC will take those constraints into account.

As the rulemaking unfolds, there will be fierce debate over how to further refine the "non-discrimination" rules while still allowing ISPs to manage peak loads on their networks. The shape of final rules will determine how much change might occur for buyers of Internet access services.

Prices might rise, new quality-of-service tiers might be introduced, or new packages based on type of dominant applications used might be thinkable where they have not generally been used before.

Verizon and other ISPs with fiber-to-home networks might find they have new marketing opportunities, since the networks with the most bandwidth will best be able to avoid any new rules.

All we can say for sure is that a new rulemaking appears to be certain. What rules emerge will depend on how well service providers can demonstrate legitmate network management tasks. Voice networks, for example, do use "busy hour blocking" algorithms.

It appears the FCC does not want any use of blocking as a technique to manage traffic. If so, other mechanisms that either entice users to self regulate, or force them to, will have to be specified.

Look for fireworks.

Has Verizon Finally Reached a Key Voice Inflection Point?

Verizon Communications might have reached a key inflection point: the time when coping with declining voice lines no longer is among the top sales challenges facing Verizon executives.

In fact, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg says he no longer is looking for the inflection point, the New York Times reports. “I don't care about that any more," he says. "I am going to focus on driving FiOS penetration and taking costs out.”

In fact, in a statement that might still have the power to shock some observers, Seidenberg says video, not voice, will be the core product bought over the FiOS fiber to the home network.

Randall Stephenson, AT&T CEO, and Ed Mueller, Qwest Communications CEO, also now are emphasizing that there is a point where landline losses would stop.

That doesn't mean, in Verizon's case, that there will be no more line losses from this point forward. In fact, that actual inflection point is nearing, but has not yet been reached.

The inflection point now is one of business philosophy and focus, the realization that more is to be gained by growing new businesses aggressively, and using the new platform to reduce legacy costs, rather than focusing on wired voice losses.

But neither would it be correct simply to dismiss the notion that there is a time coming when traditional telcos will stop losing voice lines.

To be sure, it is a huge change in mindset for a business which has seen voice line losses for nine straight years, beginning in 2000. But it always has been clear those losses would stabilize and then possibly even reverse as competitors reached some natural limit.

Nobody with any industry experience ever has argued that cable companies, for example, would take more than a fraction, though a sizable fraction of wired voice lines, for example.

And as ultimately most lines in service will be broadband lines, the notion of what a wired access line is, always has been expected to change as well. To the extent that broadband access is the replacement service for wireline voice, while VoIP is an application running over those lines, "voice line loss" will stop in a literal--as well as figurative--sense.

The "line" will be the broadband connection. On top of that will run many revenue-generating services, voice and video among them.

Given the right balance of features and price, consumers will continue to buy wired voice services, new surveys are starting to suggest.

Harris Interactive, for example, recently found that up to 70 percent of consumers would keep using their landline voice services if integrated with their mobiles in some ways. Users very much want the ability to start a mobile conversation using their in-home Wi-Fi networks and keep the connection when leaving the house, and keeping a conversation going--but switching to the Wi-Fi network, when entering the house.

Seidenberg says that with TV, the PC and the Internet converging, the carrier’s future would be in selling video services, such as interactive TV, bundled with wireless voice. And Seidenberg's vision of the future clearly includes content services to "all three screens": television, PC and mobile device.

Like leading cable companies, which "cluster" in major markets, Verizon also has made a strategic decision to concentrate on higher-density urban and suburban markets, spinning off or selling rural systems without the density to support fiber to the home networks.

Aside from allowing Verizon to execute on its new strategy, divesting rural assets also allows the company, which is nearing the end of its fiber upgrade process, to trim its capital spending.

Seidenberg also says his job now is to get Verizon Communications focused on the idea that it is going to be a video-focused company providing content and software on three screens.

Mobile Capex Not Generating Much of a Return?

Policymakers might want to be careful about changing the mobile industry's regulatory framework in ways that jeopardize the revenue any new network investment can generate.

The reason? Recent capital investment by communications service providers has proven not to generate much of a return, say analysts at the Yankee Group.

In fact, many service providers--especially in the United States--are struggling to maintain adequate return on their invested capital

Click image for larger view.

Cable Growth Shifts to SMB Segment

It is a measure of how much has changed in the U.S. cable and telephone industries that

commercial services, especially those delivered to small- and medium-sized enterprises, are an increasingly critical imperative for U.S. cable operators.

In fact, the revenue and margins delivered by these services will be the main growth engine for the U.S. cable industry over the next few years, say researchers at Pike & Fischer.

That itself is change from patterns of the last several years, when broadband access and consumer voice services have driven revenue growth.

On the other hand, though mobility revenues have underpinned revenue growth for tier one telcos, video service revenue is the fastest-growing wired service.

Separately, the most-recent J.D. Power and Associate study of consumer telephone service marks the third consecutive year that traditional cable television providers have achieved the highest rankings among phone service providers in all regions included in the study.

Are U.S. Mobile Service Plans Expensive? Or Affordable?

Are U.S. mobile users paying too much?
Some data might suggest so. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, suggests that U.S. prices are "high," based on a standard set of usage buckets.

But there's a problem. Most U.S. users talk about four times as much as some Europeans do.

The problem is that the OECD study uses definitions of "low," "medium" and "high" use that might describe usage in the Netherlands, but are wildly inapplicable to typical U.S. usage rates, says George Ford, Chief Economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies.

Specifically, the OECD analysis calls 44 outbound minutes a month "low," 114 outbound minutes medium and 246 minutes outbound "high" levels of usage.

The average mobile consumer in the United States uses 800 minutes a month, about four times as high as the OECD "high usage" level. Furthermore, the OECD considers 55 text messages a month to be "high use" where the typical U.S. mobile user sends or receives 400 text messages a month.

Since usage plans are directly related to usage, this is an issue that distorts the comparisons, difficult to make under the best of conditions. By definition, the "average" U.S. user is a "high usage" customer. So if U.S. users kept the same behavior patterns, but had to buy plans as the OECD baskets suggest, they would have to pay rates commensurate with very-high usage levels.

In other words, if users in a given country have low usage, and are on low usage plans, then average prices paid will tend to be "lower." In the United States, usage is vastly higher than in Europe.

Normalizing for usage volume, what one finds is that U.S. users pay modest prices for much-higher use. If users in the Netherlands had consumption patterns identical to U.S. mobile users, they would pay very-high prices.

In other words, one cannot simply compare low-usage plans in one country with high-usage plans in another, any more than one can compare low-usage plans in one country with high-usage plans in the same country. The results are not terribly meaningful.

Study Finds Frustration with Mobile Contracts

The biggest cell phone service frustration in the United States is the length of service contracts, a new study by the Brookings Institution finds. About 46 percent of those polled say contracts are among the biggest frustrations.

What is not clear is how much users are willing to pay for handsets in order to retain freedom to switch providers, though.

Roaming charges are an irritant for 20.4 percent of respondents. Other issues that rank among the biggist irritants are the cost of domestic calls, which bothers18.1 percent of respondents, while "lack of features" is an issue for 15.2 percent or those polled.

The inability to use devices on other provider networks concerns 14.8 percent of respondents while lack of interoperability is an issue for 12 percent of survey subjects.

Americans believe (correctly or not) that innovation is driven by new devices made by Apple and Nokia, and new Internet features pioneered by Google. The most popular new cell phone features are games (named by 61.6 percent), local directories (52.9 percent), music (49.8 percent), and chat and instant messaging (39.8 percent).

Consumer concerns are different in other countries where consumers also were polled.

In the United Kingdom, the biggest frustration is the cost of international calls (27.8 percent), followed by the cost of domestic calls (25 percent), the length of service contracts (22.7 percent), and roaming charges (22.3 percent).

For Spaniards, the greatest frustration is the length of service contract (41.1 percent), cost of domestic calls (40.1 percent), roaming charges (25.6 percent), inability to transfer devices (22.8 percent), and the cost of international calls (21.6 percent).

In Japan, the largest problems are the cost of domestic calls (32.3 percent), lack of features (18 percent), lack of interoperability (15.4 percent), length of service contract (14.4 percent), and the slow pace of innovation (14.4 percent).

Pollsters asked cell phone consumers in each country about their willingness to pay more money in order to control their cell phone applications. The country with the greatest willingness to pay more is Spain (50 percent), followed by the United Kingdom (35.7 percent), United States (32.9 percent), and Japan (17.2 percent).

American consumers were most likely to believe innovation came from new devices (32.7 percent), followed by new Internet-based services (28.6 percent), and new voice services (10.4 percent). Those beliefs may not completely align with the innovation process, but do illustrate the sense consumers have that new devices are key for innovation.

To the extent that rapid device turnover actually is directly related to introduction of new services, policymakers would do well to consider how any new mobile regulations might affect the rate and pace of new device propagation.

When asked what was most important to improve their use of cell phones, users named getting less expensive service from mobile carriers (55.5 percent) as their top item.

Business PCs: 43% Mobile by 2012, Study Says

A Microsoft-commissioned study conducted by Forrester Research suggests that worker mobility and office decentralization will become key issues for the enterprise and small- to medium-sized businesses in coming years, as worker mobility increases.

The report, "The Costs and Challenges Associated With Supporting Today's Informational Workers," suggests that mobile PCs will constitute some 43 percent of corporate PCs by 2012, an 11 percent increase over the current situation. That also suggests the number of desktop PCs will decline to 57 percent in three years’ time, down from 68 percent today.

Other parts of the study found that workers within the enterprise and SMBs have become increasingly decentralized, with 29 percent working out of branch or remote offices, five percent out of external worksites, four percent out of home offices, and six percent “mostly mobile.”

The report found that only 30 percent of firms were highly centralized in “one or a few offices,” though that number was expected to increase marginally to 34 percent by 2012.

20% of Tweets are Directly About Products

About 20 percent of tweets contain requests for product information or responses to the requests, according to Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State.

"People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services," said Jansen. "Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services."

Also, while many marketers worry about what people may say about their firms, "a lot of the brand comments were positive," Jansen says.

Jansen, along with IST doctoral student Mimi Zhang, undergraduate student Kate Sobel and Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury, investigated micro-communicating as an electronic word-of-mouth medium, using Twitter as the platform. Their results were published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Sciences and Technology.

The researchers examined half a million tweets during the study. The team looked for tweets mentioning a brand and why the brand was mentioned -- to inform others, express a view on the brand or something else -- and found that people were using tweets to connect with the products.

"Businesses use micro-communication for brand awareness, brand knowledge and customer relationship," say Jansen.

And though some are uncertain about Twitter's enduring value, Jansen sees Twitter succeeding, because people and businesses are starting to make profits from it, using it as a creative way to market their products.

"It may be right up there with email in terms of its communication impact," Jansen also argues.

Verizon Tries to Block Avaya Purchase of Nortel

Verizon Communications has moved to block a planned $900 million sale of Nortel Network Corp.'s Government Solutions group and DiamondWare Ltd., a Nortel-owned maker of softphones, to Avaya Inc., arguing there will be "serious consequences to safety, welfare and security" because of feared disruption of U.S. government and military communications networks and emergency systems across the United States and Canada.

The dispute--which has a major customer objecting to practices of a major supplier, appears in part to be a contract dispute. Avaya of course says it intends to honor all existing Nortel contracts, but Verizon and Avaya apparently have not been able to agreement in language that suits Verizon.

An outstanding patent infringement lawsuit against Verizon in Texas, slated for trial next year, appears to be an issue. Avaya appears to believe Nortel might face some liability, and doesn't want to take over Nortel's "highly contingent" liability in the patent case.

If Avaya buys Nortel's business and leaves Verizon's contracts behind, Verizon will have only a few months to get a new source of equipment, software, maintenance and support for systems that are at the heart of U.S. emergency response, anti-terrorism and national defense systems, Verizon argues.

MetroPCS to Offer 4G in 2010: Consumers Win

MetroPCS Communications, a leading provider of unlimited prepaid wireless communications service will launch Long Term Evolution 4G mobile broadband services in the second half of 2010. Ericsson will provide infrastructure while Samsung Telecommunications America will provide the company's initial LTE handsets.

The network upgrade likely will have wider implications for consumers using other service providers as well, as MetroPCS likely will offer more affordable mobile broadband prices and packaging than have been available to date, from tier one and other providers.

As MetroPCS has made a market largely on users who are substituting mobile service for landline, one suspects the firm might be tempted to try the same thing for broadband access.

As MetroPCS uses the CDMA air interface for voice and text services, it will introduce dual-mode LTE/CDMA devices as part of the plan.

MetroPCS has been a price leader in the prepaid space, and the new capabilities likely will put pressure on the tier one carriers to lower their mobile broadband tariffs further.

One wonders whether the tier one providers might not also, as part of that shift, create differentiated mobile broadband tiers that are quite a bit more "application specific," or at least tailored in key ways to the usage profiles different users have.

Business users have different requirements in the reliability area than casual consumer users. Heavy users of mobile video will require more bandwidth, but might also be offered heavy-usage plans at a higher price.

The challenge is to balance simplicity with consumption. The problem right now is that few mobile users have any idea how much bandwidth they consume and for which applications. That means consumers will have a hard time figuring out which plans they ought to buy.

Providers, on the other hand, might need to work on their billing and operations processes so they can flexibly track usage, make that information available to end users, and then create differentiated plans tailored to actual end user behavior.

It isn't yet clear what packaging innovations MetroPCS might be willing to introduce. But it has long positioned itself in several clear market segments, including users who can replace wired telephone service with a mobile, especially users with low needs for mobile support outside of the home market.

Its mobile broadband efforts are likely to build on that profile.