"File Sharing" While in Conference Seen as Most Important "Collaboration" Feature

In-Stat says SIP trunking, wireless and cloud-based computing are key changes in the unified communications business.  But notice that respondents to a recent In-Stat survey say "collaboration" means "file sharing," not necessarily visual communications, telepresence or videoconferencing, as some might mean in the phrase "unified communications and collaboration."

File sharing while in conference is seen as the application of most importance, not necessarily "seeing" other participants.

Unlimited Skype Calling on Verizon Smartphones in March 2010

Starting in March 2010, all Verizon Wireless customers with smartphones and a data plan) will be able to make and receive unlimited Skype-to-Skype voice calls to any user in the world over its 3G network, which is something that AT&T users have been able to do since last autumn.

From right to left,  John Stratton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless, and Josh Silverman, Skype's CEO, announcing their strategic relationship to bring Skype to Verizon Wireless smartphones during a press conference at the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

30% of U.S. Households Don't Use the Internet

Despite the growing importance of the Internet in American life, over 30 percent of households and 35 percent of persons do not use the Internet at home, and 30 percent of all persons do not use the Internet anywhere, say researchers at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Those with no broadband access at home amount to more than 35 percent of all households and approximately 40 percent of all persons, with a larger proportion in rural areas in both categories.

The two most important reasons given by survey respondents for not having broadband access at home are “don’t need” and “too expensive." But many survey respondents also say their PCs are "inadequate" or that no computer is available.

Canadian Video Providers Test Partial "A La Carte" Buying of Video Channels

In an important test of market demand, Canadian cable and telco multi-channel video providers are beginning to test market demand for more-flexible ways of selling cable channels. It isn't a full-blown switch to à la carte television, but will provide an important test of how well consumers like the ability to buy service in ways that might offer more targeted buying of channels they actually watch.

Bell Canada now is offering a more-granular approach to buying multi-channel TV service. The service is being introduced in Bell Canada's Quebec service territory.

The company says it will allow television customers to subscribe to individual channels, rather than the standard bundles that have been the mainstay of the multi-channel video business.

Customers must first take a basic $25 package that includes standard channels such as Global, CTV, CityTV and CBC, and can then choose 15 channels for $15, 20 for $19 or 30 for $22. Bell is also offering individual channels for $2 each.

"TV just got better for subscribers in Quebec, who now have the ultimate control and flexibility to get the channels they want," says Kevin Crull, Bell's president of residential services.

Vidéotron already offers similar options, with basic service and 15 extra channels starting at $37 a month.

Quebec has been one of the most competitive regions for telecommunications, with some of the lowest prices in the country, says the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Bell Canada apparently is not offering à la carte channels in Ontario, its other main television territory.

Rogers, Bell's chief TV rival in Ontario, does offer individual channels on top of basic service at a typical cost of $2.79 each. Basic television services in Ontario from both Bell and Rogers start at around $35 and $30, respectively.

So far, no U.S. provider has taken this route, but consumer demand will be watched closely for any signs the practice might be useful in the U.S. market as a way of providing service differentiation.

Video Cord Cutting Threat is Overestimated, Parks Associates Says

Despite the growing amount of video available online, less than eight percent of U.S. broadband households, or about 5.5 million households, are considering canceling their multi-channel subscription services in favor of online video, according to Parks Associates. You may interpret that as good or bad news.

The 2008 study found 11 percent of U.S. broadband households were considering canceling pay-TV services, and in an earlier 2009 survey, the number was 10 percent. The upside is that people might be finding it is harder than they thought to replace their current multi-channel video experience with alternative sources.

Where there clearly seems to be more danger is in the area of churn. As many as 2.75 million of those households report they are considering a switch to a new service provider. That's the bigger danger, as consumers do not have to change behavior or lose any of the value when switching providers, but might save some money, or even increase perceived value for equivalent levels of spending.

Online viewing is correlated with switching propensity, though. Parks found that households saying they are likely to switch or cancel their services watch 10 hours of online video each week, much higher than typical video consumers.

They express strong interest in having online access to pay-TV channels as well. Such video-intensive customers also use offline video, such as DVD rentals, at higher rates than typical consumers do.

Their median number of DVD rentals from the last six months is 18, compared to two rentals among other households.

“Just 0.5 percent of broadband households appear to have cancelled their video subscriptions, according to  John Barrett, director, research, Parks Associates.

In fact, the profile of a "switcher" is someone who does not watch much TV. That makes sense. Though conventional wisdom is that "heavy" users are more likely to "cut the cord," in reality it is light users who are most prone to cancel their service, simply because the value-for-price equation is not so high.

GSM Association Embraces "One Voice"

The GSM Association has adopted the "One Voice Initiative" as a way of delivering voice and messaging services for fourth-generation Long-Term Evolution (LTE) services. One Voice is based on IP Multimedia Subsystems and will provide a standard for voice and text messaging interconnection and international roaming on 4G networks, just as carriers now support 2G and 3G interworking.

The GSMA’s Voice over LTE (VoLTE) initiative has the backing of more than 40 organizations from across the mobile ecosystem.

Mobile operators supporting the initiative include 3 Group, AT&T, Bell Canada, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile, KDDI, mobilkom austria, MTS, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, SKT, SoftBank, Telecom Italia, Telecom New Zealand, Telefónica, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone.

Handset manufacturers and equipment vendors supporting the initiative include Acme Packet, Alcatel-Lucent, Aylus, Camiant, Cisco, Colibra, Communigate, Comneon, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Genband, Huawei, LG, Motorola, Movial, Mu, NEC, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Qualcomm, RADVISION, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Tekelec.

24 Carriers, 3 Handset Vendors Launch 3 Billion User App Initiative

A new consortium already including 24 global mobile service providers, Sony, Samsung and LG are creating a new applications community, allowing developers to create apps working across networks serving three billion people.

The new "Wholesale Applications Community" is a recognition of the role application stores now playing in fostering new applications and a great deal of the value of mobile broadband services.

América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, Mobilkom Austria Group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor Group, Telia Sonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind, as well as Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson are founding members.

Whether directly or indirectly, by design or by default, the new development community will compete with the Apple App Store as well as other app stores being created by Google and other device and application providers.

The real carrot for developers, if the initiative can iron out any number of important details, is access to a potential audience of three billion mobile users. In practice, discrete markets will be smaller, limited by natural language communities, for example. But it is an ambitious initiative showing access providers are not interested in forfeiting their roles in the application ecosystem to other handset or application providers.

60% of Calls are Video-Enabled on fring in W. Europ

After just two months, video over Internet calls account for more than 40 percent of fring's global call traffic, on devices capable of doing so, and more than 60 percent of its call traffic throughout Western Europe, where fring mobile video call usage doubles the leading PC-based video call services, fring says.

Fring launched the world’s first interoperable service between mobile video users of fring and Skype last November, enabling users to conduct video calls to other fring users as well as with Skype users using aWi-Fi or 3G mobile Iternet connection.

The majority of fring's mobile video calls are international.

Keep in mind that fring only works on devices running the Symbian or Apple mobile operating systems, including all Symbian 9.2 and 9.3 Nokia devices including the E71N95, N95 8G, N83, N97, 5800 and other Nokia touch-screen S60 devices and the iPhone and iPod touch.

Voxbone Adds Text Messages to Global Phone Numbers

Proponents have argued that  new IP-based communications would offer many innovative features not possible on older telephone networks. Voxbone, for example, now provides "global phone numbers" that are not tied to a specific country, and now has added text message support for those numbers, a feature that will be welcomed by users who see the advantages of a single, global telephone number.

Voxbone’s carrier and enterprise customers now can offer their subscribers one global number that can receive SMS messages at competitive rates, on mobile phones that do not have Internet access. In other words, it works the way the current services do, in terms of user interface and experience.

The move marks something of a potential breakthrough in "iNum" usage, as wireless subscribers from a growing number of prominent carriers, including Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, Virgin, and Boost Mobile, now are able to send text messages to iNum "phone" numbers.

The service is already available in the United Kingdom, France and the United States, at prices ranging from 10 to 20 pence per message in the United Kingdom., for example.

Voxbone will be adding reachability from more wireless carriers in more countries in the coming weeks.

The new feature highlights another interesting angle: Landline phones have not traditionally been able to receive text messages. It isn't entirely clear how many people would find this interesting or useful. But it could be done.

All iNum numbers have a prefix of +883, the International Telecommunications Union-assigned international code for the Internet, just as +44 is the code for the U.K. and +1 refers to the U.S.
As a wholesaler of direct-inward-dial numbers and IP transport provider, Voxbone receives calls, and now SMS messages, to numbers with this code and delivers them over IP to its carrier customers, for delivery to their end users.

Consumers Now Drive Unified Communications

A funny thing has happened to VoIP, unified communications and videoconferencing. Originally seen by many developers as products most important to business and enterprise users, each has gotten most traction in the consumer space.

 Analysts at Gartner, for example, now say that consumer markets, and not the unified communications and collaboraion vendors, are driving innovation in the UCC space.

Some 79 percent of respondents to a recent survey by Global IP Solutions said that they currently use a consumer application such as Skype as their primary videoconferencing application, for example.

Skype points out that more than 30 percent of its global user base uses the service for business, while “an average of 34 percent of Skype-to-Skype calls now including video,” says Josh Silverman, Skype CEO.

Skype also is used for international traffic and many businesses are becoming more open to using hosted solutions for business applications.

An argument might also be made that much of the value of UC or UCC actually is captured by use of relatively simple tools such as Skype, or Google Voice or any number of other rather easy to understand consumer applications.

9 Million Google Buzz Posts in 2 Days

Though it is far too early to say anything definitive about the potential success of Google Buzz, it probably is worth noting that Buzz users created nine million posts and comments in two days, buildiing on the strength of Gmail’s existing installed base.

I don't kow whether you consider that traction, or sampling. It does illustate the value of a huge installed base, huge name recognition and a cloud-based service, though. The day Google decided to go "live," it got noticed and used by enough people to create a substantial number of entries.

Also, one thing about "perpetual beta," which Google tends to rely on when launching new products, is that it does actually work. One of the "gotchas" Google Buzz rather quickly uncovered was a potential privacy issue. Under some circumstances, it might be possible for Buzz users to discover "follower" email addresses.

Google coders jumped on the problem and apparently have it fixed. And Google already is talking about launching an independent Buzz site that is not linked to Gmail accounts, to further address the issue. That's a fairly interesting illustration of how powerful social mechanisms are, though. Within three days, a potential privacy issues was uncovered and fixed, and enough users seem to indicate they want a version not linked to Gmail that Google already is considering that option.

Social Networking Grows as a Product Development Tool

Social media has become a bigger issue for a growing number of companies for several reasons. It represents a shift of where audiences are, so outbound messaging has to move that way as well. 

But that's the lesser factor. Social media means consumers are able to easily voice their thoughts about products and services. And most observers would agree that angry and unhappy consumers are more likely to complain than happy users are to praise. 

 

As much as retailers hate "bad press," they now also must contend with "negative buzz" from unhappy customers and users. All of that implies brands have to become more "proactive" about their reputations online. 

Still, even that is superficial in some sense. One thing product development teams have learned over the years is that bulletin boards, online comments and now blog posts and tweets can be sources of information useful for product design, upgrades and repairs. 

At a fundamental level, companies can launch products that have some element of unresolved "beta" elements and then modify products as feedback appears. 

“Naturally occurring conversations will be utilized in product innovation and design, and companies will create incentives for people's attention and engagement while repurposing and analyzing content and engagement in new ways that will deliver valuable input," says Ravit Lichtenberg, founder and chief strategist, Ustrategy.com. 

“The voice of the consumer is only going to get louder and stronger,” said Ms. Williamson. “It will shape what social media is and what it will become. Not too long ago, a company might have made major changes to its products or services based on a few focus groups, some financial planning and a degree of gut instinct," says Debra Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst. "Social media has already changed all that." 

No Way To Tell, Yet, Whether "Buzz" Has Any

Given that Google's "Buzz" application, which, depending on who one talks to is either a "Twitter killer" or a "Facebook killer," has only been live for several days, we probably should give our chattering a rest. Nobody can say whether connecting Buzz to Gmail will result in a viable and large social networking community being created, much less how it might affect Twitter, Facebook or other communities.

There's no question social networking has gone mainstream, and equally no question that "Google" is not one of the names that comes to mind when "social networking" is talked about. I don't know whether Buzz can change that.

In business, incumbency is a powerful thing. There's a reason iTunes owns the music space. You can point to ease of use, elegance or any number of other attributes that have lead to iPod dominance in the music player business, creation of a better way to buy and use music.

One can point to similar advantages for Google in search, Amazon in e-commerce or eBay in auctions. Once such leadership has been established, it is tough to dislodge.

So far, Buzz appears only to be "follower" on the technology front. It has some features of Twitter and some of Facebook, with the potential upside of being able to attract the Gmail audience. I don't know whether it is reasonable to expect people to abandon Facebook or Twitter for Buzz.

Facebook has surpassed 400 million active members. I'd say that is far past the point where switching behavior is "costless." As we like to say, Facebook has something of a moat around it. The ability to easily add third party apps or play games are examples.

Twitter arguably could be a different matter, as that app has gained less mindshare, or users, overall. Perhaps a "fast follower" approach could work there. Still, Buzz likely has most chance of succeeding if its users can uncover some new class of value that neither Facebook nor Twitter yet has done.

Right now, that might be hard to discern. But it's only been several days. We might be looking at years before any pattern emerges. Right now, Buzz does not have the feel of an innovation that creates an entirely-new category of experience. That could change. How it might change is the bigger question.

I'm using the app, but only casually. For me, that's not unusual, though. I use all my social networks quite casually.

iPhones Drive Sausage Sales

Sales of snack sausages are up 40 percent in South Korea thanks to the iPhone, says Silicon Alley Insider.  In the cold of winter, South Koreans are using the sausages as styluses instead of taking off their gloves.

That's one issue lots of iPhone users likely have encountered this winter. Kind of reminds you of the old Palm devices, doesn't it?

App Stores are "iTunes on Steroids"

New data from Flurry suggests that most iPhone and Android applications are disposable or perishable. Most people stop using them within a month and attrition continues to the point that withint two months, less than 15 percent of users still are using the downloaded apps.

That suggests a bias towards perishable content and entertainment or games. Few people watch "news" programming or read news articles more than once, for example.

Flurry tracks over 20,000 live applications and over two billion user sessions each month, and so far show either that "content is king" or that applications are becoming the dominant delivery mechanism for content, entertainment and tools on smartphones.

The most frequently-used downloaded apps are games, entertainment, social networking, news and other "lifestyle" apps.

Retention curves (the percentage of people using an app at varying times after download) for iPhone and Android applications were nearly identical. After just a month, 60 percent of people have stopped using the typical downloaded app.

That suggests a high degree of sampling. Users seem to be downloading and using many apps, but generally are not finding them sticky enough to continue using after two to three months.

That usage profile has not proven to be the case for some other foundational apps such as text messaging, social networking or email.

In some ways, app stores are becoming publishers of content in the same way newspapers, cable TV or the Web have been; "iTunes on steroids." That doesn't mean there is no room for other apps that prove more foundational. It just means we haven't created them, yet.