More Evidence of How Hard it Is to Replicate Google's Success

It's an impressionistic, but useful take on Google's uniqueness among companies, that so few ex-Googlers have been able to replicate Google's success. Googlers are smart, there is no question about that. But Microsoft and many other firms go out of their way to hire "smart people." That fact alone does not seem to automatically produce out-sized results.

Think you can be the next Google?

Google's Culture Flat Out Rocks

Nilofer Merchant, Rubicon CEO and founder, has penned a fabulous post about Google's corporate culture, that is worth reading, especially because you and I will rarely, if ever, encounter a company with a culture this unusually oriented towards innovation; so fearless its atmosphere towards new ideas; so intellectually egalitarian.

Few companies you encounter will ever approach this level of cultural openness. You will run into lots of companies that claim they are this way. They are not. If you speak with enough people, at enough companies, you will discover that most of them think they are "above average," "very good" or even "excellent" at  customer service, or quality, for example.

By definition, this is incorrect. No normal distribution can have a majority, or the vast majority of the population ranked in the top five percent, 10 percent or 20 percent of anything. And yet that is what you'd tend to find, if you asked.

Google, whatever else one thinks about the company, should be applauded, studied and emulated, as should Apple, in some key ways, when it is possible. Most companies cannot meaningfully emulate the core cultural traits of either company, of course. But that's why Apple and Google will remain such important companies.

Most will not try to emulate them, and most cannot, even if they want to. Sometimes the problem is simply that the culture of an organization matches the core tasks it must tackle to be successful. You wouldn't expect a "Google" style culture at a nuclear power plant, a telco or larger military organizations.

You would hope and expect to find it on any small software team, smaller consulting organizations and think tanks, smaller research or policy institutes, smaller marketing firms or architectural firms. Note the emphasis on small; that normally has something to do with it. Still, smallness is a necessary but insufficient prerequisite.

Lots of small organizations are not "collaborative" in the robust sense. People matter.

Merchant's full post

Motorola Backflip Offers New Navigation Interface

Motorola's New "Backflip" offers a new way of navigating Web pages. The Backflip allows you to navigate its screen by touching a panel behind it, thus keeping fingers off of the screen. The Backflip, which runs on AT&T's 3G network, costs $100 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a two-year agreement.

Its name comes from its design: The Backflip's screen seems to flip backward when the QWERTY keyboard flips down for use. In the device's "closed" position, the keyboard flips back up and is automatically turned off.

No Inevitable Need for Usage-Based Pricing, AT&T CEO Says

Usage-based wireless broadband pricing does not necessarily mean an end to unlimited-use plans, says AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. But it might mean plans that tie usage in some broad way to retail cost of service.

Consider the way mobile plans are sold today. There are some true "unlimited plans" for voice, data and text messaging. But there also are plans with buckets of usage that sell for various lower prices. That same content might well work for future broadband access plans as well.

PC-based wireless broadband users, for example, consume more bandwidth than smartphone users. It might therefore continue to be the case that unlimited use is more practical for smartphones than for PC dongle service.

At the same time, there also are existing precedents for fully unlimited use even for PC devices. Business-grade services such as T1 connections, for example, are unlimited-use services, but also sell for higher prices than typical consumer services.

Anthony Melone, chief technology officer at Verizon Wireless also suggested the U.S. wireless industry might not be able to wait 10 years for additional spectrum of the sort the Federal Communications Commission now hopes to entice TV broadcasters to part with. "They need to have something in the five-year time line."

Perhaps the most interesting comment is Stephenson's take on the continued role for fixed broadband capacity. Stephenson says wireless capacity issues would maintain a role for fixed-line connections "at least in his lifetime."

That suggests even Stephenson can envision a time when fixed connections are not nearly as relevant as they are today.

link to source

TV Everywhere Will Stall Growth of Online Video, One Can Argue

Some observers, not without reason, predict the days of linear multi-channel video are numbered. But that possible transition is likely to take much longer than most expect, in part because incumbents still have weapons at their disposal, including the $32 billion in fees cable operators alone pay to programmers every year.

"TV Everywhere," will allow online viewers to watch shows for no incremental charge, if they're cable subscribers. If programmers go along with the concept, there is almost no way a sizable alternative channel will open up, at least for network fare.

Cable industry executives hope the plan will indeed deflect the online video threat. At least so far, content owners seem unwilling to abandon their long-standing distribution agreements with cable operators. And so long as cable and other distributors remain so key to profits in the broader video ecosystem, no challengers are likely to succeed.

full story here

U.S. Wireless Business Twice the Size of Wireline in 5 Years

In five years, the U.S. wireless business will be more than twice the size of the entire landline services business, say researchers at Insight Research Corp.

Keep in mind that the U.S. wireless and wired network businesses were roughly equivalent revenue producers in 2009.

That is but one example of a profound change in the telecommunications business globally, where wireless already has emerged as the key telecommunications service, with wireless accounts outnumbering wireline voice lines by a four-to-one margin.

In 2000 there were 738 million global mobile subscribers. In 2010, there are 4.3 billion mobile subscribers. In other words, mobile users have doubled twice in just 10 years.

It took just four years to double the number of global mobility users, from 2000 to 2004, and just another four years to double yet again, from 2004 to 2008.

All U.S. landline communications spending stood at $161.4 billion at the end of 2009 and will grow slowly to $165.7 billion by the end of 2014, representing a negligible compound annual growth rate of 0.5 percent.

Total U.S. wireless spending stood at $160.3 billion in 2009. But wireless revenue will grow at an 18.4 percent annual rate between 2010 and 2014, reaching $373.2 billion in 2014.

It now appears 2000 was the year U.S. wired voice accounts hit their peak, as they have been steadily declining ever since.

It is a truism that new technologies cause far less change in the early going than observers predict, but also cause more change than expected once the changes really take hold. It is a related truism that tipping points occur with great suddenness. Long periods of gestation, where each year appears to be much like the next, suddenly erupt, with acute changes unexpectedly obvious.

It appears the U.S. communications industry is about to hit one of those important inflection points, where a new pattern suddenly is obvious.

Will Historic Consumer Spending Patterns Hold Up?

Long-term interest rates are quietly heading higher, and consumer confidence is headed lower, economists and financial analysts now say. Rising rates are a drag on the economy, making it more difficult for businesses and households to finance spending and investment.

This is going to slow the economic recovery and challenge my thesis that communications and multi-channel video entertainment businesses suffer slower growth, but still grow, even in recessionary times.

Just to recap, over the last 25 years, in every recession, telecom and cable TV revenues, for example, have grown, year over year. Growth rates slowed, but were never in negative ranges, overall.

That does not mean consumers were not economizing, they likely were. But overall spending on what have come to be viewed as essential services has not faltered in any recession over the last 25 years.

What tends to happen in a recession is that consumers stop buying incremental or enhanced features and products. That can take the form of less spending on premium TV, pay-per-view and on-demand content; delaying the purchase of a new mobile phone or switching to a prepaid account.

Consumers also typically shift spending away from other activities in recessionary times, propping up core communications and video entertainment services.

There has been pressure of other sorts, though. Firms including Verizon and Time Warner Cable mention that housing market distress has lowered new customer acquisition rates. When people are not moving into new houses, or stop renting and move in with relatives, or lose their homes, that reduces new subscriber additions and increases churn.

But there are other structural changes bubbling away underneath. Fixed voice lines mostly have been a case of shifted market share from telcos to cable operators, but also some apparently-growing amount of abandonment in favor of mobile. Roughly the same thing has been happening in the video business, as cable operators slowly lose share to both telco and satellite providers.

Trading market share leaves the overall business about where it was, overall. Over the past decade, though, service providers have benefitted from one truly new product--broadband Internet access--and skyrocketing additional mobile accounts. To the extent voice lines actually are shrinking, not just being shifted to new providers, mobile revenues and broadband have more than compensated for the losses.

In all likelihood, mobile broadband now is going to replace mobile voice as the revenue and growth driver for the next five year period. Assuming there is no change in the underlying rate of mobile substitution, and no sudden replacement of the multi-channel video product by an over-the-top alternative, I would continue to stand by my prediction that, even in the face of sluggishness on the economic front, cable and telco providers will continue to show revenue growth, if slower than they would like.

The real danger comes from some unexpected shift of demand that radically changes spending patterns. That is the sort of thing one cannot anticipate very well, and the reason I spend so much time trying to follow consumer behavior.

related story on growth issues

Two-Tier Internet is Not Necessarily a Bad Thing, Says Esther Dyson

"The biggest problem that net neutrality has is nobody knows what they’re talking about when they talk about it," says Esther Dyson, noted computer industry analyst. "The issue is who pays and whether they’re monopolies or not, so there’s a whole lot of, I think, disingenuous discussion about control without ever really looking at the fundamental issue, which is somebody’s got to pay for more bandwidth if consumers are gonna be uploading and downloading video."

"As long as there’s healthy competition, I have no problem if someone pays extra for additional bandwidth, as long as that doesn’t cut off people’s access to the other stuff," says Dyson. That does not mean she believes access providers should be able to put up walls around Internet content. 

"There’s this disingenuous discussion of if you don’t allow us to pay extra, you’re not gonna get free content," she says. "Well, of course not, but let the consumer decide whether they want paid or subsidized."

Beet TV

"Superphones" Will Drive Widespread Media Consumption, Glaser Says

Many observers have called the mobile phone or smartphone the "fourth screen" for multimedia content, and RealNetworks agrees with that assessment.

In fact, a new generation of devices one might call a "superphone" will be a primary way users consume video and audio content, says Rob Glaser, former RealNetworks CEO.

The future of media will be information consumed on superphones while on the go, Glaser argues. By 2013 the installed base of smart and superphones will exceed the installed base of PCs, and those Web-surfing devices will be mobile.

People want digital persistence, he argues. In other words, they want their content to be available everywhere, at any point in time, Glaser argues. That implies a world in which content is available on any number of devices, with methods for verifying the right any single has to use paid-for content.

That's part of the thinking behind the cable industry's "TV Everywhere" initiative, but also a way for cable distributors to maintain their relevance in a world with alternate distirbution channels.

Such ability to experience TV or video on mobile devices will have repercussions for a wide range of participants in the video ecosystem. Mobile providers will have to supply an order of magnitude more bandwidth. Devices will have to adapt to form factors conducive to media player usage.

Distributors will have to work to maintain their relevance in the content distribution system, and mobile marketers will find mobile video a more-attractive marketing medium.

Books Lead Apple App Store Inventory

There are lots of applications available in the Apple App Store. But a huge number of those items are discrete book or game titles, not applications. And those most applications downloaded from the App Store are of the "free" sort, about 75 percent of the books and games are "for fee" downloads.

In fact, "books" are the biggest category in the store, followed by games.

The App Store is an awful lot like iTunes, it appears: a distribution mechanism for content.

VoIP Will be a Mixed Blessing for Mobile Service Providers

This prediction for use of mobile VoIP by about 2013, made by In-Stat, might suggest the reasons why incumbent voice providers have been somewhat hesitant to fully embrace VoIP.

The pie chart suggests that a majority of VoIP activity on mobile phones will be provided by third party, over-the-top providers, not the "service providers" themselves.

That's roughly the same experience fixed line operators have had: most of the usage is enabled by third-party application providers or competitors, notably cable companies.

Some might find it odd, but VoIP actually has been a mixed blessing for incumbent voice providers. It represents the next generation of voice, but the next generation of voice turns out to be an application "anybody" can provide.

VoIP proponents have hammered away at the theme that VoIP is about new features, not price. The market keeps demonstrating by its spending that price is what VoIP "really is about." Features are nice, especially in the business market, but consumers seem to buy based on their ability to "save money," rather than for the whiz-bang new features.

The fundamental dilemma for an incumbent voice provider is that they essentially must invest more money, to provide new features end users won't pay for, at lower or the same prices. To a certain extent, that's the similar problem service providers face when upgrading to fiber-to-home or fiber-rich access networks. Video services are truly new. But broadband access has been following a "more speed for the same money" trajectory, for the most part. Fiber-rich access networks have made possible new faster tiers, sold for more money, to be sure.

But it would be tough to make the argument that the new sales of faster access, plus revenue from new video services, have earned sufficient return to justify the investments in a classic sense. More often, such investments are strategic, intended to ensure that a provider still has a business, more than investments that immediately produce attractive revenue lift.

VoIP has been a mixed blessing for incumbent telcos, though it has been very satisfying for cable operators and some over-the-top providers.

Mobile, Broadband Growth Have Shifted to the Developing World

Not since abour 2006 have there been more fixed broadband lines in service in the most-developed broadband markets than emerging countries, and by 2009 a group of about 15 nations, including the BRICs, as well as countries in Southeast Asia, South American and Eastern Europe had surpassed the developed countries in total subscribers.

These days, the 15 emerging countries have the biggest share of broadband lines and the fastest growth rates as well, says Point Topic.

It's worth pondering that for just a moment. In 2000 there were 738 million global mobile subscribers. In 2010, there are 4.3 billion mobile subscribers, and most of those subscribers live in the developing world, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

It took just four years to double the number of global mobility users, from 2000 to 2004, and just another four years to double yet again, from 2004 to 2008. That sort of growth does not happen much in the telecom business, and has not happened before in the developed world.

Broadband growth is likely to assume something of the same pattern, but likely will be driven by mobile, not fixed access. Mobility has proven to be a raging, unexpected success story for people in developed regions. Broadband is about to repeat that feat.

Quietly, without much fanfare, communications really has become a capability available to all the world's people, after many decades of attempts by policymakers and providers to figure out how to do that. In the end, better technology has made all the difference. We don't use wires, we use airwaves. We don't use analog, we use digital. We don't use physical goods; we use electronic goods.

By 2014 just 15 developing nations will account for over 320 million broadband lines, 43 percent of the world total of 740 million broadband lines, by that time.

The fastest-growing group of 15 countries will have broadband growth rates of 14.2 percent annually. Another group of 12 countries, including the United States, Japan, Greece and Taiwan, will see annual growth of about 5.5 percent each year through 2014. Some 13 countries, including Western European nations, Canada, South Korea and Hong Kong, will see 4.6 percent annual growth rates.

All of those statistics are important for one compelling reason. Global subscriber and revenue growth for voice services, mobile services and broadband now has shifted to developing regions of the world.

Boston Tops "Good for Telecommuting" List

Boston is the top U.S. medium-sized or large city for telecommuting, according to a new survey of 3,600 workers in 36 markets.

The survey, commissioned by Microsoft Corp., examined urban areas based on factors including the percentage of workers who say their jobs can be done from outside the office; the percentage of companies with formal work-from-home policies; the extent of support from bosses for working from home, as gauged by workers; and the extent of technological support provided by employers to enable working from home.

Most respondents said they were more productive when working from home. The top complaint listed was the lack of face-to-face interaction with colleagues.

Fewer than half of the companies surveyed had telecommuting policies. Within those companies that did have such policies, a little more than a third of workers took advantage of the opportunity.

Those workers listed achieving work/home balance, saving on gasoline and avoiding long commutes as their top reasons for telecommuting.

As for where they did work outside the office, many employees listed family vacation spots as a top choice. About a quarter of telecommuting workers said they set up operation in coffee shops. Some 10 percent worked from doctors’ offices.

The increase in telecommuting is being driven by the economy, which has made companies less willing to relocate staff, and by technology, which makes remote work lots easier.

After Boston, top telecommuting cities were:

Raleigh-Durham, N.C.
Atlanta
Denver
Kansas City, Mo.
Richmond, Va.
Austin, Texas
New York
Sacramento, Calif.
Portland, Ore.

source

FCC to Propose Spectrum for "Free or Low Cost" Broadband Access

The Federal Communications Commission appears to be ready to license some spectrum, as part of its proposed national broadband plan, for free or very-low-cost access. It is not clear whether the agency envisions giving a single national operator the entire frequency block, whether it will license the spectrum for free or for fee, or whether the plan mirrors other proposals that have been advanced.

FCC statement

The FCC has provided no additional details, but the thought is not new. Outgoing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin in 2008 had pushed for action on a plan to offer free, pornography-free wireless Internet service to about 95 percent of the country, using about 6 MHz of spectrum in a block of about 25 MHz. The licensee would have been free to create a revenue-generating plan using about 19 MHz.

The FCC's proposal mirrored a plan offered by M2Z Networks, which has been proposing
 providing free, wireless, family-friendly service at speeds of 512 kbps, providing a basic and relatively slow 384 kbps for downloads and 128 kbps for uploads.

M2Z Networks had proposed using AWS-3 spectrum in the 2155-2180 MHz band.

Advertising revenue would support the free service, while M2Z also proposed offering faster "for fee" services at speeds up to 3 Mbps.

M2Z also has said it would pay the government about five percent of revenues from such a service.

Cisco Announces 322-Terabits per Second Router

To support more bandwidth consumption at the edge of the network, one needs to supply more bandwidth in the core of the network. For that reason, Cisco has announced its new CRS-3 Carrier Routing System (CRS), offering three times the capacity of the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System, which operates at 92, where the CRS-3 operates at up to 322 Terabits per second.

The device offers more than 12 times the traffic capacity of the nearest competing system, Cisco says.

The Cisco CRS-3 offers operational expense savings and up to 60 percent savings on power consumption compared to competitive platforms, Cisco says.