BroadSoft Expands Tablet, Smartphone Real-Time Services Support

These days, new device ecosystems are arising, lead first by Apple and now by other platforms and manufacturers, typically by creating product families around smartphones and tablets, as well as PCs in some cases. One key effort typically is to ensure a consistent application experience across the platforms. BroadSoft, for example, has expanded its interoperability program to include mobile device manufacturers and SIP voice and video clients.

The whole idea is to help ensure that BroadSoft features work seamlessly across the range of devices its business customers will want to use.

BroadSoft Expands Interoperability Program to Include Mobile Smartphones and Tablets Powering a Superior User Experience for the Delivery of Mobile Voice Over IP and Video Solutions

Lady Gaga, Marissa Mayer, the Power of YouTube

Okay, admit it, you just can't resist watching.

4G Policy Diverging in U.K., U.S. Markets?

Regulatory policies in different nations and regions often take different directions. Right now, U.K. policy for fourth-generation networks and U.S. policy might be headed in different directions. Preparing to auction off new spectrum, Ofcom, the U.K. regulator, has established a framework where four national operators will be allowed to acquire spectrum, the thinking being that the top-four existing 3G providers also each will win spectrum to support 4G.

In the United States, policymakers have to grapple with the immediate issue of a reduction in leading national wireless providers from four to three, if AT&T is allowed to complete its merger with T-Mobile USA. Verizon Wireless has said it is not interested in buying Sprint, but industry analysts are not convinced the market will not boil down to a two-player national market, sooner or later.

Of course, there can be no assurances the number of contestants in the United Kingdom will not consolidate as well, at some point. But the The 4G auction is not expected to be the driver for any such consolidation.

If fact, Ofcom's spectrum auction will be explicitly designed to maintain the existing competitive landscape. There are provisions for regional providesrs to acquire a pair of 10MHz bands at 2.6GHz.

The auction, in principle, could have been designed in other ways. Where regulators want to encourage more entrants, policies can be designed to prevent existing market leaders from acquiring too much spectrum. In other cases they can simply be barred from bidding. In this case, the spectrum auction is designed to maintain the status quo of four national providers.

The U.S. market might  be headed the other way, towards a consolidation many have expected to see. AT&T obviously argues the move is "pro--consumer." Doubtless many will discount that claim. The big issue that now may develop is whether the broadband mobile ecosystem is developing so robustly that value, revenue and innovation are, in fact, moving away from the mobile service providers, and into the hands of other ecosystem partners, including device, application and platform providers.

If so, the issue of how many national access providers can exist will  become less important.

Will Retail Prices Climb or Fall If AT&T Acuires T-Mobile USA?

Observers disagree about whether consumer retail prices would climb or perhaps even drop as a result of AT&T's possible acquisition of T-Mobile USA.

Tower Companies Seen as Losers if AT&T Acquires T-Mobile USA

With the caveat that momentary, short-term swings in equity prices are common, investors seem to be concluding, at least for the moment, that AT&T's bid to buy T-Mobile USA will be a negative for companies that rent tower space to mobile providers. The logic is that, if the deal is approved by regulators, there will be reduced demand for tower space.

"This is bad news for tower companies as it would likely lead to cell site decommissioning and possibly lowerfuture demand, with three major wireless carriers rather than four," equity analysts at Benchmark said.

American Tower, which draws over a fourth of its consolidated operating revenue from the two operators, said about four percent of its revenue came T-Mobile contracts at 3,100 sites, which were also being used by AT&T.

Crown Castle International, which has 4,000 towers in the United States used by both carriers, said about six percent of its consolidated revenue in 2010 came from rental payments by T-mobile at overlapping sites.

One might also conclude that a successful acquisition also would be a negative for companies that sell backhaul capacity to mobile providers, as AT&T will shift as much traffic as possible onto its owned network, where T-Mobile USA leased virtually all, if not all, of its backhaul capacity.

Tower companies fall on telecom consolidation | Reuters

Mobile Search Leans to Commerce

Of people who use the mobile Web at least weekly, about 49 percent made a mobile purchase within the last six months, according to Performics, the performance marketing agency owned by Publicis Groupe. Mobile search also has pronounced e-commerce and local information angles.

The study also found that 84 percent look for local retailer information (phone, address, hours), 82 percent search to find online retailers and 73 percent find a specific manufacturer or product website.

Search Engine Marketing News - Press Releases

How Extensive is Enterprise Use of Video Collaboration?

Some 68 percent of respondents to a survey by Voice Report and BizTechReports report they already use video collaboration. For about half of organizations (51 percent), video-enabled collaboration currently accounts for less than 10 percent of their inter-office communications.

However, over the next year 56.8 percent plan to deploy this technology to more locations in their enterprise, and 58.5 percent have indicated that they will increase their video-enabled collaboration budgets over the next twelve months.

The survey of 125 executives across different industries suggests that video collaboration quite often now is used by workers in many parts of the organizations, not only the "C" suite. That is the issue with such studies, equivalent to asking whether an organization uses private jets. That's a legitimate question, but is qualitatively different than asking the extent to which that particular tool is used within an organization.

What might be more telling is the extent to which video collaboration is used "at the desk," and how widespread a practice that is. A majority of respondents (56 percent) also reports that their organizations will deploy video-enabled collaboration to more locations during 2011. On that score, many organizations seem to be using video collaboration quite extensively.

More than half (56 percent) report using desktop sharing features, while 43 percent say their organizations use video-enabled collaboration for training purposes (Fig. 9). Only 31 percent report using video-enabled collaboration for presence functions and 28 percent for instant messaging. Currently, only 10 percent of respondents say their organizations support mobile device access for video-enabled collaboration, and only 6 percent say they currently use it to support contact center operations.

Almost 70 percent of respondents believe that the interactive features offered by video-enabled collaboration services are a significant benefit over legacy tele-conferencing. Among the other major benefits respondents identify are improvements in user productivity (60 percent), utilization of IP networks (53 percent), greater end-user satisfaction (52 percent), and cost savings (51 percent).

Some 30 percent cite more efficient administration, while 27 percent perceive the customer service/support they receive from video-enabled collaboration service providers as a benefit. The caveat is that such comments deal only with "perceptions," rather than more-quantitative measures that are less subjective. That is not to say there are not such benefits, merely to note that belief there is a benefit is not the same thing as demonstrating there is a benefit.

While 67 percent of respondents report some use of video-enabled collaboration, utilization within their enterprises is far from pervasive. Half of respondents report that video-enabled collaboration accounts for less than 10 percent of their organizations’ inter-office communications.

Some 22 percent report using video-enabled collaboration 10 percent to 19 percent of the time for inter-office communications, and four percent report using it 30 percent to 49 percent of the time.

While more than half of all respondents cite cost savings as a major benefit that video-enabled collaboration offers over legacy tele-conferencing, 40 percent report saving less than 10 percent over their previous travel and meeting costs. Some 31 percent report costs savings greater than 10 percent. Some 19 percent report savings of 10 percent to 29 percent, and eight percent report saving 30 percent to 49 percent. About three percent of respondents found savings of 50 percent to 75 percent over their previous costs.

Of course, much of the impact will be hard to quantify. Better quality decisions, better customer support and so forth are harder to measure, and where measurable are hard to attribute specifically to just one change in organizational practice, if many changes are underway.

When asked about the challenges their organizations experience using video-enabled collaboration, more than one third (36 percent) report issues with video quality. Some 33 percent cite issues with reliability, while 31 percent experience issues with administration. One quarter of respondents (25 percent) report experiencing issues with user satisfaction and sound quality, while 21 percent found issues with technical delays.

View Telecom Management White Papers from The Voice Report

Online Will Claim 25% of Local Business Ads in 2015

Online advertising by local businesses will account for almost a quarter of all local ad spend by 2015, says local media research and consulting firm BIA/Kelsey. The company's new U.S. Local Media Forecast points to channels such as daily deals offers as increasingly popular with consumers, and thus a market ripe for local advertising dollars.

According to BIA/Kelsey, local online ad spending by small and medium-sized businesses will represent 23.6 percent of all local ad spending by 2015, growing from $21.7 billion last year to $42.5 billion by 2015. The economic downturn has tempered the company's predictions, previously more bullish. Back in 2006, the firm predicted local search and online classified spending alone would hit $31.1 billion in 2010.

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/stats/2035870/web-ads-draw-nearly-local-spend-2015?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clickzstats+%28ClickZ+-+Stats%29

AT&T Defends Value of its T-Mobile USA Buy

Whether a new U.S. mobile market remains workably competitive after an AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA is a matter for economists, policymakers and policy advocates to dispute. The analysis will be tougher because one cannot assume that the rest of the market remains unchanged, either. Whether two or three large national competitors is too many or too few to support robust innovation and competition will be something hard to establish in the abstract.

Many will argue a long-term stable market structure will ultimately feature only two dominant national players, but both operating with regional competitors and in an environment where most of the innovation comes from third parties. It isn't so clear that potentially-less "access" competition will have impact as dramatic as if innovation were not coming "over the top." Nor is it clear whether a market dominated by two contenders is not workably competitive. What is clear is that a market with two national players will, at some level, necessarily be less competitive than a market with four contestants.

http://www.att.com/Common/about_us/pdf/INV_PRES_3-21-11_FINAL.pdf

Social Shopping The Year in Numbers

Group Deals Industry Report

Groupon Now to Launch, Deals on the Move

"Groupon Now," a new feature GroupOn will launch soon, will extend Groupon's activities in the mobile promotion and local advertising business, with a huge "geo-location" angle.

Groupon Now will show two simple buttons that likely will have huge impact on the local restaurant trade and local shopping.
The two buttons: "I'm Hungry" and "I'm Bored."

As you might guess, there are huge implications for "liquidity" of information and deals. People will be offered deals at places that satisfy "hunger," right in the immediate area, or offer diversions when a person has free time and wants something to do.

Are Four Words Worth $25 Billion for Groupon? - BusinessWeek:

Post-PBX World?

It isn't yet a "post-PBX" world, but we are moving that way, with the advent of distributed, software-based replacements that run on servers, either at a user's location or remotely, in the cloud.

"But the technology and industry are moving in that direction," says Fred Knight. "For the past decade, we've seen the relentless disassembly of the PBX, to the point where credible and implementable architectures now can be built without a PBX, its functionality, instead, carved up and delivered via a widely distributed network of servers."

No Jitter | blog | Are We In a Post-PBX World?

Ofcom Says 4 4G Providers Best for Competition

U.K. communications regulator Ofcom is preparing for a major auction of spectrum to support fourth-generation mobile services, and has concluded that there would be a significant risk to national wholesale competition if there were fewer than four national wholesale competitors with credible spectrum portfolios for providing higher quality data services.

To guard against this risk, Ofcom proposes introducing limits both on the minimum and maximum amounts of spectrum bidders can win. These are called auction "floors" and "caps," and will ensure that there are four 4G competitors.

Ofcom | Ofcom prepares for 4G mobile auction

Email Blasts Face GMail Filtering

What's helpful for users sometimes is not helpful for marketers, but that's just a reality as users can tailor and filter their message stream. Google's "Priority Inbox" is one example of a helpful sorting and filtering mechanism good for users and arguably not so good for bulk email campaigns.

"Smart Labels" takes Priority Inbox a step further by dividing all inbound communications into three broad categories. The first identifies email from individuals, always placed in the "Important and Unread" section of the Gmail inbox.

The second label is called "Notifications," for news alerts, LinkedIn connections notices, and event updates. These messages are placed into either the 'Important and Unread' section or the 'Everything Else' section of Priority Inbox, depending on subscriber engagement.

The final Smart Label is "Bulk,"which attaches a 'Bulk' label to Everything Else. That often means almost 100 percent of promotional email is immediately placed in the bulk folder, giving the user an easy way to avoid seeing any of it.

Again, good for users, not so helpful for marketers. But all that points to the future of targeted, opt-in, contextual messaging. "Spray and pray" doesn't work so well now. It really won't work in the future.

The Ever-Evolving Inbox and the Future of E-mail Marketing | ClickZ

AT&T Faces Regulatory Hurdle