Dan York on How IPv6 Will "Kill Telecom"

Dan York talks about how IPv6 will "kill telecom."

Disruptive Telephony

Cloud-Based Services Challenge the Channel

One of the challenges Aiden Callaly, MX Sweep VP has to deal with is a change in the economics of the channel partner and distributor business. Decades ago, many firms that sold information technology products could make a reasonable living selling hardware and software.


These days, margins for software licenses and equipment have plummeted.  The typical way of describing the change is that voice services firms used to make their money on “moves adds and changes.” Software distributors used to make their money selling software licenses on a “per seat” basis. Computer networking firms used to build their businesses around gear that broke, needed upgraded and maintenance.



These days, as more features move to a cloud-based or hosted format, the challenge is how to convince partners that they actually can make a living selling different products in a new way. “Many aren’t sure a couple of bucks a month is a good business,” says Callaly. But profit margins for partners selling MX Sweep security products are in the 25 percent to 30 percent range, he says.



Right now, the buyers for cloud-based services largely are small and mid-sized businesses, the traditional “sweet spot” for channel partner sales. And, like it or not, most channel partners will have to adapt. As the economics of the software, communications and computing business change, it is possible the shape and composition of the channel also will change.

CXM Automates Call Center Agent Measurement, Training Tasks

If you assume managing an inbound or outbound call center is difficult, you’d be right. Turnover tends to be high and it can be difficult to measure agent performance or provide training on a consistent and timely basis. End user satisfaction is difficult to attain, much less measure. And many of the common metrics do not necessarily equate to customer satisfaction.

“We have discovered that average wait time doesn’t equal happy customers,” says Justin. O’Brian, CXM Recording and Quality Monitoring VP. So CXM has built software for call center managers, especially at smaller and mid-sized businesses, to better measure performance, manage in-process calls and then use interactions for training of other agents. But Zappos and Time Warner Cable are among larger enterprises that use CXM software.

Data Foundry Opens "Texas 1" Data Center in Austin, Texas

Data Foundry has opened its "Texas 1" 250,000 square foot data center, offering 130,000 square feet of facilities initially. Texas 1 offers secure colocation and disaster recovery solutions, including dedicated worksite recovery space. Its design includes independent and diverse power, water and network feeds with no single point of failure within any of these systems, the company says.

The site’s fully redundant power is fed from two independent substations with a dedicated feed enclosed in an end-to-end, concrete encased duct bank, a rare feature for data centers, says Shane Menking, Data Foundry president.




Data Foundry opens Texas 1

Google Docs Improves Collaboration with Comment-Only Permissions

Google Docs has announced a new sharing option to give people comment-only access to documents. Previously, the only options were "Can view" or "Can edit."

With the "Can comment" option, document authors can now allow others to enter feedback on a document without being able to change the document itself.

Here's how I plan to use that feature. I have found, working with too little time and too much content change, that I need a simple "wiki" style web link where anybody can access the latest version of a speaker program, which is something I seem to find myself doing more of.

Up to this point, I have made a document, essentially a program with speakers and topics, available for viewing only, so people always will know how a program line-up has changed, without having to send out all sorts of notifications to everybody who might need to know about the changes.

But that format also does not allow for me to conveniently view, and let others view, helpful suggestions about timing, format, subjects and others who should be invited to speak. With the new feature, I can capture all of that in one place, and propagate the suggestions or comments, in a convenient way. It's very helpful.

Google Docs Improves Collaboration with Comment-Only Permissions

There is an iPad Market, "Tablet Market" Has to be Created

So far, one might argue there is not an actual "tablet" market, but only an "iPad" market.

RBC Capital's Mike Abramsky sponsored a survey conducted by ChangeWave that found 85 percent of all tablet buyers plan to buy the iPad.

That doesn't mean an actual "tablet market" will fail to develop, just that it hasn't really emerged, so far. That isn't the case in the smart phone market, where Apple is a major contestant, but not the only significant competitor in a broader "smartphone market."

RBC Capital's Mike Abramsky has raised his fourth quarter iPhone and iPad estimates based on the results of a survey of 2,200 potential buyers. The survey, conducted in August by ChangeWave research, showed what Abramsky called "unprecedented iPhone 5 demand and strong back-to-school iPad buying intentions."

Abramsky says 31 percent of those surveyed said they were "very or somewhat likely" to buy the iPhone 5, significantly exceeding pre-launch iPhone 4 demand (25 percent).

With the iPhone 4 nearly 15 months old, 66 percent of existing iPhone users are very likely or somewhat likely to buy the iPhone 5.

About 54 percent of surveyed Sprint subscribers and 53 percent of surveyed T-Mobile subscribers say they are "significantly likely" or "somewhat more likely" to buy the iPhone, if available.

'Unprecedented' demand for Apple's iPhone 5

Lowe’s Goes "Standard Issue" with Apple iPhones

Lowe’s Cos. is enhancing its website and equipping store employees with iPhones as the second-largest U.S. home-improvement retailer seeks to catch up to Home Depot and boost sales from its existing locations.

Next month, Lowe’s will introduce its MyLowes online tool that customers will be able to use to store owner’s manuals, warranties and paint formulas, Chief Information Officer Mike Brown said. The company is arming workers with 42,000 iPhone 4s to answer shoppers’ questions and ring up purchases.

Among the logical rules for retail sales personnel is that they should know more about their store's products than shoppers do, and the iPhones are expected to help, in that regard.

Lowe’s adds 42,000 employee IPhones

Facebook leads online "time spent"

No question about it: people spend a significant amount of time interacting with Facebook, especially news feeds and profiles.

 Facebook engagement time

Majority of tablet customers activate 3G, AT&T says

The majority of customers who buy tablets from AT&T Mobility now also buy mobile broadband service with their devices, says Glenn Lurie, AT&T president of emerging devices, wholesale and partnerships. Most of those devices seem to use a prepaid data plan, rather than a postpaid plan. More tablet users buy mobile service


That would be a significant development, as one might argue most users will typically have to spend $50 a month for a prepaid service including 1 Gbyte of usage.

Day	$ 15	100MB
Week	$ 30	300MB
Month	$ 50	1GB

That's a big deal. In fact, for the first time in the U.S. wireless history, non-operator branded wireless connections were  the majority source of customer additions in the second quarter of 2011.

Also, almost half of the increase of mobile connections came from customers that are mostly unaware of the network they were actually using. Amazon Kindles, Barnes & Noble Nooks, countless other connected devices, and MVNOs such as TracFone were driving the growth of the industry with more than 52 percent of net additions, says Roger Entner of Recon Analytics.

The second largest growth segment was no-contract with almost a third of new subscriber additions. Contract net additions were less than 16 percent of overall net subscriber additions. B2B now drives mobile broadband

Google Introduces Own Airfare and Flight Search App

Google has begun rolling out its own airfare and flight search application, called "Flight Search." An “early look” at the service on Tuesday with flights to and from a handful of cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Minneapolis. Participating airlines include Delta, JetBlue, Continental and American.


Google enters fare search business with new app

Openbucks: Use Gift Cards to Make Virtual Goods Purchases

Openbucks is a new firm that allows users to buy gift cards from a number of companies and then use the stored value to buy things on online sites. Subway, CVS, Citgo, Sports Authority, Hess and Circle K are participating gift card suppliers. 

Use these gift cards:

Virtual currencies and social network payments

If you are a bit confused about the ramifications of mobile payments, so is just about everybody else. The common sense notion is that "mobile payments" is principally about using a mobile phone, in some way, to buy things, in scenarios where cash, a credit card, a debit card or perhaps a check typically is used instead.

At least part of what some of us might say is growing confusion about mobile payments is that "payments" are part of the "buying," "shopping" or "commerce" activity, and there now are growing ways to embed "promotion," "coupons," "offers," "daily deals" and "loyalty" into a shopping experience. You hear the term "mobile wallet," for example, which is how some of these related processes might be integrated and handled in the future.

To complicate matters further, shopping for "virtual goods," or "content" goods, as well as real world goods, are seen as essential parts of the mobile payments business. In other words, you might use your mobile to checkout from a retail location, buy a song or video, as well as purchase virtual goods for use in a game that is played on a mobile.

Then consider a growing interest in the ability not only to buy virtual goods with real money, but then to export virtual money to other applications or retailers, in some cases as another version of virtual currency, but possibly even as "money" in the classic sense.

You can go into a Wal-Mart right now and pay cash (or check) for a Facebook payment card, to be used in virtual gaming with such companies as Zynga. That doesn't seem to trouble regulators. But many believe there are advantages to allowing points, credits or tokens to be accumulated and then redeemed back into some form of actual real world currency. And that means there now are banking and other regulations that come into play.

Virtual currencies and social network payments

Cable's Cash Flow Business

The U.S. cable TV business was for many decades a difficult business for investors to understand. For decades, cable companies seemed to be plowing all their money back into construction and capacity. Few were profitable in a classic sense, but generated huge amounts of cash flow. That has required quite a lot of explaining by cable executives.


It seems cable remains a cash flow story, in large part, though a handful of cable TV firms now pay a dividend and are profitable in a classic sense. Cable companies paying dividends


Revenues for seven large U.S. cable operators have risen at an annual growth rate of 7.3 percent, from $53.57 billion in 2006 to $70.95 billion in 2010, and operating cash flow has risen 8.3 percent annually, from $20.19 billion in 2006 to $27.78 billion in 2010, SNL Kagan reports.

Margins have held steady in the upper 30 percent range, but the pressure has increased due to rising programming expenses, including both cable network and retransmission costs.



The programming expense growth has been somewhat offset by cash flows from the high-margin advanced services segments and from advertising revenues. In addition, 2010 marks the first time all of the large cable companies in the index were free cash flow positive.


Of course, nothing is really certain in video entertainment and telecom these days. The ability to deliver such predictable results and cash flow hinges on the continued success of the business model, and many would say that is questionable, over time.


So far, though, the cable industry has been remarkably adept at responding to declining, and now negative growth rates in its legacy business. To the extent that cash flows continue to grow in the future, more and more of that growth is going to come from new sources.




Cable is a cash flow business

Microsoft Wants Broader Use of Virtual Currency in Australia

Microsoft is pressing the Reserve Bank of Australia to consider adjustments to the domestic payments markets to help consumers conduct transactions in virtual currencies, such as Facebook Credits and Microsoft Points.

Responding to the RBA's call for submissions relating to innovation in payments systems, Microsoft points out that virtual currencies have some key advantages driving their adoption including the removal of the cost of multiple card processing interchange fees for low value or micro-transactions.

"While these systems are generally closed at this point of time, it is foreseeable that consumers may desire in the future to exchange value between the various schemes and that they could well become more widespread and prevalent within online retail environments," Microsoft says.

That's an important thought. Credits and tokens, even when purchased with real world money, now can be used only within a closed application, typically a game. What Microsoft and many others seem to believe is that demand will grow, at some point, for methods to convert such virtual currencies into real-world currencies. And the regulatory scrutiny already has begun.

French courts are being asked to define the status of the virtual currency Bitcoin, after local banks switched off accounts for exchanges handling the currency on the presumption that Bitcoin should conform to electronic money regulations.

At the moment, Microsoft Points are not convertible to a monetary equivalent, but are used solely to gain licenses to digital products. However, implicit in its submission to the RBA, Redwood is clearly looking to a future in which the store of value inherent in Points can be used for transactions beyond the XBox Live and MSN community.

Microsoft on virtual currencies

Are Virtual Goods a Bigger Business Than Advertising?

Sales of virtual goods are a significant, and growing revenue stream for Facebook and many developers who seem to be finding that they can make more money selling digital goods than they can selling apps outright or selling advertising within games.



That isn’t to downplay mobile advertising revenues, as a longer-term source of revenue growth for many participants in the mobile ecosystem.



Mobile advertising in the United States will grow from $491 million in 2009 to $2.9 billion in 2014, according to BIA/Kelsey, a compound annual growth rate of 43 percent. The global market for ads in video games is expected to grow from $3.1 billion in 2010 to $7.2 billion in 2016, according to DFC Intelligence. Video Games: More Ad Revenue.



But revenue models often “are discovered” in the mobile and online space, rather than intentionally created, and that seems to be the case for virtual goods.



Revenue specifically generated from the sale of virtual goods in social games has increased 245 percent from $2.1 billion in 2007 to $7.3 billion in 2010, according to In-Stat. Virtual goods forecast



According to eMarketer, the U.S. virtual goods market is expected to generate $653 million in revenue in 2011, up 28 percent from 2010. U.S. virtual goods revenue



Virtual goods purchased for use in social games might already be a more-important revenue stream for game developers than advertising represents, in other words.



And that might also suggest that virtual goods could be a more important revenue source for at least some social networks, for example, than advertising. Facebook is probably the best example of that, at the moment.



A study published in 2010 by Flurry suggested that monthly average virtual goods revenue per user amounted to $7.80. This far exceeds the ad revenue earned from marketers which is about $1.20 per month per user.




According to PayPal, a facilitator of online payments, about 12 million consumers buy virtual goods every month in the U.S. Often, the purchases are all about online currency. Flurry virtual goods forecast



Virtual goods sales already represent the primary source of revenue for social gaming on Facebook.  Michael Pachter, Wedbush Morgan Securities video game analyst, reports that social gaming has grown from approximately $600 million in 2008 to $1 billion in 2009.   


Further, he forecasts that social gaming will generate nearly $1.6 billion this year, and grow to more than $4 billion by 2013. Virtual goods beat advertising





Javelin Strategy & Research predicts that U.S. revenue from virtual goods will quadruple between 2009 and 2012, from $0.6 billion to $2.4 billion.



The increased use of virtual currencies and socially networked payments present new challenges to traditional payments services providers, regulatory bodies, and even cross-border economies. Virtual currency issues