Bye Bye Walled Garden

Whatever else it may do, the iPhone probably has killed any hopes mobile carriers might have harbored that they could create and control musice downloading walled gardens. Alltel, for example, is launching Jump Music , free of digital rights management and supporting side loading, so users can upload music they already own into their handsets.

Jump Music allows transfer of existing owned music to phones including the LG AX8600, MOTOKRZR K1m, MOTORAZR V3m, The Wafer by Samsung and the aforementioned u520. We also note that Sprint Nextel has realized the market price for a song is 99 cents, not $2.99.

Wholesale Poised for More Growth?

Business end users have, for as long as I can remember, had the ability to create their own voice services as an application. We call that a phone system. What's new these days is that there are more ways enterprises of all sorts can create their own voice services. And some of those same mechanisms can be used by consumers as well. Click to talk from a web site is one example. Instant messaging integrated with Session Initiation Protocol is another example. Voice-enabled gaming is another good example.

My assumption is that calling remains most useful when any telephone number can be called, without the constraints of who is in one's community or directory, uses a compatible client or device. And that means there is a growing business for wholesale providers of voice capabilities including, but not limited to, termination services. Which leads one to wonder whether the wholesale portion of industry revenues might be poised for even more growth. How could it be otherwise?

And might that be the case even though sales of traditional products appear to be falling? At least that's what The Yankee Group suggests is happening. The problem with tracking wholesale revenues is that the category tends to include all sorts of things. Access fees paid for termination provide a good example. What is difficult to capture are wholesale sales of services to retail providers of wireless, wireline termination and orgination, whether those entities are service or application providers or large enterprises that repackage voice termination as a feature.

That especially is true when an application provider basically needs to buy only dedicated Internet access or other bandwidth in order to make the voice application available to a wholesale customer. One wonders whether falling prices are not more than balanced by increased usage, even for legacy services, to say nothing of harder to measure IP-based wholesale.

Vonage Preps Workaround

Vonage thinks it has found a workaround that avoids any of the claimed Verizon patent infringements and plans to begin implementing them shortly, says Jeffrey Citron, Vonage interim CEO says. Vonage's new technology can be installed through software downloads and shouldn't be costly to deploy, Citron says.

Joost Raises $45 Million...

From Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Li Ka Shing Foundation, CBS Corporation and Viacom. Viacom and CBS have also signed content deals with Joost. At launch, Joost had secured programming from CBS, Sony, Turner and Warner Brothers, as well as sports coverage of the National Hockey League and Indy car racing. The free-to-view service is funded by advertising from Coca-Cola, Nike and others.

Skype for Salesforce.com AppExchange

Skype now has been optimized for the Salesforce.com AppExchange. That means Skype can be integrated with Salesforce on-demand customer relationship management applications.

Lightspeed Capex Goes Way Up...

It used to be said that Lightspeed, at&t's fiber-thinner upgrade, was far better than FiOS, Verizon's fiber to home upgrade, because Lightspeed would require just a third of the capital. Well, guess again. at&t just revised its capital spending upwards, so that Lightspeed will cost about half of what FiOS requires.

You might argue, and many will, that half the capex still is an advantage. If it works, yes. If it scales, yes. If it offers competitive advantages over cable, yes. But keep in mind that cable isn't standing still, in the access or services areas.

Lightspeed capex now will increase from $4.6B to $6.5 billion, at&t says. at&t also says the scope of the project is being reduced from 19 million to 18 million homes.

The 41 percent increase perhaps indicates that things are not going as planned, in the transport area as well as the software area. New copper wire might be one thing. Reconditioned wire is another.

To be sure, there are scenarios one can imagine where the fiber to node approach still makes sense. Rural markets come to mind. What a provider has to do to meet conceivable demand in such markets, and the cost to do so, arguably are distinct from what at&t or Verizon must do in their core metro markets. Still, it does remain my view that Verizon has taken the wiser course.

Don't Assume Users Want All Ths Technology

No wonder adoption of VoIP and other new services by U.S. consumers has been so bifurcated: users are bifurcated, according to a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Significant audiences exist for heavy use of the latest Web 2.0 innovations, ranging from social networking, blogs and wikis through user generated video. But there's also a much larger audience that makes relatively limited use of mobile communications, computers and the Internet. Most significantly of all, there is significant sentiment in all usage segments--heavy users, moderate users and lighter users--that all the connectivity is at best a mixed blessing.

About 31 percent of U.S. consumers are heavy users of technology and communications products, though eight percent of users in the "heavy use" group are not thrilled about being so heavily connected. So mark about 23 percent of U.S. technology users as "heavy and happy" users.

About 20 percent of users are "middle of the road," using both mobile phones, the Internet and PCs. But again, only half find all the technology a blessing. Nearly half of all U.S. consumers, though, only occasionally use mobile and Internet technologies. About 26 percent of U.S. consumers are relatively indifferent to information and communications technologies including mobile phones, PCs and the Internet.

In each of the three main "intensity of use" groups (heavy, middle of road and light users), there is significant dissatisfaction with use of technology. Add up all the dissatisfied users, in all usage intensity groups, and fully 44 percent of U.S. consumers really aren't happy with all the connectivity in their lives.

Contrary to "conventional wisdom," most people are not heavy users of most of the newest technology. Some who are heavy users aren't happy users. Nearly half of users don't even use their mobile phones, PCs or the Internet all that much. And fully half of the "middle of the road" users think all the connectivity is something of a problem, not a solution.

Add it all up and about 23 percent of all users are "heavy" communications and information technology users, and think that is a good thing. Everybody else is a moderate, light or non-user. About 44 percent of all users actually refuse to use new technology, or use it and find it creates problems as well as solving them.