Level 3 Attacks CDN Pricing

Level 3 Communications has been gearing up for a major assault on the content delivery networks business and appears ready to price such services at a rate that basically offers caching and downloading services for no more than the cost of buying IP transport. If, as expected, Level 3 prices content delivery at the same price as Ip transit, it could disrupt much of the market.

It isn't so much the disruption of profit margins: that already is happening as several dozen contestants now are slugging it out for some share of the growing market.

The bigger issue is how participants in the media, hosted applications and enterprise end user markets are able to change the way they do things if enhanced quality becomes an integral part of the IP transport they buy.

Level 3 hopes to have its streaming services ready by mid-November. At that point it will have a wider shot at disrupting the market for transport of real time services. Right now much of the market is focused on video content. But there are other real time applications and services that really would benefit from lower-priced and more capable delivery over networks that eliminate jitter and latency over the global wide area network.

Access networks on each end still are issues, but tail circuits also keep improving. As more applications move to "cloud-based" processing and storage, they will have to start having the "feel" of local desktop apps. CDNs will be part of that experience. And that's where the major impact will lie.

Broadband costs: Fiber Helps!

Fiber to the home helps, obviously. In the U.S. market, it helps to be a Verizon customer where FiOS is deployed, or to live within the SureWest Communications footprint. Make a note, though: this is actually a megabit per second (Mbps) metric, not a Mbyte metric. Apparently we are dealing with a technologically challenged journalist. The original data from the foundation make clear that we are talking about Mbps, not Mbytes.

Free BlackBerry Collaboration Tool for Small Groups

Telefónica and Research In Motion are introducing BlackBerry Unite!, a free PC-based software offering that will allow small groups, such as a family or small office, to stay connected and enhance communications and coordination. It's a combination of collaboration and remote PC access tools.

In addition to providing wireless email and web browsing, BlackBerry Unite! software will provide groups of up to five users with mobile access to shared calendars, pictures, music, documents and other desktop content.

The software provides five supported email accounts per user, with shared contact lists and Web browsing. Members of each user group can check each others’ availability, set up or modify appointments and send reminders.

Users can remotely download pictures, music, documents and other content on their desktop PC directly from their BlackBerry. Users also can share photos and files with other group members directly from their BlackBerries.

Users can remotely erase information on a lost or stolen handset as well. Contacts, pictures and other data on the BlackBerry can be backed up automatically over the air (via a cellular or Wi-Fi® network) to the desktop PC as well.

The BlackBerry Unite! software will be provided as a free download and, with the help of an easy-to-follow setup wizard, can be installed in minutes on a desktop PC, RIM says.

It's very cool. Not every company, and certainly not consumers, can afford to buy, set up and maintain their own BlackBerry enterprise servers. One can only hope the software will be made widely available in North America as well.

iPod Touch: Optimized for Video and Web

The newly released iPod touch is for all intents and purposes an iPhone with reduced functionality. The iPod Touch skips Bluetooth, phone capabilities, a camera and has a lower quoted battery life.

It has more storage than the iPhone though, which tops out at 8 Gbytes. The Touch is available in 8 Gbyte and 16 GByte versions, whereas the iPhone is only available in 8GB capacities. Other than that, the iPhone and Touch are identical. 802.11b/g Wi-Fi is available on both devices.

The Touch uses the same interface as the iPhone as well, but the Touch is shorter and thinner. Brilliant people, those marketers at Apple. They are creating a family of products each optimized for a different use case. The iPhone is the most capable phone. The Nano is a cheaper video player. The iPod has the most memory if you a music player.
The iPod also has dedicated volume control buttons; Touch doesn't.

The Web browser on the Touch probably is a major positioning feature. Lots of users will focus on using Wi-Fi to download music. Personally, I see it more as a Web browsing platform. Email access is not something you'd really want to do on a Touch. That's a better experience on an iPhone but arguably not as good as an iPhone as on a BlackBerry.

To prevent people from confusing a Touch with an iPhone, Touch has no audio input jacks or Bluetooth, so you really can't use a microphone. It definitely is not a phone.

So the issue is what people will make of it. It's a better Web browser and video player than a music player. The iPod is a better music player. The video-capable Nano is a cheaper music and video player. The iPhone is the only phone. The Shuffle is a better device for running and exercising because of its non-existent footprint. Unless you need to keep stats on your training progress, in which case the Nano works with some Nike shoes to collect data for you.

The net result is that lots of users will wind up owning multiple Apple products, while Apple covers the whole range of price points for devices that all are mobile music players. Clever, those marketers at Apple.

All of this is interesting for other reasons as well. One wonders how long it will be until data-optimized, communicating mobile devices might develop as a distinct niche: optimized for Web applications primarily, though capable of handling email and voice. Would such a niche necessarily require full-time mobile access? Or is there room for use cases based on Wi-Fi connection as a primary access method? Perhaps dual mode capable, but without the recurring monthly post-paid fees? Perhaps prepaid mobile access as a supplement to Wi-Fi as the primary access? Using WiMAX perhaps?

The new use case would be based partly on the characteristics of the device, partly on the nature of the access, partly on the user payment model and partly on the provider business model.

BT Joins Fon

BT has decided that Fon, the global user-built Wi-Fi network, really is complementary to telco networks, and has joined the FON community, creating a new service known as BT Fon. U.S. cable operator Time Warner Cable also has done so. The value proposition might be pitched as "free Wi-Fi access when you roam if you buy our broadband."

The result is that now millions of BT broadband subscribers can automatically opt-in to the BT Fon community, potentially expanding the footprint where BT customers can get connected.

Fon users who are not BT broadband customers will not automatically get free access to the commercial BT Openzone hotspots and Wireless Cities hotzones and hotspot network serving 12 cities at the moment. They will get access at reduced fees, however. Access to BT Fon user Wi-Fi zones will be reciprocal.

And BT is putting its money where its mouth is, becoming a shareholder and partner in Fon. So Fon now is part of BT’s strategy to provide wireless broadband not just inside the home, but outside as well.

Neuf Cegetel in France also has joined the Fon community.

The deal also means that users of BT Fusion dual-mode handsets will be able to use those devices in far more locations around the world than had previously been possible. FON also has a software client that can be used on Nokia's Wi-Fi-enabled Nseries handsets.

BT Fon has the potential to dramatically increase the size of the global Fon network, as BT has more than three million consumer broadband customers who are free to opt in to the program. By way of contrast, Fon's global network now stands at 190,000 hotspots.

The Fon router sets up a secure channel of 512 kbps that is available to other Fon users.

"Google Me"; "Skype Me"

No matter what financial pundits say about EBay's purchase of Skype, Skype has had enormous impact. As "Google" now is a verb, as in "Google it," so is "Skype" as in "Skype me." Assets can trade one way or the other. But "assets" aren't the same thing as "significance" or "value" to people. Skype is hugely valuable to users. No matter how you want to quantify the matter--10 million concurrent peak users or 200 million downloads--that's a huge user base. More important, Skype is part of the fabric of daily life for millions of people, as is Google. We may agree that EBay overpaid for Skype. That has almost nothing to do with the social significance of Skype. That's huge.

HTC Touch: On the Cusp of Something Big

Something big is going on in the handset market, which appears to be developing clearer customer niches as device capabilities start to diverge. But the big thing isn't simply the handset proliferation. The proliferation of devices is creating lots of niches, and also showing why mobile is such a powerful way to do voice.

It isn't simply mobility. It is the ability to create human affinities for communications services never possible before. Marketers talk about "branding" their companies and services to create an image of quality, reliability, dependability, fun or some other attribute. But who really believes them?

Most consumers seem to regard every mobile provider as a functional substitute for some other provider. Ford or Chevy. There are brands. It simply isn't clear that the brands mean much.

But consider perfume. Perfume is so personal that the branding is everything, the actual fragrances like operating systems. Perfumes also are ultimately personal. A person doesn't buy a different perfume because it is on sale. And on what logical basis would any fragrance be "better" than another?

Of course, that's not the point. It isn't about "better." It is about "me." The whole point of perfume marketing is to create an indelible sense that a fragrance is the personification of "me." That's sticky. That's loyalty. That's the complete antithesis of a commodity.

Wireline service is nearly impossible to personalize. But wireless service is nearly infinitely capable of segmentation, personalization and creation of niches because the handsets personify the service. This is a very big deal.

But back to HTC. It isn't clear yet whether the touchscreen interface itself will become into an actual niche, but that feature certainly is associated at the moment with devices we might say are "fashion phones." And there are two devices clearly in that category using touchscreen technology: the iPhone and the HTC Touch.

As iPhone sets records for sales of the first million units of a new handset, Taiwanese phone maker HTC says it has sold approximately 800,000 units of its Touch smartphone as well, over just about the same timeframe. While not yet available in North America, the Touch features the same sort of touchscreen interface used by the iPhone.

Both the Apple and HTC Touches have touchscreens, Wi-Fi and media playback.

HTC has already announced a successor to the Touch, the Touch DUAL, a phone that adds 3G broadband and a slide-out keypad, borrowing concepts from Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices. It should launch in Europe later this month.

Originally an equipment maker for carriers and other handset vendors, HTC in the last two years has embarked on a major campaign to sell its own branded phones. The company specializes in innovatively designed handsets and mobile computers, many of them aimed at the enterprise market.

Like most HTC devices, the HTC Touch and the Touch Dual use the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system.

The company also has launched three other devices: a 3G version of the ultramobile Shift computer that runs on Windows Vista; the P6500, designed for tough environments such as hospitals and police forces; and the S730, an update to its popular S710 phone that like its predecessor includes a slide-out qwerty keyboard in addition to a traditional mobile-phone keypad.

Even the "fashion" segment is going to evolve. Verizon is rolling out devices aimed at the more price conscious end of the fashion segment, especially where what is really needed is voice and text, without heavy Web, media player or email support.

As it seems to be turning out, though mobile phone "service" might be something of a commodity, the handset experience is anything but, and getting richer all the time. That essentially means mobile service is the closest communications equivalent to "perfume," clothing, music and other human products that have very high and very personal human meaning.