Flat Rate Data Roaming from Asian Mobile Providers

A group of Asian mobile carriers early next year will provide traveling users data access for a flat daily fee.

The carriers call themselves the Conexus Mobile Alliance, and include Hong Kong's Hutchison, Indonesia's Indosat, Japan's NTT DoCoMo, the Philippines' Smart, Singapore's StarHub, South Korea's KT Freetel, India's Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., Manager Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) and Taiwan's Far EasTone. The alliance covers 11 territories and 160 million consumers.

All the carriers use the Wideband Code Division Multiple Access data standard operating faster than 3G.

Some of the carriers already have deployed high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA), supporting speeds up to 1.8 Mbps. NTT DoCoMo already offers 3.6Mbps, and plans to launch a 7.2M bps service early next year.

The carriers hope the new alliance will boost data usage within Asia.

Major Reform of EU Telecom?

In a major revamp of its rules on wholesale access to optical loops, the European Commission executive branch has decided that, where competition is weak, incumbents must create separate “wholesale access” companies that sell services to all service providers.

Known as “structural separation,” the model resembles that current in the U.K. market, where BT and all other wireline providers buy access services from a wholesale OpenReach company.

The plan still must be ratified by member nations, and opposition is expected. National regulators are happy to be given more powers, but do not want the EU executive to be allowed to overrule their decisions and insist that they do not need an EU watchdog.

The European Commission says the new rules could be applied by the end of 2009, but observers expect EU states such as Germany, France and Spain to water them down.

If ratified, however, the decision essentially means competitors will have wholesale access to incumbent fiber-to-home facilities. The decision stands in stark contrast to rules in the U.S. market, where cable and telco providers are not required to lease such facilities to competitors.

Android Web Browser Renders Well

The Android Web browser seems to render Web pages nicely, based on these screenshots from Google Operating System.

Android Reminds me of Apple

Not since Steve Jobs over at Apple has a company apparently worked so hard on the look of fonts. But it appears Google has something of that same passion for user experience as it develops Android, its open source platform for mobile computing and communications devices. Here are the fonts users will be interacting with. Nice. Pleasing. But just as important, a sign that mobile user experience might now be really be an obsession at two companies.

Don't get me wrong. My BlackBerry is one of two devices I can't seem to dispense with, simply because it handles email so well. But it doesn't do voice very well, the key placement is occasionally awkward, and camera and media support is woeful.

The other, curently a Nokia N95, does photography, audio and video really well, has much more personality and uses a much better Web browser. RIM's browser is awful. Still, when I find I am reading the manuals, over and over, to learn how to use either device, which was my experience, something isn't being done as well as it might.

Syncing of data, calendar items and so forth is easy using either RIM's Intellisync or Nokia's PC Suite. And the picture-handling Nokia LifeBlog is interesting. The point is that software and navigation are getting to be more important now that mobiles are computers. Apple always gets this. Android might as well.

These fonts are nice. They also hopefully are a sign.

Watch T-Mobile

T-Mobile is going to be the first U.S. wireless provider to offer Android-powered phones next year. It is going to be first because it already has been working to develop such phones with Google and because it has powerful incentives to do something really dramatic to close the gap between itself and the other three major mobile providers. Put simply, it has got to take more chances and gamble more.

And oddly enough for the carrier with the least broadband capability (T-Mobile hasn't yet deployed its third generation network and the others have, T-Mobile might be launching a major push for Web-centric services. If the big opportunity not yet dominated by anybody else is the mobile Web, it's a major chance for T-Mobile to establish a new position for itself in the marketplace.

Once positioned at the "more minutes, less money" end of the spectrum, T-Mobile over the past several years has gotten more traction as a provider of "trendy" devices with an image to match. Pushing hard on the Android front is just another step in that direction.

T-Mobile also has been innovative on the services and packaging front. Its "myFaves" program allows unlimited calling to any other five numbers: not numbers supplied by T-Mobile--any other numbers.

T-Mobile also has been first to offer "HotSpot at Home," a dual-mode service allowing unlimited calling from the home Wi-Fi zone or any T-Mobile HotSpot. And though I continue to think the problem with dual-mode services is handset limitations, "HotSpot at Home" supports the BlackBerry Curve, one of the few devices I actually would consider using. So call T-Mobile remarkably prescient or lucky.

T-Mobile also worked closely with HTC, we are told, on the "Shadow," a "slide-out keypad" device with the "no keys" look that is becoming more popular.

The point is that T-Mobile is powerfully motivated to push the innovation envelope because it simply has to. That's going to be good for users. Watch T-Mobile.

Cable Industry to Get Clipped by FCC

In a move that will limit business opportunities for Comcast and Time Warner Cable and help independent networks, the Federal Communications Commission is preparing to impose significant new regulations to open the cable television market to independent networks, after determining that cable operators are too dominant in the multichannel video entertainment market.

Satellite and telco competitors should benefit at least in part, as the new rules are expected to force cable-affiliated programming networks to sell their content to competitors at better rates.

The new rules essentially would prevent Comcast from acquiring any other system assets, and limit Time Warner Cable's ability to make large acquisitions, shutting off a revenue growth path for both firms.

One of the proposals under consideration by the commission would force the largest cable networks to be offered to the rivals of the big cable companies on an individual, rather than packaged, basis. Up to this point cable-affiliated programmers have used the "bundled" wholesale tactic to get wider carriage for niche networks that piggyback on the popularity of major networks. In other words, to get the "must have" channels, competing service providers have to buy the weaker networks as well.

The agency is also preparing to adopt a rule that would make it easier for independent programmers to lease access to cable channels. Cable operators oppose that measure because it reduces their control over scarce channel slots.

Though consumer advocates believe the rule changes will lead to lower prices, that might not happen. What might happen is that consumers will be able to buy more targeted channels and packages without the "buy through" requirements that typically result in viewers "paying" for scores of channels they don't want.

In all likelihood, the changes will benefit a small number of viewers that really are interested in just a few channels, or who do not want to buy sports programs. For most viewers, who watch eight to 12 channels fairly regularly, it likely still will make sense to buy a broad package.

ESPN and sports programming in general is a major reason cable prices have risen so much over the past couple of decades, so opting out of ESPN carriage is one way consumers might save some money. Conversely, the rule changes could be damaging to ESPN if any significant number of consumers they can live without it.

Do Patents Retard Innovation?

Is the patent system broken? Supposedly a way to protect genuine intellectual property and spur innovation, patents these days seem most likely to wind up being used as a weapon of business warfare, and may actually retard innovation in many cases. Vonage and Research in Motion come to mind, as many observers think the patents Vonage is said to have infringed should not have been granted in the first place, and RIM had to pay what amounts to greenmail so its carrier and enterprise partners would not suddenly have to make all BlackBerry services "go dark."

In fact, it seems to be common these days to attempt to patent common business practices, obvious to anyone in the field. That leads to patent "trolls" buying up intellectual property and then suing companies as a business model.

Suing is a repugnant business model. And most patents seem trivial or--to a layman--overly broad. It is important to foster innovation and reward effort, and some innovations fit that bill. But isn't it obvious we ought to encourage people to work on really hard problems, and reward them, rather than encouraging lots of trivial stuff? Sure, it sometimes is hard to distinguish between an idea of significance and "prior art."

Now there's a big, socially useful problem that Google ought to be able to help with.

Whether it is the patent system or the way it gets used in business, something is out of whack. One might argue it is a necessary evil. Perhaps it isn't so necessary (at least the way currently practiced), though perhaps it often is evil.