Telcos, CLECs, Cable Among Top Ethernet Providers

You might not be surprised that at&t, Verizon and Qwest are among leading incumbent carriers providing Ethernet services to U.S. organizations and businesses. But Time Warner Telecom and Cogent also are among the top six providers, and two cable companies are among the top seven providers, according to Vertical Systems Group.

More than forty other companies are also delivering retail Ethernet services to business customers in the U.S.

at&t is the market leader with a 22 percent share at year-end 2007, based on ports in service. Verizon is second with a 17 percent port share, followed by Time Warner Telecom with 13 percent of U.S. active ports.

Cox Communications is fourth overall with a 10 percent port share, followed by Cogent with seven percent of ports and Qwest with six percent of ports. Time Warner Cable has five percent share.

Other notable providers offering Business Ethernet Services in the U.S. include AboveNet, American Fiber Systems, Alpheus Communications, American Telesis, Arialink, Balticore, Bright House Networks, Charter Business, CIFNet, Cincinnati Bell, Comcast Business, Embarq, Expedient, Exponential-e, Fibernet Telecom Group, FiberTower, Global Crossing, Integra, IP Networks, Level 3, LS Networks, Masergy, Met-Net, Neopolitan Networks, NTELOS, Optimum Lightpath, Orange Business, Paetec, RCN, Savvis, Spirit Telecom, Sprint, SuddenLink, Surewest, US Signal, Veroxity, Virtela, Windstream, XO and Yipes (Reliance Communications).

More Competition in Small Business VoIP Market

Small business VoIP providers face a challenging year where competition in the small business space is heating up. Speakeasy, for example, has introduced a voice trunk replacement service called Integrated Voice, using a per-person pricing plan, available nationally and seemingly pitched to the sort of business that otherwise might buy a Cbeyond service.

Cable operators also are aggressively pitching their own small business VoIP services. Oddly enough, it is Comcast and Time Warner that arguably can claim better national name recognition that any of the other business VoIP specialists. And name recognition has been a problem up to this point, in the small business VoIP market.

The Best Buy-owned company is targeting smaller businesses with two to 12 phone lines that also want to keep their existing on-premises handsets and phone switch, and which also have a need for broadband Internet access.

Pricing begins at just $19.95 per line or user, with long distance charges of 2.9 cents a minute.

The phone line trunk replacement service combines voice and data services over a T-1 or high-speed DSL Internet connection, where bandwidth is dynamically allocated between voice and data. Speakeasy says the service will run over any existing broadband connection, but also sells the Speakeasy T1 and 15 Mbps Digital Subscriber Line service as well, the advantage being that Speakeasy can provide quality of service mechanisms if its own access is used.

fring Launches Mobile Web and IM Initiative

fring has launched of a new version of its mobile phone application that allows anyone with a compatible handset to talk, chat, and interact with other fring users on their mobile phones. Originally launched as a way to talk using VoIP, fring now is making an effort to use VoIP as a way of creating and enhancing IM-based mobile social networking.

As such, it hopes to become a mobile Internet service and community, enabling users to talk, chat and interact with other fring users in the context of their online IM communities, from their mobile phones.

fring’s new file transfer feature allows fring users to swap music tracks, pictures, video clips and other files between each other, from mobile to mobile and mobile to PC quickly and reliably without the need for multimedia message service, cable, Bluetooth, or infrared connections. And because its fring, the connection is made via the phones’ mobile Internet capability, using the already paid for data plan, so there’s no extra cost.

fring users now conduct voice sessions over the mobile phone’s data service channel, using instant messaging in place of text messaging, for example, using fring, Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo! and AIM.

The new fring version has enhanced chat features including new real-time displays alerting the user of new incoming chat, real time typing indication and easier navigation between different chat windows, making for rich PC-style interaction.

fring users also can activate the fringME! Web services feature, making themselves contactable from any PC-based Web page, blog, home page, email, MySpace or Facebook pages (the Facebook capability will be available soon).

fringME! also allows fring users with GPS-enabled handsets to choose whether to have their real-time location displayed via a pop-up GoogleMap.

Mobile service providers probably are ambivalent about the new features. On one hand, fring will stimulate demand for data plan purchases. On the other hand, fring also will supplant and replace some amount of text messaging, at some point.

Wireless Prices Lower, Usage Higher

Since 2006, U.S. mobile users have been paying dramatically lower prices, and therefore talking more, than users in Western Europe and Japan, the latest Federal Communications Commission data indicates.

And though there may be other areas where work must be done, access, usage and price no longer are problems. Nearly 90 percent of potential users have access to four or more different providers. Some 95.5 percent have access to at least three providers. Fully 99 percent of people have access to at least two different providers. And 99.8 percent of potential users have access to at least one provider. That includes people living in rural areas where service is more limited.

Approximately 99.3 percent of the U.S. population living in rural counties have one or more different operators offering mobile telephone service in the census. Nearly 57 percent of the population lives in areas with at least five competing operators.

On average U.S. mobile subscribers paid about seven cents per minute for mobile voice calls in December 2006 based on an estimate of average revenue per minute. Prices declined 85 percent from 47 cents in December 1994 to seven cents in December 2005.

In Western Europe revenue per minute averaged 20 cents in the last quarter of 2006, while in Japan users paid an average of 26 cents a minute.

U.S. mobile subscribers lead the world in average voice usage by a wide margin, with Western European subscribers averaging 150 minutes and Japanese subscribers averaging 145 minutes, compared to an average of over 700 minutes in the U.S. market.

Lower prices also have other effects of concern to wired service providers. If wireless use does not cost too much more than tethered calling, lots of users will simply abandon use of wirelines in their lives as consumers.

During the second half of 2006, 11.8 percent of U.S. adults lived in households with only wireless phones, up from 7.8 percent in the second half of 2005, and triple the percentage (3.5 percent) in the second half of 2003.

About one in four adults aged 18 to 24 years lived in households with only
wireless telephones, and nearly 30 percent of adults aged 25-29 years lived in wireless-only households.

Sky Dayton Leaves Helio

Given that Sky Dayton now has resigned as chief executive of Helio, the wireless joint venture between SK Telecom and Earthlink, one has to conclude that Dayton, at least, thinks the end is near. Shutting Helio down is a possibility, though not the only possibility. Earthlink itself is for sale and it is possible Dayton sees the larger transaction coming.

Earthlink clearly wants out of the Helio venture, but SK Telecom clearly believes in the business, hoping only to replicate the success it has had in its home market. The issue rests with SK Telecom, as the Korean firm recently invested $70 million in Helio and now has voting control of the venture.

Maybe Earthlink executives have found a way to reorganize the firm in a self-sustaining way. If so, it almost certainly would have concluded that it must stop investing in the muni Wi-Fi and Helio ventures.

Another Cable Cut in Persian Gulf

What are the odds four undersea cables are cut in a single week? Whatever those odds, it has happened. First two cables snap off Egypt. Then a separate cable in the Persian Gulf, and now yet another Middle East cable.

In the latest incident, an undersea telecoms cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged, disrupting services, telecommunications provider Qtel has reported.
The cable was damaged between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE island of Das. The cause of the damage is not yet known.

Qtel's loss of capacity seems to be disrupting voice capacity more than Internet services. Qtel says it was operating at 40 percent over the weekend because alternative cables exist. Nevertheless, disruption to Internet and telephone services in the Gulf state is likely to continue for 10 another days or so.

Not since the December 2006 earthquake off Taiwan have so many cables been taken out of service almost at once.

Google: Microsoft "Troubling Questions"

Google is doing what it can to annoy Microsoft. Reportedly it has contacted Yahoo about potential help fending off a Microsoft takeover bid. And it certainly is going to raise antitrust and other competitive issues it hopes will be addressed by regulatory bodies.

"Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions," says David Drummond, SVP and Chief Legal Officer. "Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?"

"Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft, despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses, to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet?" he asks.

"Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services?"