Best Buy Gets First HTC Touch Dual

HTC Corp. says the HTC Touch Dual will debut in the United States in the second quarter, with Best Buy getting rights to sell the device first. The HTC Touch Dual combines a touch screen and slide-out keypad, and runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional software.

The HTC Touch Dual, which will be available through select Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile retail outlets, and online at BestBuy.com and htc.com.

Lots of Bundle Shopping

Analysts at Compete say there has been a strong upsurge in comparison shopping by users investigating triple play and quadruple play bundles offered by leading telecom and cable companies.

The data suggests that cable providers are more exposed, at the moment, than are at&t or Verizon.

Compete suggests wireless services are providing more stickiness at the moment.

Nokia N810 for Xohm

Nokia's N810 mobile Internet tablet will be one of the first devices available for use on the Xohm WiMAX network Sprint Nextel Corp. is launching commercially in April.

The device has a 4.13-inch touch screen and is among at least 10 devices Xohm expects to have available at launch.

The Xohm N810 also connects using Wi-Fi. Presumably the big attraction of the Xohm network is its ability to function more like a mobile Internet service than a conventional mobile service, so devices should skew towards mobile Web, mobile Internet and other devices that benefit from the "always connected" feature.

The three initial markets are Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Offline Google Docs Coming

Google's word processing application will now work offline, Google says, with the new feature available over the nextfew weeks, apparently. Changes made to offline documents will synchronize automatically when users go back online.

The offline feature is enabled by the Google Gears browser plug-in, which uses JavaScript APIs to enable offline access for applications such as Google Reader.

The "work offline" feature obviously is an important feature for traveling workers.

Zoho and Transmedia, which also offer online productivity suites, have been offering offline access to their word processing applications, Zoho Writer and Glide 2.0, since last year.

Augusta to Build Own Metro Wi-Fi Network

The City of Augusta, Ga. plans to build a for-fee metro Wi-Fi network it plans to have in operation by the end of 2008. A Request for Proposal (RFP) within weeks. As the business model is everything, Augusta is using a grant from the state of Georgia worth about $500,000 to build and deploy the Wi-Fi network over a highly-populated area including the downtown business corridor, three colleges and the most-densely-populated parts of the community.

That basically takes care of the network's capital cost. The RFP is to choose an Internet Service Provider to operate, market and maintain the network

The chosen ISP will operate the network and share revenue with Augusta.

New Zealand Telecom Now is Operationally Separated

New Zealand telecom regulators last year approved Telecom New Zealand's split into separated retail, network and wholesale companies, on the BT model. On March 31, the separation has taken effect. Under the new structure, all contestants will be able to lease network access and transport services on the same terms and conditions Telecom itself pays to use network features.

If the plan works as expected, retail competitors will gain market share relatively quickly, while Telecom ultimately drops to less than half the market for mass market retail services.

You might wonder "what's in it" for Telecom, as it might appear the breakup makes it easier for competitors to compete using Telecom's network. That's true, to an extent. One reason U.S. tier one telecom incumbents don't want to share their optical access infrastructure is precisely because it is so expensive an undertaking that avoiding mandatory wholesale access to those optical access facilities makes highly unlikely few competitors will emerge (cable companies and a few overbuilders notwithstanding).

So why might BT or Telecom go that route? Different "facts on the ground," for one thing. Cable companies in the U.K. and New Zealand markets are not so well developed as to constitute an access challenge for wired communications providers. So opening an optical access network to "all comers" actually works to decrease the likelihood any serious national "fiber to the customer" network will be built by anybody else.

So while Telecom will lose some retail market share, it will keep nearly 100 percent of wired optical and DSL access share. Telecom also heads off what might have been more onerous regulation.

U.K. ISPs Will Have to Block Pirated Content

Voluntarily or by government regulation, U.K. Internet service providers are going to become watchdogs of pirated music and video content, and likely will be required to disconnect repeat offenders.

In fact, Virgin Media will become the first U.K. ISP to crack down on customers who download music illegally, says Juliette Garside of the Telegraph. And video is a strong possibility for follow-on rules.

Record labels are lobbying for a "three strikes" regime that would allow ISPs to disconnect offenders' access service, and the U.K. government is expected next month to start the process of putting such regulations into place.

This would be the first time a British internet company has publicly moved to share responsibility for curbing piracy, using a mechanism where offenders are identified by copyright holders and that information is forwarded to Virgin and other ISPs.

Six million broadband users are estimated to download files illegally each year, costing record labels billions of pounds in lost CD sales but ISPs have so far resisted calls to control the traffic that passes over their networks, raising issues around customer privacy and the difficulty of accurately pinpointing file sharers.

The U.K. government, though, intends to force the matter to a head. It has said it will implement legislation by April 2009 unless ISPs came to a voluntary agreement with the music and film industries.

The new developments illustrate the difficulty of cleanly separating piracy control from content freedom; network management from anti-competitive ISP actions; optimized delivery of audio, video and other real-time services from other best-effort traffic using priority-delivery mechanisms.