Millennial Tipping Point?

Many of us have children who use devices, services, applications and networks in different ways than we, their parents, do. So the issue is when we will reach a tipping point: a time when most buyers of enterprise and consumer services are "Millennials" and "Gen Xers" rather than "Baby Boomers." It is only a matter of time.

So what bears watching are signs that the next generations of buyers have different preferences and expectations about their communication services. Today we might see the demand mostly on the "consumer" side of the business. At the tipping point we will see that demand translated into enterprise, small and medium-sized business, government and non-profit buying as well.

If users have preferences for mobile services, texting and immediacy in their lives as users, why would they not carry those preferences into the enterprise? So if one is a service provider, why wouldn't it make sense to learn from the Millennials and Gen Xers who are part of one's own company? Why wouldn't it make sense to recraft existing services and features that are more attractive to buyers with different priorities?

Fiber to Home is Necessary, Rural Telcos Told

"We are going to have fiber to the home," says John Rose, OPASTCO president. "We are going to have more symmetrical bandwidth." That might not strike you as unusual. But consider that Rose works for a trade association representing lots of small, rural telcos that know exactly how costly it will be to try to build FTTH networks in their low-density areas.

Given current broadband growth rates, there is no other option, Rose says.

Salesforce.com and Google?

Salesforce will begin reselling Google’s Web-based applications such as Google Docs to its customers, says Erick Schofneld, TechCrunch co-editor. Google's Web apps will be available within Salesforce.com and tightly integrated into its service, he says.

Google, enterprise. Salesforce.com, advertising. Does this start to make sense to you? Salesforce customers can already manage their AdWords campaigns from within Salesforce.com and Google wants to sell its apps to enterprise customers. And Salesforce.com with an integrated desktop productivity suite?

Keep in mind the uber trends: consumer technologies blending with enteprise; advertising blending with "shrink wrap" software models; Web services replacing client-server or local computing.

Go wireless to get a job; CompTIA

A survey of more than 3,500 information technology (IT) managers by CcompTIA reveals that wireless and RF mobile technology is the skill set expected to increase the most in importance over the next five years. In all but two of fourteen countries surveyed, IT managers said wireless skills will increase the most in importance over the next five years. Wireless skills ranked second in South Africa (behind security) and France (behind Web-based technologies).

Among specific industries, IT managers in healthcare (63 percent) and education (63 percent) were more likely to identify wireless technology as the skill that will be most important five years from now. IT managers in the auto/manufacturing sector (48 percent) were less likely to consider wireless important.

400 Percent Mobile Penetration

Aside from machine-to-machine traffic, it is hard to imagine WiMAX or any other fourth-generation network getting anything close to 400 percent penetration of mobile users. And while we might argue about which entities will provide the revenue, fees or prices lower than we might expect for a primary device are the likely paths. Is 400 percent penetration crazy? Not if new devices supply the demand.

Hulu Scores, YouTube Could

I have to admit I don't use YouTube much, if at all. I do watch Hulu, though, and though the reasons might say as more about me than about the future of on-demand video, there is something worth noting.

When NBC and News Corp announced two years ago that they were creating a new online destination to compete with YouTube, the idea was met with at least some derision, especially from the digirati. As is generally the case, proponents of new media and new "everything" tend to disparage the legacy players opportunties to do anything right in the new way.

But Hulu has done a lot of things right. For starters, it comes me access to short snippets of branded content I actually want to watch, and sometimes have missed. In Hulu's case, it is mostly 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live.

The user interface is really clean, of course, and it is easy to navigate. YouTube dominates user-generated videos of course, so if that is what you are looking for, go there.

At some point, full-length episodes of major TV shows also will be made available, and that's the point. Quality content is very hard to create. So most of what appears on YouTube either isn't very good, or simply isn't of interest.

Hulu doesn't compete with YouTube, in my case or probably in just about any other case. Hulu, even with limited content, is more of a "destination" site, where YouTube isn't. YouTube could change that, in at least one important dimension, though. YouTube would seem a much better destination for business-oriented video, such as a keynote at a conference I didn't attend.

If YouTube or any other provider can put together enough of that sort of content, I will use it.

Mobile Calls: 40% Are Churn Inducing

About four out of 10 mobile calls have call quality low enough (Mean Opinion Score score of 2.5) to put the relationship with the customer at risk, a survey of 630 million live mobile calls in 12 countries strongly suggests.

The reason is that subjective call quality below a MOS score of 2.5 is considered "unacceptable" by users and the ITU. When so many mobile calls are right at the threshold, they are, by definition, not "quality" calls.

You might wonder how it is that so many calls, and so many carriers, in so many countries, can have that many calls of questionable quality, when network engineers will tell you the networks are performing quite well.

The problem is that both the survey results and the network engineers are generally right: the "network" is working as it should. The problem is that problems outside the network (ambient environment around the user handset, for example) are disrupting performance. If you test the "network" in the old way, the ambient disruptors cannot be detected.

In mature markets such as the U.S. and Western Europe, 23 percent of all calls fall below the industry minimum. In rapid growth markets, such as the Middle East, India and South America, 59 percent of all calls fall below the industry minimum.

There are three primary issues, says Ken Croley, Ditech Networks director. Ambient noise, or noise that originates in the caller’s environment and enters the device’s microphone, was rated “objectionable” on up to 50 percent of all calls in some regions.

Acoustic echo, which is often caused by mobile handsets and headsets, was rated “objectionable” on up to 11 percent of all calls in some regions. That includes distortion-inducing elements such as Bluetooth ear pieces, for example.

Voice level mismatch, which makes it sound like a caller is speaking either too loudly or too softly, was rated “objectionable” on up to 28 percent of all calls in some regions, and is generally seen as a byproduct of codec mismatches.

The finds came as "a shock to carriers," says Croley. The distortions are "external to the network and missed by the network tests precisely because external to the network." Audio can bounce off a car windshield and back into a microphone, for example.

The corollary is that the problems cannot be fixed by adding more base stations or adding bandwidth. By definition, the issues are caused outside the network, by messiness in the user's aural environment.

Ambient noise levels are an issue as well: think of the trade show floor at CTIA or a crowded bar on Friday night.

The audits were conducted using Experience Intelligence (EXi), a technology developed by Ditech that quantifies the impact of voice quality impairments caused by the places where people make calls, codec impairments, and mobile devices like phones and headsets.

EXi is based on the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) G.107 E-Model, a widely used industry standard, and the technology has been utilized in the communications industry as a complement to existing voice quality test and measurement solutions.

Ditech believes the problems can be fixed by using EXi. Of course, there is the other solution: ban Bluetooth, prohibit talking in noisy places and outlaw talking while driving. Right.