One Bucket for Voice and Broadband

One of the reasons unified communications, unified messaging, unified services, fixed mobile convergence, mashups and other similar concepts are so confusing is partly because there are lots of different ways they can be implemented, and because they highlight different ways software usage and communications are changing.

In some future incarnation, users who pay money for services will be able to invoke various identities and roles when using those services and features, with some sort of analogy to "multiple service, single log in" rather than "single service, single sign-on."

In other words, where today users might have to log in serially to multiple services they want to use, in the future they might be able to log in once, but use different features, devices and network services depending on their "roles" and "identities," while the network itself figures out all the details of authentication and security.

In the nearer term, it might be more common to find that customers buy a service, such as "voice and messaging" or "broadband access," and then be able to use any number of access networks or devices as part of the one service. Think of a single bucket of usage that can be used for "calling," "messaging" or Web surfing, for example.

Instead of buying separate 3G wireless service, digital subscriber line and then Wi-Fi hotspot service, a user might be able to buy "broadband" and use all the various modalities. The same sort of concept might hold for "calling," where mobile, fixed or PC-mediated, TV-mediated, game console or some other format is used.

AT&T is pushing that way, for example. Having a large internal customer base, or "community" if you like, it can leverage assets and relationships in a fairly broad way. All AT&T voice customers, for example, are one huge calling community.

In the meantime, lots of changes on lots of fronts will keep happening, pushing almost inexorably toward a future where features are made available not on a location or device or number level, but at a authenticated user level. Beyond that lies the ability to invoke features based on an identity or role.

Java: 100 Percent Open Source

Sun Microsystems says Java will be made 100 percent open source. Sun began moving that direction in 2006 and now will hope the change prompts much more development on the Linux platform.

The move does not finally the answer the question of how some companies can make money "selling" things other people offer "for free." Still, the move will provide more examples of how "for fee" businesses and services are built on "free" or "open" platforms.

One of the obvious developments so far is that "open" is one business model, "free" another. Platforms can be "open" to innovation without using a "free to end user" business model. On the other hand, "free" platforms can sometimes create huge ecosystems of "for fee" devices, services and software that leverage a widely-used "free" platform.

Mobiles: Slowdown Possible

Mobile shipments are shaping up to be softer in the second quarter, says ABI Research Vice President Jake Saunders. "Year on year, the first quarter of 2008 was up 13.7 percent, but the second quarter of 2008 is likely to be softer than in previous years."

Shipment volumes in the developed markets have softened slightly due to the credit crisis, but emerging markets such as Asia-Pacific, South America, and the Middle East/Africa are delivering growth rate percentages in the mid-20sn he says.

Nokia increased its share to 39.9 percent while Samsung and LG were also net winners with 16 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively, he adds.

Motorola continued to lose market share (falling 2.6 percent) to 9.5 percent, while Sony Ericsson lost market share (down to 7.7 percent).

But a new class of mobile device: MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices). MIDs made their debut last year, and some might consider them contenders of a new sort.

ABI Research expects 2008 to top out at 1.28 billion devices shipped – a 12 percent increase year over year. But the firm also warns there could be exposure to the downside.

Spam Not an Issue?

Ferris Research wonders why there isn't more interest in spam problems on the part of the media. One reason might be that ISPs, application providers and security suites are doing a pretty good job these days.

One observation: mission creep is an issue lots of organizations face. Attention gets paid on new problems that sooner or later get solved. Then organizations or companies have to find some new problem to solve or they are out of business.

Maybe spam is that sort of problem.

Teens: 60% Have Mobiles, 70% Have PCs

Six in ten teens (59 percent) now have a desktop or laptop computer and 71 percent own mobile phones, up from 45 percent in 2004 and 63 percentin 2006, says the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Overall, more than four in ten teens (45 percent) personally have both a computer and a cell phone with cell phone (81 percent) and computer (65 percent) ownership being
particularly high among older teens.

iPhone Boosts Wireless Data Revenue

The iPhone clearly is boosting AT&T Wireless data revenues, which increased 57 percent increase year-over-year in its most-recent quarter.

Wireless revenue for the first quarter of 2008 was $11.8 billion, with wireless data revenue contributing $2.3 billion, or 22 percent, of that total, compared with 16 percent in the same period last year.

Internet access, email, and messaging overall are the drivers. And there's no doubt smart phones are key. Smart phone users generate twice the data revenue of typical phone users.

iPhone average revenue per user is more than $90, AT&T executives say.

BT's 90 Day Cycles Startle People

BT now operates on 90-day development cycles for applications, including the time needed to prepare a business case, says Dave Axam, BT director of transformation. In some cases, as you would suspect, more than a single cycle might be required for a single project.

But that sort of speed seemed to startle many delegates at the MetaSwitch Forum, many of whom are independent telcos, rural cooperatives, competitive local exchange carriers, cable companies and other associated with those ecosystems.

But Axam says BT is serious about that sort of adaptation to a world running "at Google speed." He was given the assignment of launching voice over IP for BT "in three months." Axam says he discovered early on that Session Initiation Protocol is a bit like English--one has to know which variant of the dialect is being used--and that has taught BT much about the pitfalls of relying exclusively on such "standards."

All of that seemed to provoke some anxiety on the part of delegates, who may well have been wondering how well they'll fare in a world that requires innovation at that sort of speed, with the relationships and assets such speed would seem to require. BT, after all, created a developer community, a software development kit, feedback, response and interaction capabilities as part of the overall effort.

"But one of the hardest things is the commercial wrap," says Axam. That means the ability to intgrate new applications, many with some sort of tie to the Web, with the rest of BT's services.

One delegate, who seemed to agree with the characterization of where things were headed, nevertheless expressed the obvious point that "I don't think we are going to be putting together third-party developer groups" to do this sort of thing.

Anxiety? Yes, for many reasons. The integration of Web with telephony, the increasing importance of software-mediated experiences, the growing technological complexity of the business overall and the different assets required, may well be disadvantages for whole classes of competitors, even as the trends favor larger, wealthier companies.

All of that simply creates new opportunities for aggregators of applications, though. Still, as another delegate put it, "I'm not sure how comfortable I am with putting my widget on an iGoogle page."

But that might be a more viable avenue than trying to "force" customers to a service provider portal, as beneficial as that might be for the service provider.