"Large" Suite Does the Job

Not all of us enjoy messing around with technology; backing up files, restoring software, tweaking application settings, defragmenting our hard drives and so forth. In that regard, I ran a scan using Large Software's "PC Tune-Up" suite on my XP machine.

The Suite quickly found about 504 problems, most of them said to be "serious" or "moderately serious." The dashboard information was clear, intuitive and the scan seemed to run faster than I recall other similar suites operating. Again, this was not a controlled test, so I can't speak to how other programs might have performed.

I will say the application executed much faster than I was expecting, especially in the defragmentation phase of the tune-up.

As service providers look to avoid "dumb pipe" status, supplying enterprise, peformance optimization would seem a logical place to extend the range of services such as anti-virus, firewall and anti-spam functions many Internet service providers now supply as an integral part of the access service.

The other thing is that some services are more "logical" parts of service bundles. An enriched software experience that improves Web and Internet performance probably will be seen by users as a logical extension of basic access.

Also, as the actual user experience migrates beyond a service provider network interface (a router in a small business setting, IP phones in an enterprise or mid-sized business setting or the PC in a consumer application, service providers of necessity will be seen as the "entity to call" when something isn't functioning properly.

If you can't avoid the calls to your customer service center, you might as well extend service and support to the actual end user device. Most of us by now have discovered the "dueling applications" problem when loading any new software. A hosted approach should eliminate that problem.

That's not to say I experienced a single issue using the downloaded version of the software. Set-up was completely uneventful and the application executed better than I expected. The observation is simply that distribution as part of a bundled "access" service would make sense.

Lots of us just want to do things. We don't want to be system administrators. This should help.

Average Capacity Prices Dropped 10 to 20% in 2007

The average price of wholesale circuits in most major markets dipped 10 to 20 percent in 2007, according to TeleGeography. For many, that would be considered price stability.

As price declines have moderated, international bandwidth demand has remained strong, growing at a compounded annual rate of 52 percent over the past five years, TeleGeography adds.

But revenue growth remains elusive for many wholesale network operators, the company says. A key reason lies in bandwidth buyers' changing purchase patterns: they simply are substituting bigger pipes for smaller pipes, paying more money in aggregate but at lower prices per megabit per second of capacity.

Companies that may have purchased a few 155 Mbps STM-1/OC-3 circuits five years ago are now opting for 2.5 Gbps or 10 Gbps wavelengths. These large circuits are far cheaper in terms of the price per Mbps of capacity than the smaller circuits.

"The effective price per megabit per second of capacity sold is falling a lot faster than nominal circuit prices, themselves," says TeleGeography Research Director Robert Schult. "Carriers need to sell ever larger volumes just to maintain stable revenues."

Which Devices Will Drive Mobile Web?

Given a choice between believing what people say they will do and evidence of what they have done, I've always found it is more helpful to believe what they have done is a better predictor of what they will do in the future.

So consider a bit of survey data which seems to have the ring of authenticity and some purchase behavior that might bear on the development of mobile Web devices.

The clear winner in an In-Stat survey of U.S. consumers about preferred mobile Web devices is the smart phone, the research firm says. Nearly half of the respondents said they preferred the smart phone as a mobile Internet device.

Fewer than 10 percent indicated a preference for the capabilities of mobile Internet devices, such as an ultra-mobile PC or a mobile Internet device. In some ways that simply makes sense. The mobile device most people carry is a mobile phone. Given the ability to add Web access from that device, one would expect most people to say that is the preferred, "use every day and everywhere" device.

The issue is that consumers rarely if ever provide decent input on applications or devices they have not seen or used. Survey responses would seem to carry an awful lot of that sort of data.

About one quarter of users like the idea of the ultra-mobile PC as long as it does not involve sacrificing the capabilities of a full-function laptop. But few users have them, at least so far.

Those showing an interest in MIDs were unclear about how they would use these devices or where to buy them. Again, there is a lack of awareness and experience with such devices, which make the feedback less useful.

The main objection for non-users of mobile data technology in general, and smart phones in particular, is that users are skeptical of the benefits of mobile data and view it as a “luxury.”

On the other hand, there is data gathered from Finland mobile operators suggesting very strongly that it is in fact PCs that drive most of the mobile data traffic.

It might be that today's mobile Web users primarily are users with characteristics different from the ultimate base of mobile Web users. That might be the case for 3G data card users and iPhone users, for example.

The point simply is that we won't know what users actually will do until they have ample chance to see and use mobile devices capable of using the Web. There is ample evidence that iPhone users have mobile Web usage profiles astoundingly different from users of other Internet-capable mobile devices.

Enterprise VoIP Winners

Pike and Fischer analysts predict that AT&T, Verizon and Qwest will capture the biggest share of large enterprises as VoIP customers, but will face competition in the SMB space from a variety of new entrants.

The big issue is whether the former RBOCs also will have the same success in the consumer market, despite early dominance by cable operators.

This analyst thinks they will.

Microsoft Expects 50% Mobile Software Growth

Microsoft Corp. expects global unit sales of its Windows Mobile software for mobile phones to grow at least 50 percent per year in fiscal years 2008 and 2009, driven by smart phone demand.

"Fifty percent growth is the minimum," Eddie Wu, Microsoft managing director, told Reuters.

He said Microsoft expects to sell 20 million units in its 2007 to 2008 fiscal year ending in June 2008, and expects to grow at least 50 percent annually over the next two years.

Web 2.0: Features, Not Business Models?

Lots of valuable features do not provide a foundation for fleshed-out business model, many Web 2.0 entrpreneurs seem to be finding.

The shortage of revenue among social networks, blogs and other “social media” sites that put user-generated content and communications at their core has persisted despite more than four years of experimentation aimed at turning such sites into money-makers, the Financial Times reports.

“There is going to be a shake-out here in the next year or two” as many Web 2.0 companies disappear, says Roger Lee, a partner at Battery Ventures. That's just part of the innovation process, as you know if you were part of the Web 1.0 boom of the late-1990s.

But features often are an important and long-lasting effect, even when completely new business models are not built. Email arguably hasn't created a stand-alone business model, for the most part, yet it has radically changed user behavior and expectations.

Social networking appears to be one of the lasting fruits of the current Web 2.0 wave, no matter what happens with most of the companies attempting to make a business out of it.

U.K. Rural PC Penetration Tops Urban

It appears that U.K. PC use in rural areas, use of Internet access and broadband access rates are higher in rural areas than in urban areas, U.K. regulator Ofcom reports.

Some will note that unbundling of access loops is at 100 percent in the U.K. market. What that effectively means is that every potential customer has access to broadband, eliminating uptake differentials limited by physical unavailability.