UK supermarket chain Tesco is building its own GSM network, an unusual step for any enteprise to take. The retailer will construct a private GSM network to replace its existing fixed-line phones at about 1,500 locations, CommsDay reports. Cable & Wireless will provide the backhaul and Ericsson will design, build and manage the network for five years.
Inside buildings and on Tesco campuses, mobile handsets will act essentially as cordless phones. But those handsets also will roam to the public GSM network off campus or outside buildings.
In many ways, the Tesco network is one of the more significant enterprise fixed-mobile converged networks so far. Tesco will use its existing IP network for voice trunking, while replacing tethered phones with mobile handsets that double as traditional mobile phones when outside the office.
By doing so, Tesco eliminates desk phones and all the maintenance,moves, adds and changes associated with use of those phones. To the extent that unified communications and FMC are at least in part about reducing the number of devices or phone numbers or mail boxes any single user must interact with, Tesco's network eliminates all support requirements for one of the two voice services it used to support.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Tesco Cuts the Cord
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Cisco Buys Jabber
Cisco Systems is acquiring open-source instant messaging software maker Jabber. Cisco will embed Jabber in its on-premise unified communications suite and and its WebEx Connect application.
Jabber provides integration of presence data across different devices, users and applications, allowing multiple instant messaging to communicate with each other, an obvious advantage for any unified communications service or application.
More than 10 million users, including workers in AT&T, Bank of Ireland, BT, Department of Homeland Security, Earthlink, FedEx and JP Morgan, license software from Jabber.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
300% Jump in Bandwidth Use by 3G iPhone Users
AT&T had expected about 500 percent growth in data consumption by 3G iPhone users, but has found bandwidth consumption jumped only 300 percent, according to AT&T CTO John Donovan.
It isn't clear whether this is because of end user behavior or some other element of the experience, such as users not being able to use their devices as much as they might have wanted to. Battery life issues, coverage issues or other impediments might have contributed. Nobody really knows, yet.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
What Convinces Cord Cutters to Buy Landline Voice?
Nielsen Mobile has found that about 17 percent of U.S. households say they have no landline voice service and rely on wireless services instead. But the Nielsen study also found that 10 percent of U.S. households are former wireless-only users who now have returned to wired voice service for one reason or another. About 17 percent they are required to have a landline voice connection in order to use some other important service, such as an alarm service, digital video recorder service, Internet or fax.
About 12 percent say it was too expensive to make all their calls using a mobile.
About 11 percent say the value and price of a bundle convinced them a landline voice account was worth having. Another 10 percent cited the convenience of a bundle as the reason to move back to buying landline voice. Basically, 22 percent said a bundle including voice was what got them to move back.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Vodafone to Offer Dell Ultra-Mobile PC
Vodafone and Dell have announced that Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 ultra-mobile device will be sold with built-in mobile broadband, exclusively through Vodafone stores and online, and directly from Dell, in key European markets.
Available from late September, the Inspiron Mini 9, featuring built-in mobile broadband from Vodafone. There is no word yet whether Vodafone plans to take the plan a step further and directly bundle the mobile PC with service in the same way that mobile phones are bundled with mobile service.
But that is a logical step, if EU regulators will allow it.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
$40 billion private line services market
The $40 billion private line services market is posting solid growth for a third straight year, say researchers at Insight Research.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
Mobile Not Up to Emergency Tasks
"SMS is touted as being able to deliver critical information during disaster events, and such services have been purchased by universities and municipalities hoping to protect the general public," says industry association 3G Americas.
"Unfortunately, such systems typically will not work as advertised."
New research conducted for the association indicates that there are serious limitations in third party Emergency Alert Systems (EAS).
In particular, because of the general architecture of CDMA, TDMA and GSM cellular networks, such systems will not be able to deliver a high volume of emergency messages in a short period of time.
Current systems not only cannot widely disseminate such messages quickly, and the additional traffic created by third party EAS solutions may disrupt other traffic such as voice communications, including that of emergency responders or the public to 9-1-1 services, the analysis suggests.
"Unfortunately, such systems typically will not work as advertised."
New research conducted for the association indicates that there are serious limitations in third party Emergency Alert Systems (EAS).
In particular, because of the general architecture of CDMA, TDMA and GSM cellular networks, such systems will not be able to deliver a high volume of emergency messages in a short period of time.
Current systems not only cannot widely disseminate such messages quickly, and the additional traffic created by third party EAS solutions may disrupt other traffic such as voice communications, including that of emergency responders or the public to 9-1-1 services, the analysis suggests.
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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