CallVantage Closing Highlights VoIP as Part of Triple Play

AT&T is discontinuing its CallVantage "over the top" VoIP service, a move that has some observers calling AT&T stupid for turning its back on the future. But that isn't what AT&T is doing. It will focus on using VoIP as a key part of its triple-play or quadruple-play consumer offerings, instead of devoting resources to a small, if well-run service that offers little synergy or business value with the other things the company is doing.

It just makes more sense to focus on VoIP as a part of a bundle.

Solar Plants in the Desert Will Be a Disaster

Tundra and desert arguably are the most-sensitive ecosystems to be found on land, with their plant life highly susceptible to disturbance. So essentially "clear cutting" huge swatches of desert for solar factories is bad enough. Draining the important underground aquifers is worse. 

"It is not in the public interest for BLM (Bureau of Land Management)  to approve plans of development for water-cooled solar energy projects in the arid basins of southern Nevada, some of which are already over-appropriated," Jon Jarvis, director of the Park Service's Pacific West Region, says. 

National Park Service hydrologists say nearly 16.3 billion gallons of consumption has been proposed by applications in the Amargosa Valley alone. That water cannot be replaced. 

Nevada officials say the basin can support only half that amount. Rushing to approve huge solar projects without proper environmental review is dangerous. Clearing the desert and draining the aquifers is worse. 

Solar power is a good thing. But not when destruction of fragile ecosystems is the price. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8466882

EU Caps International Text, Mobile Internet Access Rates

As expected, the European Union has mandated price caps for international text messages, Reuters reports. Charges will be capped at rates as much as 60 percent lower for travelers in the European Union. The caps take effect in July

Operators will be allowed to charge customers a maximum of 11 euro cents (14 U.S. cents) for each text message, excluding sales tax, compared with current prices of about 28 cents, when customers use their mobiles outside their home countries.

Buying a song using a mobile phone or using a laptop with a dongle or GSM card to access the Internet will cost a maximum of 1 euro per megabyte at the wholesale level, from about 1.68 euros today.

Price caps that were introduced in 2007 on roaming voice calls.

The rule has to be ratified by each member state.

Solar Isn't Necessarily "Green." Neither is Ethanol.

In the desert, where many think we should create solar factories, solar is anything but "green." And that's before one considers the impact on aquifers. If you live out west, and you have spent even a little time looking at the matter, you realize that water is the truly-scarce resource. 

"Wet-cooled parabolic trough systems require five acre feet of water per megawatt. The five plants planned for Amargosa Valley, Nevada, propose to generate from 150 to 1,000 megawatts, so we are looking at over 10 million gallons of water a year. This water is fossil water believed to be tens of thousands of years old, not recharged since the last ice age. Even if they buy out the private water rights, there still would not be enough to supply this massive use of water. Devil's Hole, Ash Meadows wetlands, and springs of Death Valley (all home to a great diversity of endemic pupfish) would be dried up."

If you look at the amount of water required to grow corn, to create ethanol, you face the same problem. Water is the scarce resource. There are other ways to create clean energy. 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-pavlik15-2009feb15,0,7619561.story

http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/SolarDesert.html

Forget Job Growth: Rural Broadband Never Pays for Itself

Surprise, surprise: rural broadband does not automatically lead to measurable job growth or other economic benefits. That doesn't mean we shouldn't provide it. But it likely is not ever going to provide a financial return for the companies that install it.

Aside from that, assume $5,000 investment per home passed. Assume a 60-percent subscribe rate, at $50 a month retail prices. Assume a 30-percent profit margin on such accounts.

The per-subscriber cost of installing broadband is $8333.00. Recovery of the investment cost, without factoring in the cost of capital or time value of money is about 14 years. If one assumes the useful life of the plant is 20 years, a company never actually makes money on such investments.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/22/AR2009042203637.html

AT&T Wireless-Broadband Bundles Show Strong Growth

Worth noting: AT&T CFO Rick Lindner says "our stand-alone DSL product which about 50 percent of the time is bundled with wireless has been very strong for us."

You might suspect there has been some recent promotional activity to encourage such behavior but that is not the case. "We haven’t been running any significant promotional activities I think in the last few quarters," Lindner says.

The implication: high-speed Internet access and wireless are the two foundation communications services.

E-Commerce Growth Falls off Cliff

The rate of growth for online products plummeted from 24 percent in early 2006 to nine percent in early 2008, while the rate of growth for products bought at retail locations dropped from nine to five percent over the same period.

One can think of lots of reasons why this might be the case. A more mature business grows more slowly.

There's less novelty effect. Perhaps it is just the impact of the recession, and more staples are bought at physical locations.

The issue is what happens after the recession ends. There's a line of thinking that with serious deleveraging happening throughout the economy, consumer spending will not return to its pre-recession level.

Off the top of my head, it's hard to see why this line of thinking is wrong, though it is worth noting that consumer behavior often surprises researchers.