Have Smartphones Surpassed TV as a News/Information Channel?

The mobile phone has become an increasingly prevalent channel for Americans to receive news and information, in fact surpassing television in terms of importance, says Synovate.

About 35 percent of U.S. survey respondents say they cannot live without their mobile phones. Compare that to the 34 percent of U.S. respondents who said they couldn't live without TV.

There's your shocker: mobile phones now have become more important than television.

But the Internet clearly is the number-one source for news and information. Fully 58 percent of Americans say they can't live without the Internet, the highest response across all 11 national markets surveyed by Synovate.

One way of evaluating importance is to compare the monthly recurring cost of using a multi-channel video subscription compared to a smartphone subscription. Most smartphone fees, for a single user, now run in the $75 to $100 a month range. The typical video subscription likewise runs in the $75 to $100 range.

To be sure, a single video subscription can be shared among members of a household, so the value per person is different. But many households also use mobile family plans, which likewise changes the cost-per-user.

The comparisons are most direct for a single-user household, where it might be argued the value of a mobile and TV are about equal. In a four-person household, one might argue the mobile is more important as per-person spending is something like $50 a person, whereas mobility is about $80 per person.

Mobile Internet Wave Coming: Who Wins?

If a "fifth wave" of computing is about to break, as analysts at Morgan Stanley clearly believe, the issue is who the wave's new winners and leaders will be.

The history of computing suggests that the companies that lead the prior wave do not lead the new wave.

Morgan Stanley seems to think that as social networking and mobility combine, a company such as Facebook could wind up in the "Mobile Internet Computing" leaders category.

Morgan Stanley also is high on Apple making the cut, as well. Should Apple pull that off, it would make history.

Verizon Gives Fixed, Mobile High-Speed Internet Access Customers Free Public Wi-Fi

Though it has not extended the offer to its smartphone users, Verizon Wireless has given some of its fixed broadband access customers (those on plans supporting a minimum of 3 Mbps in the downstream direction) and mobile broadband customers "no incremental cost" access to about 10,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots in the United States.

Verizon Wi-Fi is available in locations across the United States, including airports, bookstores, coffee shops, hotels and other public locations. The service is also available at locations in Canada and Mexico.

The new feature is available to mobile broadband customers using Verizon Wi-Fi supported devices, including the Mobile Broadband USB modem, PC Card, "ExpressCard," Verizon Wireless MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot, or a notebook or netbook with "Mobile Broadband Built-In" running Windows 7, 2000, XP or Vista.

When within range of a Verizon Wi-Fi hotspot, customers can use "VZAccess Manager" to connect with a Wi-Fi-enabled notebook or netbook computer. When they are ready to move, but want to remain connected, or if they want the added security of the Verizon Wireless network, customers can simply switch back to Verizon Wireless’ 3G wireless network, which is the largest and most reliable in the country.

To use Verizon Wi-Fi, customers must also have VZAccess Manager version 7.2 or higher installed on their PCs.

Will 2010 be a Turning Point for the Telecommunications Industry?

Will 2010 be a turning point in the telecommunications industry? Maybe, says Mike Cansfield, Forrester Research analyst.

Cansfield argues that the recession has brought a new realism to the sector, forcing telcos to cut costs and adopt better operating practices. Might might argue this trend has been underway for several years, though.

Uncertain economic growth also will weigh on the industry.

But new converged services might explode, as the boundaries between Internet, telecom, voice, data video and applications continues to blur.

Cansfield argues that a major telco will disappear in a merger or go bankrupt in 2010. The merger of T-Mobile and Orange in the United Kingdom, the unsuccessful merger of Bharti Airtel and MTN Group in Africa, and the purchase of HanseNet in Germany by Telefonica are examples.

"Green" initiatives will be back on the telco agenda in a big way, Cansfield believes.

Mobile device wars will renew with extra intensity and the battle for the mobile apps market will begin in earnest. Just as iTunes in conjunction with the iPod changed the music industry and the MP3 device market, so the Apple App Store in conjunction with the iPhone transformed the mobile data and applications market for both consumers and, now, businesses.

The boundaries between "work" technology and "home" technology will continue to blur. Traditionally customers have bought different communications services depending on whether they were at work or at home.

But these distinctions are blurring, Cansfield says. Many of us today work part of our week at home and connect with the office through our own terminals and fall into the trap of dealing with business emails at home in our supposed down time. But this is not a one-way-street — hence the high number of personal SMS and Twitter messages sent from the workplace.

Net neutrality will be a major issue in 2010, because the evolution of stable and sustainable revenue models for the entire ecosystem is at stake, though most for network service providers.

Also, 2010 will be the year that many governments will recognize that broadband connectivity is essential for economic competitiveness, the delivery of public services, and an inclusive society, and they will step up to the plate to close the digital divide, Cansfield argues.

All of us likely have opinions about the importance of 2010. I suspect some of us really believe 2010 will not be especially noteworthy in terms of marking a turning point in the telecommunications business, but only because the underlying changes are irresistible forces not dependent on economic conditions, government regulations or industry consolidation.

The business is changing in profound ways because end user needs and interests, provider business models and powerful technology trends are profoundly aligned. Nothing is going to stop those changes.

Surprise, Surprise: Mobile Ops Now See Google as a Partner

Mobile service providers seem to have reached new conclusions about their role in the future mobile ecosystem, Nokia Siemens Networks says.

The single greatest change of business environment is that “the boundary between mobile telecoms and the Internet has all but disappeared,” says Frederic Astier, Nokia Siemens Networks head of customer operations marketing.

So what does that imply about the relationship between network service providers, application providers and end users?

“This study tells us that telecoms operators increasingly see their value, and competitive differentiation, in increasing customer satisfaction through improving network quality, while acting as a content broker for social networks, mobile app stores, TV and voice over IP services," Astier says.

Where the old business model was tight integration of network capability and applications, the new world features an more-open environment where network services and features are sold to third parties who create and deliver services, applications and features to end users.

While voice calls remain at the core of their business, about 78 percent said they plan to open their network as an intelligent bit pipe for new solutions, by while 69 percent said they intend to bundle voice with other content.

Moving away from the walled garden approach of the traditional telecom model, they are embracing two-sided business models by acting as conduits between third-party applications and content developers and the end users.

In that regard, there seems to have been a bit of a shift in attitudes towards application providers such as Google, which now is seen less as a disruptive threat and more as a partner.

The study involved one-to-one interviews with the business leaders of 70 communications service providers from 42 countries, says Nokia Siemens Networks. Its aim was to provide a comprehensive overview of these telecoms operators’ business needs through 2012.

ADTRAN Unveils "NetVanta Unified Communications Solution Suite"

The issue with many unified communications solutions is that they explicitly or implicitly require people to change the ways they do things. ADTRAN thinks that doesn't work. The other problem is that people sometimes have trouble envisioning how IP communications can help them, in concrete ways.

For that reason, the new "NetVanta Unified Communications Solution Suite" provides voice mail, unified messaging, fax server, and auto attendant features that are compatible with legacy and IP-based business phone systems, with a big focus on the ability to create business process apps.

NetVanta UC solutions are designed to accommodate from five to greater than 2,000 users per server,  and are designed to allow rapid creation of vertical market applications for the  banking, hospitality, education, health care, retail and real estate industries, for example.

The "NetVanta UC Solutions Suite" includes the "NetVanta UC Server," a software-based UC application designed for customers with an existing PBX.  Microsoft Windows platforms and scales up to 2,000 or more users per server. It is capable of supporting unified communications on one or more different types of PBXs from a variety of leading manufacturers.

It provides unified messaging, fax server, auto-attendants, personal assistants, graphical drag-and drop service creation, IVR for inbound and outbound calling services, integration with ODBC databases, text to speech, one number services and call redirection services and notifications.

The "NetVanta Business Communications System" combines the NetVanta 7000 Series IP-PBXs with the NetVanta UC Server, enhanced with click-to-dial capabilities and an integrated conference server.

The "NetVanta Enterprise Communications Server" is a complete IP-based voice system for larger enterprises. Designed for use with Microsoft Windows and "Active Directory," it offers a full soft IP-PBX that is complemented with all the UC features of NetVanta UC Server, plus click-to-dial, an integrated conference server, a paging server for overhead paging.

The "NetVanta Business Application Server," scalable to more than 200 concurrent calls, allows businesses to create cost-effective new apps using a graphical drag-and-drop service
creation environment.

It allows channel partners, service providers and IT and telecom professionals to quickly and easily create tailored communications services. The app server integrates with existing application databases.

It is useful as a standalone solution or can integrate with Microsoft OCS or IBM Lotus Sametime, for example. It also works with IMAP email servers and Google Gmail.

The new NetVanta products are all software applications using the Microsoft platform. The key decision for a buyer is whether it wants to "buy a new PBX" or "keep" what it already has.

If a firm has 10 to 100 users, it will tend to buy a new PBX. If it has 75 to 2,000 users per location, it also will tend to want the enterprise communications server.

The complete line includes a standards-based PBX, switch, router, firewall, voicemail, voice gateways, auto attendant, integrated messaging. The base package now supports as many as100 users. Larger organizations will use the enteprise communications server, using ADTRAN or Polycom handsets.

One advantage of the system is that it works with analog or IP business phone systems. More significantly, though, it allows rapid creation of vertical market apps.

In the real estate business, the "Talking House" application can be used to create automated logs of who is calling in to inquire about a property, or allow prospects to get information on any property an agent is showing, with the materials created directly by the agent.

Agents can have people contact them right away, listen to an IVR message or create marketing materials that can be faxed or emailed to people who want more information.

The same thing can be used by auto dealers to automate the process of car warranty notifications and doctor's offices can automate the reminder process.

"In a business office environment, customers can use unified messaging to provide more value, using our PBX or anybody else's," says Jeff Wissing, ADTRAN senior product manager.

"You can deliver a fax to a smartphhone, forward messages, read emails over the phone or harvest telephone numbers from existing directories and then place calls," says Wissing.

"If you listen to customers, you can create apps for them," Wissig says. In some cases it might take only minutes, it other cases a few hours to create an app. Once a reseller learns the environment, the reseller can use the tools to create all sorts of templates for their end users.

The whole idea is to "make it very personal and customized," he says.

"Customized services are a big draw and makes end users very sticky," Wissig notes. "It very often is faster to spend an hour to build a prototype service, and then have the customer use it, than to explain what a user might do."

"We had a B2B call center and built a prototype in 15 minutes to show how the solution would work," Wissig says. The customer got a payback on the system within 30 days, he says.

"In every organization there are ROI opportunities with UC that are lurking, just waiting to be discovered," says Wissing. "You just have to know how to find them."

A manufacturer of personalized items such as rubber stamps, signs and business cards might create an IVR application that provides 7/24 order status to customers with small orders, allowing their call attendants to concentrate on providing personal service to larger customers.

A wallpaper manufacturer might use an IVR application to provide product availability and pricing to their resellers based on their membership level in their reseller program, providing reliable 7/24 service without the need for call takers.

A large multi-national company might use an application that reliably redirects after-hours calls for support to the cell phones or even home numbers of on-duty support staff, eliminating the need for physical staffing of an after-hours call center.

A video store might allow callers to place orders 7/24 without the need for an after-hours service team.

Is the Unified Communications Business Growing or Shrinking?

One of the "problems" observers have when evaluating the size of the unified communications market is that UC includes so many different legacy products and services, ranging from business phone services to software applications and hosted services.

The other issue is that UC applications overlap with and complement other applications such as mobility and social networking, which can make an accurate estimate of product sales difficult. Analysts at Forrester Research, for example, suggest that sales of legacy products of all sorts are not growing much at all, while sales of business phone systems might drop precipitously in coming years. This forecast represents annual sales volume in billions of dollars, for example.

Whether UC is important or not is not the issue. Lots of other useful, even essential services and applications, such as email and voice, represent indirect revenue streams, or even declining revenue, despite their inherent usefulness.

Something of that sort seems to be underway in many segments of the UC business. This forecast does not cover other product segments that likely will represent parts of the future UC revenue stream, such as telepresence, a direct UC application, or even access services such as SIP trunking that will be used to support unified communications.