Verizon To Add "Own" Operating System, Devices

A few mobile services providers are taking clear steps to insert themselves a bit more forcefully into the handset operating system and device business, as Verizon Wireless, Orange and Korea's SKT introducing LiMO-based handsets in 2010. .


For Verizon, LiMo is expected to help create sales volume for high-end mobile Web devices with a Verizon brand. As with the moves by carriers to create a carrier-centric applications community, the move represents an effort to gain more clout in the important device and application space where other partners now dominate.


The LiMO smartphone software platform, unlike the vendor controlled Android, Symbian and Windows, is largely driven by carriers. Therefore, it fits neatly with other operator initiatives to swing the balance of power in mobile services their own way, notably the new Wholesale Applications Community (WAC).

Three more carriers to support LiMO this year

Germany Allocates 4G Spectrum

The German spectrum auction has ended, raising about half the expected revenue. Observers think the credit crunch and huge overspending in the 3G auctions helped ratchet down amounts contestants were willing to spend.

A total of €4.38bn ($5.5bn) was spent on the new spectrum blocks, while analysts at KPMG had forecast income of €8bn for the government as a result of the sales.

As you might expect, the three largest mobile operators, O2, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile, each won two paired 5 MHz chunks of spectrum in the 800MHz band, prized because of its propagation characteristics, allowing greater coverage at lower cost, including better signal strength inside buildings.

German spectrum auction ends but prices low - Rethink Wireless:

Sprint Might be Looking at LTE for its 3G Network

Sprint Nextel Corp. has issued a 'next generation network' request for proposal for its CDMA third-generation mobile network in the United States, and Long Term Evolution (LTE) has emerged as a potential technology choice.

The RFP does not appear to affect the Clearwire network presently using WiMAX, but the "legacy" CDMA network that underpins Sprints current 3G network that operates in the 800 MHz and 1900 MHz frequency bands.

Light Reading Mobile - 4G/LTE - Sprint RFP May Include LTE - Telecom News Analysis:

Will the "Bell System" Survive?

"Will the Bell system survive?" asks Allan Ramsay. He argues that a "massive transfer of wealth from Bell to VoIP is underway." We can disagree about how large the wealth transfer is, what VoIP is, or whether voice is on its way to becoming a feature, and not a revenue driver at all. 


It is not a question the Federal Communications Commission appears to think relevant, though. 

Will the Bell System Survive? A Massive Transfer of Wealth from Bell to VoIP is Underway - MumbaiHunGama Info Articles:

What Does "Effective Competition" Actually Look Like?

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission seems to be implying that U.S. wireless markets are "not competitive," though the inference is hard to glean from the FCC's own study on the U.S. wireless market. See the document at (http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-81A1.pdf)

What "effective competition" looks like varies from market to market, from economist to economist. How many competitors a market must have to be deemed "competitive" is in this case a political question, not an economist's question, though.

There are some businesses where there is no "effective competition" because the market has "natural monopoly" characteristics. You can think of electrical power, waste water, highways and roads (generally speaking), water systems and national defense as clear examples.

Telecommunications once was deemed to be a "natural monopoly," but most regulators around the world now agree that is true only in part. In triple-play markets, for example, effective competition, but not "perfect" competition can occur, in an economic sense, with as few as two players, even though the U.S. market has many more than that in major metro markets, and typically at least two providers even in the rural markets.

In the real world, there are very few examples of major facilities-based competition beyond two major players, although in a few markets there are three facilities-based fixed line providers. As researchers at the Phoenix Center have suggested, in the fixed line triple play markets, imperfect though workable competition does in fact exist with one one dominant telco and one dominant cable provider. 


See http://www.phoenix-center.org/FordWirelessTestimonyMay2009%20Final.pdf, or http://www.phoenix-center.org/pcpp/PCPP12.pdf or www.phoenix-center.org/PolicyBulletin/PCPB11Final.doc.

The problem is what the level of effective competition actually is in the communications market. Presumably the FCC believes three to five competitors in a single market is not enough.

U.S. fails to describe wireless industry as competitive - Yahoo! News

What People Do With Their iPads

A new survey by Changewave Research of iPad owners suggests that the device is being used just about as Apple expected it would: as a content consumption device able to support the types of "content creation" most people do, namely send emails.

It isn't clear whether this usage profile is much different from what most consumers would do with their netbooks, notebooks or desktop PCs, but so far the iPad is not being used as a "content creation" or "work" device, as most would have expected would be the case.
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Smartphones a New Mass Medium

Smartphone subscribers are still a small slice of the mobile handset market, about 20 percent, inching towards 25 percent, by some estimates, and as high as 30 percent, by other estimates.

By 2013, predictions are that smartphone penetration in the U.S. market will be more than 50 percent, most seem to believe.

It is worth noting that 10-percent penetration is the point in the consumer electronics business when a popular device really accelerates, in terms of penetration, and smartphones are well past that point.

Also, to the extent that smartphones represent a new medium, and that nearly every huge mass medium has been sustained by advertising, it takes no genius at all to predict that advertising and marketing will be a big business in the future (click on image for larger view). 

To the extent that smartphones increasingly will be venues for rich media (video and audio) as well as text, it isn't unfair to describe smartphones as a new "medium," as the Internet, TV, radio and other media are.

Smartphones are "phones," it is true. But they also are a new media format. And hence, the foundation for a new media business.

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