Google Voice Podcast

Jim Burton, Dave Michels,Samantha Kane, Jon Arnold, Michael Finneran, Art Rosenberg, Don Van Doren, and Steve Leaden talk about the implications Google Voice poses for the broader unified communications space. 
 listen here

Mobile Broadband Now 24% of All U.S. Consumer Connections

About 24 percent of all U.S. broadband consumer connections already are mobile, and in just six months in 2009, mobile broadband accounts in service grew 40 percent, the Federal Communications Commission reports.

Of 113 million broadband connections in service in the United States in mid-2009, about 35 million were mobile broadband connections, the Federal Communications Commission reports.

Compared to the beginning of 2009, when there were 25 million mobile broadband subscriptions in service, mobile broadband grew 40 percent in just six months.

There were 94 million residential connections in service at mid-year 2009, of which 71 million
were fixed-technology connections and 23 million were mobile wireless.

Mobile broadband connections are growing much faster than fixed connections are, but the ironic result is that average consumer broadband speeds might appear to be slower than they actually are, since in 2009 most mobile connections operated slower than most fixed-line connections.

That will change once fourth-generation networks become more widespread, and more consumers actually subscribe to 4G services. Right now, virtually all mobile broadband services operate at 3 Mbps or less. That should not be the case once 4G networks start to be used.

full report here

Analytics is Key for All Targeted Advertising

Mobile analytics are crucial for the future of mobile advertising for drop-dead-simple reasons. The whole point of targeted and location-based marketing is that companies pay to create impressions and leads at the times when such pitches are likely to have an impact, and rarely, if ever, at other times.

That old adage about "half my advertising investment being wasted; I just don't know which half" is being challenged by targeted approaches, when it is possible to eliminate the "wasted half."

The long-term repercussions on the advertising ecosystem are hard to predict, though. One might argue that new targeting techniques will drive incrementally more spending, or incrementally less.

Is Unified Communications a Ponzi Scheme?

Gartner VP Nick Jones says he is "an unashamed unified communications skeptic for a mixture of technological and business reasons." That might exaggerate the attitude most potential buyers might have, but there is little doubt the value proposition sometimes is a bit unclear.

"UC looks to me like an ill-assorted mix of technologies that vendors want to sell in a single bundle because it’s convenient for them, rather than because they’re what your employees actually need," says Jones. To be sure, the return on investment for full-blown UC solutions has often been difficult to illustrate.

In recent days some attention has shifted to video conferencing, audio conferencing and related solutions that essentially can be proven in by reduced spending on physical travel, coordinating remote work teams or enabling sales and marketing activities on a more affordable basis than has been possible in the past.

In fact, some might argue that one issue is the relative easier task of identifying point solutions that unify some business processes, without requiring a shift to a completely new architecture. Under those conditions, it is easier to point to incremental advantages from unifying some specific processes, but not all.

The other issue is the new complexity social media and social networking represent. It is not always immediately obvious how to integrate those tools with existing email, messaging, voice and mobility solutions in a specific enterprise context.

"UC is a dinosaur in a world of fast-moving little furry mammals; the leading edge of communication and collaboration is happening in the consumer space driven by companies like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Fring, Nimbuzz and dozens more," he argues.

These are better, cheaper and more fashionable than UC and there is no way the so called “enterprise” vendors can keep up with their rate of evolution, Jones argues.

Mobility can be equally challenging, sometimes as mobility relates to enterprise integration, sometimes related to the more-dispersed nature of work, where integration "backwards" to the enterprise phone system might represent less value in a highly-distributed, mobile-reliant enterprise. In many cases, hosted services might be viewed as a more flexible, less costly and more effective alternative.

Also, UC is technically unachievable because many communications channels such as SMS and MMS aren’t accessible to enterprise servers, the only place where everything actually comes together is on your mobile handset, Jones argues.

In part, his observations intentionally are intended to provoke a sharper debate about unified communications, to present one side of a debate on UC merits. But lots of observers might agree the questions remain germane in many cases.

Is Unified Communications the biggest scam since Ponzi?

Execs Talk About Who They’d Buy And Why

On July 29th senior corporate development executives from Cisco (Derek Idemoto), Facebook (Michael Brown), Google (Amin Zoufonoun), Microsoft (Fritz Lanman), Twitter (Jessica Verilli) and Yahoo (Taylor Barada) convened at Startup2Startup to talk about what kinds of companies they want to buy, and why.

The panel was moderated by CODE Advisors founder Michael Marquez, who was also a former corp dev executive at both Yahoo and CBS.

Merger Mania: Corp Dev Execs Talk For An Hour About Who They’d Buy And Why:

College Tuition: The Next Bubble to Burst?

This is a major problem. Those of you paying college tuition already know this.

Those of you who only casually think about what is best for the nation might come to the conclusion that there's a "bubble" here that has to burst.

Alternatives can, and must be found.

Web TV Heats Up

The Wall Street Journal’s Sam Schechner and Spencer Ante weigh in on what Apple and Amazon’s pricing moves mean for the ongoing battle for online media.

MarketWatch’s Dan Gallagher discusses videogame publisher Take-Two, which saw shares jump today after reporting surprise earnings from a new title.