Does Skype Matter?

It will sound presumptuous to ask whether Skype matters. It has 663 million registered users, now has the resources of Microsoft, is profitable and contributed more net new minutes of international voice than the rest of the industry put together in 2010, according to Telegeography.

Most people you know use Skype at times, at the very least, and audio quality is quite good.

The reason one might ask the question of whether Skype really matters is that, strategically, aside from cleverly managing a decline as gracefully as possible, one might question whether voice in itself is a strategic product for most service providers, or is getting to the point where it is tactically important. Important, but mostly important tactically.

By way of comparison, mobility is probably strategic, for example.

That is not to discount the huge role voice revenues continue to play in the service provider business model, its continued relevance as a value driver for users or importance. It is to ask whether anything about voice rises to the strategic level of what to do about creating new revenue, how an access provider can remain relevant i the Internet ecosystem and whether the growing importance of "dumb pipe" access services (not to be confused with "low gross revenue, low margin or low value" adjectives) can be matched by new ways to monetize other carrier assets.

With the coming shift to cloud computing, the growing role of devices and application providers in the rest of the Internet ecosystem, the question about Skype is whether it really makes sense for most people, even within the service provider industry, to worry about voice, or Skype, very much. Of course, businesses that sell voice products and applications are an exception. They will care quite a lot.

But it isn't so clear most people, even within the communications and network-based entertainment businesses, need to care so much. True, there was a time when Skype frightened most telco executives. That time has passed. There was a time when Google was seen as the biggest competitive threat. That, too, has passed.

So, in a strategic sense, one might ask whether Skype really matters. That isn't the same thing as asking whether it is clever, widely used or capable of gaining more share of international voice minutes. How much time and effort does a strategist want to spend thinking about voice, when there seemingly are a zillion other challenges to be met?

It will sound odd to some, but for many in the Internet ecosystem, the access and transport networks essentially are assumed to exist. All the other important business and software issues are handled elsewhere. That's something of the sense in which the question about Skype might be asked. Do users and providers not simply assume that Skype and communications capability exists?

It might not yet be the equivalent of "electricity," but it is getting closer. If one assumes the availability of electricity then many other products and businesses can be built. That doesn't mean electricity ceases to be a business for some entities. But it might mean most people will not obsess about it.

AppGlide Allows Service Providers Visibility into Content Choices and QoE

The Alcatel-Lucent "AppGlide" Video Analytics service equips broadband providers with video analytics that measure end-user quality of experience and uncover content delivery issues.

Service providers can use AppGlide to identify degradation in the QoE of any on-line video service delivered over their networks.

AppGlide allows service providers to accurately determine where QoE-affecting problems reside: with the content provider, an off-net (external) content delivery network (CDN) or within their own network. That might have uses for determining when quality of service violations have occurred.

AppGlide also can monitor the QoE of content delivered from an on-net (internal) CDN and gather important content-based metrics.

The application also can leverage information about content usage and trends to forge stronger relationships with content owners and advertisers.

Perhaps more importantly, the app can be used to determine, in aggregate, what consumers are watching, when and how long. The app can tell service which particular videos and programs are most viewed as well.

The app also can help service providers determine when QoE is causing users to abandon watching, for example.

That, in turn, might help service providers match QoE measures with retail pricing of QoE mechanisms. Basically, the tool helps service providers tie network activity to subscriber behavior.

Read more here.

Sprint Might Get LightSquared Spectrum in Case of LightSquared Default

LightSquared has won approval from its lenders to give Sprint Nextel Corp. a second lien on its spectrum, part of a deal under which the wireless start-up will rent space on Sprint's network, the Wall Street Journal reports. See LightSquared Gets OK on Sprint Spectrum Lien

The concession gives Sprint additional security if a deal with LightSquared is finalized, but might also provide a path for Sprint to acquire the LightSquared spectrum in the event LightSquared fails. The issue, some might say, is whether Sprint would want to do so.

It isn't yet clear whether the Federal Communications Commission will allow LightSquared to use the upper part of its L-band spectrum, to avoid GPS interference problems which seem to be caused by signals in the upper part of the band. In that case, Sprint might be paying for about 20 MHz of LTE-capable spectrum.

If you have followed various mobile satellite ventures over the last two decades, you will remember that there has been more failure than success in the field, which is one reason why the satellite spectrum is available in the first place. If it turns out that LightSquared can use only about 20 MHz of its 40 MHz worth of spectrum, you would think there will additional repercussions.

At a rough level, wouldn't you say the venture is "worth" only about half of whatever valuation you thought it had before it lost half its spectrum?

And as far as Sprint's plans for additional spectrum, there is some growing speculation that Clearwire is getting ready to sell itself in any case. Sprint owns about 54 percent of Clearwire already, and if it were sold, Sprint would have all the spectrum it needs to build a new Long Term Evolution network, which clearly is coming. http://blogs.forbes.com/joanlappin/2011/06/09/clearwire-clearing-the-decks-for-sale/.

Wouldn't it be odd if LightSquared, which wanted to build a network, ultimately finds itself a tenant on Sprint's LTE network instead, with Clearwire history? What that would do to LightSquared's wholesale business plan is unclear. LightSquared might find itself using its satellite links mostly for backhaul, and using Sprint's LTE network (formerly Clearwire) for the actual terrestrial connections.

Even then, some analysts would have trouble coming up with a plausible, self-sustaining business model for LightSquared. The wholesale-only model hasn't worked all that well in the U.S. market, in any segment of the business, on a long-term basis.

Netflix And Hulu On Cable Set Tops?

Cable operators already deliver Netflix and Hulu over broadband. Could both services, now perceived as competitors, wind up as part of the cable package? Time Warner Cable Chief Programming Officer Melinda Witmer thinks it is a possibility.

“Consumers are getting it on every device that’s coming on an IP basis today but not the set top. They look like a programmer to me and it makes me sense that we’d be doing business with them in the home on our equipment too.”

“We’ve reached out and I think probably virtually every operator has had some discussions," she said. "It’s unclear what their rights are to be able to come to a set-top box."

"But we’re interested in offering our customers what they want and if 23 million people or 25 million subscribe to Netflix, there might be something we can do with them that makes sense," said Witmer.

@ Cable Show: Netflix And Hulu On Cable Set Tops?

Google to Expand Wallet to Europe in 2012; Sees One Wallet Per Phone

Google plans to launch its Google Wallet in at least one major European city during the first half of 2012, said Osama Bedier, Google’s vice president of payments, who politely, if disingenuously, discounted talk of a coming wallet war in either the United States or Europe.

Bedier suggested that any given near field communications capable phone would have only one mobile wallet, and if that wallet is Google's, the company would need to either control the secure chip that holds the wallet applications or be able to manage those applications.

That means a Google Wallet is unlikely to share space on the same phone with, say, a wallet from the Isis mobile operator joint venture or one from card network Visa Inc. No wallet war? Really?

Google to Expand Wallet to Europe in 2012; Sees One Wallet Per Phone

3 Ways to Prepare Your Business for Social Search

It is quite easy to become overwhelmed with all the things "you should be doing" as part of your content marketing initiatives. There's your blog or blogs, your videos, your social media, your white papers, studies, search engine optimization, commenting on other blogs and industry forums. In most cases, no organization has the time or resources to do all of this, as well as experts say it should be done.

But there is one practical bit of advice that concerns only your blogging and your social media efforts, and it relates to Google, and the way Google is starting to alter its ranking algorithms to incorporate "social content."

"You may have already noticed that socially shared content is rising to the top of your Google search results," says Jeff Korhan. What that means, in part, is that Google is giving more weight to original content that social network users think is interesting enough to "retweet," "like" or otherwise share.

So, if you want to earn higher rankings with Google, you not only need to be creating high-quality content, but also actively encouraging its sharing on the social networks. To be sure, you can only "encourage," you cannot compel. So you need to write about things interesting enough, or provocative enough, or important enough, that other social network users will share it.

You will hear lots of people offer you lots of advice about how to create that sort of content. Personally, I don't think there is any "silver bullet." People share things that make them laugh, or think, that make them mad or happy, that are "news" items of interest or things that seem really "dumb." People share items of beauty or inspiration, and in almost all cases items that have some shared meaning.

Lots of people will share videos of cats doing funny, cat-like things. None of that is especially easy for brands selling consumer or business products to incorporate.

There is no one rule about how to create such copy. But the important bit of advice is that Google now believes items people share deserve a higher ranking than items people do not share. That means a bigger emphasis than ever not just on original content, but original content that is worth sharing.

3 Ways to Prepare Your Business for Social Search | Social Media Examiner

Mobile TV Advertising $1.4 Billion in 2015

Tablets are poised to help U.S. newspapers increase paid digital circulation to 4.6 million in 2015, for example, with most of the growth coming at general interest newspapers, from 1.5 million last year, primarily at the Wall Street Journal, according to annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Mobile-TV ad spending in the U.S. will grow to $1.4 billion in 2015 from $370 million last year. Traditional TV ad revenue in the United States, meanwhile, will grow to $89.8 billion in 2015 from $70.7 billion last year, according to the report. And online TV, excluding mobile, will see U.S. advertising grow to $4.1 billion in 2015 from $1.6 billion last year.

The number of people viewing mobile TV in the U.S. will grow to 52.5 million in 2015 from 17.6 million in 2010.

AdAge