Email Isn't Dead Yet

There are three times as many email accounts as Twitter and Facebook accounts combined, according to Wrike.  And email represents 38.5 percent of mobile time spent on the Internet.

What is SDN Good For?

At least in some quarters, we are in a growing hype cycle related to software defined networks. As I simplistically understand it, SDN is about separating the "control plane" from the "data plane." 

In a probably over-simplistic way, that means putting intelligence in a headend or central office location, while using much-simpler, cheaper devices "out in the network" that only have to deal with "data," while the centralized controller does the computation that formerly was "out in the network."

The broad analogy will be familiar to those who once worked with "client-server" computing architectures. It isn't a case of "mainframe-dumb terminal" models, because the SDN clients are not "dumb" devices. But the big computation loads are handled centrally (control plane) while the many distributed data plane devices can work fast because they don't have to deal with local computing chores, and just handle the data.

As we typically do, there will be years of wrangling over "what SDN" really is, and how it is implemented. There will be many attempts to graft SDN onto the existing base of platforms that actually have intelligent devices scattered all over the network.

What probably will be lost is the "so what" part of the discussion, for service providers or their customers. 

Most lost in the discussion will be the end user benefit. But some might argue that's what we really should be talking about. 

It is perhaps not required that SDN be used to provide a user-defined set of policies relating to use of bandwidth. That could logically be provided other ways, including the use of intelligent devices scattered throughout the network.

But it might arguably be much easier, much faster, more dynamic and more affordable to supply end-user define policies on an SDN network than it is today. 

For service providers the advantages might be even simpler. SDN might enable "bandwidth on demand" in a reliable, robust, affordable way. 

But all that will likely be lost in the wave of hype we are about to start hearing. 

2 LTE Air Interfaces for China?

China Telecom's chief executive officer says China Telecom prefers the frequency division flavor of Long Term Evolution rather than the time division flavor chosen by its rival China Mobile. 

If China Telecom does opt for frequency division (FDD-LTE) rather than China Mobile's TD-LTE, it would mean the Chinese market would feature two distinct air interfaces for Long Term Evolution networks. 

Some might say that is not such a good outcome, as handsets might be incompatible. But the choice of FDD-LTE also would mean that China Telecom has immediate access to devices already developed for North American markets, where FDD-LTE is the air interface.

China Mobile already has committed to build its 4G network based on the TD-LTE standard. 

U.K.'s EE Launches Fixed LTE Service

U.K.-based EE is launching  a "4G fixed and mobile broadband service" in Cumbria, said to be one of the most rural areas of the United Kingdom.

The launch will offer many Northern Fells residents access to average upload and download speeds between 8 Mbps and 12 Mbps, with "headline speeds" over 20 Mbps.

The region, covering almost 100 square miles, also is said to contain the highest concentration of homeworkers in the UK.

The move obviously has implications. The Cumbria area is so rural that fixed networks are quite expensive, a situation not restricted only to Cumbria. The new 4G network will offer faster service than fixed networks can, in that area. 

In a sense, 4G LTE therefore competes directly with satellite broadband and terrestrial fixed wireless methods of providing Internet access. AT&T and Verizon, it is fair to say, will be testing those notions in the U.S. market, at some point.

In Europe, in some countries, mobile substitution already runs in the mid single digits to high double digits range, providing some indication of how much adoption fixed versions of LTE could attain.

To really do so requires a change in "universal service" regulations, though, allowing the providers to use any available and feasible technology to serve customers. 

Chrome, Android OS Will Not Merge, Google Chairman Says

Chrome and Android operating systems will remain separate products, although there could be more "commonality" between them, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said. 

Speculation about such convergence has been an obvious subject of speculation as tablets and phablets blur the lines between "phones" and "personal computers," raising the possibility that a common operating system could evolve out of the separate Android and Chrome environments.

It still is possible something like that might happen in the future, but the current thinking probably is that merging the two operating systems would result in a creation with too much overhead and "weight," making the resulting OS sub-optimal compared to distinct approaches optimized for the PC and smart phone-tablet environments.

YouTube Now Gets 1 Billion Users a Month

YouTube now has more than a billion unique users users:  every single month, representing about half of all Internet users globally. What isn't yet so clear, as with Android, is how widespread usage will lead to business benefits for Google, especially revenue. 

Current thinking probably revolves around advertising, a logical enough line of thought. But most media-related businesses have multiple sources of revenue (subscriptions, advertising, promotion and marketing services, research, conferences), so it is possible other sources ultimately could be important as well. 


And mobile and tablets figure into the discussion in a big way. For the first time, an entire generation has grown up watching content using the Internet, mobile, and social apps, consuming content when and where they want. 

Nielsen calls this group "Generation C" because they are not just defined by their age group, but by their connected behavior. In part, that means they watch on multiple devices, though in linear fashion. 

But the deeper  changes pertain to "sharing" behaviors. Generation C creates videos, and does not simply watch them. They share what they like and curate content for others. All of that means YouTube could have monetization opportunities of several types, eventually. 

At least some of those opportunities will flow from the use of mobiles with highly contextual location capabilities. 

Amazon Gets CIA Cloud Computing Deal

The Central Intelligence Agency reportedly has agreed to a cloud computing cloud computing contract with Amazon Web Services that could be worth up to $600 million over a decade. 

The deal adds some luster to AWS, the market leader in cloud computing, as a vote of confidence in Amazon's ability to provide a highly reliable and highly secure private cloud computing environment. 

But the deal might also suggest that the CIA sees cloud computing as a more cost effective way to take advantage of the latest developments in commercial technology and rapid innovation, compared to older ways of creating information technology assets, especially developing key systems "in house."

Instead, the CIA seems to be sending a clear message that commodity hardware platforms, married to software as a service, are not only more effective (works better), but also more efficient (costs less).

One would suspect the deal increases the likelihood of additional wins in the federal government segment of the communications and IT business. Perhaps oddly, most of the estimate revenue in the cloud computing business might not come from core "computing" services, but from the purchase of cloud-based applications (software as a service).