Another Cable Cut in Persian Gulf

What are the odds four undersea cables are cut in a single week? Whatever those odds, it has happened. First two cables snap off Egypt. Then a separate cable in the Persian Gulf, and now yet another Middle East cable.

In the latest incident, an undersea telecoms cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged, disrupting services, telecommunications provider Qtel has reported.
The cable was damaged between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE island of Das. The cause of the damage is not yet known.

Qtel's loss of capacity seems to be disrupting voice capacity more than Internet services. Qtel says it was operating at 40 percent over the weekend because alternative cables exist. Nevertheless, disruption to Internet and telephone services in the Gulf state is likely to continue for 10 another days or so.

Not since the December 2006 earthquake off Taiwan have so many cables been taken out of service almost at once.

Google: Microsoft "Troubling Questions"

Google is doing what it can to annoy Microsoft. Reportedly it has contacted Yahoo about potential help fending off a Microsoft takeover bid. And it certainly is going to raise antitrust and other competitive issues it hopes will be addressed by regulatory bodies.

"Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions," says David Drummond, SVP and Chief Legal Officer. "Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?"

"Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft, despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses, to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet?" he asks.

"Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services?"

Mobile IS Voice

Enterprises and consumers still spend lots of money on voice services delivered over some sort of wired connection, including "plain old telephone service" as well as newer replacement services such as cable-provided "digital voice" (voice over IP) or hosted business phone services.

But wireless is where the action is moving. And while lots of different approaches to integrating wireless and wireline access are being tested and deployed, it's hard to escape the conclusion that wireless increasingly is the dominant way people "do voice," even when some amount of talking shifts to PC-to-PC format.

There will be lots more integration of features and call delivery between wireless and wired modes, to be sure. But there will be an equally large amount of wireless substitution as well, even in the enterprise customer segments.

France is Leading W. Europe VoIP

The three largest VoIP providers in Western Europe are French: Orange, Neuf Cegetel and Free. According to InfoCom's most recent report on IP-based voice, Orange also is active in the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.

All in all Orange had 3.57 million VoIP customers in these four countries at the end of June 2007 and was the largest provider of IP voice services that are a replacement for analog telephone service, with a 14 percent market share. Neuf Cegetel and Free (Iliad group) follow. BT ranks fourth while and United Internet ranks fifth.

Skype leads for PC-to-PC VoIP share, though MSN or Yahoo! each get significant usage as well. Generally speaking, consumers do not use Skype, Google or MSN VoIP services as their main phone line in place of their traditional telephone line, InfoCom analysts say.

Cable Cuts Highlight Opportunity

Several recent undersea cable cuts that interfered with Internet connections in India and the Middle East might ultimately focus attention on other ways to get call center and business process outsourcing handled. By some reports 20 to 25 percent of outsourced call centers initially were unable to do any work at all while many had only 50 percent of capacity once restoration work began and traffic was rerouted.

At some point, at least some providers and some customers will conclude that if the price is equivalent, it makes more sense to base call centers and other business process outsourcing operations on shore. The issue is how to operate them more efficiently.

Perhaps there is a role here for IP voice interconnections. Though other costs are less malleable, it ought to be possible to create highly-distributed call overflow mechanisms using "voice over private network" IP connections in ways that allow economical call center operations in lots of rural areas that are more protected from cable cuts.

Will Yahoo Get Another Offer?

Will a Yahoo white knight emerge? Financial blogger Henry Blodget thinks it is possible. Now that Microsoft's bid has put Yahoo into play, there's speculation that Yahoo will try to escape Microsoft's clutches by turning to a private equity firm. Observers recently have doubted that any public company would be able to justify buying Yahoo. Apparently the growing size of private equity deals now makes even a private buyout conceivable. Look for more Yahoo layoffs if that happens.

Yahoo still gets lots of traffic, but is not growing revenue as fast as Google, as this data from 2007 illustrates.

Enterprise Software: Negative 1st Quarter

If you buy enterprise software, you most likely will be spending less, or no more, than you did last year. For what it says is the first time in years, a ChangeWave member survey shows negative growth for enterprise software spending for the first quarter of 2008.

Better than 22 percent of members polled now say their company will spend less for software over the next 90 days compared to the previous 90 days.

For the time being, that will put some discretionary buying plans on hold, while some providers might do better by touting lower upfront cost or lower recurring cost or both. That ought to be good for providers of Web-based software as a service providers.