Google Voice to Launch Within Days

Nearly two years after acquiring GrandCentral, Google is preparing to relaunch the service with lots of new features. GrandCentral has been in private beta for the last two years and over the next few days Google will be prompting existing beta users to upgrade to Google Voice before rolling out the service to new users in a few weeks.

GrandCentral was a Web-activated IP voice service that uses a single "public" number that points to other numbers and devices, providing a range of visual voice mail and Web message retrieval and call management features.

Google Voice will add the ability to make free calls to U.S. telephone numbers and cheap calls to other numbers, make conference calls, and send, receive, store, and search SMS messages and create transcripts of voice mails.

From my perspective, one of the best new features is the ability to deliver the Google Voice number, even when placing a call from some other real device. The reason for that is that Google Voice features are applied to inbound calls using the virtual number.

If anybody calls using the actual device's "delivered" number (caller ID), the features aren't available. So it now will be easier to deliver the Google Voice caller ID on outbound calls, which virtually assures that return calls will arrive in a way that allows call management features to work.

Also, voice mail now will more nearly resemble email, and users can create transcripts of calls, a useful feature for many call settings.

Hopefully, Google will make address book importation easier as well. That, and the inability to simply deliver the GrandCentral virtual phone number, have been my two biggest problems using the service.

Comcast Passes Qwest as Phone Provider

Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable television company, says it now has become the third-largest provider of primary home phone service in the United States, overtaking telephone company Qwest Communications International.

Comcast, which started offering phone services in the spring of 2005, said it now has 6.47 million subscribers.

RCN Metro Has "Nice Problems"

Here's a problem any service provider sales staff would like to have: trying to figure out why sales are running ahead of projections for four months in a row. But that's precisely the issue Phil Alvarez, RCN Metro Optical Networks president, says he has been "grappling" with over the last four months.

"Gven our sales across all markets, we were trying to figure out why we are doing so well," says Alvarez. "You

question yourself." When RCN Metro dug into the numbers, it found very strong activity in wireless, a result of wireless providers really shoring up their backbones to support wireless broadband services. Need for more route diversity and the ability to provision very quickly also were factors.

You might think any provider with exposure to the financial services industry might face some exposure. Sure, there's some churn, says Alvarez. But "our services address trading requirements, data center connectivity and connections to customers and trading partners," Alvarez says.

So they still are buying. The financial services industry is used to periodic downturns, Alvarez says. They know business will pick up again so they have to keep moving. Their core business plans require capacity investments.

That said, RCN has seen some minimal recession impact. Some customers say they might substitute new providers for some services, on some routes, in some areas, in part because, on some selected routes, and for some services, a great deal of very-aggressive pricing is going on, in areas such as transit services. What is more obvious is pricing pressure on high-traffic routes, though. In other areas, on a highly route dependent basis, prices are relatively firm, or firming.

Generally, on routes where there is pricing pressure, it is Ethernet capacity pricing that is most exposed, not SONET capacity, which Maura Mahoney, RCN VP, says is quite strong.

That isn't to say the recession is haivng no impact at all. It is reasonable to assume that, industrywide, customers are asking for, and might be getting, more capacity for any given level of payment, especially when contracts are renegotiated early, locked in for more years or when upgrades from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, or 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps services occur.

That does not seem to be the case for10-Gbps and wavelength purchases, though, says Alvarez.

To be sure, lower prices wouldn't be much unusual in the capacity business, which is used to virtually annual decreases in price-per-megabit-per-second pricing.

In some cases, customers are asking for shorter contract intervals. Where customers might have been buying contracts of five to seven years' length, they are in some cases making three-year commitments. Historically, longer commitments have been associated with a belief that prices would be climbing, shorter commitements with a belief that prices will be falling. That might not be the primary driver at the moment, but could be playing a factor.

Crowded routes are being hammered by low price competitors, though, and Alvarez believes that is not sustainable.

Still, Alvarez says he has been "surprised" at the levels of demand.

A nice problem to have, these days.

AT&T to Add 3,?000 Jobs, Reduce CapEx $2-$3 Billion

AT&T plans to invest $17 billion to $18 billion in 2009, in line with its 2007 capital expenditures of $17.7 billion, though not as much as the almost $20 billion it spent in 2008.

About two thirds of AT&T's 2009 investment will go to its wireless and wired broadband networks The company also says it will add almost 3,000 jobs in 2009, primarily to support mobility, broadband and video services.

AT&T also expects to reduce jobs in other areas, primarily wireline. Some of the investment is in more than 2,100 new cell sites across the country, as well as an expansion of 3G service to 20 new markets in 2009. .

AT&T also says it will invest in its IP/MPLS backbone networks, U-verse, more DSL coverage.

NTIA Broadband Stimulus Meeting: Little Meat on Bones

The National Telecommunications and Information Agency held a public meeting on how the broadband stimulus programs will work, and attendees emerged with little more concrete detail than they entered with, with a couple of suggestive bits of guidance.

Bernadette McGuire-Rivera, NTIA associate administrator, suggested the agency will try to allot its $4.7 billion for broadband programs in three rounds of grants, with the first round coming between April and June. The NTIA is required to allocate all the money by September 2010.

The Rural Utilities Service, with about $2.5 billion to allocate, also likely have three rounds of grants and possibly loans, with a funding notice coming out within 60 to 90 days, said David Villano, USDA assistant administrator for telecommunications programs.

Moody's Issues "Most Likely to Default" List

Here's a list no company wants to be on: a new Moody's list of 283 companies which it believes are the most likely to default on their debt within 12 months. Moody's estimates about 45 percent of "Bottom Rung" companies will default on debt in the next year.Among the firms of interest to communications industry watchers:

Blockbuster,  CavTel, Charter Communications, Clearwire, Cleveland Unlimited, Global Crossing, Grande Communications, Intelsat, Integra Telecom, Level 3 Communications, Palm, Primus Telecommunications and Securus Technologies.

The Bottom Rung list, which Moody's will update monthly, represents roughly the riskiest 15 percent of all companies the agency tracks.  Seeking Alpha calls it the "leper list." Others call it the "death list." Others might call it a potential list of "dead pool" companies.  

Whatever one calls it, it is not a list one wants to be on. Some of them have been in dangerous straits for years, though, without crashing. One hopes Moody's is wrong. 

Broadband, Video, Mobile: What Will 1Q 2009 Show?

U.S. consumer spending on subscription TV, broadband, and mobile services will be "about the same" for most consumers, but about 15 percent say they intend to cut back in 2009, says In-Stat. The first test will come as first quarter 2009 results are released.

Should consumers do what In-Stat analysts think they might, these three service segments could see nearly a $5 billion decrease during the next 12 months.

The In-Stat might yet prove to be correct. But the latest round of earnings reports do not yet show evidence of the trend. comcast revenue was up 9.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, the latest quarter for which returns are available. Time Warner Cable revenue was up 6.7 percent.

In February 2009 average spending at Verizon and Sprint increased by three percent and one percent respectively. T-Mobile and AT&T saw declines of slightly more than one percent each.

Still, since October, both Verizon and AT&T have seen relatively stable revenues, according to the Geezeo. Main Street Spending Index. Customer spending increased four percent at Verizon while AT&T customers are spending one percent more in the October 2008 to February 2009 period.

Sprint and T-Mobile, have seen a dip since October 2008. T-Mobile’s customer spending dropped by 9.36 percent and Sprint’s customer spending dipped 13.36 percent.

"It important to note, however, that all four of these firms have seen positive spending figures from this time last year, in both overall and year on year statistics," Geezeo says.

In its fourth quarter of 2008, Verizon grew year-over-year revenue over 12 percent in wireless, nearly 37 percent in broadband and video and over eight percent for the key strategic services offered by Verizon Business. In addition, ARPU grew 1.4 percent in wireless and over 14 percent in consumer. In the fourth quarter, Verizon grew revenue 4.6 percent.

At AT&T, fourth quarter revenue grew 2.2 percent sequentially and 3.4 percent year over year.

So it is likely that cutbacks, should they materialize, will have the effect of shifting revenue from some providers to others. It also is possible that aggregate industry revenue in each of the segments--wireless, broadband and multi-channel TV--actually will increase, though just about everybody believes that underlying secular declines in wired voice will continue, and might intensify.

In-Stat suggests that the biggest decrease in spending on mobile, broadband and subscription TV services, though, will come from households with income below $35,000, a finding most would find logical. The offset is that revenue and average revenue per user still seem to be growing, at least based on fourth-quarter results. Of course, the first quarter 2009 results will be instructive.