Thursday, September 28, 2006

Mobile Revenues Dropping for the First Time 

Mobile revenues in Austria are dropping in the first half of 2006 from 1931 million Euro in 2005 to 1914 million Euro, although call minutes are still increasing. The reason is the strong competition causing a tariff battle.

Austria has 8 million inhabitants using 8,8 million SIM-cards.

The only area of hope are data services for Internet access, currently about 10% of the market, estimated increase until the end of the year up to 15%.

Nobody is talking about video telephony and IPTV, not to mention other IMS services.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Italian Economics School 

Looking at Telecom Italia and Alitalia, Le Republica said:

"Make debt public after privatizing the profits."

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Telecom Italia may sell TIM 

The Financial Times and also the International Herald Tribune are reporting yesterday and today about plans from Telecom Italia to spin off there fixed and mobile businesses and finally to sell off Telecom Italiy Mobile (TIM).

Of course everybody here at ETSI TISPAN (including TI staff) is wondering why? Is it because they simply need the money or do they have a good idea to get rid of the mobile part before it goes down the drain, concentrating on broadband and IPTV in future via the fixed lines?

In 2001 Marco Provera (CEO) has initiated a consolidation of the fixed and mobile businesses to save money and leverage a combined mobile and fixed service.Lars

Is fixed-mobile convergence not so a good idea after all?

Lars Godell from Forester Reseach says: "I think that is being driven by TI's own short-term financial considerations and has nothing to do with the overall trends in the industry".

AlcatelLucent 

I was reporting some days ago that KPN selected Lucent for IMS. Today Forbes is announcing that the shareholdders of Alcatel and Lucent approved to alcatel's takeover of Lucent Technologies in a deal worth $ 10.8 billion. The new company will be called AlcatelLucent.

The companies have a combined market capitalization of around $ 27 billion and pose a threat to other manufacturers such as Ericsson and Siemens.

We are another step closer to creating the first truly global communications solutions provider with the broadest wireless, wireline and services portfolio in the industry," said Lucent CEO Patricia Russo.

Standard & Poor's Equity Research analyst Ken Leon had near-term reservations about the deal as he believed end-user markets for both Alcatel and Lucent remain highly competitive.

Competitors may have an advantage in the wireless and broadband equipment sectors as Alcatel and Lucent integrate operations, which won't happen until the merger closes.

Despite its disappointing financial results, we think the planned merger will benefit Lucent as it becomes part of a strong company," Leon wrote in a note to investors Thursday.

He maintained a "hold" opinion on Lucent shares.

XConnect aquires IpeerX 

XConnect, already the world’s largest provider of IP Communications Peering and Federation services and the operator of the XConnect Alliance, today announced at the VON in Boston that it has acquired IPeerX, a leading US based VoIP peering company owned by industry-leader Jeff Pulver’s Pulver.com Enterprises.

With the acquisition, XConnect will bolster its global VoIP peering presence and significantly increase the size of its ENUM registry of VoIP numbers. Jeff Pulver, founder and CEO of Pulver.com Enterprises will become a member of the XConnect Advisory Board, and Kingsley Hill, President of IPeerX, will head XConnect’s Strategic Federation development activities.

The acquisition of IPeerX comes on the heels of XConnect’s acquisition in May of e164.info, the Germany-based Carrier ENUM Exchange. This brings the total XConnect membership to approximately 300 service providers in 30 countries, together contributing over eight million active VoIP numbers to XConnect’s ENUM Registry.

XConnect and IPeerX share the common goal of enabling the full potential of end-to-end IP communications services and combined form the largest neutral ENUM registry for VoIP calling in the world.

The customers of a VoIP company enrolled in an XConnect peering federation can enjoy the full promise of IP Communications; free or unlimited calling with hi-fidelity audio and video conferencing, with the customers of other XConnect federation members. Without peering, such advanced services would be limited to those calls within each individual network.

Eli Katz, Chief Executive Officer of XConnect said, “In creating the definitive global ENUM registry, XConnect enables the development of innovative IP services and delivers new revenue opportunities for Service Providers, while significantly reducing the costs of interconnections. This deal is a win-win for the customers of both companies and the VoIP Industry as a whole.”

Jeff Pulver, Founder and Chairman of Pulver.com Enterprises said, “VoIP Peering will drive the adoption of the new generation of IP communications including video, voice and messaging. The success of VoIP Peering depends on having a sufficiently large community of service providers – this deal creates an industry player with the critical mass to succeed.”

“With IP peering federations, the value to each operator and consumer increases with the addition of new participants. Peering federations, and the combination of XConnect and IPeerX in particular, bring efficiency not found in bilateral agreements, bring greater trust and security among peering partners, and most importantly, by connecting VoIP islands, enables operators to offer features only available when there is end-to-end IP connectivity,“ said Lynda Starr, Senior Analyst, IP Communications at Frost & Sullivan.

This is also called Metcalfe's Law by others ;-)

Thursday, September 07, 2006

SCIAM - Keep the Net Neutral 

Finally I received today the August copy of Scientific American. The editors are also talking about net neutrality:

...On balance, those favoring net neutrality make the better case. A system for prioritizing data traffic might well be necessary someday, yet one might hope that it would be based on the needs of the transmissions rather than the deal making and caprices of the cable owners. Moreover, personal blogs and other web pages are increasingly patchworks of media components from various sources. Tiered service would stultify that trend....

...Ending net neutrality might feel safer if the telcos did not often enjoy local monopolies on broadband service. Almost half of all Americans have limited or no choice if they want high-speed connections...

They are also pointing to SavetheInternet.com (favoring net neutrality) and HandsOff.org (against it)

KPN selects Lucent for IMS 

In a press release Lucent and KPN announced this week:

Lucent to provide key IMS elements and serve as integrator for multivendor standards-based IMS solution to replace KPN’s public switched telephone network

Going to ETSI TISPAN next week I just wonder what the "multivendor standards-based" part of this annoncement really means ;-)

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