Carl Ford : 4G Wireless Evolution
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March 2012

You are browsing the archive for March 2012.

Has Apple Cornered the Market on Passion?

March 30, 2012

China Mobile in Flux

March 22, 2012

The worlds largest Mobile Operator seems to be going through a major purge, with police investigations and executive resignations.  I am not sure what to make of it.

I find China Mobile a major wild card in the world market since they are committed to TD LTE and have been assisting other players around the world to follow them.

I am not sure if this a pull back on that policy or an internal issue.  The new chairman, Xi Guohua, is a loyal party member and this could be more about the local structure than the Internationalizing of China standards.

I have had discussions with brilliant financial friends who have discounted my thoughts about the impact of chinese standards on the rest of us.  However, the reality is that Huawei is delivering solutions cheaper to the current carriers and China Mobile is delivering services in mass to the point where they are a market. 





OMGPOP Gets Some Zynga

March 22, 2012

Here is interesting news.  Zynga bought OMGPOP for its latest game according to the NY Times.  The issue for Zynga is that its not having as much success as it has had in Social networks.  That maybe because their model requires a commitment to gaming that is hard to sustain.

I played CityVille to the point where my town was a drain on time. 

The Enemy with SIM

March 22, 2012

Today, I am in Rome.  And when you are in Rome... I try to read like the Romans do.  In this case Telecom Italia has proven once again that the enemy is within. 

The Enemy with SIM

March 22, 2012

Today, I am in Rome.  And when you are in Rome... I try to read like the Romans do.  In this case Telecom Italia has proven once again that the enemy is within. 

Avaya Buys Radvision for $230 Million

March 15, 2012

Silver Lake has the golden touch?  Having helped Skype become a stand alone entity,  It has been interesting and confusing from time to time to watch Avaya under its care.

I expected Avaya was going to benefit from portfolio proximity of Skype, but it never happened.

Since then Cisco has bought Tandberg leaving Radvision's role as a subcontractor dubious.

With Avaya gaining the skills of our friends at Radvision,  I think the migration to Video and the improvement of their SIP stack can be assured.

Additionally it opens up a huge opportunity to work with third parties in new ways.  Since for many of us Radvision has been the basis of our development. 

Mergers often require insight, beyond the immediate upfront strategy.

I think there is a gold mine here if Silver Lake manages it well.
 












Coalition of the Illing

March 14, 2012

For a while T-Mobile became the defacto way for the rest of the world to have access to GSM in the US.

Now we have China Mobile having a role in the development of Clearwires Time Division [TD] LTE network.  TD - LTE is a standard spear headed in China and its export to the US could have far reaching implications.

While most deployments today are based on Frequency Division, TD-LTE can solve a few ills for companies where spectrum interference is a possibility.

With Cricket having signed a five year deal with Clearwire for access to their China Mobile implementation.  This could lead to a rich market for China to start exporting smart phones and other devices.

TD - LTE is also a logical place for WiMAX companies to focus their migration but we have been on a hard path with these companies before.  Now the question is can the missing economies of scales be found with the Chinese driving the demand.

I think the answer is yes.









And the Wisdom to Know the Difference

March 14, 2012

In the world of 12 steps you confide in your sponsor, you reach out to the newcomer and you stay focused on recovery.

So it was with some dread that I saw the http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/insider-trading-charges-center-on-alcoholics-anonymous-meetings/ picture of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in the deal book of the NY times.

While it is nice to know that even stock brokers can experience recovery, and its also nice to see the SEC chasing leads on insider trading. I am not sure where the line was crossed. 

It bothers me that a "member" was dealing with a merger with a Japanese company and perhaps was being tested by the saki toasts.

It does not say if the person was his sponsor.







4G LTE In Israel, The Shoemaker Sons needs Shoes

March 12, 2012

According to Haaretz Communications Minister Moshe Kahlon appointed a committee to start pending the rules for the 4G LTE Auction.  The auction will be worth about .5B NIS based on licenses of 140M NIS each.

Israel has always been an exporter of communications and its understandable to be slow to innovate on wireless standards.  As we have seen from WiMAX the cost of being first is often being off on a tangent.

However with 4G LTE being so essential to development in other countries and with companies like Siklu looking to catch the attention of deployers.  It would be nice to find a way for the Ministry to enable some alternate strategies particular some innovations in architecture.

I believe the base stations and small cells need a lot of innovation to match not only demand but the probable need for alternate access methods.

Its time for the Shoemaker to focus on his son and Israel to display by deploying at home.







Hey Meg, HP Needs to Bundle Not Balkanize

March 12, 2012

According to Richard Waters of the Financial Times,  Meg Whitman has an easier time figuring out what's wrong rather than what's right.  Here are some ideas.

In the discussion he pointed out HP's 23 drop in consumer revenues as opposed to apples 75% revenue increase. 

 



Apple the Turtle continues to Beat the Industry

March 8, 2012

The iPad 3.0 has arrived with incremental features and a community of loyal Apple customer ready to toss 1 & 2 for 3 as if they were a 1982 Kaypro.  Pretty amazing.

As Jeff Orr of ABI Research stated in there press release

“Individually, none of the new iPad features create an insurmountable advantage for Apple over its competition,” says Jeff Orr,  group director, consumer research. ASUS is currently shipping a quad-core tablet and even Chinese vendor Huawei announced one last week. 



VoIP Outage Reporting Discussion April 24th.

March 8, 2012

The FCC has expanded the outage reporting requirements to interconnected VoIP providers. This have caused a few message boards to light up with discussions, so we have gathered some of our best advocates to explain what is required and how to manage the process.

Join Fred Campbell - WCAI, Glenn Richards - Pillsbury Law,  Brita Strandberg - Harris Wiltshire and David Young - Verizon as we gather to discuss the new rules.

The conference call will be on April 24th at 1:30 EDT and you can sign up to be on the call here.

Verizon Wireless HomeFusion PSTN Sunset 10 GB at a time

March 6, 2012

According to the Washington Post today Verizon Wireless is offering an alternative home access service for $60 a month and 30GB service for $120 a month. 

The most important aspect of this service is that it finally breaks the cross elastics that the carriers have been using for their MiFi services.  Embedded in the pricing of the MiFi services was equivalent rate to a T1.  If you did the price analysis it was there in black in white. 

If You Can't Trust your Certs....Tales from GitHub

March 6, 2012

Once again we have discovered that PublicKeys can be thwarted and in this case the victim was GitHub.  Now I have to tell you,  I am constantly asked to run a security event.  And the reality is that I have security training, but no one wants to admit that they need it.  Especially a place that supports open source. 

Is YHOO try to be a Yahooligan with Facebook?

March 5, 2012

So far Scott Thompson has not been catching the stock markets fancy with YHOO.  Perhaps proving that Yahoo! is really a Californian company it has joined all the patent infringement strategies and is bring suit against Facebook.

Ironically the infringements are based on the acquisition of GeoCities years back.  As you know the patent wars have already caused Google to purchase Motorola Mobility and several others to build an arsenal. 

Interestingly we have yet to see Scott Thompson bring to bear a mobile payment strategy which I would have hoped to see at Mobile World Congress. 



Ron Johnson Brings in Apple's Laurie Beja Miller to JCP

March 5, 2012

The Genius Bar was lowered at Apple when Laurie Beja Miller departure to JCPenny.  Ron Johnson the man who Jobs worked with to create the Apple Store experience has brought in Ms Miller to "create a town square" feeling to the department store.

If you have not noticed Ellen Degeneres  doing all these commercials for 'JCP' the rebranded JC Penny, you probably turned off their pre superbowl adds with all the customer's screaming "Noooooo" as the stores posted their after Christmas pricing. 

The bottom line is we are going to get a very fresh look at retailing at JCP and its worthwhile to walk in to see where the changes are taking them.


Getting your Compass on CSS3

March 2, 2012

If you are looking for some HTML5 training for yourself over the weekend one place I am currently focused is on how CSS3 is changing and particularly the framework of Compass. 

Here are some resources on Compass.


Compass Reset Utilities | Compass Documentation
Developers Guide to HTML5 - Is HTML5 Right for You? http://bit.ly/Ah3OEF

http://slidesha.re/xwNLLc

http://bit.ly/yIS5m3


Of Course you can always join us in Santa Clara April 25 & 26



Yelp's IPO needs some Review

March 2, 2012

__PLACEHOLDER__Perhaps we have a bubble again.  Perhaps the community of Yelp Reviewers are betting on their experience rather than the finances.
Yelp as an IPO has the feel of a drug that could get sued over a side effect that happens in almost 100% of all cases.

The Yelp Financials suggest that they are going to bleed cash without a growth strategy to solve their operational woes. 

Something about has made the stock go up today on the first day of trading.

The only thing I can think of is they need to be acquired, but the stock that has been released is not enough to get any trade outs.  So at the end of the day they are either going to be a minnow looking for whales to swallow or happy to be a pilot fish. 






Rule Tata! Tata Rules the (Air) Waves

March 1, 2012

It is inevitable that monies acquired need to find a place to be spent.  In the case of Tata buying Cable and Wireless it's got the benefit of historical irony and today's common sense. 

Cable and Wireless has always been good at milking cash cows.  The company that started as the sealant manufacturer for undersea cables has come along way and has been the incumbent in many places where the British Empire once ruled (including India).

Now Tata is considering buying Cable & Wireless and it makes a lot sense to me given the capabiliities of Tata. 



Does Windows 8 Give us a Short Time View on Intel?

March 1, 2012

We used to refer to them as WINTEL. Microsoft and Intel were connected to each other at the hip.  Servers, Desktops, Laptops all were in their sphere of control. 

Then Came Linus Torvold's contribution to the Unix world and we got a stable open source kernel that stopped the warring factions on Unix and made Linux and LAMP the server side solution. 

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