Recently in Verizon Category

I just came across an article by Glenn Hall on the TheStreet.com which details outrage at the fact that Verizon charges $350 for their early termination fee - essentially this fee just doubled. His point is that as devices get more and more powerful and device envy increases, we should encourage upgrades. And his point makes good sense.

The challenge for Verizon Wireless is the incredible amount of money they have spent on their network. Having just come back from a trip to Huntsville, Al I can tell you that once again, Verizon proves it has the fastest network and the network which is the most reliable in more places.

I know because I carry a Verizon MiFi device as well as have another Verizon radio embedded into my laptop and I also carry an iPhone. AT&T has a poor network. It is getting better but it is poor and 3G just doesn't exist in many places I travel to. Not so with EVDO from Verizon, it is almost everywhere I go and is almost always blazing fast. Many times it is faster than a local WiFi hotspot which charges $10-$12 per day!

At the end of the day, consumers who want the best network have to pay for it. You can't get something for nothing. The fact that we are able to go into a Verizon store and purchase a $650 phone for $199 and then expect to upgrade it for free a short while later is nuts. Verizon spends billions on its network and I for one want them to continue spending because the productivity of the nation and my company increases in lockstep.

By the way, this leads me to an interesting point you may be interested in, for wireless broadband use, TMC has standardized on Verizon but for devices, we have standardized on the iPhone. One of the things I hear most often when I travel to telecom and tech events is, "If the iPhone was offered on Verizon Wireless, I would get one." The reason of course is the network. Unless you happen to only go to the relatively few places where AT&T has a strong 3G network, you likely would benefit from this great network and again, you can't get something for nothing. One last point -- if you are a Verizon Wireless customer, you want them to continue improving the best network in the US.

I am thrilled that a past ITEXPO keynoter Carly Fiorina will be running for the California Senate. Carly is a charming, personable and knowledgeable thought leader who gave a captivating address to a standing-room only crown in Los Angeles a few years back. Fiorina was a major executive at both Lucent and HP where she was CEO. It is my humble opinion that having a candidate who understands telecom and technology will benefit this great country of ours if for no other reason than she will be in a position to really understand the issues.

This is more important than you may first realize. Without pointing anyone out in particular, it is apparent that politicians don't have a clue about net neutrality and these are the people who set rules for the US which will likely be duplicated worldwide. In addition, Fiorina will understand and appreciate the brain drain which is taking place in the US and how this hurts us. Why? Well we bring the smartest people from around the globe to our universities and allow them to get the world's greatest education. We then chase them away and force them to start new companies in other countries and in the process we lose hundreds of thousands if not millions of valuable jobs.

Perhaps most importantly, Fiorina is a political candidate who has run something. She has hired. She has fired; she has faced competition from Asia and other parts of the world firsthand. She knows what to do to make the US a more competitive place and this means more jobs for our ailing economy.

This is not theoretical knowledge - she learned by doing.

I believe we need to stop electing candidates who have little to no experience running companies. How is it these people who have never run anything are in a position to dictate to the private sector how to run companies? Do they have more experience than a random college graduate? No. And that is why our country is in trouble today. We need more government officials who care about the country and do what is best for it. I am not talking about doing what the special interest groups with the most money dictate, I mean doing what is good for the people that elected them.

We will see how this plays out but I for one am all for electing politicians who understand business and have run successful companies.

I got a tip that Adtran was acquiring Objectworld. My take? Objectworld is a company with great UC technology and no brand recognition. Adtran is a company with a product line similar to Cisco but much smaller. Still, with a market cap of over $1.4 billion, Objectworld can really get a boost from Adtran's access to capital, infrastructure, reseller network, carrier relationships  and improved branding.

Here is a link to a cached page mentioning the acquisition. Keep it tuned to TMCnet and my blog for more.

Today I am headed to Huntsville, AL where I will be giving a presentation on the state of the industry to Adtran customers and I am really excited to be meeting with a number of carrier representatives and resellers at the event. Typically to get from New York to Huntsville I drive from Nashville, TN which a direct flight from New York but a 131+ miles away. Today I am connecting via Detroit directly to Huntsville - I am a bit surprised that there is such a direct flight when there isn't one from NY to Huntsville but then again I know there are auto plants in Tennessee which could explain why there are flights from Detroit.

Anyway, I was reminded of the importance of face to face communications as I saw this video interview of Scott Kargman by Suzanne Bowen. Suzanne works for DIDX, a company supplying DIDs to carriers worldwide. Scott runs Crossfire Media, a TMC partner in our M2M, 4G and Smart Products initiatives or SPEC. Check out the interview which took place at Supercomm 2009 in Chicago.

At Supercomm 2009 in Chicago I had a chance to speak with MRV Communications a leader in the carrier Ethernet market boasting among other things, access solutions for 10/100 GE, 10GE, SyncE, 1588, SHDSL and fiber which share a common OS and management interface. The 20-year old company was an early innovator in the field of lasers and now employs more than 4,000 engineers, has 6 R&D divisions and $538 million in revenue coming from a broad range of connectivity products primarily targeted at carriers and campus networks.

A common theme at the show was backhaul solutions and MRV too is looking to help carriers as they transition to 4G networks and more importantly the company like others in the market is helping service providers leverage packet-based technologies while giving up little the more expensive and proprietary circuit switched world has to offer.

Case in point is the company's new synchronization over packet addition to its Optiswitch 900 product line. The goal of this entry is to facilitate the migration to 4G/LTE in mobile backhaul networks. Specifically the environmentally hardened (allows it to be installed almost anywhere) 904-MBH is a compact carrier Ethernet demarcation device supporting IEEE 1588v2 and synchronous Ethernet.

Company execs explained that they didn't want to have two separate boxes and this new device is the first to to enable synchronization-gateway functionality between synchronous and asynchronous physical layer networks for both 3G and 4G networks.

In addition, this device supports traffic management for enhanced QoS meaning carriers can ensure timing packets have ultimate priority over other packets.

The company also announced its new LambdaDriver IP switching module (OPN 800/1600) for migration to packet optical transport networks. These new carrier Ethernet aggregation switches have 8 GbE ports for access to XFP-based ports for backbone network connections. The products tie into the GMPLS control plane and allow MPLS enforcement and are tunable as well.

The company has put a big focus on SLA assurance and their new OAM techniques are embodied in their new network provisioning ands management software. Among other things this new solution hopes to squeeze fault isolation to minutes instead of hours in order to facilitate more rapid truckrolls. The GUI-based Pro-Vision software platform is touted as an easy-to-use tool allowing central management. In addition, it is designed to allow quicker time to revenue for carriers through its use of pre-defined individual service platforms.

A constant theme recently has been using Ethernet in carrier networks whenever and wherever possible. Logically this is what has to be done as the cost per bit is continuing to decline and margins are being eternally squeezed. Lowering the cost of network infrastructure is the best way to combat this trend. MRV has a suite of solutions they have been successfully selling in the space and they hope to continue in their pursuit to provide more and more strategic solutions to carriers worldwide as they transition to next generation networks.

Bill Gurley writes correctly that Google is positioned to take over the world. I am certainly paraphrasing and adding some personal bias - he describes in detail how the company invested great sums of money to assemble a superior turn-by-turn GPS database which includes a street view and in so doing is now able to take marketshare from competing mapping vendors by using advertising to subsidize the cost of acquiring this information.

Advertising revenue in fact will drive the company's operating system, software as a service and just about everything else.

As the company shares part of this revenue with partners you have seen wide adoption of Android by wireless carriers and no doubt hardware vendors installing the Google Chrome OS are next.

Expect the company to continue going after Microsoft products - by giving services away and supporting them through ads.

Any competitor which has an inferior ad network and generates less money from advertising (this is all of them) is pretty much domed.

The only way to stop the onslaught is to build a far superior search engine and hope the world switches. At this point the sheer marketshare Google commands in search allows them to utilize their massive database of user behavior as a massive focus group allowing them to improve by the second.

I just can't see anything stopping this company besides, a scandal, high level departure, illness or something similar. Even then, the company is a monopoly at this point and perhaps momentum will ensure their future success.

Is the company using its power in a way which warrants them being broken up by the DOJ? Possibly, but Google reminds me a heck of a lot of Wal-Mart as the larger it gets, the better consumers do. Giving away free GPS for example is a pro-consumer behavior and as long as the company keeps breaking into new markets and giving things away, it is tough to see how the Google could be considered to be harming customers.

Getting back to the headline of this article -- do I really think Microsoft is doomed? Yes. Immediately? Obviously not. But any time a company with a quality name in the market can make money while giving away good products which you charge for, you are done.

Carrier Ethernet ring network standard allows potential SONET/SDH replacement at as little as 1/10^th the cost

As smartphones and netbooks proliferate and drive more wireless data traffic, the need for better backhaul solutions only grows. In fact this week the new Verizon/Motorola Droid will be released with a new version of Google Maps which includes free turn-by-turn navigation. Expect it to be a single application which is called out as a bandwidth hog in the future.

One company looking to help provide carriers with less expensive and more reliable solutions which support this massive bandwidth growth is Actus Networks. Recently at Supercomm I had a chance to speak with company execs about their ITU-T G.8032 and G.8032 2010 compliant ring protection products which bring many of the benefits of SONET/SDH to the world of carrier Ethernet.

In addition, Actus has equipment which allows carriers with circuit switched networks to use their equipment to access both their legacy and new Ethernet networks. As carriers move to IP-based 4G/LTE networks they will have to explore using IP in their backhaul applications as well and this is where the Korean-based company comes in.

The current product offering consists of a NEBS level 3 compliant, 16-port, 1U G200 carrier Ethernet access device which supports QoS, PBB-TE, OAM, ring protection, E-Line service and circuit emulation (discussed above) as well as the G300 Carrier Ethernet Access Platform.

To learn more, you can read this article, view a recent press release and/or watch a video interview (get popcorn   )I had recently with Kevin Rhee CSO and Peter Cho CEO/President.

Bandwidth Tsunami, have you heard of it? I received an email which said this recently from a close relative. Heard of it I answered, sure - telepresence, YouTube, video conferencing HD video streaming, p2p sharing networks, 3D TV, yep, one of the brightest spots in tech is finding ways to monetize this trend. The Backhaul market is just one example. It is apparent that this trend is not going to slow down anytime soon and equipment providers are tripping over each other to provide solutions which in turn deliver more bandwidth. Even companies supplying chemical coatings for fiber optic cables are optimizing their products to serve the insatiable global bandwidth appetite.

One company, DSM Desotech, a leading supplier of UV-curable optical fiber coatings has even focused on ensuring the frequencies which transmit video are optimized on optical cables which carry their coatings.  Wondering what UV curing is? Well I am glad you asked. You see, my father started TMC back in 1972 as he saw an opportunity to educate the world on chemical coatings by launching the first magazines in the world in this space. You see there was an energy crisis and the world was switching from coatings which were cured (dryed) in huge money-wasting heat ovens to coatings which contained chemicals which would react to ultra violet light and dry rapidly without the need for wasted heat. TMC was likely the first publisher in the green technology space.

In 1982 he launched the first magazine in the world on the contact center and from there the company gradually shifted to communications and technology and we left our chemistry roots behind as we grew to be the world's leading media company focusing on communications and technology.

So it was with fond memories I got to discuss how DSM Desotech has a UV coating they call DesoLite which maximizes signal reliability and performance from -60 degrees to 85 degrees Celsius.

Of special importance is the coating's resistance to microbending which is best described as random bends in the cable which cause small deformations in the cable axis which results in signal degradation. Microbending can take place when there is a non-uniform external force on a cable such as fiber being forced on cabling materials or pressed on a rough surface.

Some of the benefits of DesoLite are power and money savings associated with purchasing less repeaters as well as decreased repair costs.

To further the market, DSM Desotech recently partnered with Telcordia to drive standardization for the characterization of microbending performance in optical fiber and cable products. Some of my contacts in the optical industry think this is a smart move as it allows the company to effectively combat competition from Asian manufacturers. I tend to agree.

To learn more, watch this video which contains an interview with Robert Crowell, VP of Fiber Optic Materials and Steven Schmid, Research and Development Director, Fiber Optic Materials.

Just a kid, that's all I was in the early eighties in high school as I took a class in BASIC. I was always fascinated by all things electronic and whether it was video games or advanced scientific calculators, I couldn't get enough. At Westhill high School, they had a Prime minicomputer and it was on this machine where I was instructed how to program. I also had a Commodore 64 at home and with it I wrote my own video games at night and on weekends.

In the early eighties, Route. 128 in Boston was the stuff of legend... It is where all the minicomputer companies lived - Wang, Prime Computer, DEC and many others. Prime was my link to this area and it seems like it was yesterday when I wrote a math quiz program on the schools's minicomputer which I used to better prepare me for the math portion of the SAT. Today, Rt. 128 is a distant second to Silicon Valley in terms of technology and of course all the minicomputer companies missed the PC altogether and are gone.

If you are wondering why Silicon Valley took the lead over Boston, you may want to refer to this article from Vivek Wadhwa which discusses how the Valley follows a more open model where innovation is more readily shared with small companies and moreover spread through job hopping. In addition, he points out a book from AnnaLee Saxenian (which was published in 1994 predicting that Boston would be the loser in the tech race

Here is an excerpt from the article:

She noted that Silicon Valley had an amazing dynamism about it. There were extensive professional networks, job hopping was the norm, information was exchanged openly, and the culture encouraged risk taking. The Silicon Valley ecosystem supported entrepreneurial experimentation and collective learning. In other words, Silicon Valley was a very open network--a giant social networking site working in analog before the concept of such a thing even existed.

This organizational mechanism was in sharp contrast to that of Route 128. Dominated by large, vertically integrated, and secretive minicomputer producers such as DEC, Wang, Prime, and Data General. Technology, skill, and know-how were trapped within the boundaries of the large corporations.

The differences were evident at many levels: venture capitalists in Silicon Valley had deep roots in local networks and were far more nimble than their east coast counterparts; educational institutions and research labs in the West partnered with local startups as well as more established firms, while those in the East worked only with the largest corporations; and the meritocratic openness of Silicon Valley made it a magnet for non-traditional talent and immigrants.

By the mid-1990s the east had missed the shift from minicomputers to personal computers as the flexible Silicon Valley ecosystem sped ahead with innovation across a diversifying range of components and systems going from chips, routers, and application software to ecommerce and search engines. Today Silicon Valley is the leading location for cleantech venture activity, an area widely considered to be the next big value creation engine for the U.S. and the world.

Boston, however, is no slouch. The Route 128 community remains the second biggest in the U.S. in terms of venture funds committed. Boston has powerful research institutions, still, and lots of very strong companies. In some areas, such as biotech, Boston may even rival Silicon Valley. But overall, its pretty clear that the Valley has not only won but is racing further ahead.

Most entrepreneurs and engineers that come to Silicon Valley, come to experience this network and to embrace the culture it has created. That's why I came, too. Network effects don't just work for fax machines. But then again, most of them knew that intrinsically. University guys like me need to do a bunch of surveys to figure it out. They voted with their hearts and feet.

At this point the game is even tougher to win if you aren't in Silicon Valley due to the propensity for exit strategies to present themselves more readily where the acquirers are. Yahoo, Google, Cisco and Oracle are just a few of the companies responsible for billions of dollars worth of M&A dollars. And as this these companies have grown, they  have made so many millionaires that they in turn go out and launch new companies and/or invest in others which are nearby.

If you are looking for a lesson here it is that a company which mirrors Silicon Valley and is more open, flexible and shares information more readily will likely always beat the company which is inflexible and contains many silos.