According to Bloomberg, "Verizon Communications Inc. agreed to buy fiber-optic networks from Carl Icahn's XO Communications LLC and lease spectrum for about $1.8 billion, giving the nation's largest wireless carrier more Internet bandwidth for corporate clients and airwaves to test faster wireless technology."
The Synergies will likely be a RIF of most of the 2800 employees left at XO, which will be a rounding error for Verizon Communications Inc. and its workforce of 177,700. Last reported income from XO was in $1.4B in 2011. Even if XO was still bringing that in - which they are not! - it is about 1% of VZ's 2015 revenuesof $135B.
Hard to make the revenue needle move much at $135B!
XO has been a mess for a long time, mainly because its owner since 2011, Carl Icahn at XO Holdings, hasn't done much with it but cut employees and spending. XO started in 2000 as a merger between NextLink and Concentric Hosting. Later XO acquired Allegiance Telecom in 2004 after recovering from a 2002 bankruptcy.
I wonder if the Broadsoft, UC and cloud business goes with the fiber. XO has 2 million SIP trunks, but all the press releases read fiber-optic business. That might be in keeping with the theme for Verizon - fiber-optic! Cut all ties with copper and just be fiber and cellular.
Also, the wording of the press release appears like an asset sale not a purchase of XO Holdings.
"Separately, Verizon will simultaneously lease available XO wireless spectrum, with an option to buy XO's entity that holds its spectrum by year-end 2018." [pr]
"XO holds 102 licenses to spectrum in the 28 gigahertz and 39 gigahertz range, which cover about 45 percent of the U.S., according to Bob Varettoni, a Verizon spokesman." [Bloomberg]
The XO fiber allows VZW to backhaul the small cells needed for a denser network for both 4G and the soon to be trialing 5G cellular networks.
Right now, Verizon is shutting down its public cloud infrastructure - and giving customers just two months to move! according to DCK. It is exiting competing against the computing giants of Microsoft, Amazon and Google. It will be keeping its private hosting/cloud - and no sale of its data center business formerly known as Terremark has been announced yet. (I would have thought that the data center business would have been sold to buy XO, since VZ already is soaked with debt.)
On the ILEC side, the sale of Cali, Texas and Florida ILEC assets to Frontier has not been approved yet. On other fronts, VZT is making the move to retire copper as fast as it can despite opposition from the CWA, consumers, CLECs and state agencies. The opposition to copper replacement comes from the Super Storm Sandy mess, when all the networks were down. Also, as copper is retired, CWA loses power and head count and CLECs lose access to customers, except through more expensive means like cable and ILEC fiber.
]]>I don't think anyone wants to buy Sprint, whose wireline - the old Pin Drop fiber Network - is only bringing in $581 million in revenue these days. That won't help offset the $33.8 Billion in debt that is hanging over them.
There is often talk about who Level3 is going to buy next. As a channel partner of Level3, I hope they forego acquisitions for another year. They have some positive movement in the TWT integration going on, good people in place - don't mess with it! They even have some interesting products like Managed SfB. Go Organic!
The cable space has quite a bit of M&A in the works with the TWC-Charter-BrightHouse deal still waiting FCC and other state approvals; Altice is buying SuddenLink and Cablevision; and folks are waiting for ABRY to dump RCN and someone to scoop up WOW!. All about scale and grown no matter what, right?
It seems all the rumors are around Comcast, Zayo, Level3 and T-Mobile. It leaves out the rest of the CLEC market - namely, EarthLink, XO, Integra, Birch. I put Windstream and CenturyLink in the CLEC puddle because while they are mainly RLECs, it isn't what they are known for.
Birch is already working on moving to Canada with their acquisition of Primus Telecom. Maybe they don't like the Presidential candidates any more than I do?! Zayo also made a Canadian buy - Allstream.
EarthLink sold off its IT business to Synoptic for $29 million. ELNK gets a small amount of cash but looses about 100 talented employees. I guess EarthLink is staying focused on the Retail space.
While there were rumors about VZ selling off the old MCI assets currently named VZB, the CFO said that was not the case. The Terremark data centers are on the auction block according to reports, but no word yet on any firm sale. But rumor is abound about Verizon buying XO, mainly for its wireless spectrum.
"XO is the largest owner of LMDS spectrum, currently [2007] worth $35.8 million, in the nation. NextLink, the wireless operation of XOHO, recently launched its broadband wireless services in Las Vegas and increased its wireless portfolio to 14 markets at the speed of covering 1 to 2 metro areas/month: Washington DC, Boston, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Nashville, Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston, LA, Seattle, Phoenix, Las Vegas - already more than its almost only competitor in LMDS fixed wireless services, FiberTower. The remaining large LMDS spectrum owner, Level 3, through its acquisition of Telecove." [seekingalpha] IDT also owned a chunk of this spectrum too.
LMDS operates between 28 GHz and 32 GHz and falls in the microwave sector of spectrum. For 5G cell service, the FCC may be approving this band soon. If VZ can pick up XO for $2B, that is far cheaper than buying spectrum. It would have spectrum in 15 metros to trial 5G with.
Spectrum is the new beach front property.
This makes Level3, FiberTower and IDT worth a little more.
XO's long haul network consists of a good amount of IRU on Level3's network, which would be a hiccup for someone buying them for their network instead of for the customers and the spectrum.
We should see by March if this is a go or not!
]]>Windstream is in battle at the FCC to get IP equivalent wholesale products from AT&T as TDM retires. It is not going well. (You would think all CLECs and Comptel would be roaring along with them.
A little more WIND news as residents of Alabama are taking Windstream to court over slow broadband speeds. Not shocking.
9-1-1 is falling apart in this country. No one notices until a huge outage. T-Mobile hit with $17.5 million FCC fine for 911 outages . Fines are great, but the FCC has to address the underlying problems with the 9-1-1 system, especially as we transition from TDM POTS calls to cellular, texts and VoIP. But, heck, the FCC hasn't fixed Rural Call Completion problems yet either.
So DISH bid on spectrum in the last FCC auction using a bunch of shell companies setup as "small biz" for credits and discounts. Well, the FCC caught on. FCC Poised to Reject Dish Partners' Spectrum Discounts Affiliates requested $3.3 billion in small-business discounts on $13.3 billion in winning bids.
So the FCC is approving the AT&T-DirecTV deal with some conditions. Will they actually follow up on these conditions? History says No. "12.5 million customer locations will have access to a competitive high-speed fiber connection. This additional build-out is about 10 times the size of AT&T's current fiber-to-the-premise deployment, increases the entire nation's residential fiber build by more than 40 percent, and more than triples the number of metropolitan areas AT&T has announced plans to serve." [forbes]
"The customer relationship management (CRM) market is mature, bloated and consolidation is going to continue for the foreseeable future. The upshot: Technology buyers need specialized CRM vendors, but they could wind up absorbed by a giant." So companies build their own systems. Why build from scratch when you can use stuff like tray.io, Idea2, IFTTT and the like?
74% of business buyers told Forrester they conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase. [source]
]]>The IOCs and RLECs are in the midst of a tempest due to USF Reform and other legislative changes taking place. A consortium of (unnamed) Independent telcos bought Codero. Why? In a word: cloud. In lots of words from the website: "Robust, high-speed, technically advanced networks and access to cutting-edge IT services are critical to maintaining employment, supporting economic development, and sustaining the vitality of rural and small markets. The telecom and broadband providers that serve smaller markets must continually invest in new technologies and capabilities to address the rapidly changing needs of their customers. The Codero transaction is about marrying the impressive technical, product development and sales resources of Codero with the collective resources and established market presence of the investor telecoms, creating a scalable vehicle for the development and delivery of customized hosting and IT products and services." RLECs and IOCs need to start selling more than landlines. Hosted Voice and cloud services to businesses -- even if there are only a couple of hundred businesses -- has to make up for the decline in residential services.
Cloud and hosting companies are so hot that Liquid Web received an investment from Madison Dearborn Partners, a brand name private equity firm based in Chicago, IL. Liquid Web is in hosting, VPS, and cloud with 30K customers globally.
I missed the Datapipe / GoGrid deal that happened in January. Sorry.
The big rumor is that Altice, a French telecom company, buying MSO Suddenlink is also looking to buy the remaining wireline assets of Verizon. "Altice has spent $7.9 billion for acquiring 70% stake in the seventh largest US cable TV company, Suddenlink Communications," the article explains. And now it is eyeballing the remaining FiOS assets.
Two New England telecom firms merged - Oxford Networks and BayRing Communications. The way the PR reads, I smell IPO next year. "The combined entity will be the largest competitive telecommunications provider headquartered in Northern New England. The new organization will operate approximately 2,000 route miles of high-capacity fiber optic network providing access to nearly 50,000 commercial buildings, four robust SOC 2 (Service Organization Control) data centers, and direct access to all other major hub data centers throughout Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. These 2 mainly compete against Fairpoint and the cablecos in New England. If you have you stuff together, it isn't even a fair fight.
8x8 grabbed another company. 8x8 announced the company has agreed to purchase certain assets of privately-held Quality Software Corporation (QSC), a software QA and analytics firm for $3 million in cash and $1.3 million in stock compensation. "QSC is one of the newest, most innovative players in the call center performance and analytics marketplace based in Delray Beach, Florida with a development center in Romania." [source]
Last rumor is T-Mobile and DISH. "Possible Dish/T-Mobile merger could be trouble for AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile's problem is spectrum--Dish owns a ton of spectrum and hasn't used it." Here's what is wrong with that statement: T-Mobile has spectrum. It got some more as part of the deal break-up with AT&T. It hasn't been aggressive in spectrum auctions. It hasn't deployed all the spectrum it owns either.
[See spectrumgateway, a 2006 auction view and finally this article.]
DISH has some crappy spectrum, along with 40 MHz of nationwide AWS spectrum . They bought AWS-3 spectrum as DE Holdings, but they have spectrum that is terrestrial satellite with an FCC dispensation. The clock is ticking on DISH actually deploying the spectrum. At the end of 2013, DISH was in fixed wireless/TD-LTE trials with nTelos in rural Virginia. In Texas, Sprint was in a similar trial with DISH. The problem is twofold: deploying the radios and spectrum costs real dollars and lots of labor, including filling in the coverage gaps and doing it in the FCC mandated time frame. Hardly any of the Top 4 Cellcos have a spectrum issue; they have a cash-deployment issue. Luckily, the FCC is soft on enforcement of mandates and auction specs.
]]>Both have been running from wireline for a while -- since maybe 2006. I think they wanted forbearance to get rid of unions and that copper plant. The wireless divisions are non-union for the most part. Unions and pensions are killing them financially (they say).
AT&T will record a $10 billion charge in fourth quarter. "The company expects a pretax loss due to changes in pension and post-employment plans and abandonment of certain copper assets." And "The Dallas-based company will also take a $2.1 billion non-cash charge after deciding to abandon certain copper assets deemed unnecessary for future network activity as customer demand for older voice and data products declines," writes CNET.
Verizon nears "the end" of FiOS builds, according to ARS. "Verizon lost $2.23 billion, but FiOS and wireless businesses remain profitable. Verizon posted a net loss of $2.23 billion in Q4 2014, despite making a profit of $9.63 billion for the full year. The loss included "significant non-operational items... primarily related to the annual actuarial valuation of benefit plans and mark-to-market pension adjustments," Verizon said."
VZ nears the end of landlines as it makes a deal to sell off as it makes a deal to sell Cali, Texas and Florida wireline and FiOS to Frontier for $10 Billion.
The RBOCs both spent big in the AWS-3 auction. AT&T spent $18B and VZW spent $10B. AT&T bought Nextel Mexico from NII Holdings and Iusacell. Verizon just sold Cali, Texas and Florida to Frontier for $10B plus, according to this SEC filing.
Cable won the broadband war when the FCC raised the definition of broadband to 25 Mbps. Now cable will again win market share as it did when Frontier took over Connecticut. Where does Frontier keep getting this money from? And why can't they ever have a smooth transition?
The RBOCs want out of copper (VZ more than ATT) - and want to focus on wireless which is profitable for them. BUT their churn is getting out of control. AT&T "said postpaid churn, or the rate of customer defections, rose to 1.22 percent and average revenue per phone user declined 10.7 percent from a year earlier." [reuters] The cellular market is flat in the US. AT&T has been looking to expand to Europe, but the EU says NO (probably due to Room 641A and Snowden revelations). So it is off to LATAM for AT&T. Verizon is kind of stuck because they have all that debt from divorcing Vodafone for sole ownership of VZW.
Now the FCC is making their DSL obsolete and about to add Title II regulation. The RBOCs are likely ready to leave that headache to Frontier, Windstream (70% of revenues are broadband), and the cable coalition.
Oh, if the Title II goes through for mobile broadband, VZW's super cookies will be burnt.
I was going to talk about this: "Chairman Wheeler Proposes to Classify Internet Access as Telecom Service" but everyone has made so much work of it in the last few months that I decided to give my readers a break. Please note, however, that ACA, et al. Oppose Title II Regulation on Small ISPs; WISPA opposes the plan; and CTIA Urges Different Open Internet Rules for Mobile Broadband Providers. No one likes change. Lawsuits already filed - even before the order has been voted on and finalized. You can blame just 2 companies: VZ and Comcast -- and then spread some blame over to the FTC for not jumping in the fray.
]]>AT&T is adding cities in NC to its U-Verse with GigaPower. I wonder if this is a response to TWC buying DukeNet there.
Verizon Wireless looking to buy Dish Network's spectrum [Reuters]. It came out of the NY Post; the article is so vague that it doesn't even mention what spectrum. Chalk it up to #rumor by bankers.
21 charts about the US changes. I know these graphs are someone's representation / view / spin, but take it at face value that some observations are true, like we are a more diverse population and the population is getting older. To quote Tom Peters: start marketing to the diversity and the Boomers!
#14 - "The US economy has undergone a fundamental shift: it has moved from a more goods-focused economy to a service-based economy." I see that the Internet helps to spin our economy (or at least the market caps of a number of companies), so why is Congress, the courts and the two F agencies, letting any corporation muck with it?
#15 - "Speaking of productivity, the American worker just keeps getting better and better at boosting the economy, thanks largely to technology. American workers are creating more and more economic value, but they're not getting paid accordingly. Productivity has climbed steadily over the last decade, but compensation hasn't followed suit." I don't think anyone can argue that point, but I am certain someone will try.
#6 - We are more Politically Polarized than ever before. "A 2014 report from the Pew Research Center found that the two man political parties are drifting further from each other ideologically. Americans are far more likely to be consistently conservative or consistently liberal than they were 10 or 20 years ago." And we tend to only listen to people we agree with and ignore differing opinions, which means that this will only get worse.
"Largely because of our aging population, there's going to be a growing need for more healthcare workers in the US economy over the next 10 years....Home health aides and personal care aides, both of which are going to grow by around 50 percent, are also remarkably low-paid jobs, with median annual pay of around $20,000 each." In a consumer service based economy, when people can't buy stuff, the economic engine grinds to a halt. Henry Ford knew that.
#17 - "We're staying unemployed for an unusually, terribly long amount of time." The skills for jobs that pay well have changed - perhaps outpacing the unemployed. Plus many jobs have been automated out of the organization. (The new burger maker machine will even automate the low wage jobs at fast food. then what?)
This slide deck is about technology's influence on the workplace (which could be about BYOD and other stuff). What it said to me is that if you are selling cloud as a replacement for premise, you are wasting your time. Cloud is an improvement over premise. Get that straight right from the beginning, chum.
]]>The Broadband money (NTIA, BIP, BTOP) as well as the Lifeline (Obama phone) program has seen its share of abuses, but billion dollar programs will do that. The FCC needs to tighten that up.
The USF funds for Connect America have been dispersed - except for 30% which is being disputed. The carriers came out swinging for the broadband map. Some called satellite and fixed wireless broadband systems inadequate. It got a little ugly. Tables got turned as 5 carriers await the results of a dispute as competitors have said that broadband is being delivered in the areas that CAF money was going. Oops! Lots of areas for the FCC to tighten up the reins. This same pile of money pays for E-rate Internet in schools and libraries and rural healthcare, especially tele-medicine.
Probably the FCC's biggest responsibility is the spectrum. Mobility is eating the world, just ask anyone (including Fred Wilson). But a majority of the spectrum is in the hands of just 3 companies. Kind of crazy. There's a couple of auctions coming up. Some of the last available spectrum -- which is the prime real estate for all things wireless and mobile. The FCC needs to safeguard this spectrum so that more than 3 companies have some.
Meanwhile, the House of Reps is calling for a telecom act re-write. "They envision a multi-year effort that will start next year with a series of hearings and white papers next year." It should be great. (sarcasm btw).
There is a lot on the new FCC chairman's plate. Plus dealing with Congress. He basically is residing over the engine of the economy -- Internet and mobility - the two sectors driving the economy right now.
Meanwhile, as the traditional telecom world rapidly shifts, competitors that don't own network - wireline or wireless - need to figure out how to navigate the opportunities popping up as other ones close.
]]>The Internet of Everything is like putting M2M (machine-to-machine communications) on steroids. Bridges are being built with nanotech sensors in order to get a warning when the bridge structure is in need of repair.
More and more sensors connecting everything. Shoes, wristwatches, cars, cameras, thermostats and door locks are just some of the always-on connected things that will be eating up wireless capacity on one band or another. The FCC is setting up the next spectrum auction now - AWS-3 (1755-1780 MHz and 2155-2180 MHz). Cellcos in the US want 500 MHz of spectrum.
VZW is sitting on its A-block and B-block 700 MHz band (humorously called 5G) as well as 40 MHz of AWS bands. Other cellcos are deploying 1.8 GHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.x GHz, device radios will need to read a lot of spectrum (from 700 to 2600 MHz). Why? Current VZW LTE is the only one on 700 MHz bands, so customers can only roam to 3G networks. Also, no other carrier can roam to VZW 4G since the radios in the phones can't read that spectrum band. It's like early Sprint 4G phones that only connected to Clearwire WiMax. Worthless bricks now that Clearwire is mostly LTE.
And that is just phone spectrum. The FCC freed up 5 GHz for unlicensed wi-fi, since a majority of the devices attach to wireless networks (WLAN) at homes, businesses, coffee shops, malls, etc. Wi-fi offload is what is helping the cellcos now. The problem will be that there will be too many devices attached to the WLAN (especially at home) and then what? Consumers aren't going to be able to manage a WLAN.
Then you have wearable tech. All those pieces of gear - like Google Glass, Nike Fuel band, Fitbit, etc. - all chewing up Bluetooth or other frequencies. RFID tags and so much more in the way of home health monitoring, home security, personal security, personal health, yadda. We will be eating up a lot of spectrum.
So if all of this Connectedness is the wave, what happens to the UC players, MVNOs, CLECs and other service providers without a mobile strategy? There isn't profit in being an MVNO or a reseller so in the Internet of Things, what will you do to capitalize on the Mobile Connected World?
There is plenty of opportunity in managed services, training, repair and the like. However, for those thinking that they just need an app to take care of that: you might want to re-think that.
]]>The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau clarified the rules for data collection for Special Access circuits. WC Docket No. 05-25 Report and Order is out.
Susan Crawford writes, "The giant companies that sell access to the Internet are working on multiple fronts to ensure that no regulator has any real authority over them." She is talking about the last 2 RBOCs - AT&T and Verizon, although VZ is the one making the most noise with its lawsuit against the FCC.
"The Obama administration has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking that all wireless carriers be required to unlock all mobile devices," reports many sources. The 700 MHz spectrum that VZW won in the auction was deemed Open Access. Google's Nexus 7 with LTE is in a fight with VZW over the unlocking. Good story here where VZW claims that our system isn't built for that. If VZW claims it will be too hard and costly, the FCC will likely forgive them. There systems are closed and proprietary and antiquated - fix it or give the spectrum back!
ZDnet has the story of Verizon Enterprise Solutions president John Stratton criticizing Google, Yahoo and Microsoft for suing "the NSA in order to be able to reveal more about their interactions with the intelligence agency."
The FCC has announced the H Block (1.9GHz) spectrum auction.
The FCC approved the Alltel acquisition by ATT.
"the FCC has given the thumbs-up to AT&T on its proposed $780 million acquisition of Alltel assets. The package includes retail stores, approximately 620,000 customers in the Midwest, network equipment and spectrum in the 700MHz, 850MHz and 1900MHz bands. AT&T isn't getting away scot-free, however, as the FCC will only approve the deal based on a few conditions: first, the network needs to deploy HSPA+ and LTE in the new areas within 15 and 18 months (respectively); second, AT&T must keep Alltel's 3G EVDO network alive and kicking until at least June 15, 2015. Third, AT&T needs to ensure that every affected customer gets a comparable phone for free without a contract extension. [engadget]
And the FCC is still without 2 commissioners, because Congress is too dysfunctional to do its job!
]]>Does the FCC have authority to enforce Net Neutrality rules? A court already ruled yes. VZ's appeal is today.. "The FCC's 2011 open Internet rules require Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally and give consumers equal access to all lawful content....Verizon has argued the rules are an excessive, "arbitrary and capricious" intrusion which violates the company's right to free speech, stripping it of control over what its networks transmit and how."
My bet is the public loses - and the Appellate judges hand it over to VZ.
Four more points:
One: VZW's 700 MHz spectrum was auctioned off with Open Internet rules. Who will police that?
Two: the Internet is the last frontier of Innovation. It is the Engine of the New Economy. Mess with that at our own peril.
"Few people would dispute that one of the biggest contributors to the extraordinary success of the Internet has been the ability of just about anyone to use it to offer any product, service or type of information they want." [NYT] That success is in the hands of three federal judges.
We have already seen where the privacy invasion by the NSA will likely cost US cloud firms tens of billions in revenue, which means less jobs and less tax income for the US.
In the global job market, we need fast, cheap Internet access with fast, cheap devices - unencumbered. How does the US compete globally when they are handcuffed by the secret interests of both the government and Big Business? Every American is competing against an eighteen year old in other nations with broadband and desire.
SOPA - Stop Online Privacy Act - was defeated in 2012, but is being revived. We do not need Internet cops. We do not need the ISPs to have Editorial control over our content.
Most things are not what they seem at the surface. Syria isn't really about chemical weapons. It is about chess at a global level. It is about power, influence, money and energy. It is about positioning for the next ten years.
There is a lot going on right now. Much of it will have long ranging effects.
Gary Kim writes that Net Neutrality will stifle innovation.
]]>"San Diego-based Leap also has $2.8 billion in net debt." Which will be added to AT&T's already massive debt load of $74 Billion in debt
VZW and AT&T are in spectrum hording mode. Most of the postpaid crowd (contracts) buy smartphones and use tablets on family plans. Yet the average revenue on the smartphones haven't increased much in the past few years.
The cellcos not only have to acquire spectrum, they then need to actually deploy it and backhaul it. Then figure out how to make more margin from it. Streaming video and the constant pinging of smartphones on the network is a huge network management proposition for the carriers.
The two RBOCs spend between $7 and $9 billion on their cellular networks. Plus acquisitions. Plus tons of marketing.
From the numbers below, it looks like the next frontier will be prepaid customers, although the prepaid cellcos like Leap and MetroPCS never hit a home run. So no idea how that will work as a side business for AT&T Mobility.
Another acquisition means another bunch of layoffs and the further shrinking of the middle class - but as long as the giants can keep eating all is good with the world.*
1Q2013 "Consolidated revenues of $31.4 billion, down 1.5 percent versus reported results for the year-earlier "
Strong cash from operations of $8.2 billion and free cash flow of $3.9 billion
total wireless revenues and wireless service revenues both up 3.4 percent versus the year-ago quarter [at&t pr]
296,000 wireless postpaid net adds; postpaid churn improves to 1.04 percent
1.2 million new smartphone subscribers; smartphones 88 percent of postpaid phone sales
Postpaid wireless ARPU is up only 1% from last year.
]]>Verizon Wireless is America's most heavily used mobile-phone carrier, with 93 million monthly subscribers (second-place AT&T (T) has 71 million). The telecom has continued to attract more new customers than its biggest rivals in recent quarters with ad campaigns that boast about its network's speed. The only problem is that Verizon's network can't always handle the traffic load, and in some cases the subscriber connections have slowed dramatically.
Both claim that it is a spectrum issue, but I think it is a deployment issue. VZW is sitting on AWS spectrum. It just finished deploying LTE. Via Infoweek, "Verizon is essentially done building its LTE 4G network. The company recently announced that its LTE network covers 99% of its CDMA 3G footprint. That means about 95% of Americans, or 298 million people, have access to Verizon's LTE 4G network if they want it."
Now the cellcos will start re-purposing spectrum - 2.5G and 3G spectrum will be used for LTE. That means new phoens will only have LTE radios in them and utilize VoLTE.
So if the cellular network is congested, how can they in good faith migrate NJ and NY cities to LTE only to replace copper plant damaged during Storm Sandy? Will Fire Island become the test case? AARP is objecting to this switch.
If they are begging the FCC for more spectrum every week - and the CTIA keynotes about the spectrum crisis at every show - then how come you are pushing people to cellular - in landline repalcement, in mobile video, and other ways? These are 2 opposing ideas -- my network is congested // customers please use it more and depend on it for E-911!
Cellular service is NOT ubiquitous - see an article here. It is certainly not a replacement for landline -- no matter how much the new Verizon (run by VZW execs) wants the old Verizon Telecom (and its unions) to go away.
]]>Personally, I think these CEOs - Crowe, Hesse, and others - have to take more responsibility for revenue, integration, value and culture. The role of CEO is more than just setting some ambiguous vision that your reports then have to crystallize and execute on.
Best quote from Mobile World Congress:
"Openness is not something to be afraid of. There are lots of business models available. But openness is also about being open to innovate." - Jolla CEO Marc Dillion (launched Sailfish at MWC)
FCC and FTC gave the green light for T-Mobile to merge with MetroPCS. To VZW and ATT, this is a yawner. To the consumer, it will just eliminate one of the all-you-can-eat players.
This news comes as Gary Kim writes about the spectrum crunch that never came. Please note that all of the Top 5 cellcos still have a bunch of spectrum that they have not deployed yet. It bears repeating: there is plenty of spectrum that they have not deployed yet! (Despite what Hesse spouts to the press. He likes being in the spotlight, which is fine, if someone else was running Sprint.)
Susan Crawford wrote an article about the lack of wireless competition. Every flavor of broadband - terrestrial or wireless - has clear winners and losers, but mostly losers, who we call customers.
I have beat this drum before but all the value in the US economy is in knowledge and innovation -- it is the Internet Economy. Stifling that due to profits for a few companies is not going to make the US competitive in a global race.
Nice blog about small business, Obamacare and the opportunity for channel partners.
In SAAS, the secret sauce is data integration - which fails almost 20% of the time!
One last one: at CPExpo, a channel AVP at ATT was given my book and read it and took the time to come over to say that he enjoyed it. Kind of a highlight at the show.
]]>An interesting announcement today two weeks before thier customer summit, Cisco bought a stake in Parallels and gets a Board seat.
Parallels is the middleware for many cloud providers, customers that Cisco would like to sell a lot of stuff through. This might be a response to the cooling relationship between Cisco and VMware, according to reports.
Alltel is completely gone now. AT&T grabbed the leftover assets (customers 500K+ and spectrum) of Alltel for $780 million per VZW's divestiture of Alltel after their 2009 sale.
Google updated Panda again. SearchEngineLand has this to say: "Google has announced a new Panda refresh, making this version number 24. This refresh has a noticeable impact 1.2% of English based queries according to Google. The previous confirmed update was #23 and it impacted 1.3% of English queries on December 21, 2012. Prior to that was a refresh on November 21st that impacted 0.8% of queries. It seems like Google is now rolling out these updates every 4 weeks or so."
Panda is Google's algorithm for search results to " helping people find high-quality sites in Google's search results."
]]>Broadsoft announced UC One and now Rich Communications Services (RCS) to be added to its BroadCloud SAAS platform. [UCStrategies]
After Softbank put $20B into Sprint, Sprint turns around and buys some US Cellular markets for $480M. Consolidation - that's all we have left as an industry.
RUMOR! Google and DISH launching wireless network! This is the rumor, since the FCC is about to rule on spectrum that DISH controls (40 MHz of MSS S-band spectrum in the 2 GHz band, that the FCC renamed AWS-4). This spectrum may get cropped and added to the H-block auction. Should have an FCC announcement by Thanksgiving.
Right now, One in five smart phones sold in the U.S. is from the Samsung Galaxy series. I guess the $1B patent fine was nothing!
]]>