Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

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It's a Mobile Monday

January 30, 2012

It's a mobile Monday as I get set to pack up to head to ITEXPO East 2012 in Miami Beach.

Yahoo was being Yahoo! this morning as it announced - in the same breath - that it has launched a "Mobile First" mindset, then shut down 10 mobile apps. Granted, some of them were not doing well (like Yahoo itself), but it's schizophrenic to do it on the same day.

Patent house Klausner Technologies sues MetroPCS for Visual Voicemail Infringement. That's always fun - and profitable for the patent house. Hopefully, in this case, it doesn't mess up the consumers' experiences.

AT&T is now supporting DISH Network at the FCC on its deployment and usage of spectrum in the 2 GHz range that it acquired from bankruptcy court via TerreStar Networks and DBSD North America.

Woes: AT&T, Spectrum, Yahoo, RIM

January 17, 2012

How badly does AT&T need spectrum now that the T-Mobile deal is dead? According to analysts (who are likely just trying to get press and pump up some stocks so they can make short term gains), AT&T has to make a move soon.  T-Mobile does too.

I find this interesting because AT&T and T-Mobile are sitting on spectrum that they have not deployed. If you needed it that bad, you would use what you have - at least for now.

Let's look at Clearwire as a 4G wholesaler. Clearwire has a ton of spectrum - not all of it deployed obviously, because they need money badly to operate what they have deployed and to build out the rest of their nationwide network. T-Mobile could partner with Clearwire for 4G.

T-Mobile could also outsource their 4G network to someone like Nokia Siemens (NSN). 

There is also Lightsquared.

Are You Going to ITEXPO?

December 28, 2011

It's just about a month away from  ITEXPO East 2012 that starts January 29, 2012. The Lowes Hotel is already sold out in Miami Beach. 

I am moderating 4 sessions this time. Here they are:

2/1/2012 @ 11:00-11:45am - TRACK: Customer Engagement -- "Social Media Channel Integration"

2/1/2012 @ 2:30-3:15pm - TRACK: Next Gen Service Provider -- "Educating the Channel with Industry Standard Certifications"

2/3/2012 @ 9:00-9:45am - TRACK: Customer Engagement -- "Does Your Business Have a Social Media Strategy?"

At 4GWE on Friday the 3rd at Noon, I will be moderating "Wireless Access Open For Business" where we will be discussing fixed wireless as a last mile access choice. Then we will have an open discussion, kind of an Un-Conference.

You can register for ITEXPO or MSP World or Cloud Comm Summit for $99 until 12/31/11. You can register for 4GWE here.

4G is in Trouble

December 20, 2011

AT&T had to give up the acquisition of T-Mobile.

LightSquared is almost out of money, says Reuters

Clearwire needs money - not only to build out the two 4G networks it has promised to Sprint (WIMAX and LTE), but to continue operating.

VZW has been quietly buying up all the AWS and other spectrum it can get, which - if it gets through the DOJ and the FCC - would be devastating to everyone but VZW. If the cablecos actually start bundling VZW with their triple-play, as Forbes is betting, Clearwire - and subsequently Sprint - could be in trouble. 

The top 4 cablecos account for most of the consumer broadband and a huge swash of the US. Partnering with VZW - which seems so weird to me - means that

Sprint has MVNO deals with Cbeyond, TelePacific and XO.

Sprint Deals With Clearwire

December 5, 2011

The best details of the Sprint-Clearwire deal is at Marketwatch, but Tammy Wolf at TMC did a good job, too. Clearwire gets "up to $1.6 billion over the next four years in payments for WiMAX services, possible pre-payments for LTE services and potential equity investments" from Sprint. "Sprint will pay Clearwire a total of $926 million, approximately two-thirds of which will be paid in 2012, for unlimited 4G WiMAX retail services during 2012 and 2013, subject to certain conditions." So Clearwire is stuck with WiMAX until like 2015 while also building an LTE network. The speculation begins: is $1.6B enough for Clearwire? Who will buy the bundle (Sprint-Clearwire)? The Senate wants to know more about Lightsquared.

It's Monday So Lots Happened

October 17, 2011

Polycom bought Vivu, a video collaboration company, to help Polycom push it's Presence gear. Video, video, video. Yet I never have video calls or video call requests. To me, I wish you would work on the phone part.

360, OpenRange and Hosting.com

October 11, 2011

It looks like Zayo Group is going to buy 360 Networks. Back in May, Zayo and 360 entered into a long-term dark fiber deal that must have set off talks of an acquisition. (It explains why 360 was too busy to keynote this week.) Zayo, backed by M/C Ventures,  reported sales of $77.8 million and a profit of $11 million in 4Q11.  Instead of being acquired, Zayo is grabbing its 17th sale.

Hosting.com acquired Neospire, a Dallas based mission critical, managed hosting provider. It adds higher margin services to its portfolio.

OpenRange went bankrupt, Gary Kim reports.

How Do You Make it Rain in the Cloud?

October 10, 2011

Here at Microcorp's One-on-One event, I moderated a panel this morning about various cloud services with Level3 (CDN), Cbeyond (Virtual Servers), Intercall (Microsoft 365/Linc), EarthLink (Security), and PAETEC (Visual Messaging). It's an eclectic mix, but that should tell you that there are many ways to leverage this thing called CLOUD to make money.

The Cloud is really a value for IT services. It's about leveraging the technology and the technical skill set of another company in order to let the business focus on their own finctionality, instead of the tech that might help the business operate.

The move to the Cloud by carriers is due to the lack of margin growth in the primary business of access. It's moving up the OSI stack from Layer 1 (wireless, copper, fiber) to Layer 3 (Internet) to Layer 7 (Apps).

VZW and the Open Spectrum

June 7, 2011

In the 700 MHz FCC spectrum auction 73, Google 's involvement insured that the spectrum would be Open Access. ATT ducked out of that auction to buy 700 MHz spectrum from Aloha Networks instead. VZW won $9B worth of Googlized spectrum. That is, that the spectrum was supposed to be used for open access.

More Spectrum, More Spectrum

March 22, 2011

At CTIA today for the CEO Panel, AllThingsD quipped, "A lot of carbon dioxide being expended at CTIA talking about how spectrum is the industry’s oxygen." Just so you know, they HAVE spectrum. They horde spectrum. What they don't do is deploy it until they feel like it.

CTIA wants another auction. The FCC's "Genachowski touts benefits of voluntary incentive auction where broadcasters and others get a piece of the revenue generated by auctioning off their spectrum."  Have they all forgotten that the radio spectrum is a public asset? That it isn't owned but leased out for use for very specific reasons, like a public radio station, a TV station or cellular data?

More regulations have to come with a $30B auction of the last of the spectrum.  More good would come from making some of it unlicensed or even quasi-licensed like 3650 MHz.

You look at the spectrum out there right now - like T-Mobile's AWS, VZW's 700 MHz, Aloha Networks' 700 MHz that Ma Bell bought, Qualcomm's 700 MHz that Ma Bell wants, Clearwire's 2.5 GHz, and LightSquared owns 70 MHz of spectrum in the 1.x GHz range.
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