First Coffee

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Primal Scream’s 1992 album Screamadelica:

Kuwaiti mobile operator Wataniya Telecom and Nokia have signed a $125 million contract for Nokia to provide Wataniya with a network to support the carrier’s high speed packet access network.

Wataniya, the second-largest mobile operator in Kuwait, in a statement said Nokia would deliver state-of-the-art radio and core networks technology for “beyond 3G” mobile technologies. CEO Harri Koponen said the deal gives Wataniya “a platform to provide the most advanced, capable and reliable network services in the region.”

First Coffee^SM isn’t up to scratch on the validity of that claim, but Wataniya is getting advanced mobile services such as Push to Talk, video calls and video sharing for its subscribers in Kuwait. Nokia will also modernize Wataniya’s GSM network in order to create an EDGE layer that will support advanced services even outside 3G coverage.

Nokia will support High Speed Packet Access technology, which will give Wataniya the ability to offer mobile broadband Internet access at up to two megabits per second in the first phase.

The agreement was signed yesterday in the presence of Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen during his state visit to Kuwait.
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InnoMedia, a privately-held supplier of Internet and broadband access IP telephony today unveiled the “new generation of entry-level videophones with 3G interoperability and VoIP International call capability,” according to company officials.

The MTA 5410S videophones, according to reports, feature a stylish yet classical design, in a black and grey color combination, as well as a simple to use icon-based graphical user interface.

First Coffee^SM favors most anything that is stylish, classical and simple to use, but is grateful videophones have not caught on in a big way – what if the person on the other end of the call could see your facial expressions and hand signals while you’re talking? First Coffee^SM cringes to think.

The MTA 5410S will be marketed to “value-conscious consumers,” according to company officials: “The MTA 5410S is designed with a classical touch and ease of use that will appeal to the general public, especially with a competitive pricing that will enable carriers to put a videophone in every household,” says Alex Chua, Senior Director, Product Management, InnoMedia Pte Ltd.

The MTA 5410S is compatible with 3G networks and mobile videophones. Calls can be made between fixed line videophones and 3G mobile videophones.
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Catching up on the weekend news, yesterday Bloomberg reported that Verizon and SBC were rebuffed in their efforts to get a Texas law enacted that would have made it easier for the telephone companies to sell television services in the Lone Star State.

As it stands now Verizon and SBC need to go from town to town to get permission to do so, instead of being able to secure permission statewide in Austin. And folks, Texas is a pickin’ big place.

Verizon and SBC, the two-biggest U.S. phone carriers, realize this makes it a whole lot more difficult for them to compete with cable TV providers such as Comcast. They’re working on state legislatures and Congress to try to get more favorable laws passed.

“Competition for video services will occur much slower without a statewide video franchise,” Steve Banta, president of the Southwest region for Verizon was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “We regret Texas lawmakers did not have enough time to reach a compromise.”

Last Monday Texas’s House of Representatives did approve a bill allowing any cable or video provider to get statewide permission to sell TV services, instead of having to go town by town, but the Senate did not act on the bill before the biannual session closed.

Verizon Chief Executive Officer Ivan Seidenberg and SBC Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson have been grousing about the need to get approval from local governments. Seidenberg calls it the “biggest barrier” to Verizon offering television, and Stephenson has said his company’s video effort would “hit a brick wall,” Bloomberg reports, if SBC is forced to seek franchises in each target city.
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Soffront Software Inc., a provider of enterprise and hosted CRM for the mid-market, is announcing that integration is available between Soffront CRM and the Perforce software configuration management system.

Perforce tracks and manages changes to source code and digital assets for software development environments. Change request and status information entered into the Soffront system is linked with Perforce data and can be easily accessed from one central repository by support agents, developers, and QA engineers.

The integration provides complete traceability between defects and source code changes in either system.

Manu Das, president and founder of Soffront says the integration will increase developers’ productivity “by allowing them to easily track and verify the completed work associated with each defect,” according to a statement.

The bi-directional integration allows users to work in the application with which they are most comfortable. Developers can work entirely within Perforce without having to switch to the defect tracker and re-enter data. In both environments, users can see relevant data related to source changes and their relation to change requests entered in the Soffront system.
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Beth Carney has an interesting article in the online Business Week about American businessman Malcolm Glazer buying 76 percent of the stock of Manchester United and taking it private. Glazer, who owns the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has been subjected to intense hostility from fans of Man United, the most popular – and profitable – soccer team in England, and probably the world.

First Coffee^SM wonders why. When some shady Russian zillionaire bought the British team Chelsea there wasn’t the vitriolic hatred now splashed across the British press – Glazer, an almost reclusive man whose sons are the front men for his business interests, has been burned in effigy in England.

Man United fans say oh, they don’t want it to be like American football – cheerleaders, fans waving sponge hands, as if anybody’s proposing such nonsense. You’d think Glazer, who has not announced a single change to anything, was using the American flag as the new symbol of United with Uncle Sam as the mascot. If there was an outcry when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea about how he was going to Russianize the team, introduce Cossack dancers and sell vodka instead of beer First Coffee^SM missed it.

The anti-Glazer fans are also complaining about the debt he’s loading on the team, as if any of them could intelligently discuss the financial realities of the deal for three minutes. “He’s going to place all the debt on United, and we’re going to lose all the players. It’s going to go downhill completely,” Kirsty Gilliatt, 17, an optimistic student who has already canceled her United sponsor Vodafone service in protest, tells Carney. Gilliatt’s sources for these clairvoyant revelations was not given.

First Coffee^SM thinks that English football is England’s problem – except when English hooligans express their team pride by trashing whatever they can find. Still, Americans own a lot in Britain and there doesn’t seem to be any problem.

It certainly wouldn’t be because Glazer’s Jewish.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content placement, so after much deliberation and consultation with his 7 and 6-year old sons has concluded that the coolest animals are definitely owls, dolphins and snow leopards.