October 2005 Archives

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this Halloween morning, and the music is not “The Monster Mash,” but the scariest song First Coffee^SM has on any CD: Barbra Streisand lumbering her way through “People (Who Need $22,000 A Year To Keep Their Lawns Green While Lecturing Other People On The Need To Cut Back On Waste):”

Nokia is announcing what they’re calling “the world’s first commercial service management solution for DVB-H services, the Nokia Mobile Broadcast Solution 3.0.”

The Nokia MBS 3.0 supports the broadcasting of different types of digital content such as live TV, radio and video clips over DVB-H networks to mobile devices. The key features of the MBS 3.0 include the Electronic Service Guide, a consumer interface in the mobile device for searching available services, setting alerts for upcoming programs and for the viewing selection.

The MBS 3.0 is based on open standards such as DVB-H. It fully implements the Open Air Interface 1.0 implementation guidelines, which Nokia published in August 2005. The Open Air Interface specifies how mobile TV devices connect with the DVB-H network and the servers of the overall mobile TV service infrastructure. The OAI specification was published to enable multivendor interoperability in the mobile TV industry.
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Applied Wave Research, Inc., a vendor of high-frequency electronic design automation tools, has announced that its Visual System Simulator software now provides a WiMAX broadband fixed-wireless option for the design of WiMAX-certified broadband wireless access products.

It meets the IEEE standard 802.16-2004 Wireless MAN-OFDM PHY specifications, and includes all the bit level functions, framing, randomization, RS-CC coding, interleaving, modulation, pilot, channelization, and bandwidth options for uplink and downlink operations.

WiMAX capability and interoperability in BWA communications products lets network operators deliver broadband data, voice, and video services to both residential and business customers. The standard, which delivers point-to-multipoint connectivity, is backed by over 220 communications equipment companies.
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PMC-Sierra, Inc., a vendor of broadband communications and storage semiconductors, has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Silver Lake Partners to acquire the storage semiconductor business of Agilent Technologies for approximately $425 million in cash.

The storage semiconductor business is part of Agilent’s Semiconductor Products Group, which KKR and Silver Lake Partners are in the process of acquiring.

The acquisition of this business strengthens PMC-Sierra’s position in the storage semiconductor market. The storage semiconductor business of Agilent’s Semiconductor Products Group (SPG) is a long-term technology leader in Fibre Channel protocol controllers with its Tachyon product line and is developing next-generation multi-protocol controllers supporting Fibre Channel and SAS/SATA/iSCSI storage systems, as well as other storage-related products. When closed, the acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive for PMC-Sierra.
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Business Objects, a provider of business intelligence products, has announced that the Juneau, Alaska Police Department has standardized on Business Objects to improve reporting and information management, gain deeper insight into emergency dispatch activities, and facilitate coordination with the court system and federal agencies.

The police use Crystal Reports for secure access to current information, as well as keeping sensitive departmental information private and secure according to HIPAA regulations.

Crystal Reports lets the department track, understand, and manage all emergency calls and ongoing cases. Administrators, officers and dispatchers use it to analyze crime and incident patterns, and provide information to the City Manager and Assembly, the court system, and federal agencies.

The Juneau Police Department can track any metric they wish – for example, they have developed a set of reports related to the encroachment of bears into residential and business districts, tracking the number and type of bear incidents and sharing that information with the Fish and Game Department and city government.

The Uniform Crime Reporting required by the federal government is done a lot quicker these days, the department reports, and improved oversight of police activities, such as assessing officers’ performance based on criteria such as time in the field, the number of calls responded to, the number of citations and warnings issued, and the disposition of incidents is easier.
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First Coffee^SM wasn’t aware that there was an anti-money laundering product sector out there, but evidently there is, as The Association of Bank Compliance Officers of the Philippines, facilitated by the Bankers Association of the Philippines, has selected LogicaCMG and NetEconomy as the preferred suppliers to develop the first national anti-money laundering system in the Philippines.
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First Coffee^SM appreciates robust, muscular approaches to financial reform as much as the next guy, and can appreciate the feelings behind Iranian hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s idea, echoing a sentiment heard presented to the latest cabinet meeting in Tehran, that “if we were permitted to hang two or three persons, the problems with the stock exchange would be solved for ever.”

Ahmadinejad was addressing a cabinet meeting held to discuss the “rapidly deteriorating situation at the Tehran Stock Exchange,” the daily Ruznet reported on Sunday, according to an unattributed news article published on Little Green Footballs.

“Ministers and experts disagreed with all the different views and proposals raised at the meeting, which came to an end without any concrete results. Tempers flew high and participants shouted at each other during the discussion, according to the daily,” the article said.

Ahmadinejad, one of the pro-Khomeini terrorists who kept dozens of Americans hostage for over a year in the 1979 raid on the American embassy in Tehran, is “frustrated with the inability of his economic advisers and experts to come up with any solution,” telling them the only way out of the current stock exchange and financial market problems was to “frighten” speculators by hanging two or three of them.

First Coffee^SM wonders how long it will be before Ahmadinejad threatens to hang his economic advisers and experts, or wipe them off the map.

The ultra-Islamist president first sent jitters through the country’s markets when he said on the eve of the presidential elections in June that “stock exchange activities are a kind of gambling and we are against them,” the article reported.

The Iranian economy has been moribund for years, unemployment is around 20 percent, so hey, might as well test the efficacy of threatened hangings. First Coffee^SM isn’t optimistic, however, and suggests the one solution that’s never failed: Ditch the central control and Soviet-style Five Year Plans in favor of free-market capitalism with protection of intellectual and personal property rights. Your economy will thrive.
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Great new book out, Peter Schweizer’s Do As I Say (Not As I Do), a study of hypocrisy. Examples include avowed pro-union filmmaker Michael Moore outsourcing his post-production film work to Canada to avoid paying American union wages, pro-union loudmouth Nanci Pelosi using non-union labor on her Napa Valley Vineyard, avowed anti-racism filmmaker Michael Moore hiring very few minorities, violently anti-military Noam Chomsky making millions off Pentagon contracts, avowed anti-stock market, anti-Iraq War loudmouth Michael Moore maintaining a large investment portfolio that includes Halliburton and profits from the Iraq War… a great read.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is as good as Bruce Springsteen ever got, “Rosalita.” Too bad he peaked so early in his career:

That’s one thing about blackberries, they’re ubiquitous, hardy, durn near indestructible suckers. Got a neighbor you hate? Wait until she’s visiting her mother in Cleveland and plant blackberry vines in her yard. Provides a lifetime of evil pleasure. Just make sure you plant them on the far side of her yard from yours.

Here’s something nifty: Identum, developer of the Private Post PRO e-mail encryption software tool for consumers, is to release a Small Business Edition through retail outlets. It will offer 5, 10, 25 and 50 user licenses. An Enterprise Edition will follow.

Karl Feilder, CEO of Identum, says Private Post lets business establish private communication channels with their “stakeholder communities,” including customers, suppliers, investors and employees.

“At the moment every e-mail you send can be easily intercepted as it travels across the Internet via public networks,” said Feilder.

(No, his name’s not a misprint: First Coffee^SM’s wife was born in the New Zealand town of Feilding. Must be a Brit thing.)

He urged companies to think about how much of their e-mail contains sensitive data. “Private Post also encrypts attachments so if you’re mailing a financial spreadsheet, for instance, you can keep it between you and the recipient,” he said.

Feilder claims Private Post Small Business Edition is “easy to deploy: it is either installed centrally or, because it is so easy to install, can be implemented by individual users.”

For the promised enterprise-wide deployments, the Private Post configuration tool lets IT departments to maintain and enforce control over individual usage of Private Post. It can be configured to meet specific requirements to conform with internal policies for management and governance of e-mail content.

Private Post could also help with data protection regulations, since governments are “encouraging” companies to implement policies that prevent fraudulent access to information held in their care, “particularly information about their customers,” said Feilder.

Identum was founded in 2002 originally as a spin out from England’s University of Bristol cryptography department. The company has spent more than two years developing Private Post. The company is privately owned by its founders, employees and investors.
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Redline Communications Inc., a standards-based broadband wireless equipment vendor, has announced its RedMAX family of WiMAX products will be deployed with Cisco Systems, Inc.’s IP products, part of the $22.2 million first phase of an IP network implementation in Saudi Arabia.

INTRACOM Middle East, an information and communications technology vendor, will incorporate RedMAX in a country-wide communications network for Integrated Telecom Company Ltd., a licensed data service provider in Saudi Arabia.

The RedMAX products will be part of a network that will bring advanced communications services to the region, including high-speed wireless voice, video and data services for residential and business users. Redline’s RedMAX base stations and access points will be installed as part of the network, enabling ITC to offer WiMAX services throughout Saudi Arabia.

In addition to WiMAX wireless broadband, the network will include IP solutions from Cisco, digital leased lines, VPN services, metro Ethernet, and international data gateway services.
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Even in Sweden and the Philippines they proliferate. Vodafone Sweden has extended its “BlackBerry from Vodafone” portfolio with the addition of three mobile phones that support BlackBerry services developed by Research In Motion. Vodafone Sweden’s new and existing business customers that use the Nokia 9500 Communicator, Nokia 9300 smart phone or Sony Ericsson P910i can now also use BlackBerry Connect.

With BlackBerry Connect, customers get BlackBerry features in conjunction with BlackBerry Internet Service or BlackBerry Enterprise Server, including push-based connectivity, wireless e-mail synchronization and attachment viewing. Additional features supported by BlackBerry Enterprise Server include wireless calendar reconciliation, remote address lookup, IT commands and policy enforcement and advanced security with Triple DES encryption.

The “BlackBerry from Vodafone” portfolio for the Swedish market also currently includes the BlackBerry 7230, BlackBerry 7100v and BlackBerry 7730 devices.

And in the Philippines Smart Communications, Inc. has announced the availability of BlackBerry Connect for new and existing users of the Nokia 9500 Communicator, Nokia 9300 smart phone and Sony Ericsson P910i in the Philippines.

The introduction of BlackBerry Connect expands SMART’s portfolio of BlackBerry products which currently includes the BlackBerry 7100g, BlackBerry 7290 and BlackBerry 6720.

With BlackBerry Connect, customers can enjoy the advantages of BlackBerry services with support for features such as push-based wireless e-mail, wireless e-mail synchronization and attachment viewing on the Nokia and Sony Ericsson devices. Wireless calendar synchronization, remote address lookup, Triple DES encryption, IT commands and policy enforcement are additional features supported with BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
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According to the excellent daily e-mail The Writer’s Almanac, it was on this day in 1919 that Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson’s veto and passed the Volstead Act, which provided for enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors in the United States.

As The Writer’s Almanac says, “ours isn’t the only nation to attempt a ban. Various forms of alcohol prohibition have been attempted since ancient times by the Aztecs, ancient China, feudal Japan, the Polynesian Islands, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Canada, and India.”

The movement to ban alcohol in this country began as a religious movement dominated by women – the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874, still active today, it claims to be the oldest continuing women’s organization in the world. Incidentally it was also one of the first organizations working to outlaw prostitution, halt domestic violence and give women the right to vote.

Whyzzat? “At the time,” Writer’s Almanac explains, “it was still difficult for women to make a living on their own, and many women had seen their lives ruined when their husbands squandered the family income on booze.”

And you ever wonder why it took so long for women to get the right to vote? It was the liquor industry that put up such a long fight against women’s suffrage, “because they were terrified that women voters would usher in restrictions on the sale of alcohol.”

But Prohibition was a huge failure, right? Nobody stopped drinking and the only result was to benefit organized crime? Maybe in the big cities, but “in rural America, prohibition was quite effective. Both cirrhosis death rates and admissions to state mental hospitals for alcoholism fell by more than fifty percent. Arrests for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct also went way down. And while organized crime may have gotten a boost, homicide rates were the same during the 1920s as they were in the previous two decades.”

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits’s career pivot point, Swordfishtrombones:

Alpha Retail Technology, a vendor of POS, enterprise, and merchandise management products, is introducing a new system for the tracking and management of Imaging Services. This system automates key imaging services processes including estimate generation, order conversion, order processing, and payments.

“Imaging services” means the scanning, copying, file conversion, archival, and licensing of documents. ART is calling the Alpha Retail Imaging Services Management System “the first software package available that manages all Imaging Services licensing, resources, and activities.”

ISMS uses cost tables to provide estimates and quotes for necessary work. Services are scheduled and work orders are tracked throughout the process. User flags can be set so that alerts and reports are automatically generated by the system for items that have predetermined deadlines. Workflows are automated to set specific reminders such as payments due on orders or deadlines for the receipt of licensing permissions.

ART is also banking on the increase in privacy and regulatory issues, since the need for software systems to track intellectual property goes up as well. For copyrighted materials, Imaging Services facilities must obtain the appropriate signed licenses (single use, commercial, distributed, what have you) and process payments. Customer order detail, scheduling, and costs are tracked by the ISMS software system. Rules can be set to prevent orders from being completed until the necessary approvals and permits have been obtained.
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SigmaTel, Inc., a vendor of mixed-signal multimedia semiconductors, has announced the establishment of SigmaTel Japan. The new office joins SigmaTel’s growing global infrastructure and will support the company’s customer-base in the Japanese market and across the Asia-Pacific region, letting the company provide faster technical and sales support directly to its customers in the region.

Ron Edgerton, SigmaTel’s president and CEO called the Asia Pacific region “strategic for SigmaTel,” saying “building out an infrastructure in Japan to support the growing customer-base is critical for the company’s continued success.”

It’s particularly important for the company’s integrated component products business unit as well its portable multimedia products for MP3 players and digital multimedia devices. SigmaTel has approximately 15 customers located in Japan, including Sony, SHARP, Panasonic, Toshiba, and Fujitsu.
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Verizon Wireless is reporting that 23 of its 42 retail stores in South Florida have reopened for business in the wake of Hurricane Wilma, and are providing free local and long-distance calls, battery charging and technical support to those in need of these services. Customers can view a list of open stores here. (See the end of the column for the link if you’re reading off the blog site.)
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You’d think they would have done this before, but the World Wide Web Consortium is announcing the launch of its Indian office on 10 November 2005.

Based at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing in Noida, India, it is the first W3C Office launched since the introduction of W3C’s new fee structure for organizations in developing countries.

The opening ceremony coincides with the International Conference & Workshop on Web Technologies on 10-11 November 2005 at the Hotel Taj Palace in New Delhi. Among those attending the opening ceremony are Dr. Steve Bratt, COO of W3C.
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The U.S. Air Force is sloshing out your tax dollars again, and this time Click Commerce, Inc. got splashed. They’re announcing that as part of the deal Oracle got with the USAF a few days ago, a firm-fixed price contract for commercial software, maintenance, professional services and education training for the USAF’s Expeditionary Combat Support System program, Click Commerce, Inc., through its Click Commerce SPO subsidiary, is a part of the Oracle bid team for this contract.

Over several years, beginning in 2006, Click Commerce expects to realize several million dollars of license revenues, and a similar amount of maintenance and professional services revenues, related to the USAF contract. Oracle and Click Commerce are currently completing the contract process and related contractual arrangements.
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U.S.-based CLECs are expected to increase their deployment of multiservice access platforms to build out their broadband access networks in coming months, as FCC rule changes regarding unbundled network elements go into effect, according to a new report issued today by Heavy Reading, Light Reading Inc.’s market research division.

Caveat: First Coffee^SM has found once or twice that Light Reading’s enthusiasm for its reporting has gotten ahead of the actual facts of the matter. Nothing egregious, but read with a slightly colder eye.

“MSAPs: A Heavy Reading Competitive Analysis” presents what Heavy Reading’s claiming is “the most detailed, comprehensive competitive analysis undertaken to date of MSAPs,” which are emerging as an important class of access equipment enabling the delivery of broadband services to business and residential customers.

In key product categories, it provides granular information on aspects of functionality and performance of each vendor’s offering, in matrix format. It then uses a weighted system to provide a high-level view of which MSAPs represent the best overall choice for different applications.

The 87-page report delivers a concise analysis of the emerging worldwide market for MSAPs and analyzes 44 different MSAP products from 21 major manufacturers, including Alcatel, Ericsson, Lucent Technologies, Nokia, Siemens and UTStarcom.

Products are compared on such criteria as equipment size and specifications, support for Ethernet connectivity, quality of service features, and support for legacy services.
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Yeah it’s a self-serving thing for a tech vendor to do, kinda cheesy, but in a charming and fun way, so it gets a little ink here: eSpeed, Inc., a developer of electronic marketplaces and trading technology for the global capital markets, has announced that it launched its first annual worldwide Texas Hold ‘Em charity poker tournament in Chicago as part of a – First Coffee^SM’s quoting, mind you – “philanthropic initiative to give back to one of the many communities in which it does business.”

ESpeed hosted its first Texas Hold ‘Em charity poker tournament for 150 of its futures and government bond trading customers located throughout the Chicago fixed-income trading community with the prize being the right to donate $25,000 to the charity of the winner’s choice. The winner that time was the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Illinois Chapter, which received the donation because it was the charity of choice selected by the traders of Rosenthal Collins Group.

All participants were given a bank of “charity chips” to begin the tournament.

The firm plans on hosting additional charity poker tournaments for customers located in Toronto, London, Tokyo and New York. Individual customers with the highest chip counts from each city will be invited to participate in the championship tournament, which eSpeed will host in Las Vegas, NV.

ESpeed plans on donating $100,000 to the charity of choice selected by the overall champion. Okay, it’s not exactly Mother Teresa, but it’s a lot more fun and creative way to donate to charity than most.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning – your first, First Coffee^SM’s fourth – and the music is –

“We know it’s gonna be a Frank Sinatra CD, okay, which one?”

Uh, Nice ‘n’ Easy:

FPT Telecom, a multimedia and Internet service provider in Vietnam, has completed the deployment of the first metro Ethernet and optical network in the country.

The 10 gigabits per second next-generation network, built with a total metro Ethernet, broadband and Internet Protocol/Multiprotocol Label Switching product from Cisco Systems, will provide FPT Telecom with a platform to deliver a wide variety of data, voice and video services over high-speed broadband connections.

At the core of FPT Telecom’s optical network is Cisco ONS 15454 Synchronous Digital Hierarchy Multiservice Provisioning Platform, which provides the functions of multiple network elements in a single platform. It provides legacy time-division multiplexing, metro Ethernet, storage area networking connectivity as well as wavelength services through integrated dense wavelength-division multiplexing and reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer functionalities.

At the access edge of the FPT network, by deploying Cisco’s Catalyst Ethernet switches and Broadband Remote Access Server (36D) technology, FPT now have a single platform that not only aggregates its DSL subscribers for Internet services but expands its broadband connectivity with metro Ethernet services while enabling new value-add services such as triple-play and IPTV.
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Global Crossing has been awarded a framework agreement for the supply of voice services to a consortium of 10 UK local authorities. Bracknell Forest Borough Council is the first member of the Southeast Network for Telecommunications consortium to place a four-year contract with Global Crossing.

SENT comprises councils in the southeast of England that have pooled their purchasing power for telephony services provided to more than 15,000 users.

The SENT initiative is led by Bracknell Council Borough Council. Global Crossing is providing voice services to SENT members through the Government Telecommunications Contract, a framework agreement administered by OGC.buying.solutions.

SENT is actively marketing the services provided by Global Crossing to other local authorities in the southeast region, including schools, parish and town councils, and other public sector bodies.

BFBC alone expects to reduce its current spend on telephony by 30 percent. At current usage levels, the councils collectively expect to realize well over $1.5 million in savings over the term of the agreement. As additional members join SENT, further savings will be possible through volume discounts.

The objective of SENT is to rationalize the procurement of telephony and to meet government “value for money” criteria when awarding supplier contracts. The contract with Global Crossing was awarded following a mini- competition between GTC pre-qualified suppliers.

As part of the impetus for the public sector to extract maximum value, SENT commissioned an e-auction between pre-qualified suppliers for various categories of service.
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In a press release datelined “Florianopolis, Brazil,” Nokia is announcing a pair of CDMA handsets designed expressly for new growth markets.

Both the “classically styled” monoblock Nokia 1255 phone and the “expressively designed” fold-style Nokia 2355 phone are at entry-level price point, and should be available during the 1st quarter of 2006.

Low-priced, but the Nokia 1255 phone does have a two-way hands-free speakerphone, voice recorder and a calendar with an alarm clock as well as two built-in games, 20 ringtones and a selection of user-selectable screen savers. It delivers up to four hours of talk time and up to 10 days of standby time.

The Nokia 2355 has a compact, color screen, built-in FM radio and integrated flashlight and the ability to download BREW 1.2 or Java MIDP 1.0 content, such as ringtones, games and screensavers.
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In the Cool Stuff Techies Just Love (But Real People Probably Won’t Be So Crazy About) Department, we have Buffalo, a wired and wireless networking vendor, and Mediabolic, a provider of software for connected entertainment products, announcing that the LinkTheater Mini Network Media Player will begin shipping today.

This product contains Media Player software from Mediabolic and allows consumers to play music, photos, and videos over a home network.

Kuniaki Saiki, COO of Buffalo says the LinkTheater Mini is “well positioned so that consumers can have one in every room in their homes.” Basically it lets you play videos stored on PCs or other Digital Living Network Alliance compatible products.

“You just plug it in and it works!” says Daniel Putterman, president and CEO of Mediabolic. “Buffalo has successfully broken through the $100 price barrier with a product priced to get into multiple rooms in the largest number of homes.”
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The Selling Source, Inc. has announced the purchase of a Kansas-based mobile commerce company, Mobile Sciences Knowledge Group, LLC.

Derek LaFavor, Selling Source’s CEO said the acquisition means Selling Source’s technology “will reach beyond the desktop and notebook to every kind of electronic mobile device. The MSKG operation will move to Las Vegas this month.” Talk about a cultural shift there, folks.

MSKG has developed VoIP technologies, text messaging platforms and new mobile commerce technologies.

Las Vegas is home to a burgeoning technology economy some have dubbed “Silicon Desert.”
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Cool news: Electrovaya Inc., a vendor of portable power solutions (a.k.a. “batteries,”), has announced that a zero-emission electric car prototype has been launched in Norway by Miljobil Grenland AS.

The launch of this vehicle, powered by Electrovaya’s Lithium Ion SuperPolymer battery, opened the “China, Environment and Energy Conference” in Langesund, Norway, attended by delegations from China, Scandinavia, World Bank and others.

“The adoption of clean electric vehicles has been hampered by the lack of advanced battery technology. Electrovaya’s battery technology triples the range of electric cars presently available in Europe, and we believe it is the breakthrough technology necessary to introduce zero-emission vehicles into Norway, Scandinavia and China,” says the wonderfully-named Oddbjorn Solum, Managing Director of Miljobil Grenland AS.
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Boy, last year the Boston Red Sox, this year the Chicago White Sox, who wins the World Series next year? Why, the Chicago Cubs, of course.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Frank Sinatra’s A Swingin’ Affair! album. As one reviewer said, records don’t get much better than this:

China Netcom Group Corporation Limited (Hong Kong) a telecommunications company in China and the Asia-Pacific region, has announced that its shareholders have passed the resolutions to a conditional sale and purchase agreement to acquire telecommunication businesses in northern China.

Under the agreement, the company will acquire from China Netcom Group Corporation (BVI) Limited its telecommunication businesses in Heilongjiang Province, Jilin Province, Neimenggu Autonomous Region and Shanxi Province at a purchase price of RMB12.8 billion ($1.5 billion). The amount will comprise an initial consideration of RMB3 billion ($370 million) payable in cash to CNC BVI and a deferred consideration of RMB9.8 billion ($1.2 billion) payable within five years after completion of the acquisition.

Commenting on the benefits of the acquisition, Chairman of China Netcom, Mr. Zhang Chunjiang, said, “The acquisition is a major step towards our business integration. This acquisition will further expand our geographical coverage, brace us for further growth, and enable us to realize economies of scale and reach greater operational and management efficiency.”

CNC BVI is characterized by CNC Hong Kong officials as “the dominant provider of fixed-line telephone services, broadband and other internet-related services, and business and data communications services in its regions,” with an operating profit of RMB1.135 billion ($140 million). As of 30 June 2005, CNC BVI had a total of approximately 28.86 million fixed-line subscribers and approximately 2.78 million broadband subscribers, representing approximately 90.2% market share of fixed-line telephone services and approximately 90.7% market share of broadband services in its service regions.
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Chalk one up for common sense in at least 15% of the population: Research and Markets’ latest report, The Pet Market: Market Assessment 2005 finds that 15% of all pet owners say that they think pet insurance is too expensive and/or a waste of time.

Pet insurance. Does it ever strike you that some people have too much disposable income?

Intriguingly the research put forward in the report showed that Southern pet owners, where one would expect a more common-sense approach to the whole issue, are “considerably more likely” than those in the North or the Midlands to take their pet to the vet – understandable – but, incomprehensibly, “twice as likely to have pet insurance for their dog or cat.”

Only a very small proportion of pet owners whose pets are not already insured, the report finds, say that they are considering taking out pet insurance in the future – indicating that the pet insurance market may be reaching a critical mass, with most of those likely to purchase it already having done so. Also “slightly worrying for the pet insurance industry,” according to the report, is the fact that 15% of all pet owners say that they think pet insurance is too expensive and/or a waste of time.

Actually the fact that a pet insurance industry exists in the first place is slightly worrying.
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End2End, a European provider of outsourced products for mobile data, has announced the expansion of mobile messaging capability of MSN Messenger to Scandinavia.

The expansion is part of the rollout of MSN Messenger 7.5, which incorporates mobile messaging in the PC client as part of the convergence of PC based internet and mobile.

The latest release of MSN Messenger, including mobile messaging capability, has been available to MSN users in many markets around the world including Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom since May 2005.

Following the announced expansion, this service will also be available for MSN Messenger users in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
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Yankee Group has announced the results of its 2005 European Connected Consumer Survey, which reveals European broadband consumer trends, summarizes the state of the market and gauges future market trends.

Survey respondents are broadband households spread evenly (20% each) across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Key findings include that 21% of broadband users have churned from their BSP in the last 12 months, compared with 17% in 2004.

Also nearly 70% of multi-PC homes now own some kind of home networking product, more than half of all broadband users are interested in next-generation TV services.

“BSPs need to explore ways to beat price-based competition,” said Jonathan Doran, Yankee Group, senior analyst, Broadband & Media Europe. “BSPs can avoid this battle by paying close attention to consumer desires including value-added services, enhanced benefits and new features.”
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Walk up to a friend in the office and say “Hey, betcha five bucks you can’t guess, within 10 million, how many mobile phones are going to be shipped this year.” They’ll guess 200 or 250 million, you take a sip of coffee and say “800 million” and pocket a five-spot.

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global mobile phone shipments grew 25 percent year-over-year, to reach a record 209 million units during Q3 2005. In contrast, worldwide industry Average Selling Price fell 11 percent annually during the quarter.

Motorola reached its highest share position since 1999, while Sony Ericsson achieved its best performance since 2001.

Neil Mawston, Associate Director of the Wireless Device Strategies service at Strategy Analytics, said, "A record 209 million mobile phones were shipped worldwide in Q3 2005. Following 566 million units during the first 9 months of the year, we expect the full-year total to surpass the 800 million level for the first time ever.”

Mawston added that Q4 will be “yet another record quarter,” and the cell phone market is on track for $120 billion in total annual wholesale revenues by the end of this year.

Chris Ambrosio, Director of the Strategy Analytics Wireless Device Strategies service, added, "In stark contrast to the 25 per cent upward growth in shipment volumes, global wholesale handset ASPs declined 11 percent year-over-year, to reach $146 during the third quarter of 2005.”

Ambrosio said “intense pricing and profit pressures within the mobile phone industry” are going to cause consolidation-pressure to reach critical mass among smaller vendors, “such as Ningbo Bird and Panasonic,” who will, in his estimation, “struggle to maintain increasingly expensive development efforts in either low-cost phones or feature-rich 3G handsets through the next several years.”

Other findings from Strategy Analytics' Q3 2005 Global Handset Market Share Update include that Motorola achieved a 19 percent global market share during Q3 2005, representing its highest position since 1999, and that Sony Ericsson rose to almost 7 percent market share during Q3 2005, achieving its highest rating since their merger was announced in 2001.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.com

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Mahalia Jackson’s 1991 Gospels, Spirituals and Hymns boxed set. The only time First Coffee^SM has ever agreed with anything noted shakedown artist Jesse Jackson’s uttered is when he said that a voice like hers comes along not once in a lifetime, but once in a millennium:

As a Washington Redskins fan, First Coffee^SM is in a particularly good mood this morning. Our thoughts and prayers of sympathy to all you San Francisco 49ers fans out there, that’s as poorly as First Coffee^SM has ever seen a supposedly professional football team play – and First Coffee^SM watched Super Bowl XX.
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Aruba Networks is announcing new access points and a software update to its ArubaOS Mobility Software, designed to enable the deployment of the company’s newly announced Mobile Edge architecture.

In an unrelated announcement Aruba says it has closed a series D round of funding, securing an additional $25 million in equity financing. The latest round brings the total equity investment in the company to $84 million.

The new round of financing was led by Artis Capital Management, LLC, with additional participation from all existing equity investors, including Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Trinity Ventures, and WK Technology Fund.

The Mobile Edge architecture connects mobile workers to enterprise VoIP and data networks from any location. The newly announced APs extend the enterprise WLAN to remote locations, creating secure corporate hotspots that follow the user.
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ECI Telecom is announcing that Intelsat, a provider of satellite communications services, has chosen ECI’s XDM Multi-Service Transport Platform for its optical network.

Intelsat has used ECI’s T::DAX bandwidth management platform for bandwidth aggregation for all of its GlobalConnex managed services. GlobalConnex is a portfolio of end-to-end services designed to support trunking, broadband and media communications requirements by bundling space segment with Intelsat’s global teleports, points of presence and ground network infrastructure.

As part of its optical network build out the XDM optical network deployment in the Greater Washington D.C. area will be used as the backbone infrastructure to deliver services to customers. The implementation will feature an XDM-based network and ECI’s LightSoft network management system, which will enable Intelsat to view and remotely manage multiple technology layers and services within the network.

So Redskin fans in the D.C. area can do things like call each other to see where the victory party is, and 49er fans can do things like call Dial-A-Prayer.
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A report into the third-party logistics industry released Sunday highlights that 3PL providers need to “reinvent” themselves to offer more strategic and standardized products to users.

The findings come from the 10th Annual Third-Party Logistics Study, published today by Capgemini and the Georgia Institute of Technology, in “collaboration with” SAP and DHL, two firms with significant business interests in the subject of supply chain logistics.

The study was unveiled in San Diego at the 2005 Annual Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Conference, and will be presented in London at the Eye for Transport Conference later this week. It attempts to provide an assessment of the use of 3PLs across several key geographies and major industry segments, with an eye to the future of the industry.

For the first time in the 10-year history of the survey, price has overtaken value-added services to become the most important attribute in selecting a 3PL provider, reflecting, say the study’s authors, “the emphasis on the pressure of logistics cost reduction in the supply chain.” At the same time that 3PL users closely examine cost, they also are demanding more strategic offerings.

The report stresses the importance of the use of technology in the 3PL supply chain process to balance cost concerns and strategic needs. 90% of respondents agreed that IT capability is “a necessary element” of overall 3PL provider expertise, whereas only 38% are “satisfied” with their providers’ capabilities.

Survey respondents identified the top three future requirements of IT-based services as being Radio Frequency Identification, Internet-based transportation/logistics markets, and supplier management systems.

The study surveyed 1,091 logistics and supply chain executives. While about half of responses (516) came from North America, almost one-third (339) came from Western Europe, and approximately one- tenth (144) came from Latin America. Responses also were received from Asia-Pacific (53), South Africa (31), and the Middle East (8).

More than two-thirds of overall respondents came from the manufacturing sector, with significant responses from the automotive, chemical, consumer products, food and beverage, high tech/electronics and life sciences (pharmaceutical) industries.

The survey responses, according to the study’s authors, confirmed that the proficiency of a 3PL provider’s core services was considered more important than the provider’s ability to deliver value-added services during the selection of a provider: “This shift from frills to core services is a major change, likely driven by recent global consolidation that may have given the perception of weakened core services.”

“3PL providers cannot be all things to all people; they need to clearly define their customer satisfaction strategy,” says C. John Langley Jr., Ph.D., Professor of Supply Chain Management and 3PL study leader at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Capgemini is a provider of consulting, technology, and outsourcing services to clients, and reported 2004 global revenues of 6.3 billion euros ($7.5 billion). Dr. C. John Langley Jr. is The Logistics Institute Professor of Supply Chain Management and a member of the faculty of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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A tip of the coffee pot to Wayne Nelson and Bill Woodruff, recently appointed sales directors at Formula Telecom Solutions, Ltd., a developer and global provider of billing and CRM products for the telecom industry and a member of the Formula Group. The new hires are part of what Israel-based Formula characterizes as an “expansion of its North American operations.”
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LogicaCMG is announcing a contract with Batelco, a telecommunications provider in the Middle East, to upgrade its existing LogicaCMG mobile messaging platform to an IP-based Next Generation Messaging product.

Batelco’s upgrade to a Next Generation Short Messaging Service Center will, according to company executives, allow it to “expand its mobile messaging capacity and reduce time-to-market” for new services that are to be announced at a later stage.

The company wants to upgrade customer service, improving delivery of messages during peak traffic times.
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Judith Miller is but the tip of the iceberg as The New York Times, the newspaper of Walter Duranty, Jayson Blair, Paul Krugman and Howell Raines (and those are just the ones who’ve been caught) bleeds yet more of whatever credibility it has left. Those of you reading this off the blog page will want to hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ to get the links on those names for some quick, colorful reading.

The search for a new national paper of record is on. First Coffee^SM nominates The Wall Street Journal.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits’s raggedly majestic Mule Variations:

In this week’s Terrible Horrible Awful Weather Disaster Which Is Going To Cause A Lot of Damage And Trouble As Terrible Horrible Awful Weather Disasters Have Done Since God Created Water But Which The MSM And Other Assorted Moonbats Are Going To Blame On President Bush (Instead Of Completely Incompetent Blithering-Blathering Idiots Like Ray Nagin), Hurricane Wilma is going to see what damage it can do to southwest Florida.

If there’s anywhere in America which should know what to do when a hurricane hits it’s Florida, just as if there was one unorganized, incapable, corrupt, fat, lazy indolent city incapable of taking responsibility for its own safety in the face of a disaster it was New Orleans; as First Coffee^SM explained to friends here on the Mediterranean coast there was no worse, more incompetently administered city in the United States for a hurricane to hit than New Orleans.

Florida, however, by now should be as adept at handling hurricanes as Disney World is of handling kids who throw up corn dogs on the rides. Wireless providers have learned a thing or two from Hurricane Charley, as well as Katrina and Rita. Verizon Wireless is already “mobilizing efforts throughout the entire southern peninsula to ensure reliable wireless phone coverage to residents and emergency agencies across the state before, during and after the storm.”

One thing they’re doing is arranging fuel delivery to the company’s network switching facilities in Southwest Florida and other key areas, and to generators at permanent cell sites to keep the network operating at full strength even if power is lost for an extended period of time.

Nearly 80 percent of the individual transmission sites operated by Verizon Wireless have their own on-site generators. This capability is critical when power goes out and if roads are impassable.

They’re also positioning mobile generators, with ready access to roof-top cell sites along the state’s Southwestern and Eastern coasts. In Florida, for some reason known only to God and Carl Hiaasen permanent generators are not allowed on roof-top cell sites.

Verizon Wireless also has dozens of Cells on Wheels (love that acronym) on standby statewide, including many at the company’s Fort Lauderdale and Jupiter network switching facilities. These self-powered mobile cell sites are to be deployed immediately in any hard-hit areas that need extra network capacity.

Engineers have spent a lot of time fine-tuning the company’s digital network across the state, maximizing call capacity where needed in threatened areas before the storm hits. During the most recent storm seasons, call traffic spiked dramatically on the day before a hurricane’s landfall, and continued to be heavy on the Verizon Wireless network as other communications networks failed.

Ray Nagin’s been issued a court injunction to stay at least 300 miles away.

Teams of “test men” from across the state are getting ready to roll in specially-equipped vehicles to test the network in the wake of Wilma anywhere the storm might pass.

Mike Lanman, Florida region president of Verizon Wireless confirms that much of what they’re doing is a response to problems encountered in recent hurricanes. “We learned so much during Charley and the subsequent storms about how to prepare and respond successfully,” he says.

Verizon urges Floridians to please, please, pretty please send brief text messages rather than voice calls, to “conserve battery power and free-up wireless networks for emergency agencies and operations.” Text messages also queue up if the wireless system is unavailable, and will be delivered as soon as possible. In other words, there’s no need to re-send.

Good luck, Florida. It’ll be tough, but at least you don’t have Ray Nagin in charge of anything, so you’ve got an advantage over New Orleans right there.
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Cisco Systems officially broke ground today on a one-million square foot campus in Bangalore that will support staff from Cisco’s Research and Development, IT, Sales and Customer Support teams in India. The company will spend approximately $50 million to build the new integrated campus, which is expected to be completed by June 2007 and accommodate 3,000 staff.

Cisco President and CEO John Chambers is currently on a swing through India, talking up the company’s $1.1 billion commitment over the next few years to the country. He officially launched the new facility at a groundbreaking ceremony conducted at the site of the new campus on the Outer Ring Road in Sarjapur.

Cisco first established R&D facilities in India in 1998. It is the largest development center for the company outside of the United States.
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Here’s Toshiba’s Official Statement on Warner Bros., keen to avoid another Betamax dud, throwing its lot in with the Sony-backed Blu-ray Disc Association instead of Toshiba’s rival technology HD DVD:

“Toshiba and Warner Bros. continue to collaborate closely toward the commercial launch of HD DVD. We understand Warner Bros. continues to strongly support HD DVD, due to its outstanding features, cost structures, and market readiness.

“We recognize Warner Bros.’s participation in the Blu-ray Disc Association represents the studio’s understandable commitment to listen to a broad array of opinions and to continue to make technical evaluations of each format, and we are more than confident this will not affect timely introduction of HD DVD content to the market.

“Toshiba strongly believes the HD DVD format will eventually win broad support as the more superior format, and in cooperation with our partners, we are committed to bringing HD DVD products first to market early next year in the U.S.”

How polite. Forrester thinks Blu-ray will win out of the incompatible technologies, since evidently they can’t agree on a compatible version, the scoundrels. Warner Bros. had originally said they’d go with HD DVD, and they’ll release some titles in that format. HD DVD will be to market sooner than Blu-ray – by March, according to best industry guesses.

Support from the six major Hollywood movie studios is the deciding factor in which one will become the standard, and right now Paramount and Warner have said they’ll release movies in both formats. Naturally the studios want to standardize on one format, and it looks like the current momentum’s with Blu-ray, despite HD DVD’s earlier-to-market position: Companies committed to HD DVD, such as Warner Bros., have started offering both formats, companies committed to Blu-ray have not included HD DVD.

Looks like HD DVD is sharpening the seppuku knives.
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In good news, Cellnet Technology, Inc. has begun a Wi-Fi initiative for the City of Madison, Wisconsin. Cellnet will build and manage a Wi-Fi network in Madison.

First Coffee^SM is a supporter of municipal wi-fi, and is heartened that starting this fall, Cellnet will begin deployment of phase one of a Wi-Fi network to support users in the downtown region of the City of Madison. The network will be installed at no cost to the city, and Cellnet has secured its initial revenue from service agreements with Internet Service Providers.

Cellnet is partnering with WFI, a network engineering and technical services provider to design and deploy the network that Cellnet will own and operate. The network is being “designed and built with multiple applications and service providers in mind,” according to Louis Kek, Cellnet CIO.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Sticky Fingers, the Rolling Stones’ second-greatest album. We’ll have no argument about that objective fact:

Guess you’ve heard by now, but in case you haven’t Motorola, Inc. has filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois against Mike Zafirovski (“Zafirovsky” in Reuters reporting) who was recently appointed as president and chief executive officer of Nortel effective November 15, 2005.

The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that Zafirovski (Nortel’s spelling), who resigned earlier this year as Motorola’s president and chief operating officer, has breached various agreements with Motorola by accepting a position with Nortel, since it will “inevitably” result in the use or disclosure of Motorola’s trade secrets.

The lawsuit seeks, among other relief, an injunction to enjoin Zafirovski from rendering services to Nortel for two years, from soliciting or hiring Motorola employees, and from using or disclosing Motorola’s confidential information.

The lawsuit does not name Nortel as a defendant, but the injunctive relief requested is against Zafirovski and his employers, among others.

Basically Motorola’s accusing Zafirovski of violating noncompete agreements he signed before starting work at Motorola. Zafirovski left Motorola at the beginning of the year after being passed over for promotion to the top job there, according to Reuters reports.

Zafirovski was given millions of dollars in cash, stock and stock options to agree not to work for a Motorola competitor for two years after leaving the company, the lawsuit says, putting the total compensation for spending the next two years trout fishing and doing crossword puzzles at $30 million.

First Coffee^SM hereby wishes it to be known that he will promise in iron-clad writing involving children and bodily parts not to work for a Motorola competitor for the next two – heck, make it ten – years in exchange for similar terms.
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In other lawyer-enrichment news Synopsys Inc.’s recent claims of patent infringement against Magma Design Automation not only “rely on patents that are invalid,” but also constitute a “violation of United States antitrust law,” Magma has asserted in a court filing.

Magma, a provider of semiconductor design software, in reply to Synopsys’ Sept. 26 lawsuit, filed an answer to complaint and counterclaims disputing Synopsys’ claims on the basis that the applications Synopsys made to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office knowingly concealed relevant prior art that described the inventions claimed in the applications.

Magma’s counterclaim asserts that not only is the existence of this prior art a basis for rendering patents invalid, but that to knowingly exclude relevant prior art from an application to the U.S. PTO constitutes a fraudulent application, and that Synopsys’ Sept. 26 lawsuit against Magma was therefore an attempt to enforce a fraudulently obtained patent and constitutes a violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

David Stanley, Magma special counsel and therefore a completely unbiased source for opinions on the question, opined that “filing for patents with such flagrant and knowing disregard for relevant prior art seems at the very least an embarrassing act, but to then attempt to enforce such patents in the interest of exploiting a dominant market position is an outright violation of U.S. laws of commerce.”

In late September Magma said it considered the Synopsys lawsuits against it to be without merit and indicative of “desperate” tactics by Synopsys.

Synopsys filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court a claim of unfair competition against Magma, based on Magma’s actions in defending itself in the federal patent case between the two companies. Synopsys also filed on Monday a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware claiming that Magma infringes three patents held by Synopsys, one of which Synopsys gained in its 2004 acquisition of Monterey Design Systems.
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Attention, earthlings. It has come to First Coffee^SM’s attention that dogs are highly organized creatures from an alternate universe, and that they are not, in fact, our friends.

Disagree? Then how do you explain this news item from Albuquerque, New Mexico yesterday?

The author of a new state law that allows felony charges against owners of dangerous dogs was hospitalized over the weekend after his own dog attacked him.

Bob Schwartz, who also is Gov. Bill Richardson’s crime adviser, was hospitalized at University of New Mexico Hospital on Sunday night with bites on both his arms, said Pahl Shipley, a spokesman for the governor.

A hospital spokeswoman declined to release Schwartz’s condition, but Shipley said Schwartz is “going to be fine.”

A random attack, you say. Weird coincidence. Could’ve happened to anybody.

Right. I got your coincidence. Ask any police detective how much he trusts that the “coincidences” he encounters investigating crimes are entirely coincidental. Anyone near the scene during the carefully-planned attack would have learned the dog words for “felonize this, buddy.”

Schwartz has three dogs registered with the city: a boxer and two English bulldogs, said Denise Wilcox, who oversees Albuquerque’s animal care centers.

Schwartz was instrumental in getting a law passed during this year’s regular legislative session that would allow felony charges to be filed against owners of dogs deemed dangerous or potentially dangerous and that seriously injure or kill another animal or person.

The law was designed to make dog owners accountable, said Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort, who worked with Schwartz to pass the bill.

That this guy was attacked by his dogs is about as coincidental as Abraham Lincoln being shot by John Wilkes Booth: “Aw heck, I was just aiming at anyone, actually I thought I’d hit Major Rathbone, it’s just bad luck that the president’s head got in the way of the bullet.”

Fellow humans, the dogs have fired a warning shot across our bow. The next move is up to us.
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First Coffee^SM isn’t sure if this is a joke, but a group calling themselves Community Voice Mail, describing themselves as “a grassroots charity,” engaged in providing “phone numbers and voice mail to the homeless and hurricane victims in 37 cities and 19 states,” has a nifty gift idea.

Individuals can send holiday e-cards to friends and family for seven bucks apiece, which pays for one hurricane victim or homeless person to have voice mail for one month. Seriously. We’re reading off the press release, folks.

It could be true: A few Christmases ago everyone in First Coffee^SM’s family got a certificate from Oxfam or some other ultra-leftist outfit like that, saying that in lieu of giving us presents, one sister had, in a tax-deductible donation, purchased livestock in our names to be given to somebody else. So instead of receiving a present from this sister, First Coffee^SM had supposedly given someone in some hellhole twelve chickens, Mom had given someone else a pig, another sister had given someone in Africa four geese, etc.

The next year First Coffee^SM sent this sister a certificate saying a donation had been made in her name to the National Rifle Association to buy a cattle rancher in Wyoming a case of 30.06 shotgun shells, next year she got one for a donation in her name to the Daughters Of The Confederacy for maintaining Confederate graves in Mississippi.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Ol’ Blue Eyes’s 1960 album Nice ‘n’ Easy, towards the end of his Golden Era:

Why can’t all press releases be this much fun?

First Coffee^SM’s as much a fan of good advertising writing as anyone else – whoever wrote those Volkswagen magazine ads back in the ‘60s deserved the Pulitzer Prize more than 75% of the now-forgottens who won it – and a fan of Nokia as well, love their phones, which is why the latest news from Espoo, Finland rates first mention.

Witness their new product line, the “L’Amour Collection.” Instead of frustrated music critics writing business technology articles, as is the case with First Coffee^SM, we have frustrated fashion correspondents writing telecommunications press releases:

“Continuing to push the boundaries of mobile phone design, Nokia has introduced a collection of three trend-inspired mobile phones, the Nokia 7360, Nokia 7370 and Nokia 7380. Each model in the L’Amour Collection offers a beautiful mix of contrasts – infusing cultural and ethnic influences with luxurious touches of the unexpected. Hints of vintage and craftsmanship [sic], are fused with natural materials, colors and patterns, all carefully crafted and layered with a passion for detail.”

With a strapless white tulle bodice and lovely flowing skirt. Press releases like this are so more enjoyable than the vast swamp of sludge we slog through to Bring The News To You!^TM, keep ‘em coming, just remember we’re talking about pretty good cell phones here, guys, and not Versace handbags.

“For many consumers, the mobile phone has truly become an extension of their personal style – it is a fashion statement as well as an advanced communications device,” maintains Alastair Curtis, Vice President of Design at Nokia’s Mobile Phones division. “Every detail of these products, from the nature-inspired graphics to the velvet-lined pouches [!], has been carefully considered with the style-conscious individual in mind. We are very confident that consumers who appreciate design and attention to detail will fall in love with the L’Amour Collection.”

That’s marketing, folks. Reminds First Coffee^SM of the ad campaign for the Dodge Diplomat, advertised as a “Fiendishly Seductive” car. Drive it and watch the gals come running. Whip the ol’ Nokia 7380, with its “etched mirrored surface and discreet keyless dial” out at parties, and get ready, as it “invites glances, even stares.” (“Hey Zach, izzat gal starin’ at your cell phone? Over by the cashews there.” [Sheepishly] “Well, she is invited to…”)

Maybe it’ll happen, since “in the design and development of the L’Amour Collection, Nokia’s Design team looked to materials such as amber, ceramic, turquoise, silk and enamel for inspiration. Craft techniques, such as enameling and etching, added a creative spark to the graphics, materials, finishes and colors selected for each model in the collection.”

Or because, aesthetic critiques aside, leather covers and mirrored displays “subtly masking” the “sophisticated technology” aside, these are simply quality cell phones. The stare-inducing Nokia 7380 isn’t just “a reflection of discerning taste” but a reflection of the perfectly understandable basic human desire for food, shelter, clothing and a 2-megapixel camera and intuitive voice dialing, especially as the camera has a 4x zoom, the phone’s got enhanced voice commands and an MP3 player, so if you’ve got the estimated retail price of about six hundred bucks you can pick one up in early 2006.

The other phones probably don’t need the frou-frou either; the Nokia 7370 has, along with a “leather-inspired” faceplate [?] a 1.3-megapixel camera and 3D sound effects, an 8x zoom for the camera, 2-inch QVGA color screen (320 x 240 pixels) stereo speakers with 3D sound effects and video ring tones. In plain black this phone’d be worth the $350 price tag.

Great job on the press release, Nokia, creativity and a good read are rewarded in this life as well as the next. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
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Got another of those spam e-mails with the weird literary snippets tacked on for whatever reason. Trying to sell intimate pharmaceuticals this e-mail writes “and later than the era of Aesop, rightfully bears his name, fell down dead under his burden. Not knowing what else to do in THE PEACOCK made complaint to Juno that, while the nightingale last one day he broke his cords and halter, and galloped into his tore him to pieces”

Wow. Is this a reference to Irish playwright Sean O’Casey’s tragic comedy Juno and the Paycock, in which Joxer needs VjAGGRA  while Captain Boyle prefers the discount CjALLjS?
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Rich Tehrani forwarded over an interesting e-mail from the Consumer Voice for Communications Choice. “As the nation’s televisions switch to digital technology, Congress is getting ready to sell our public airwaves to big corporate interests,” they warn, “and in the process prevent cities and towns from setting up valuable community wireless Internet projects.”

Gracious. “Two-thirds of all U.S. households today don’t have high-speed Internet access – either because private companies won’t offer it in their area, or because it’s just too expensive,” they claim. Yet, as they correctly point out, high-speed internet is a must for economic development, education and job growth.

Hundreds of communities do, in fact, offer high-speed wireless Internet access over public networks to connect consumers, schools, libraries and businesses. But these wireless networks “use public airwaves that are in short supply,” the advocacy group says.

Their request? Tell your Congressional representatives to preserve access to our public airwaves for community internet projects!

It’s true that even though the big telecom and cable companies don’t actually provide service to all our communities, “they want to block cities and towns from installing municipal networks,” as this e-mail warns, and in an apt comparison, says “that’s like banning cities from building public libraries because there are book stores in town (or worse yet, banning public libraries even if there are no book stores in town!)”

Just because it’s not economically profitable for the big cable companies to run service to East Slingshot, Nebraska doesn’t mean East Slingshot has to do without the sort of high-speed wireless access that could economically benefit the town. If the town’s willing to spend money on such a sensible investment, as opposed to relandscaping in front of City Hall, great. More power to them, and if the big telecoms and cable guys don’t like it, they can go to East Slingshot and install something themselves.

First Coffee^SM’s usually laissez-faire when it comes to government vs. business scraps, but when Congress doesn’t let communities do what’s in their own best interests, that’s simply wrong. There is no reason anybody but a corporate PR flack would trot out for why communities can’t build their own high-speed wireless networks, and if the telecom and cable companies don’t want to let these communities improve their economic viability they certainly should get to do it themselves.
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Click here for the winner of First Coffee^SM’s Most Repulsive Creature Alive contest. No you didn’t get to vote, the contest was conceived of, entered and won all in a span of 2.8 seconds after the viewing this picture, and First Coffee^SM defies anyone to find a more worthy candidate.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is something First Coffee^SM finally got around to ordering off iTunes and burning onto disc – the Rolling Stones’ 1969 album Let It Bleed, the midpoint of their five-album 1968-1972 run, Beggar’s Banquet to Exile On Main Street, the greatest five consecutive album string any band’s ever had:

Agilent Technologies Inc. has announced that King Yuan Electronics Corp., an integrated back-end service provider in Taiwan, has purchased an Agilent 93000 Pin Scale system to add to its Agilent 93000 installed base. The system will be used for testing complex systems-on-a-chip for applications such as PCI Express, Serial ATA and HyperTransport – all commonly found in personal computers.

The 93000 Pin Scale system, according to KYEC officials, was bought for its flexibility to meet cost and performance demands, including support for up to 2,048 pins – enough for multisite test or high-pin-count devices. The Agilent 93000 scales up to 3.6 Gb/s to address the high-speed interface applications targeted for KYEC’s system.
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Sleipner S.A., a Milan-based company developing and designing software for wireless handheld devices, has announced an agreement to be acquired by Calypso Wireless, Inc., a vendor of wireless telecommunications technology.

Sleipner’s COMOB software lets smart phones and wireless PDA/Pocket PCs switch between GSM or CDMA cellular towers and WiFi access points (hot spots). Sleipner provides VoIP and IP applications for the enterprise and vertical markets.

The acquisition was made by Calypso to expedite the delivery to market of the Calypso’ ASNAP patented technology on the C1250i WiFi-GSM-GPRS VoIP smart cellular phone. Calypso’s C1250i runs on Intel PXA series application processor and a Microsoft WinCE 5.0 operating system.

With a potential market of 56 million cellular phones sold in Italy and an European market of more that 340 million subscribers and “growing rapidly,” according to Bruno Motta, Vice President of Marketing of Sleipner SA. this deal is seen as “a new starting point in our effort to promote and sell the complete Calypso-Sleipner technology and product line to cellular operators in the European market.”
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Cisco Systems, Inc. has announced advancements to its Network Admission Control framework that help protect organizations from threats such as spyware, viruses and worms attempting to gain network access through a growing number of endpoint devices.

The Cisco NAC framework now includes support for Cisco Catalyst switch and wireless products, the expansion of the NAC partner program to include a new agentless auditing category, and enhancements to NAC appliances, formerly known as the Cisco Clean Access group.
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Really, if you think about it, there’s no other consecutive five-album arc from any other rock artist that shows the maturity, experimentation and general increase in overall quality than these five from Mick & The Boys. It’s more impressive when you look at what came just before Beggar’s Banquet, the Between The Buttons album, and realize that the same band writing pop pap like “Yesterday’s Papers” and “Miss Amanda Jones” is actually capable of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Sway” and “Shine A Light.”

Once they kicked useless druggie Brian Jones out of the band, got Their Satanic Majesties’ Request out of their system and brought Mick Taylor aboard they blew everyone’s doors off until they finally crashed after their 1972 world tour, absolutely undisputed kings of the hill, exhausted and ready to retreat into strict professionalism and wealthy living instead of chasing inspiration from then on, content to break new ground in tour gross receipts and leave musical innovation to the young guys.

Never again would they be on the cutting edge, but hey, if those five albums, each one better than the last until they drop the greatest album in rock history in Exile On Main Street, aren’t good enough for you, then you simply don’t like rock music as she was meant to be.
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MetaSolv Software, Inc., a vendor of operational support system products for communications service providers, has announced Provisioning 5, their order management solution designed to automate provisioning tasks in the service fulfillment process.

Provisioning 5, formerly known as MetaSolv OMS, provides back-office provisioning management functions to operate tasks required to deliver services to customers as well as managing internal network buildouts for broadband, IP, data and mobile services. The Provisioning 5 solution framework lets multiple systems interact, including legacy and commercial applications, and is engineered to simplify how new services are designed, bundled and delivered.

Provisioning 5 uses a 100% J2EE meta-data driven architecture tuned to scale and handle the demands of tier-one carriers and provide flexibility for service processes.

This approach, currently in production with MetaSolv customers, provides back-office provisioning management between upstream customer relationship management systems and downstream inventory management and activation platforms.
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DDD Group plc, a 3D software and content vendor, has announced the introduction of the TriDef Vision+ 3D set top box, called Vision+.

Vision+ converts most popular consumer video formats to 3D as they are watched, allowing any broadcast, DVD and videocassette content to be presented in 3D on the latest 3D displays and projection systems.

The delivery of the Vision+ set top box is part of a GBP 140,000 ($245,000) development agreement with Arisawa Manufacturing Co., Ltd. announced in late 2004. The product combines the real time 3D conversion capabilities of the Vision+ with the large 30” 3D LCD displays developed by Arisawa’s optoelectronics division.

Using Arisawa’s 3D optics, the flat screen 3D televisions are capable of displaying conventional 2D pictures as well as 3D. When the viewer decides to watch in 3D, they activate the Vision+ set top box using their remote control and put on a pair of 3D glasses. The system then delivers 3D images from any viewing position in the living room with clarity and quality comparable to 3D digital cinemas.
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Running Let It Bleed a second time here. Man, there wasn’t any harder-working musician in the business than Keith Richards, was there? What quality.
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Teleglobe International Holdings Ltd., an international telecom services for Internet service providers and fixed and mobile network operators, has announced the opening of a new IP point of presence in Warsaw. The new IP PoP lets ISPs and carriers in the region connect their voice networks via VoIP and IP networks to Teleglobe’s global network for voice and data services.

The new point of presence gives local Internet service providers and carriers access to Teleglobe’s global network. This access is of critical importance, Teleglobe officials say, as Polish companies reach out to the North American market and rest of Europe.

Neighboring countries, such as Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine, also benefit from having a Teleglobe IP PoP close by. Teleglobe has already connected its IP network to many Polish companies including ATM, a provider of telecommunications services throughout Poland and Multimedia, a Polish CATV operator, broadband Internet and phone service provider in the Warsaw IP PoP.

“Opening a Teleglobe IP PoP in the region is good news for Eastern European businesses, because the company is a leading IP provider and its global network connects us to key markets,” said Janusz Nowakowski, Carrier Relationships Manager of ATM.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is still that Traffic live CD, Welcome To The Canteen. First Coffee^SM had forgotten what a good work CD it is:

Got another comment on Caiman.com’s terrible customer service, this one from “Anthony:”

I think they have their people put false positive feedback on amazon.com. I have been cheated by them I wish I had tried harder to find a local copy of Xenogears.

First Coffee^SM’s heard from a lot of people who’ve been let down by Caiman.com – either not getting what they ordered, having it arrive grossly late or not at all, and being sent rude e-mails by a company completely uninterested in providing good customer service.

Someday soon, we hope, Amazon.com is going to do the right thing by their customers in the choice of vendors they allow to sell items on their site.
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A tip of the coffee pot to Akshay Sharma, formerly Siemens’ Chief Architect Mobile Enterprise Solutions Calypso Wireless, Inc., who’s been appointed Calypso’s Chief Technology Officer. Company officials say Sharma will be tasked with spearheading implementation of Calypso’s technology on the C1250i WiFi-GSM-GPRS VoIP smart cellular phone.

“One of Mr. Sharma’s principal tasks will be to coordinate the activities of all three Calypso Research & Development centers in Miami Florida, Milan Italy and Hong Kong,” said Mike Pizzi, Executive Vice President & General Counsel of Calypso Wireless.
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It’s always nice when someone takes customer satisfaction seriously enough to spend money on it. MCI, Inc. has announced that it has enhanced its customer loyalty program through “an expanded strategic engagement” with customer experience management vendor Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

In addition to their existing twice-yearly customer relationship surveys, MCI’s customer-facing operations can now “receive immediate customer feedback on all non-technical inquiries, technical faults and provisioning activities, which provide MCI with real-time representation of operational performance,” according to company officials.

Andy MacLeod, general manager and senior vice president, MCI Europe said the company expects to get “immediate access to customer feedback,” allowing them to “monitor progress toward delivering an enhanced customer experience.”

Launched in 2004, MCI’s Customer Loyalty Program was centered around a relationship survey, designed to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback from MCI’s most important customers. In early 2005, MCI tweaked the program to gain more immediate customer feedback on issues such as how a service was delivered or how an inquiry to
MCI’s help desk was addressed.

Company officials say the feedback provided “has already led to a number of customer loyalty activities and improvement initiatives, as well as steering investments aimed at improving customer service.”
…

Palm, Inc. and Research In Motion have announced that they’re working together to bring BlackBerry Connect to the Palm Treo 650 smartphone. The companies expect the product to be available in the United States and internationally starting in early calendar 2006, according to company officials.

Through RIM’s BlackBerry Connect licensing program, Palm will enable its Treo 650 and future Palm OS-based Treo smartphones with secure, push-based wireless e-mail via BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

The new configuration, according to Palm officials, will enable push-based e-mail using BlackBerry Connect with Palm’s VersaMail e-mail client, support for Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino, wireless calendar synchronization, remote address lookup of corporate e-mail directory, convenient e-mail-attachment viewing, triple DES encryption and IT policy enforcement and commands, such as remotely disabling or wiping e-mail and PIM data from a device in the event it is lost or stolen.
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Cablevision Systems Corporation has released a statement saying Cablevision President and CEO James Dolan was “admitted to the hospital Saturday and is scheduled to undergo heart bypass surgery Monday. His physicians expect him to make a full and complete recovery.”
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CanWest Global Communications Corp. has announced today that its 70% owned New Zealand media operation, CanWest MediaWorks (NZ) Limited, reported consolidated earnings before interest, income tax, depreciation and amortization of NZ$68 million ($47.5 million) for the year ended August 31, 2005, an 11% improvement compared with pro forma combined EBITDA for the same period last year.

By the way, those of you impressed with the spectacular New Zealand landscape – and the quality of New Zealand filmmaking – in the Lord Of the Rings movies have another chance to see The Land of the Long White Cloud on the silver screen this Christmas, when Disney releases The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, its much-hyped first installment in its Narnia series.

Seen as a sort of hybrid Harry-Potter-Meets-The-Lord-Of-The-Rings-In-New-Zealand marketing vehicle, it’s a huge bet for Disney, which has reportedly sunk an upwards of $200 to $250 million in the movie. It was filmed in New Zealand’s South Island near Christchurch, probably the most beautiful chunk of real estate left in the world.

First Coffee^SM will be down around there for a couple weeks around Christmas, as Mrs. First Coffee^SM’s Kiwi family will be migrating there for a reunion. When your family lives in New Zealand, western Canada and the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, family reunions become much bigger deals.
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Gotta love Bruce Cleveland, Siebel’s feisty Senior VP and GM Products and designated salesforce.com mudslinger. In response to the hoopla surrounding salesforce.com’s App Exchange announcement, Cleveland writes in a letter “if one looks at the applications that salesforce.com currently has on its site, virtually none are any that most people have heard of. And businesses are not going to use those applications simply because they are available in a convenient location.”

As Cleveland says, anybody remember download.com? Merisel? OS/2? The one big flaw Cleveland sees in the whole App Exchange strategy, he says, is that an online platform for distributing applications isn’t a new idea, and there’s still the age-old problem of building a loyal customer base for the applications, no matter how they’re distributed.

And, “if any of these App Exchange companies are fortunate enough to grow to a point where they are large enough to survive on their own, what’s the purpose of staying there? It’s the Web after all… convenience of price, location and shipping is irrelevant.”

Riffing on Marc Benioff’s Hawaii theme, instead of App Exchange becoming “a thriving Big Island, it’s quite likely we’ll see App Exchange become Molokai, the leper’s island of application software,” Cleveland says.

Maybe not exactly a leper’s island, First Coffee^SM can’t see Marc Benioff subsidizing unwanted, useless applications just to prop up App Exchange – that probably requires a longer attention span, for one thing – but reckons App Exchange could turn into a kind of Star Search or American Idol, where you can see lots of talent you haven’t heard of, as Cleveland points out, in search of the one or two stars who’ll break out.

It might turn out like those sweaty music clubs you pay $5 covers at to see a band trying to break its way to the top. Dave Matthews used to play those kinds of clubs, now he doesn’t, but that’s where he was discovered. And once discovered, he left them behind.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited:

Passing this along, FYI: Sistema, which is probably correct when it claims to be the largest private sector consumer services company in Russia and the CIS, has announced that, according to press reports, Open Joint Stock Company ASVT has filed a lawsuit against Sistema in a Russian court for approximately 50 billion rubles, or $1.75 billion.

Whew. What got ASVT’s knickers in a twist, according to Sistema officials – you writea da press release, you spinna da story – was Sistema’s investment in Mobile TeleSystems OJSC made over ten years ago. There is also a second related lawsuit against Limited Liability Partnership VAST, “in which ASVT seeks to be named as its sole owner. Sistema and its subsidiary MGTS are named as third parties in the second lawsuit.”

Sistema and ASVT own 51% and 49%, respectively, of VAST, which owns approximately 3% of MTS. Sistema’s current majority ownership in MTS includes its beneficial ownership of 1.5% of the shares of MTS through VAST.

While Sistema has not yet received official notice of the lawsuits, according to company officials “the company believes there is no legal basis for the claims and intends to vigorously defend itself.”

If that affects your morning eTrade activity any.
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Not every day you get a story datelined Kourou, French Guiana, but that’s where PanAmSat has announced that its Galaxy 15 satellite was launched into space. Propelled by an Ariane 5 rocket, the spacecraft is a first for PanAmSat, as it carries a dual C-band and L-band payload for HDTV and video distribution to its cable programmers and government-related business.

To be located at 133 degrees west longitude, the satellite is the third of PanAmSat’s next-generation satellites from Orbital Sciences Corporation, providing coverage of all 50 U.S. states. It’ll deliver video programming for America’s television programmers, and the L-band payload will provide navigation signals to in-flight aircraft as part of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s Wide Area Augmentation System Geostationary Communications and Control Segment.
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PeerMe, Inc., a peer-to-peer voice communications technology company focused on voice enabling the Internet, has announced the PeerMe Partners Program created to accommodate Internet portals, classifieds Web sites, e-mail hosting companies and companies offering applications software to add PC based voice and instant messaging
capabilities to their services.

PeerMe has developed a peer-to-peer voice and instant messaging environment supporting PC-to-PC and PC-to-handheld voice communications and instant messaging over public Internet connections.

PeerMe’s technology, according to company officials, can be used independently by users connecting on a peer-to-peer basis or integrated into Web communities.

It’s no small market the company’s aiming for: “The worldwide voice market is a trillion dollars, and poised for continued, rapid growth,” said Tom Lasater, founder and CEO of PeerMe.

In light of “recent announcements by Google and Skype,” Lasater thinks, “more and more companies will follow the lead of these firms and investigate into the possibilities that peer-to-peer technology holds for their business model.”
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Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. has announced the development of “BB MediaRouter,” which company officials describe as a gateway platform for home network products in “the ubiquitous era.”

This router is a platform to “organically connect various home network solutions by combining info-telecom technologies with home appliances.” The Tokyo-based company will develop products and deploy them to telecom carriers, ISPs and municipalities.

With the BBMR, users can “fully enjoy new services from networked home appliances, using their existing infrastructure,” said Keizo Ikeda, President of Media-network Appliance Company at Oki Electric.
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PECO II, Inc. and Delta Group, providers of power equipment and services to the telecommunications market, have announced a definitive agreement, pursuant to which PECO II will acquire exclusive rights to certain business and inventory for Delta’s U.S. and Canadian service provider business in exchange for an equity position in PECO II that will enable Delta to become PECO II’s largest shareowner.

At closing, Delta will receive approximately 4.7 million shares of PECO II common stock and a warrant to purchase up to approximately 12.9 million shares of PECO II common stock at a $2.00 strike price that is valid for 30 months. As a result, Delta may acquire up to 45% of the common stock of PECO II.
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America West customer service representatives have “overwhelmingly” approved the establishment of the Airline Customer Service Employee Association, a joint alliance between the Teamsters labor union and the Communication Workers of America.

The alliance, approved by a 1,321 to 175 tally of Teamster members from America West, will represent more than 9,000 CSRs at the merged US Airways and America West.

“This is fantastic news,” thinks Dan Vogelgesang, an America West reservations worker based in Phoenix. “There is power in numbers, and our alliance with the CWA members at US Airways will have the power of over 9,000 members behind it.”

“By joining forces with the union representing CSRs at US Airways, we’re ensuring that they will receive strong representation in the newly merged airline,” said Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa.

The Teamsters Union represents 3,500 CSRs at America West and the CWA represents 6,000 passenger agents at US Airways. The employees work as reservations, ticket and gate agents, and also staff hospitality clubs at airports and assist handicapped passengers.

The pact calls for General President Hoffa and CWA President Larry Cohen to alternate in heading up the association, with Cohen initially serving as director for the first year and Hoffa as vice director.

The future goal of the association is to improve salaries and conditions for America West and US Airways employees. In day-to-day representation, CWA will continue to represent workers in the eastern, largely US Airways locations, and the Teamsters will represent those in the western states where America West mainly operates.
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Pixsy, a developer of multimedia search tools, has announced a partnership with Chitika, Inc., a provider of impulse merchandising services. The Chitika “eMiniMalls” will enable media search provider Pixsy to offer what company officials describe as “contextually relevant PPC shopping ads” through a CPC-based intelligent and interactive product merchandising service.

Rich Lerz, COO of Pixsy Corporation explained that when a Pixsy user types in a media search query, eMiniMalls matches that query with “the most contextually relevant product promotion.”

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

So Orhan Pamuk didn’t win the irrelevant Nobel Prize for Literature, according to “observers of the Nobel process” cited in The Guardian who say that, “given that the European Union has decided to engage talks on Turkey’s entry without condemning the Pamuk trial, some members of the Swedish Academy, which chooses the literature laureate, feel politically exposed.”

“‘If the Pamuk row is real, the academy’s reluctance is not based on a fear of being political, or controversial,’ said Svante Weyler of Nordstedts publishers, ‘but on concern that literature must not be overshadowed by politics.’”

Literature must not be overshadowed by politics in Nobel considerations. Leaving aside the completely political nature of that consideration in the first place, that’s like saying looks must not overshadow personality in Miss America. The Nobel Prize is so hopelessly wedded to trendy international academic left-wing politics as to be a fairly accurate barometer of that year’s political fads.

Consider this year’s winner, yet somebody else the intelligent reading man in the street’s never heard of, British playwright Harold Pinter. Pinter’s written exactly two plays which First Coffee^SM, who was a literature major who took courses in Modern Drama, has heard of, “The Caretaker” and “The Birthday Party” – and who still has no idea what the hell they mean.

Why Pinter, why now? Pinter because he writes obscure works about meaninglessness, which are two of the qualities seemingly required by the Nobel committee, and now because he’s a fiercely outspoken critic of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and “vehemently opposed Britain’s involvement in the war,” according to The Guardian.

In 2003, Pinter published a brainless volume of anti-war poetry about the Iraq conflict which nobody read, and in 2004 he joined a group of “celebrity” campaigners idiotically calling for Blair to be impeached. “I’m using a lot of energy more specifically about political states of affairs, which I think are very, very worrying as things stand,” he said.

But Orhan Pamuk, whose only “controversiality” is to state that the Ottoman Empire massacred Armenians during World War I, a commonplace observation anywhere in the world outside of Turkey – and increasingly accepted as fact in Turkish history, years ago his comment would have landed him in jail, today it rates only a half-hearted slap on the wrist – is too political.

Too political, according to the Nobel committee, which means “not sufficiently conformist knee-jerk leftist anti-Bush and anti-Blair.”

But perhaps the real problem with Pamuk is that he is actually a somewhat popular author, who writes books people can read and enjoy on the subways on the way to work a real job. That sort of rapport with the average reader is a negative, according to the highly insecure academics who dole out the award and who get a self-important snobbish rush in giving the award to completely obscure writers since it proves (to them) just how much smarter they are than the rest of us.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Traffic’s 1971 contractual obligation live album Welcome To The Canteen – the legal issues were so convoluted the band name “Traffic” doesn’t even appear on the album, just the musicians’ names. One wonders what Dave Mason’s interpersonal issues were, as six performances into the tour this album was taken from he was fired as Traffic’s guitarist – for the third time. George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin had a more stable working relationship than Traffic and Dave Mason did.

Level 3 Communications, Inc. has announced its European operating subsidiaries are now providing Internet Protocol services in Warsaw, Poland. The expansion puts Level 3 in 23 European markets.

Level 3 is offering (3)CrossRoads, its wholesale high-speed Internet access service, to Internet Service Providers, cable providers and carriers selling communications services in Poland. Among Level 3’s customers in Warsaw are Telekomunikacja Kolejowa Sp. z o.o. and ATM S.A.

Under the terms of both agreements, Level 3 will supply IP transit and access to its extensive international Internet backbone via the new Point of Presence in Warsaw, enabling access to the global Internet. “Poland is a key market for us,” said Brady Rafuse, president of Level 3’s European operations.

Level 3 already supplies IP transit to Telekomunikacja Kolejowa Sp. z o.o., a provider of telecommunications services that operates an optical fiber network covering more than 6,000 kilometers.
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Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is claiming development of the world-first 512-Megabit DDR2 SDRAM using 70-nanometer processing, the smallest process technology yet applied to a DRAM device.

The new 70nm technology maintains continuity with the 80nm and 90nm processes Samsung now uses in most DRAM production today. The number of chips yielded per wafer will be at least 100% higher than could be obtained with 90nm technology.

After completing the first sub-micron DRAM process in 2002, Samsung introduced an 80nm version in 2003 and today has set another industry milestone with the new 70nm version for DRAM fabrication.
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The JibJab guys are back at it. You’ve seen their Bush-Kerry take to the tune of “This Land Is Your Land,” you may have seen their ad for Budweiser, now they’re back in politics for the first time since the 2004 election.

The brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis have a new animation, titled “Big Box Mart,” premiering on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight. It’ll be available at JibJab.com and MSNVideo.com later.

The piece shows an “unsuspecting consumer” whose “high-skilled factory job is shipped overseas to accommodate the ‘everyday low prices’ he’s come to expect from his favorite retailer,” according to JibJab officials. At the end of the song, the only work he can find is as a janitor at Big Box Mart.

“It’s virtually impossible for small businesses to produce goods in America inexpensively enough to sell to big box retailers,” said JibJab co-founder Gregg Spiridellis. “It’s an issue that affects everybody and that’s why we decided to tackle it.”
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A tip of the coffee pot to Jose R. Figueroa and Margaret Rice-Jones, recently appointed corporate vice president and regional manager of Motorola Networks, EMEA and corporate vice president and general manager of Motorola’s Core Networks business respectively.

Figueroa takes on the new role in addition to continuing as Corporate Vice President and Regional Manager of Latin America and Caribbean for Motorola Networks.

Core Networks is a newly-aligned business within Motorola Networks, which covers communications technologies for both wireline and wireless operators. Rice-Jones will be responsible for profit and loss performance of the business including the strategic planning, development engineering, handling third party relationships, product management and customer support.
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GO Networks, a provider of carrier-class broadband wireless Local Area Network products, has announced that the China Ministry of Information Industry has “homologated” – their word, First Coffee^SM has no idea what it means, if it means something awful call their lawyers, not ours – its wireless access products and authorized its equipment for use by carriers and enterprises in China in time for the debut of the company’s Shanghai office and initial trials of its first systems.

The MII authorization is a regulatory requirement by the government of China and allows carriers and enterprises to trial and deploy GO Networks Carrier-Class WLAN. GO Networks’ equipment is being tested in multiple locations in China, and the company will support local partners and customers from its new China office.
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VoIP Partners, a provider of wholesale Voice-over-IP services, is upgrading to a Session Border Control product from Newport Networks to “ensure the security, scalability and efficiency of its network,” according to company officials.

Founded last year, Denver-based VOIP Partners launched its first services this spring, targeting high-end customers with differentiation in vertical or geographic markets. Its network infrastructure features a Broadsoft platform with Newport Networks’ 1460 providing secure peering between networks.
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According to the J.D. Power and Associates 2005 Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study just released, 43 percent of Internet service subscribers use Web as their primary e-mail account, compared to 57 percent who access e-mail through their primary Internet service provider using e-mail software installed on the user’s computer.

Web mail is defined as e-mail service that allows access to mail through a Web browser. The study finds that 73 percent of residential ISP subscribers report the length of time they have been with their Web mail provider exceeds three years.

Additionally, 35 percent of these subscribers say their relationship has existed for six years or more and name the Dodge Ram the #1 pickup truck in its class.

“E-mail addresses are emerging as the phone number of the new millennium,” said Jonathan Brookner, director of telecommunication research at J.D. Power and Associates.

The study, now in its second year, examines the consumer behavior, experiences and satisfaction of Internet service subscribers with the most frequently used online services, including instant messaging, Web mail services and search engines/functions.

Yahoo! Mail ranks highest in customer satisfaction among primary Web mail providers, receiving the highest ratings from users in all three factors contributing to overall satisfaction: ease of use, performance and reliability and features.

Yahoo! Messenger ranks highest among primary instant messaging services, while Google ranks highest in satisfying Internet users with primary search engines/functions, receiving top ratings from users in all three customer satisfaction factors: functionality, ease of use and results.

The study finds that 43 percent of all respondents rely on Google as their primary search engine. This increases to 53 percent among those with high-speed Internet connections.

The 2005 Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study is based on responses from 6,313 residential customers of Internet service providers nationwide.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is solid ol’ classic rock, Stephen Stills’ 1972 Manassas, released in the last year of the Great Era for rock’n’roll, and which can stand in the same company as the year’s other redwoods, such as Exile On Main Street, St. Dominic’s Preview, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Eat A Peach:

Salesboom.com, the provider of on demand customer relationship management software who aspires to play in the salesforce.com, NetSuite and RightNow league for SMB hosted CRM, has announced an enhanced administrative upgrade feature for Salesboom users.

Dubbed the Salesboom “SmartUpgrade,” the new feature will allow Salesboom administrators to select which updates they wish to use and when to introduce them to their users.

Salesboom has been releasing new updates to their hosted CRM, with an update at least every 4 weeks. The new “SmartUpgrade” feature will allow system administrators more control and flexibility over which updates they would like to see launched. The new “SmartUpgrade” system will be available to all Salesboom users with the upcoming release of Salesboom v7.0.

The Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Salesboom.com touts their frequent updates as their competitive advantage of the trio of established players in the space: “Yet even with the versatility of the Software-as-a-Service model, the biggest online CRM providers [see above] continue to hold that functionality over their customers’ heads,” company officials say, adding, with the not-completely-accurate insinuation that others don’t release patches and feature updates ahead of scheduled version updates, that “with Salesboom’s SaaS model, customers don’t have to worry about waiting months for promised features and patches, as they are released in a system of scheduled and transparent updates, occurring at least every 4 weeks.”
…

Fargo, North Dakota-based Vtrenz, Inc. has announced product enhancements for its marketing automation platform. Vtrenz iMarketing Automation is engineered to give marketers tools to plan, build, manage, execute and measure both online and offline marketing activities, designed to help companies “generate, qualify and nurture leads as well as retain and win-back customers,” according to company officials.

Adding behavior-based segmentation capabilities, a new integrated campaign management tool, and multi-track rules-based campaign automation, iMarketing Automation has improved its offerings for running automate marketing campaigns triggered at the time most appropriate for the contact instead of the time most convenient for the sender.

It’s billed as “built for non-IT users; marketers, sales representatives, or other business professionals.”
…

When SAP’s VP of CRM application solution management, Siegfried Leiner, said in an interview last week with ComputerWire that hosted CRM is “commodity CRM,” dissing it in favor of componentized, platform-based CRM where CRM functionality is integral to the application infrastructure, it was up to someone from the hosted community to swing back.

Kudos to founder and CEO of hosted CRM supplier RightNow Technologies Inc, Greg Gianforte, for picking up the gauntlet, pointing out that SAPs approach is just an attempt to save an outmoded way of operating, according to ComputerWire.

“Chopping its application up into bite-sized pieces is not going to save SAPs bacon because they still insist that all elements have to be used with its costly and impractical NetWeaver platform, negating the flexibility of choosing which applications to run,” he said. “Maybe this complex, technology approach to CRM is why SAP has more than 3,000 customers but only 1,000 that are live.”

Zing! Ball’s in your court, SAP. But hey, the one thing Gianforte and Leiner – and pretty much anyone else in CRM – can agree on is salesforce.com bashing: “I agree that at the low end where salesforce.com plays, selling to very small companies, the market is commoditizing,” Gianforte tells ComputerWire. “But at RightNow, 30%-40% of our revenues come from companies with greater that $1 billion in revenue – definitely not small fry.”

As to the question at hand, which is the model of the future for CRM, First Coffee^SM would note that on-premises vendors Siebel and SAP are introducing hosted products, but none of the significant hosted vendors are introducing on-premises products.
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The word is that Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk will be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature tomorrow. The Nobel Prizes, of course, have descended into self-parody, what with naming career mediocrity Mohamed El-Baradei and his pitifully inept International Atomic Energy Agency recipients of the once-prestigious Peace Prize, which used to mean something before it was awarded to people like Yasser Arafat, who will go down in history as the man responsible for inventing the airplane hijack.

As a friend of First Coffee^SM’s asked, are they going to give it to North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il next on the grounds that he could have nuked South Korea but didn’t?

And of course it goes without saying that nobody has ever heard of any of the Literature recipients in the last 20 years – $10 if you can name last year’s recipient. Give up? Bitter, hateful Austrian novelist Elfreide Jelinek, whose detractors describe her work as turgid, nihilistic, violent, unreadable, sexually brutal sludge and whose supporters describe her work as socially observant turgid, nihilistic, violent, unreadable, sexually brutal sludge.

First Coffee^SM remembers working as a journalist in Istanbul in the 1990s, when Turkish Kurdish novelist Yasar Kemal was yearly touted as a certainty to win, as he was an outspokenly political Kurd at a time when such were fashionable. Only thing is, he didn’t write books anybody outside of Turkish-Kurdish intellectual circles had ever heard of, let alone read. First Coffee^SM struggled through his signature work, Mehmed, My Hawk and hopes never to have to read anything as boring again.

Yet Kemal visited the newspaper First Coffee^SM worked at then, and was a thoroughly gracious man, so it would have been nice to see him win.

Handicapped as Pamuk is by the fact that he dares to write books people outside of leftist literature faculties like – Snow and My Name Is Red are good places to start – he is an acceptably politically outspoken author from a politically trendy country who says politically correct things and gets in trouble with the political authorities for doing so, acts which impress the small-minded, politically-fixated Nobel committee and should balance out the fact that commoners actually read and enjoy his books, usually the kiss of death in Nobel Literature Prize considerations.

First Coffee^SM is considering securing citizenship in Uzbekistan – no Uzbek author has ever won the Nobel Prize for Literature! What indefensible cultural prejudice! – adopting the currently popular politically-correct beliefs and churning out childish rants against Worldwide Corporate Hegemony and Western Cultural Imperialism and in a few years cashing a check for 10 million kroner.

First Coffee^SM met the shy yet polite and courteous Pamuk at a party in Istanbul back in those days, he was in the middle of defending himself in some court proceeding for saying something the government didn’t like, and was swapping stories with an American journalist who was also in trouble with the authorities for writing stuff the government didn’t like – that was back in the era when Turkey was second only to China in the number of journalists killed on the job.

To First Coffee^SM’s knowledge no CRM writer has ever been killed on the job. Funny how once Mrs. First Coffee^SM agreed for better or for worse such considerations became more, well, considered.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.