By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Mary Lou Lord’s inspired song “Jingle Jangle Morning”:
Motorola has announced an agreement with Bharti
Teletech Ltd. in a strategic agreement that extends Motorola’s reach across metros, cities and to the smallest
towns in India. Today’s announcement gives Motorola what excited company
officials are calling “unprecedented breadth of distribution through one of the
widest retail networks for phones in the country.”
Bharti Teletech’s access to the burgeoning rural market jibes
with Motorola’s ambitions to “connect the unconnected,” company officials say,
by providing handsets like the new C113a, which Motorola considers “suited to
mass-market users.”
Their broad distribution to urban cities also allows
Motorola to market to the fast-growing population of Indian professionals eager
for the latest high-end gadgetry.
Motorola’s agreement to extend the availability of its products for consumers
in the market through Bharti Teletech’s national distribution presence is part
of what is, evidently, a long-term focus for Motorola on the market
possibilities in India. Right now they’re working on combining Beetel, one of
the brands of Bharti Teletech in India, with Motorola’s own internationally
recognized brand to produce more options to be marketed to mobile consumers.
…
Nokia has today announced support for Optus’ 3G services launch in
Australia, which Nokia officials describe as “providing the
behind-the-scenes network infrastructure and turnkey services” as well as “assisting
Optus to develop 3G consumer applications.”
In November 2004, Optus jointly announced an innovative
infrastructure sharing deal with another operator to have Nokia build a shared
3G network. Company officials describe it as “the first in the world to feature
Nokia’s Multi-Operator Radio Access Network technology,” which allows for the
sharing of radio services.
Where MO-RANs are deployed they allow for two operators to share the same base
station and to share the radio network controller which directs the voice and
data traffic back to the operator’s own core network, kind of like how two
banks can share an ATM.
“The issue for many operators is no longer whether to share a network, but
rather, what approach will offer the best solution,” said Henrik Glud, Optus
Account Director for Nokia Australia.
…
Recent research on the UK text messaging market released by
the Mobile
Data Association forecasts that 32
billion text messages will be sent in 2005. The MDA has also found that the
most common business use of text messaging in the UK is meeting reminders or
appointment scheduling.
Independent research on global trends by BulkSMS.co.uk, a wireless application
service provider, indicates that text messaging is used to meet provide such below-the-line
marketing as allowing companies to target customers with product and service promotions, and banks are using text messaging to alert customers each time a transaction
is effected, helping cut down on fraudulent transactions.
Health services are beginning to see the benefits of text reminders.
In one case documented by bridges.org, personalized messages are sent to remind
tuberculosis patients to take their medication. And more customer support
services are providing customers with a call log reference number and status
updates via text messaging.
The study finds that the messaging market is poised to gain from additional messaging
services, such as multimedia messages services and WAP for distributing images,
audio clips and video content.
…
Linksys, a Division of Cisco Systems, Inc., and MCI, Inc.
today announced they are joining forces to offer Linksys One, a hosted
communications product specifically designed for small businesses.
By combining the communication products from Linksys with
MCI’s global Internet Protocol network and services, the two companies are
marketing to small businesses with the features and services to “operate with
the sophistication and efficiencies of their larger business counterparts,”
according to the sales pitch.
Seeking to present a “simple, cost effective IP platform
that small businesses can rely on for their voice, video and data requirements,”
Marthin De Beer, vice president and general manager of the Linksys Small
Business Systems Business Unit says the new offering is aimed at the “largely
underserved small business market,” combining application services with an IP
communications platform.
The Linksys One/MCI product will offer small businesses an
extensible services platform that can provide communications hardware and
services, including business-class telephones, Internet broadband access, and
data networking services, hosted business applications and local/long distance
Voice over IP services on a single connection.
It’s being advertised as eliminating the overhead and
technical complexity of running separate networks, allowing small businesses to
“streamline their business communications and replace their separate voice, fax
and data lines, which most have installed today, with a solution managed by
MCI.”
…
Hong Kong-based Axesstel, Inc., a vendor of fixed wireless
voice and broadband data products, has announced the availability of the L800 and L1900 Fixed Wireless Desktop Phones
for first time home phone users and the P830 and P1930 Fixed Wireless Desktop
Phones with greater voice calling and multi-media functionality.
The phones operate on 800 and 1900 MHz band CDMA2000 1X
networks. The L450 and P480 are two additional models in the new product lines
that operate on 450 MHz band CDMA2000 1X networks. The P480 is available now,
while the L450 is anticipated to be available in Q1 2006.
Axesstel is pitching the products as letting telecoms worldwide “provide quick,
easy and affordable access to quality voice and high-speed data services with
customized design and enhanced functionality that meets the diverse needs of
their customers.”
…
First CoffeeSM signed up for National
Novel Writing Month at the beginning of November to acquire the
one special, magic ingredient that’s been missing in the years-long quest to
escape the ranks of the “one-day novelist,” as in “one day, I’ll write a novel”
and join the ranks of the “well, at least it’s done” novelists: A deadline.
It’s worked wonders. The premise of NaNoWriMo, as all great
premises are, is simple: The month of November, every year, is when you promise
to produce a 50,000-word novel. That breaks down to about 1,667 words a day.
More doable than you’d imagine.
Yes the first 50,000-word draft (under 200 double-spaced
Microsoft Word pages, about the length of The
Great Gatsby or The Catcher In The
Rye) will suck, yes it’ll be in dire need of revisions and rewriting, but the
fact is, it’s a lot harder to revise and rewrite something that doesn’t exist
in the first place. The idea of November is to simply birth a beast you can
housebreak later.
It’s based on a book by Chris Baty titled No Plot? No Problem! First CoffeeSM’s
read dozens of how-to-write books, mostly as successful rationales to
procrastinate writing itself, and finds NP?
NP! to be a wonderfully practical kick in the butt to get writing, which “one-day”
novelists need a lot more than they need another lesson on building tension or
creating memorable characters. Some things you learn best by doing, writing
being one of them.
At the end of the first week First CoffeeSM had
cranked out 18,273 words. The final count for Week 2, as we head into Week 3
this afternoon, is 29,618 words. Ahead of schedule but slacker than the Week 1
pace, so we’ll need to pick it up here in Week 3.
“So what’s the book about?” About 30,000 words (rim shot).
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content.
