First Coffee

First Coffee for June 7, 2005

June 7, 2005

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bill Evans, from the Verve Jazz Masters series. As the liner notes say Evans never burst on the scene, people just gradually realized he was one of the most influential jazz pianists ever:

Okay, there’ll be a lot of news from Supercomm 2005 in Chicago in First CoffeeSM today, there’s a lot happening so let’s get to it.

One thing everybody’s talking about – so hey, it’s gotta be true, right? – at Supercomm ‘05 is Internet Protocol TV. IBM’s laying out their IPTV “vision,” Kasenna (“The IPTV Company”) is showing off what they bill as “the industry’s first fully integrated IPTV application suite,” Calix is demonstrating IPTV over ADSL2+, the oddly-named Scientific-Atlanta’s touting “the combination of our new, state-of-the-art IPTV set-tops… and a robust switched video network… to deliver new and exciting entertainment services to consumers,” plus all the reporters drinking on expense accounts are talking about it, so that’s good enough for First CoffeeSM.

Every show like this has to have some buzz, and although First CoffeeSM isn’t in Chicago – as they couldn’t drag First CoffeeSM out of the blues clubs until closing there wouldn’t be time for sober reportage anyway – the coverage indicates that this year’s Officially Approved Show Buzz™ is Internet Protocol television.

Entone Technologies, a provider of personal video content delivery products, and Neterion Inc. (formerly S2io Inc.), a provider of 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter products for servers and storage, have teamed up to provide the first 10 Gigabit Ethernet high-definition IPTV demonstration.

For the third consecutive year, the Metro Ethernet Forum has selected Entone as the IPTV provider for its SUPERDemo at Supercomm.

First Coffee

June 6, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the 1946 – 1959 Billie Holiday collection Lady In Autumn: The Best of the Verve Years, an oddly appealing era of emotion shining through her tattered vocal abilities:

Nortel today announced what company officials are calling a “major breakthrough” in enterprise communications, with the introduction of a new multimedia communications plug-in for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003.

Nortel’s new Multimedia Office Client is a stand-alone product using the “Office Anywhere” capabilities of Nortel’s Session Initiation Protocol-based Multimedia Communication Server 5100 and 5200.

The Multimedia Office Client will reside within Outlook 2003 as a toolbar that enables users to manage and personalize voice, video and text communications, and to initiate calls from a desktop phone or headset simply by clicking on a contact name, all from within Outlook 2003.

The Multimedia Office Client allows users to manage incoming calls in real-time –answering, rejecting or transferring calls, accessing voice mail via mouse and creating incoming communications rules to indicate how, where and by whom they can be contacted.

Service providers will be able to use this plug-in to complement hosted Microsoft Exchange services with VoIP and multimedia services, as well as offer integrated VoIP and multimedia services to enterprise-managed e-mail servers.

The Multimedia Office Client is now in customer trials and is expected to be generally available on the MCS 5100 and 5200 during the fourth quarter of 2005. Nortel will be demonstrating the Multimedia Office Client during SUPERCOMM 2005 (booth 39066) in Chicago.

Alan Stoddard, general manager, Multimedia Converged Networks, Nortel said over 400 million people around the world use Outlook.
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On Friday the number of Skype downloads topped 100 million, and the company is launching two premium services, according to the Associated Press.

SkypeIn and Skype Voicemail are built into the latest version of the software, which is available for Linux, Mac OS, Pocket PC and Windows platforms, Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies SA said Friday.

SkypeIn offers customers regular phone numbers on which they can receive calls from landline or mobile phones without having to pay roaming charges. “Users can purchase up to three numbers from their home country in Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States during the initial test period,” the AP reports. It will cost $13 for three months and $39 for a year.

First Coffee

June 3, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the best album ever to emerge from Motown, Marvin Gaye’s 1971 What’s Going On:

Horsham, Pennsylvania-based CentraView LLC, a provider of Open Source Centralized Business Management software is being secretive about a deal they’ve signed with “an established software company” to develop its next generation of product and services offerings on CentraView’s software technology.

“CentraView recently secured a multiple six figure license agreement with an established software company” says Alan Rihm, CEO of CentraView. “We are unable to reveal the name of the company due to the private label nature of the agreement.”

Evidently the company in question, according to Rihm, had the choice of “building, buying or partnering with CentraView” and chose CentraView because the company felt that working with CentraView’s architecture and code base “would enable them to get to market faster, and reduce the risks and expenses associated with launching their new product and service offerings.”

Source code for the CentraView Open Source project is now available for download through Sourceforge.net. Built on the Enterprise Java platform and optimized for Linux and Windows environments, it uses open source technologies such as Linux (RedHat Enterprise and Fedora), Apache Tomcat, JBoss and MySQL.
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For those who missed this announcement, VoX Communications, a packet communications services provider deploying wholesale, residential and business VoIP services nationwide, has announced plans to debut its total VoIP product at SUPERCOMM 2005.

VoX will demonstrate its wholly owned packet telephony technology and its advanced, nationwide network, terminating traffic with Global Crossing VoIP Outbound Services. VoX Communications' President Mark Richards said visitors to the IPCC booth “will be able to make calls using the most advanced wireless IP phones available over our advanced, nationwide network and packet telephony technology.”
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PacificNet Epro, a provider of contact center and CRM products and a subsidiary of PacificNet Inc. has announced a partnership with Epicor Software Corporation, a provider of software for middle-market companies, to provide Customer Relationship Management for Chinese companies.

PacificNet Epro became a Value-Added Reseller of Epicor in August 2004. PacificNet Epro and Epicor’s partnership includes holding joint seminars to promote integrated products by the two companies.

The seminars have the catchy, if somewhat ambiguous title “Unlock the hidden risks and cost for not having an integrated CRM and CTI solutions,” a title written by the same guy who writes such snappy slogans for China’s Communist Party as “Fully utilize various levels of the Party organization as bases in a battle ground.”

The seminars cover the cost and risks faced by sales and marketing professionals that can lead to lost sales revenue and market share.

At the seminar Billy Lui, Business Solutions Manager, Epicor Software (North Asia) Ltd, demonstrated various CRM tools such as eMarketing, Sales Force Automation, Customer Service for better understanding customer needs and improving customer loyalty.

In addition Terry Leung, General Manager of System & Solutions of PacificNet Epro, demonstrated Epro’s WISE-xb Contact Center System with customizable Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) and seamlessly integration with Epicor’s CRM software.
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Bangalore-based software giant and global outsourcer Infosysmade the Business 2.0 list of the top 100 fastest-growing technology companies in the U.S., placing at #8.

And they’re not just running call centers.

First Coffee

June 2, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a Guilty PleasureSM, ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love:

A good BusinessWeek article this morning by Burt Helm argues that the splashy SBC move to offer high-speed broadband at $14.95 is a gamble for SBC but a no-brainer win for Yahoo!. It is that, and First CoffeeSM thinks it’s also a big step towards ubiquitous VoIP among normal, ordinary non-tech geek consumers.

You’ve heard that yesterday SBC Communications cut its price by a quarter to $14.95 for DSL, and that Yahoo! will provide SBC’s customers with “services like e-mail, instant-messaging, and Web-hosting” for an undisclosed fee, as Helm writes.

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First Coffee

June 1, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Son Volt’s 1995 album Trace, as good as alt-country ever got:

How do you compete with the likes of Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone in the German cell phone market? Dutch telecoms group KPN hopes cutting costs and raising customer satisfaction is at least part of the answer.

Today KPN announced it would “restructure its call centre activities” with newly-acquired call center company SNT to try to do just that. Reuters is reporting that the restructuring will cut about 630 jobs, “which are part of the overall 8,000 job cuts over five years that KPN announced on March 1.”

Taking an farsighted view, KPN officials believe the job reductions, up to 1,750 jobs annually through 2009, will help save an upwards of $1.05 billion a year from 2010 on. It expects more modest savings of about $200 million a year until then, Reuters reports.

The cut of 630 jobs at call center unit is “relatively high,” Nico van Geest at Theodoor Gilissen tells Dow Jones. “KPN had already indicated it would integrate recently acquired SNT, but this announcement comes sooner than expected,” Dow Jones reports.

First Coffee

May 31, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Dave Brubeck’s landmark 1959 album Time Out, the first jazz album to feature all original compositions, and the first jazz instrumental album to sell a million copies:

Cingular Wireless is offering Good Technologies Inc.’s mobile e-mail service for business customers – at a nice price: free.

Cingular, the largest mobile phone service provider in the United States, will bundle the GoodLink service with its wireless Internet service for mobile phones free of charge, the Associated Press reports, “charging $45 a month for unlimited usage. Previously, users also paid the equivalent of $27.50 a month to GoodLink.”

The one-time account fee of $1,500 and one-time set-up fee of $99 for each individual user still apply, though. Gotta make money somewhere.

This is a huge boost for Good, still far short of BlackBerry and their over three million customers. Under a previous agreement Good Technology users had to sign separate contracts with the company and Cingular. They’ll now use the single-contract system Cingular does for BlackBerry.

Cingular Wireless executive Michael Woodward told Reuters there aren’t any problems with BlackBerry, but “we heard our customers saying… they were looking for some choice, a little bit of flexibility.”

This is the first time GoodLink, compatible with other providers’ mobile devices “will be sold directly by a major carrier in nearly a year,” according to AP: “By contrast, Cingular and the other four national cell carriers already sell BlackBerry devices… and its complimentary e-mail system directly to corporate customers.”

Good’s growing fast, but it’s nowhere near BlackBerry.

First Coffee

May 30, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The MTA 5410S is compatible with 3G networks and mobile videophones.

First Coffee

May 27, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Al Stewart’s 1975 album Modern Times, glittering, intelligent songwriting:

Maybe First CoffeeSM should be listening to Led Zeppelin’s first album, since “communication breakdown” is the reason given for Australia’s Telstra to announce that yes… no… yes, the telco will offer retail clients VoIP in 2005/06.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Telstra Corp Ltd is officially – as of now, anyway – retracting its earlier statement that it had “scrapped plans to offer its retail clients the ability to make calls over the internet for at least another year.”

So to sum up: Telstra will offer VoIP to retail clients either this year or next. Honest.

Telstra is saying that its VoIP isn’t quite ready for prime-time, though. “The company does hope to have a consumer launch in the coming financial year, depending on customer demand,” a Telstra spokesman told the Morning Herald. “But we still have a lot more work to do… the trial found that the consumer experience was below expectations in terms of voice quality and reliability.”

Telstra group managing director of technology, innovation and product Ted Pretty told AAP in March that the company wanted to see the service being taken by broadband customers with a BigPond connection before the end of calendar 2005, the Morning Herald reports.
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Rumors of a Siebel takeover are being both fueled and allayed by the company’s new staff retention plan.

First Coffee

May 26, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the best currently available Donovan anthology, Troubadour: The Definitive Collection 1964 – 1976:

Luxembourg-based Gemplus International S.A., one of the world’s largest providers of smart card based products has been picked by “operator galaxy” T-Mobile to provide its new GemXplore Generations operating system as the basis for future card and service deployment.

T-Mobile evidently liked GemXplore’s ability to comply with the latest multimedia features and standards releases, both of which can be updated over the air at any stage of the SIM lifecycle – thereby reducing time to market.

Przemek Czarnecki, Executive Vice President Terminal Technology, T-Mobile said the Gemplus’ GemXplore Generations was “revealed to be the most technologically advanced concept of OS.”

First CoffeeSM lives on the Mediterranean coast and loves how foreigners use English. Locutions that would never occur to a native speaker sound almost… poetic.

T-Mobile will use GemXplore Generations to provide a common smartcard platform for the T-Mobile group.

Gemplus International S.A. is, company officials claim, according to Gartner-Dataquest (2005), Frost & Sullivan and Datamonitor “the world’s leading player in the smart card industry in both revenue and total shipments.” It has sold over 5 billion smart cards, and its 2004 revenue was just north of a billion dollars.
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First CoffeeSM hopes you’re sitting down, because the latest Network Management Group study shows – hold onto something – that “commercial-free radio over mobile phones and the ability to download music to phones are the two most interesting advanced mobile services to young adults,” according to Reuters.

They’d also rather put up with ads and get free mobile video than sign up – and pay – for subscription video services of the kind offered by Verizon Wireless and Sprint for about $15 a month, the survey finds.

First Coffee

May 25, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s recording of Ignacy Paderewski’s Symphony in B minor (Polonia), Op. 24 in Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh in January 1998, Jerzy Maksymiuk conducting:

Consummating a deal which had been announced Monday, Norwegian state telephony provider Telenor ASA today paid over $1 billion for two broadband services providers in Sweden and Denmark “as the switch to IP telephony threatens to crank up competition in the whole of Europe,” according to Computer Wire.

The price breaks down to $821.8 million for Bredbandsbolaget AB in Sweden, and $202.6 million for Cybercity A/S in Denmark. Growth in broadband is big in the Nordic region now, and this purchase moves Telenor, 53 percent owned by the Norwegian government, ahead of Sweden’s TeliaSonera AB in the lucrative market.

“Strategically, this is a necessary move for Telenor,” Poul Jessen, an analyst at Danske Bank A/S in Copenhagen tells Bloomberg. “Fixed and wireless services are converging, and Telenor needs to be able to provide a complete package to compete” with TDC A/S and TeliaSonera AB.

According to TheDeal.com, the purchase will double Telenor’s broadband customer base to about 800,000. Telenor expects the move to save about $390 million over the next few years on its existing Sweden and Denmark operations.

With its core wireline revenue in decline, Computer Wire says, “Telenor sees growth prospects of the triple play of voice, data, and TV to the home, and a whole raft of IP-based services to business users.”

“There is huge growth potential in the broadband market in this region,” Berit Svendsen, head of Telenor’s fixed line division tells TheDeal.com. “We expect the market to grow from [$3.9 billion] to [over $6 billion] over the next five years and we want to be a part of that.”

As Robert Parker’s Spenser or Susan Silverman might say, “anybody would.”
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The Taiwan telecom industry is “making history today,” in the words of Taiwan Mobile company officials, with the initial launch of Taiwan’s first 3G service by Taiwan Mobile.

Primary amongst such 3G offerings will be Hong Kong-based Artificial Life’s products V-girl – “Your Virtual Girlfriend!,” “Virtual Disco” and “Virtual News Reporter Service.” The launch of the 3G products in Taiwan is scheduled for Q3, 2005.

Virtual girlfriend, disco and news reporter?

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