David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

First Coffee

May 10, 2005

By David Sims

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is May Your Song Always Be Sung, a 1997 grab-bag of semi-obscure artists, the likes of Nilsson, Dream Syndicate, Jennifer Warnes and the self-proclaimed “Worst Band On Earth,” the Leningrad Cowboys doing for the most part pretty damn good Bob Dylan covers:

LiveVoip LLC, Mesa, Arizona-based worldwide resellers to the Asterisk-based PBX market has rejected a takeover offer from RV Wireless, Inc. LiveVoip’s management feels VoIP is the “next wave,” the future of the Internet and therefore privately-held LiveVoip “must consider all offers and options presented in order to gain maximum value for its shareholders and customers.” Go for it, guys.
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Staple First Coffee© newsmaker Qwest Communications has launched residential Internet telephone service for roughly the same price as traditional phone service, according to the Rocky Mountain News‘s Official Qwestwatch Guy, Jeff Smith.



Qwest OneFlex will be available in 48 states, but it requires a customer to have a high-speed Internet connection at $29.99 a month for unlimited local phone calls. Domestic long-distance costs an additional 5 cents a minute, with a minimum fee of $2.99 a month and a maximum charge of $19.99 a month, Smith reports.

Calls are routed over Qwest’s private fiber-optic network, which some believe would make it more reliable than VoIP over the public Internet. Yet many VoIP competitors offer unlimited local and domestic long-distance for less than $30 a month – heck, Vonage offers unlimited local and long-distance for $24.99 a month.

First Coffee

May 9, 2005

By David Sims

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Best Of The Beach Boys 1970 – 1986: The Brother Years by The Beach Boys, gems from such grossly underrated post-surf music albums as Holland, Sunflower and the ironically-titled Surf’s Up:

Qwest isn’t giving up on its quest for MCI. The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that MCI could be facing shareholder dissent over its acceptance of an $8.5 billion sale to Verizon. A shareholder vote could as soon as late June or early July.

Qwest withdrew a $9.9 billion offer last week, but was in talks with MCI shareholders and “believed there could be enough support to vote down Verizon’s bid,” the paper said, citing people close to the situation.

MCI, the second-largest U.S.

Turkish Coffee

May 4, 2005

The picture of the war.

May 4, 2005

First Coffee

May 4, 2005

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the May 1960 recording of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo at the Manhattan Center in New York City, Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic:

Forrester Research is saying that almost half of marketers plan to decrease spending in traditional advertising channels like magazines, direct mail, and newspapers to fund an increase in online ad spending in 2005.

First Coffee© finds predictions about 2005 made halfway through 2005 not quite as bracing as those made in, oh, 2002.

Total US online advertising and marketing spending will reach $14.7 billion in 2005, a 23 percent increase over 2004, according to the crystal balls at Forrester, which also think online marketing and advertising will represent 8 percent of total advertising spending in 2010, rivaling ad spending on cable/satellite TV and radio.

Forrester also thinks that search engine marketing will reach $11.6 billion by 2010 and that display advertising, which includes traditional banners and sponsorships, will grow at the average rate of 11 percent over the next five years to $8 billion by 2010. Now that’s more like it, sheer wild guesses are so much fun. Not $11.5, or $11.7, but $11.6 billion, mind you.

Siixty-four percent of respondents are interested in advertising on blogs, 57 percent through RSS, and 52 percent on mobile devices, including phones and PDAs.

No mention of when admen will be knocking First Coffee©’s virtual door down.
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Avaya CEO Don Peterson says worries over viruses and network downtime are keeping CIOs from embracing IP networks.



According to Peterson, call centers in particular have fielded security as a reason to avoid switching to an IP network: “They don’t want two devices with virus exposure on their desk."

Peterson says security’s a big concern with IP telephony. “Many of our customers say it’s why they don’t deploy IP influence,” he said, adding that security “is why we have chosen to deliver our IP telephony solution on Linux rather than on Windows."

Still analyst house The Radcati Group predicts that 44 per cent of corporate telephone lines will be using VoIP by 2008. Ever notice that these companies in the business of predictions rarely publish their accuracy rates?
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The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, whose backers include Nokia, Motorola and Intel has started working with wireless developers to make Bluetooth and ultrawideband compatible.



Wireless developers are planning how to work together to meld Bluetooth with UWB to do cool things like beam video and other large content short distances between TVs, home entertainment systems and computers.

The discussions with the WiMedia Alliance and the UWB Forum are described as “preliminary,” which means nothing’s actually happening yet.

Of course Bluetooth might be passé already – the best transmission speed it can offer is up to 3 megabits per second, while UWB allows speeds of 100 mbps and higher.

First Coffee

May 3, 2005

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the 2003 three-CD set Swing Brother, Swing, 54 big band favorites from 1925 – Fletcher Henderson’s “Sugar Foot Stomp” – to Artie Shaw’s “The Continental” in 1950:

Qwest has lost the bidding for MCI to Verizon’s $26 a share (or up to $27.70, depending on triggering clauses) offer for a $8.44 billion package, as everyone knew they would, and First Coffee© wishes they’d be more of a man about the whole thing.

Qwest has been issuing self-pitying statements ever since, claiming the whole process “seems to be permanently skewed against Qwest,” “MCI never intended to negotiate in good faith with Qwest” and that MCI had allowed Verizon to “impugn” Qwest.

Bushwa.

First Coffee© would like to remind Qwest that they’re a company with $17.5 billion in debt and a measly $14 billion in annual revenue, they’re one of the most highly leveraged carriers in telecom, that their stock price has fluctuated wildly the past year – dropping from $4.85 to $3.42 since their takeover bid, that many analysts believe the stock price was illegally manipulated Friday just to keep their bid for MCI alive, and that they still haven’t resolved shareholder lawsuits from $2.5 billion in overstated earnings.

Verizon, on the other hand, is the country’s largest communications company, the country’s No. 1 phone company with more than $70 billion in annual revenue and a majority stake in Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 carrier behind Cingular.

MCI looked at the relative financial strength of the two companies, the achievability of the projected cost savings, the expected competitive position of a combined Verizon/MCI vs. a combined Qwest/MCI, Qwest’s lack of its own wireless network operation and stockholder lawsuits stemming from Qwest’s accounting scandal and, to their credit, did right by their fanatically loyal customers, who were almost unanimous in preferring a Verizon takeover to Qwest.

Some analysts have suggested Qwest consider bankruptcy reorganization. First Coffee© suggests they consider reality immersion therapy.

Stockholm-based TeliaSonera is starting tests in Denmark of a new concept integrating mobile telephony with IP telephony at home. TeliaSonera’s self-confessed ambition is “to lead the migration from fixed to mobile and Internet-based services.”

The aim is to integrate mobile and IP-based telephony so the customer only needs a single wireless phone for all telephone needs.

Hey Qwest: Shut Up And Grow Up.

May 2, 2005

Look, Qwest, it’s one thing to get your butt kicked by a far superior company, it’s another thing to blame everyone and everything except your own pitiful condition for losing a fight nobody but you and the guy who picked Mondale to beat Reagan thought you had a shot of winning.

Qwest dropped out of the bidding war for MCI Inc. on Monday after MCI agreed to another new deal with Verizon, rejecting a higher-priced bid from Qwest for the fourth time.

Fourth time! I was turned down by a lot of girls in college but nobody, nobody had to turn me down four times. Two or three was usually sufficient for me to get the message.

“It is no longer in the best interests of shareowners, customers and employees to continue in a process that seems to be permanently skewed against Qwest,” the Denver-based company groused in a statement. “We pursued MCI with tenacity and discipline and feel strongly that our bid would have brought far more value to MCI shareholders.”

Whatever Qwest might have “felt” is irrelevant, since a large number of MCI’s most important business customers had indicated that they preferred a transaction between MCI and Verizon rather than a transaction between MCI and Qwest, according to MCI’s statement, as of course any sentinent business customer would.

“Additionally, as their contracts come up for renewal,” MCI said, “a number of customers have also requested rights to terminate their arrangements with MCI in the event of a Qwest transaction.









Verizon ups bid for MCI.

May 2, 2005

The Associated Press is reporting that Verizon has raised its bid for MCI to "at least $26" per share in cash and stock.

The increased offer from Verizon Communications Inc. is still less than the $30 a share that Qwest Communications International Inc. has offered.

But MCI's board has favored Verizon's past offers even though they were lower than what Qwest was offering because of Verizon's larger size and presumed healthier prospects.

Under the sweetened deal with Verizon, each MCI share would be exchanged for cash and stock worth at least $26, consisting of $5.60 in cash plus the greater of 0.5743 Verizon shares for every common share of MCI or a sufficient number of Verizon shares to deliver $20.40 of value.

Under this price protection feature, Verizon may elect to pay additional cash instead of issuing added shares over the 0.5743 exchange ratio.



First Coffee

May 2, 2005

The news as of the first cup of coffee this morning, 2 May 2005, and the music is the 1970 Deutsche Grammophon recording of Beethoven’s Sonata for piano and violin No. 5 in F major, op. 24, “Spring,” Yehudi Menuhin on violin and Wilhelm Kempff on piano:

Qwest’s Carriages To Pumpkins Tonight?

Qwest has said its nearly $10 billion offer for MCI will be withdrawn at midnight tonight if MCI's board does not officially switch its support away from a deal with Verizon by that time.

Last weekend MCI declared its $7.5 billion deal with Verizon inferior to the Qwest bid and indicated it would change its recommendation to shareholders if it did not receive a revised proposal from Verizon.

New Zealand Telecom Sold

April 29, 2005

It can be fairly argued that we cover New Zealand news a bit closer because a) this reporter's wife is a Kiwi, and b) it's the most beautiful place on earth, but beside all that, New Zealand's telecom industry is one of the most robust on earth:

Telecom Corp. of New Zealand, whose dividend yield is twice that of Verizon Communications Inc., agreed to sell a media investment to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., boosting its ability to increase payments to shareholders.

New Zealand's largest telephone company plans to sell its 12 percent stake in Independent Newspapers Ltd., a cashed-up former publisher, to News Corp. for NZ$6.19 a share, or NZ$272 million (US$198 million), Telecom said in a statement in Wellington today.

Telecom raised dividend payments this year to 85 percent of earnings from as little as 50 percent after the company slashed debt it had used to expand the past three years. Telecom, whose stock has an indicated gross yield of 8.9 percent, has said it may pay special dividends should it have excess cash.

"They have got reasonable capacity to pay some sort of increased distribution and this helps,” said Jeremy Simpson, an analyst at Forsyth Barr in Auckland, who rates Telecom a “buy.” The brokerage is New Zealand's largest for private clients.
Shares of Telecom rose 0.8 percent to NZ$6.06 at the 5 p.m. market close in Wellington. The stock's 1.5 percent decline this year lags a 2.7 percent drop in the benchmark NZSX 50 Index. Of 12 analysts who follow the stock, eight rate the stock a ``Buy'' and four a “Hol."

Chief Executive Theresa Gattung, 43, whom Fortune magazine ranked the 32nd most powerful woman in business outside the U.S.

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