Recently in Telecommunications Category

At first glance, this news item from a group of partners in the business of mobile content delivery caught my attention as interesting and worthy of coverage:

BT Media & Broadcast, Sparrowhawk and iO Global announce the first deployment of TxtBIG! - the revolutionary new video messaging service

And maybe it really is interesting and worthy of coverage, but I don't exactly see why. TxtBIG is being released via a demo at the 3GSM World Congress, the mobile event taking place in Barcelona this week. Participants at the show can sample the new service by sending a Valentine's Day-themed message to a loved one with a compatible phone.

As far as I can tell, all the service really lets you do is send someone a kind of video greeting card via mobile phone, adding your own personalized text message -- kind of a mobile version of web greeting cards. Although today's press release describes TxtBIG as a "revolutionary new messaging service" and "an innovative and exciting new opportunity for mobile operators and content owners alike," at this point it's hard to see this as anything other than a possible feature for a provider to add in to a bundle of mobile content services.

But maybe I'm missing something!

In its favor, the service does enjoy the involvement of some important partners: BT Media & Broadcast, providers of "digital media, content processing, distribution and data storage"; content producers Sparrowhawk Media Limited; and iO Global Limited for mobile content delivery. One possible advantage in the TxtBIG solution is that this triumvirate of providers appears able to offer solid end-to-end implementation of mobile content production and delivery for content originators, advertisers and service providers.

AB -- 2/14/06

TMCnet has learned that E Solutions has acquired the Tampa, Fla., assets of Genuity Inc. to double its data center capacity.

Just in time, it seems. Today's announcement says E Solutions' Phase I Data Center is near capacity. The facility provides services for a number of regional sports franchises, including the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Tampa Bay Storms and 13 major league baseball teams. E Solutions also provides services for SipStorm, MD TalkNet, Dollar/Thrifty Rent-A-Car, Disney/Buena Vista Pictures, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, IBM and the American Red Cross.

E Solutions provides a range of services, including application development, managed hosting, network management and security. E Solutions current data center is a 16,000-square-foot facility on the 16th floor of Tampa's Park Tower. The Genuity facility adds another 9,060 square feet on the seventh floor.

E Solutions' announcement, emphasizing security and reliability, quotes President Michael Morizio as saying, "We’re built to physically withstand most natural or man-made disasters, including Kevlar-reinforced walls, triple redundant generators, and parallel UPS systems; we have no single points of failure." Today's release also says that the company's facility uses "ionic 'sniffers' to detect overheating ... an Inergen gas fire suppression system ... a dual pre-action dry pipe sprinkler system ... concrete reinforced bunker surrounding the exterior of the seventh floor ... three backup generators and fuel." Eleven 20-ton Liebert A/C units are used for cooling.

E Solutions also highlights the company's unique location right on "Tampa's two high-priority power grids" and "housed in the region's 'Telco Hotel,'" providing direct fiber connectivity "burstable to OC192." The data centers are also "on top of the regional telecommunications infrastructure," allowing for added bandwidth when needed.

AB -- 2/7/06

I sort of feel like I should write an elegy for the passing of the Western Union telegram service, but now that I contemplate it for about 10 seconds, I realize that I don't think I have ever sent a telegram in my life, and the only one I ever remember receiving was the one that came to my father from his Uncle Fred when Aunt Hilda died in about 1960!

AB -- 2/2/06

A new mobile phone base station promises to make 3G mobile technology available via satellite communications in remote areas.

From what I can tell, the companies have not given this picocell a product name yet. The product is designed to make UMTS high-speed data communications available in remote locations, such as ships, airplanes, rural areas, disaster areas and battlefields. The manufacturers expect their initial customers will be NGOs, military and businesses with private ships and airplanes.

3Way Networks says they will shortly begin trials with NATO forces. A company spokesman, quoted in a release, says, "The solution will allow the rapid deployment of a secure 3G infrastructure virtually anywhere in the world, providing a local communications centre which will be invaluable in remote areas, for example during conflicts or when administering aid."

AB -- 2/2/06

TMCnet has learned that American Fiber Systems (AFS) has completed $25 million in financing from Comerica Bank's Technology and Life Sciences Division. AFS will use the money to increase their capacity to offer infrastructure and wholesale transport services in second- and third-tier metropolitan markets.

AFS is a privately-held broadband service provider (BPS) with headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. Their business is focused on delivering carrier-grade wholesale optical broadband services to telecommunications carriers and large enterprises, so those customers can "cost-effectively extend existing technology infrastructure for high-bandwidth, high network reliability data services, including optical speed Internet, business services, telephony services, IPTV and video streaming applications."

AFS says that it has deployed over 90,000 miles of cable since the company was started in 2000. Their markets include Atlanta, Cleveland, Kansas City, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville and Salt Lake City.

AB -- 2/2/06

COMTek, the communications provider responsible for a broadband-over-powerlines (BPL) deployment in Manassas, Virginia, said in a release today that there is no longer any "documented basis for further ham radio operator concerns" over the city's BPL system -- see the press release at "COMTek: Finetuning of BPL Technology in Manassas Complete, Legitimate Ham Radio Operator Concerns Now Addressed."

The release quotes COMTek Vice President Walt Adams:

"We know of fewer than half a dozen ham radio operator complaints, each of which COMTek has gone to truly extraordinary lengths to address. COMTek stands by our service and the deployment of our equipment. We are not aware of any valid basis for the concerns of those who would deprive BPL broadband to Manassas families and small businesses. The opposition from these almost entirely non-Manassas individuals and their national organization appears to be grounded in a fundamental opposition to BPL rather than any hard facts."

The release also accuses opposers of running a "campaign to turn back the clock on broadband in the United States."

However, a release from the Amateur Radio Relay League from January 18, 2006 (see "Shutdown 'Imperative' in Face of Still-Unresolved BPL Interference, ARRL Says"), expresses a very different point of view in these excerpts:

"After the operator of the Manassas, Virginia, BPL system failed to meet its own commitment to resolve complaints of interference to local radio amateurs, the ARRL again demanded the system's immediate shutdown."

"'It is now apparently unwilling to voluntarily comply with its regulatory obligation to shut the system down,' [ARRL General Counsel Chris] Imlay said of COMTek, following a meeting January 17 between company officials and local radio amateurs."

"The League asserts that COMTek did not want to start the meeting with a local newspaper reporter present. Imlay said the company's 'bizarre action' indicated that COMTek 'was unwilling to subject itself to public scrutiny.'

"COMTek Vice President Walter Adams acknowledged at this week's meeting that its BPL system was causing harmful interference on Amateur Radio frequencies, despite its pledge to permanently notch ham bands by January 15, the League said. Even so, Adams 'specifically declined to take any further steps to mitigate the interference,' Imlay continued, calling COMTek's stance 'totally unacceptable to the aggrieved licensees in Manassas.'

"In its letter, the League said it doesn't question COMTek's desire to eliminate the harmful interference. 'However, the inescapable fact is that the Main.net hardware now in use in the city's BPL system is, and has been proven, incapable of being configured so as to function as intended without causing harmful interference to radio communication.'"

"'These meetings have not produced any solution to the interference problem but have, instead, created the illusion that the problem is being addressed,' Imlay charged in his reply."

"Among BPL systems more likely to be involved in stubborn interference cases, the ARRL said, are those using DS2 or Main.net technology that lack fixed, permanent notches in the ham bands. Utilization of such BPL technology, the League maintains, has resulted in 'substantial, extremely difficult-to-resolve incidents of interference' from BPL pilot programs and deployments to Amateur Radio."

COMTek's Walt Adams says in the company's press release that the Manassas BPL system is the first "full-scale commercial deployment of BPL on a meaningful scale in the United States." The system has over 900 subscribers.

AB -- 1/24/06

The other day I wrote about AT&T's use of vehicle wraps in its rebranding effort following the SBC-AT&T merger.

I just thought it was interesting that BT is doing something similar in the UK in connection with its launch of its Openreach division -- see "Fresh waves for BT."

In many ways, the telecom business is all about truck rolls, so the vehicle surface is an obvious low-cost, high-value advertising medium. BT's Openreach project is making use of striking, large-scale, full-body imagery to get attention. And with 22,000 vans on the road, the branding impact should be impressive. I couldn't find too many images illustrating the new branding, but here's one that gives you an idea:

AB -- 1/11/06

Today we received an interesting news release from Bumper2Bumper Media, a graphics company that played an interesting role in the rebranding of SBC and AT&T following their recent merger (see "Bumper2Bumper Media Wraps Merged SBC/AT&T Fleet").

One of the nightmarish tasks of implementing a merger like this would have to be updating signage and branding in thousands of locations, including company vehicles. Bumper2Bumper is in the business of vehicle wraps and architectural graphics, and they collaborated with AT&T's branding agency, Interbrand, in the rebranding effort.

Bumper2Bumper's release says that their project involved "305 vehicle wraps across the United States, 600 large-scale identification banners shipped across the globe, and a landmark lobby mural for the company headquarters in San Antonio, Texas," and was executed in three days, in time for the formal merger announcement Nov. 21, 2005.

From the examples given on the Bumper2Bumper web site, I can see that a vehicle wrap is really much more than just a plain old truck sign -- the medium uses as much of the vehicle surface area as possible to create a highly-visible and memorable image. Their site doesn't seem to include an image from the AT&T project, but this picture will give you some idea how it works:

Unfortunately, Bumper2Bumper's web site is almost entirely designed with Flash, so I can't give you a hyperlink to a fascinating video that shows a truck being wrapped. Try going to the "Mobile" section of their site, then hover over "Our Capabilities" then click on the "Installation" link.

AB -- 1/6/06

Rich Tehrani alerted me to this amazing story about Douglas Rupp, who lives in a remote river valley near Index, Washington, and all the trouble he's gone through trying to get phone service out to his home.

Rupp heats with wood, uses hydro and solar for power, gets Internet and TV service via satellite dish, and bought a 20-foot-long Army amphibious vehicle to haul supplies across the river to his home. But so far telephone service is eluding him.

The article in The Daily Herald of Everett, Washington, says Rupp has spent over $30,000 trying to rig up some way to get phone service to his house, including building a 50-foot antenna on his roof (not high enough) and pounding over 100 ladder rungs into a 120-foot tree to put an antenna up there (still not high enough), and constructing complicated reflecting devices to try to redirect cell phone signals to his house (nope).

As part of the merger deal for Verizon and MCI, Rupp and his neighbors hoped to to bundle in a requirement for Verizon to run telephone service into the area, but it looks as if state regulators back-pedaled on the deal.

AB -- 1/2/06

An announcement today says that on Thursday, Dec. 8, 2005, the New Millennium Research Council will release a new report pointing to broadband deployment as a key to reducing U.S. healthcare costs and boosting the nation's economy.

The new report, "Great Expectations: Potential Economic Benefits From Accelerated Broadband Deployment to Older Americans and Americans With Disabilities," is authored by Bob Litan, described as a Kauffman Foundation and Brookings Institution scholar. Litan will present his findings at a luncheon in Washington, D.C. at 12 noon ET (see PDF invitation). The presentation will reportedly be available by audio feed and archive -- follow link for details.

According to today's announcement, Litan's report will point to cost savings and large economic benefits that could result from broadband deployment expediting telemedicine, independent living and telework. Litan intends to argue that "accelerated broadband should be made a much higher national priority than it is today" because of the potential benefits.

AB -- 12/6/05