Kevin Martin, chairman of the FCC just released a plan proposing to allow for more consolidation of the media industry, by relaxing the rules governing media ownership. The biggest move would be to remove the prohibition of owning a newspaper and television station in the same market. In the age of online news, cable and web tv, the rule might not have as much relevance as it 30 years ago. Despite the decentralization of media content that the Internet encourages, big media production is still plays a crucial role how the society functions. The vertical and horizontal integration of the media industry is only going to constrict the flow of information. With an election coming up, I’m not sure why this is being brought up now. When the former commissioner tried the pass a similar measure, it failed against a loud dissent.

After months of complaints since the launch of the iPhone, Apple just announced the a Software Developer’s Kit will be released in February. Mac Rumors noted that the letter from Jobs suggested that they might use a digital signature to control who can develope applications, a strategy the Nokia is using.

For this reason, and the iPhone’s relatively small user base, I’m not sure that we’ll see the applications on the scale of Facebook. However, I’m looking forward to what software developers can come up with.

That being said, iPhone apps might be more profitable, because people are getting more used to downloading and paying for apps and content to mobile phones.

A recent Telephia report on mobile applications, found that in Q2 2007, 5% or 13 million mobile users downloaded a mobile app, which generated $USD 118 million. Compare that with Business Week reporting the estimate that the entire monthly Facebook revenue from widget advertising is less than $USD 1 million, or $USD4 million for the quarter.

OK, so I’m back from Berlin and Munich, but still behind on post.

Right now, I’m in DC attending the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference… Should be interesting.

The threshold everyone in telecom was waiting for, looks like to have arrived, as mobile users overtake landline users. Mediamark Research Inc. announced the results of a study, finding that 84.5% of people surveyed have landlines in their homes, while 86.2% have at least one cellphone. Further, only 12.3% of the participants only had a landline, while the people who solely used mobile phones was 14.0%.

I don’t think that landlines will be going away time soon. Especially for businesses that require stable and high quality voice service. I can see home landlines usage to continue its decline. This move toward mobile-only usage raises interesting questions on how infrastructure in residential landlines will evolve, and the reactions by the telecoms and the FCC.

Image source: fcc.gov

I got a little behind writing here the last week, because my spare time writing was taken up by finishing my flow column on Kevin Martin, the chairperson of the FCC.

It’s up, so I thought I’d link to it.

What is the blog etiquette on cross-posting?
Good thing? Bad thing?
I’d be curious to hear your opinions.

Image source: nytimes.com

New York Times reported that Nokia is priming a relaunch of the N-Gage after two failed attempts at providing a portable phone and gaming platform. Following two attempts to market the N-Gage in 2003 and 2004, Nokia pulled the line of devices from Europe and North America in 2005, after lukewarm sales, well below their sales targets. Not giving up, Nokia hired the legendary design firm IDEO, for a user-centric design approach for the next iteration. Now, the new N-Gage will allow people to play games with their friends and strangers, and try-out and purchase games from their phones. They will also know more about the skill levels of the other people they are playing against, so they can find people of similar abilities, which was a user need that was discovered through IDEO research. If the re-launch is successful, the N-Gage could become a textbook example of user need driven product design.

Combining a portable gaming device and a phone seems like a no brainer, but success has still been elusive. Besides Nokia, the other obvious places to look have been slow in making progress as well. Sony presents yet another example of the Japanese giant having a difficult time getting their individual arms to work together, but it looks like they are starting to work it out. After years of rumors, Sony has filed a patent on a mobile gaming platform that will combine the PSP with Sony Ericsson phone technology. Seeing that the patent was only filed in May 31, 2007, seeing a product to market in the US, could take time. However, as unwired review notes, if it can play PSP games, it could have immediate impact.

Putting aside the success of the DS line and the Wii console, Nintendo is still strangely silent, despite filing a similar mobile phone gaming patent way back in 2001.

Of course, Sony, Nokia, and Nintendo will also have to deal with the US carriers, who lean heavily toward restrictions on their ondeck services, as they too want to earn revenue from the mobile gaming market. It’s not clear to me, how the N-Gage will integrate with US mobile carrier services. I’m definitely going to follow up on the agreements that will be made, and how the services will play out. The complexity of the current system definitely makes it even more clear that, the FCC mandate of device and software interoperability for 700 MHz auction was important, even if some people think the FCC compromised too much.

I’m back from San Francisco and ready to post. More posts will be coming, but here on my two cents on AT&T’s censoring of anti-Bush lyrics during a webcast of a Pearl Jam performance that they hosted. AT&T shifted blame to a third-party vendor did the censoring, and they are working to put up an uncensored version.

What is most notable is that in carriers and media companies are now converging. When AT&T was a pure-play telecommunications services company, they didn’t need to worry that much about the information being transmitted over their wires. Now that AT&T and other carries want a piece of the “information service” pie, they are finding themselves in uncharted areas. It is not surprising then, for something like the Pearl Jam mishap to occur. This convergence of traditional telecoms and media companies will be bumpy because telecoms don’t have much experience being media companies. Content is a fiercely competitive arena, where audiences and marketers are extremely fickle. Telecoms on the other hand are only used to a handful of competitors, if any at all. As the telecoms push into more content related areas, it will be interesting to track their successes and failures.

Image source: John Hoffmann’s Weblog

I’m back from a short trip to the beach, only to return to a massive thunder storms which lead to an extra long commute due to flooding and the sweet smell of raw sewage in Soho that was percolating in 90 degree summer heat. Ah… it’s good to be home.

With that said, let’s get back to Google. (Did you think I could go five posts without directly mentioning them?)

It’s funny because the spectrum auction has been a big deal in telecommunications circles every since the FCC made television broadcasters switch from analogue to digital, which freed the 700MHz band of spectrum in the first place. But Google makes news, and their public announcement of their concerns about the auction turns a business section article into front page news on the New York Times (albeit below the fold.) All this analysis leads to a lot second guessing. The what ifs and predictions can be fun and are an important part of the game, however separating the signal from the noise is difficult. More over, after a week passes, most people will move along with the rest of the blogosphere to the next bright and shinny news item, like the new iMacs. In the short window of coverage, it is easy to forget that Google has been concerned about access and pipes for a long time.

On that note, let’s return to 2005, when the internet was abuzz with rumors of Google buying up “dark fiber” and their mysterious job postings.

At the time, Robert X Cringely (who made the great documentary Triumph of the Nerds, not to be confused with the movie about a nerd fraternity of a similar title.) commented upon the dark fiber speculation and the even cool super-secret plans to building their own Internet using home grown US$500 million mobile data centers housed in shipping containers.

Two years later, we haven’t seen or heard much more about these plans. It is also interesting to note how Cringley opened his article:

“Google’s strengths are searching, development of Open Source Internet services, and running clusters of tens of thousands of servers. Notice on this list there is nothing about operating systems. There are many rumors about Google doing an operating system to compete with Microsoft. I’m not saying they aren’t doing that (I simply don’t know), but I AM saying it would not be a good idea, because it doesn’t play to any of the company’s traditional strengths.”

Two years later, Google hasn’t created a new internet, nor they have entered the desktop OS market. Although, they have rolled out word processors, spreadsheet, photo album and calendar tools to join their email service which launched on April 1, 2004, which overs a lot of people software application needs, even it isn’t specifically called an OS (but if it walks like a duck…) And Sun created something that looks a lot like what Cringley was talking about.

The internet is full of rumors and wild guesses at future actions. Cringley is smart enough to know that he can’t see into the future. Further, he is humble enough to put a section which lists his predictions and review his track record when he does make a prediction. He is currently batting 0.533, which is say that he is right a little more than half the time.

This abundant media speculation is good when it focuses national attention on important, but often dry, issues as interoperability and access to wireless networks and services. Getting people to wonder why they can’t use their mobile handset on a carrier of their choosing and why they can’t control their on-deck applications are important first steps to insuring fair and reasonable telecommunications policy. However, the telecommunication industry can change surprisingly quickly. Historic perspective helps put these changes in context. Amid these changes, we have to remember where we’ve been before, and even where we thought we were going.

Images source: upgrade:travelbetter.com

With all this Google and spectrum talk swirling the internet and news media, I keep coming back to Wi-Fi as a good way to contextualizing the importance of having open networks and services, as well as open applications and devices. There are of course, many differences which I’ll identify, but the similarities are important and insightful.

Wi-Fi has exploded in the past few years. As with many overnight success stories, this one was twenty-five years in the making. In 1985, FCC opened several bands of high frequency wireless spectrum for unregulated use. This move allowed people to transmit over these frequencies without a license, as you would for radio or television. The spectrum 900MHz, 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz was (in hindsight) amusingly named “garbage bands.” Because they were used by medical equipment and home appliances including microwave ovens, they were considered to have limited telecommunications value.

In 1997, the turning point of Wi-Fi was the adoption of IEEE 802.11 standard by the Institute Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which was nearly ten years in the making. With a standard in place, developers could make devices and applications that were interoperable with each other. Developers chose the 80211b flavor in the first wave of products, because it was least expensive, albeit slow. Faster flavors of the standard, such as 802.11g and 802.11n, are now being developed and brought to market. The early application of 802.11b shows that the agreement on of a standard is just as important as what is agreed upon. As commercial products began rolling out, “Wi-Fi” was settled upon as a term for this new technology, because “IEEE 802.11b compliant” wasn’t as sexy.

Two points to take away from the spread of Wi-Fi concern standards and the open spectrum. First, the adoption of the IEEE 802.11 standard allowed for interoperability. Because products could easily to talk to each other, the chances for wide-spread use increased. Second, providing open spectrum expanded development, because
anyone from the size of Cisco and to the individual members of the Toronto Wireless Users Groups to develop and experiment with Wi-Fi. As well, it vastly expanded its usage by people. (Imagine if everyone who wanted to set up a Wi-Fi network needed to apply and pay for a broadcasting license.)

Wi-Fi will soon face competition from other wireless alternatives, like the results of the 700 MHz auction or WiMax, which is faster and has roughly 100 times wider range. These telecommunications technologies require towers and infrastructure, which have price tags that run in the billions of dollars to implement in the US. Big upfront costs means that big entities are involved like telecoms, industry disruptors like Google or Apple, or governments. Even if the FCC mandated open networks and services (which it did not,) standards and truly fair pricing would remain challenges to seeing levels of innovation and adoption on par with Wi-Fi.

Some good, accessible readings on the topic:
A Brief History of Wi-Fi, Economist, June 10th, 2004. (subscription required)

“How Wi-Fi Works”

Just a quick post on the upcoming 700MHz spectrum. Yesterday, FCC released guidelines on the auction. Google was pressing for 4 points on its policy blog:
* Open applications: consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire;
* Open devices: consumers should be able to utilize a handheld communications device with whatever wireless network they prefer;
* Open services: third parties (resellers) should be able to acquire wireless services from a 700 MHz licensee on a wholesale basis, based on reasonably nondiscriminatory commercial terms; and
* Open networks: third parties (like internet service providers) should be able to interconnect at a technically feasible point in a 700 MHz licensee’s wireless network.

FCC is gone along with the first two, which is important because outside developers can innovative as we have seen on the Internet, but less so on mobile phones. However, it appears that the winners of the spectrum will not be forced to keep their services and networks open.

I still getting my head wrapped around that FCC actually said. Google hasn’t say yet if they are going to bid in the auction. But they are more likely now that given the FCC’s guidelines. Along similar lines, even if the FCC implemented open networks and open services in the auction guidelines, openness is ultimately all about execution. Defining and overseeing “nondiscriminatory” pricing is crucial. As seen, in the attempts to open wirelines, the task is tricky and can be gamed. Inflated prices make it economically impossible for third parties to profitably lease pipes and services, similar to the experience of third-party broadband ISPs.