Archive for the ‘Information Technology’ Category

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Ivan Seidenberg shines the “light” on Verizon’s FIOS strategy

Monday, October 5th, 2009

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Dave Burstein at DSL Prime reports that Ivan Seidenberg effectively says the the wireline voice telecom business is dying:

“we have to pivot and make a shift from the voice business to the data business and eventually to the video business. … we must really position ourselves to be an extremely potent video-centric asset.”  He further states, “The issue there is perhaps it is like the dog chasing the bus a little bit. So what I need to do is get ourselves focused around the following idea, that video is going to be the core product in the fixed line business. … I shed myself of the burden of chasing the inflection point in access lines and say I don’t care about that anymore.”

Despite Seidenberg having been one of the few telecom industry visionaries to truly embrace data/video as the future of the industry as long as 10 years ago, it still sounds strange (heretical, in fact) to hear a telecom CEO say “I don’t care about that [access lines] anymore.”  On the other hand, I believe Seidenberg is correct in focusing Verizon’s strategy on the combined communications capabilities of its wired and wireless footprints. (more…)

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Posted in Communication Networks, Telecosm, Web as Business Platform | Comments Closed

Paid Search 101 Rap

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

This creative gentleman converts the concepts of SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization/Search Engine Marketing) into catchy rap lyrics.  I think he should consider entering the employee training or seminar business – it would sure make some of this stuff easier to learn!

Posted in Interactive Marketing | Comments Closed

Latin America Wireless

Tuesday, March 6th, 2007

Like most of the Middle East and Africa, Latin America is skipping the 100% wired stage of telecoms. Governments in those countries were too financially unstable &/or corrupt to mandate buildouts beyond the wealthy enclaves and business districts of their major cities. The beauty of wireless is that it is so much less capital intensive. Consequently, wireless telephony penetration in LatAm now approximates 60-70%. Moore’s Law continues to reduce the cost/increase the functionality of handsets (and you can have either, but not both, as a consumer). In LatAm, prepaid service is a much bigger mode of payment for service, as it facilitates budget management. Also, calling party pays, not the one called. Finally, network convergence is driving all the margin out of the historically high margin voice telecom service (in late nineties 45% OPERATING profit was the norm), whether wired or wireless.  (more…)

Posted in Communication Networks, Telecosm | Comments Closed

Publishing and Advertising 2.0 – Part 2

Friday, February 16th, 2007

The Internet will continue to drive major structural change into the advertising and other digitizable media for the next 25-35 years. (The Carlota Perez book previously mentioned explains paradigmatic technology diffusion; Ray Kurzweil, referenced below, builds on the same concept to posit that technology/human change has accelerated since time began and will continue to do so, resulting within 30 years in implanted brain chips that leverage our thinking capabilities the way our foot on the gas petal leverages our muscular capabilities). Anyway, back to the present. Broadband connectivity (medium band, really – until we get more competition in telecoms, the 100MB/sec links available throughout Seoul, Korea and other foreign cities will be a figment of our imagination here) just recently hit critical mass in the US. Broadband mobile phones (again, medium band vs other nations) will reach critical mass in the next three years. That $200/household for Internet ad spend represents only that revenue that has been derived from the move of print ads to the web; audio/video related advertising is at its inception (and is why Google paid $1 billion for the largest market/mind share position in that market. Audio search is well developed and will begin to be monetized via ads soon. Video search has further to go, but I have no doubt that Moore’s Law will bring the processing power required to do it to an economically viable level. The number of doublings in processing power/unit ($) of resources consumed just recently passed thirty. Given the exponential nature of this growth, however, the absolute gain from each doubling has now reached the point of delivering stupendous economic impacts (same applies to storage, where you can now easily buy Terabyte storage servers for less than $1000).  (more…)

Posted in Bureaucracy Busters, Digital Media, Humorous, Web as Business Platform | Comments Closed

Publishing & Advertising 2.0 – Part 1

Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Publishing and advertising are undergoing structural transition last seen when Gutenberg’s press was invented. The Internet, and more specifically, the broadband Internet (which has reached critical mass during the last six years), eliminates the cost of distribution as an economic factor in media publishing and advertising. The fact that some businesses, including most of the historical advertising and publishing concerns, have not adjusted their business models has absolutely nothing to do with Bush or politics. For extended treatments of this subject, see Carlota Perez: Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital and Clayton Christensen: The Innovators Dilemna. For more concise observations in point of the facts of structural change in advertising business, I refer you to these:  (more…)

Posted in Bureaucracy Busters, Core Theme, Digital Media, Humorous, Web as Business Platform | Comments Closed

Squarespace

Thursday, December 14th, 2006

NewGround’s web site, including this blog, is created within a web-based application developed and hosted by a company named Squarespace.  This service, in my mind, would best be described as a Web 2.0 Content Management System (CMS).  From a business perspective, I believe the Squarespace service offering represents a great value proposition.  For $20/month, we get a web development and hosting platform that allows us (non-HTML proficient people) to create, store update/refresh, manage and publish our website, including this blog,  I mention this because today I noticed this post on their customer service blog describing the recent launch on the same Squarespace service (and servers) of a much larger and much more heavily trafficked website (of former US House Majority Leader Tom Delay).  The contents of that post not only raised my esteem for the Squarespace platform capabilities, but also underscore what a great value proposition it is – for Delay a great website/managed traffic service for $100/month versus several thousand to create the same capability for yourself.

Posted in Blogs, Software, Venture Capital | Comments Closed

Six Sigma Software

Friday, May 27th, 2005

 

In this post, Nicholas Carr asserts that software will have to eventually reach Bell telco levels of reliability.  I agree with this argument and believes it applies to almost all businesses.  Disciplined focus on process management is the only sure-fire way to attaining this standard of reliability (also known as five nines (99.999+%).

 

With software forming an increasingly vital part of the infrastructure of the world’s economy, reliability, stability and security are paramount concerns. In the past, software companies routinely shipped bug-ridden programs, figuring they could patch and update them later. And their customers took what they were given. That’s history – or will be soon. In the future, the best business software companies will distinguish themselves by producing industrial-strength, bulletproof code – code that approaches Six Sigma standards.

 

Posted in Software | Comments Closed

Government as Communications Infrastructure Provider

Wednesday, March 30th, 2005

In spite of being an ardent free market propronent and a believer that less government is better than more, I am beyond beginning to believe, although not yet completely sure, that government would be the best WiFi provider. And I should add that maybe, maybe that could also be true for the physical wired network infrastructure (fiber-to-the-home/business) as well.

Should WiFi Be Public Infrastructure? (continued)
I hate logging in to all of these various hot spots. Each one has a different login, a different account, and the process is one big hassle.
I’ve begged for better wifi roaming and I’ve wondered if Wifi should be public infrastructure.
Yesterday, a reader sent me a link to this story about a silicon valley firm called AnchorFree that is putting up free hotspots that are sponsor supported.
That’s a lot better than the paid hotspots we have now, but what I really want is free Wifi everywhere. Or at least let me pay a monthly bill to someone and then get free wifi everywhere I go without having to deal with different vendors with different payment schemes and different login systems.
This is only going to become more important as we get wifi voip phones, wifi iPods with podcasting built in, wifi cameras, and wifi video.
I honestly believe that the cost of supporting public wifi is not that expensive and the benefits to the citizens of every city that does it is enormous.
UPDATE: A great post on the comparisons between public water projects in the 19th century and wifi today. It’s a very interesting read.

Posted in Telecosm | Comments Closed

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