The commercial launch of Xohm in the US this week is a milestone for the WiMAX community. The WiMAX business unit of Sprint, whether the WiMAX camp likes it or not, is widely viewed as the flagship mobile WiMAX operation in the 2.5GHz band. Any further delays in its launch – it was originally scheduled to kick-off in Baltimore in April 2008 – would have been an unwelcome distraction for all those involved with the WiMAX industry and cast a shadow.

Now Xohm is up and running, and with the prospect of more Xohm-branded devices to add to the Zyxel PC modem and Samsung Air Card on 8th October – Sprint is holding a press event in Baltimore on that day – WiMAX, in the eyes of many observes in the mainstream press (and even some parts of the trade press) is well and truly off the drawing broad. The ‘will-it-or-won’t-it’ debate can now be laid to rest.

But Xohm is just one part (albeit a big part) of the WiMAX push for greater economies of scale. According to the WIMAX Forum, there are over 300 WiMAX deployments around the world; over a 100 of these are offering commercial service.

In India, with BWA spectrum auctions in the standardised 2.3GHz and 2.5GHz WiMAX frequency bands scheduled later this year, WiMAX looks set for a turbo-boost, so favourably is the technology viewed by the Indian government and the state-owned operators.

And in Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, Taiwan and Japan, WiMAX continues to make progress in either network deployment or commercial service.

Yet it is in Latin America where WiMAX, arguably, faces its sternest challenge. While the region looks fertile ground for WiMAX – wired broadband penetration rates are low and mobile broadband is in its infancy – lack of spectrum availability in the 2.5GHz and 3.4-3.6GHz frequency bands is dampening the technology’s prospects in the near term.

This is particularly so in Mexico and Brazil, two of the strongest economies in the region, which has repeatedly delayed its 3.4-3.6GHz spectrum auctions. And in the 2.5GHz frequency band, which is predominantly used by MMDS operators offering analogue and digital TV services, the respective regulators of the two countries have shown themselves unwilling to allow this spectrum be used on a nationwide basis for broadband internet access, particularly mobile broadband, in fear (it would seem) of stamping on the toes of the cellular operators.

If the lobbying efforts of the WiMAX camp in the coming months could secure more spectrum in the potentially massive markets of Brazil and Mexico, that would be as every bit as significant for the technology’s prospects worldwide as the Xohm launch in Baltimore.

 
 
 
 
The most interesting thing about the recent publication in France of responses to the public consultation on the planned issue of 2100MHz spectrum was the continued objections raised by the three incumbent operators to the emergence of a new player.

A total of 23 contributions were received by telecoms regulator ARCEP and can be broadly summarised as those in favour of bringing in new competition to help stimulate the moribund wholesale market and benefit consumers (20) and those against (3).

Contributions were made by two local authorities, two user associations, one individual, four equipment vendors and 14 operators comprising the incumbents and Altitude Telecom, Bollore Telecom, Coriolis Telecom, Iliad, Inquam Broadband, Kertel, Numericable, Omer Telecom, Tele2 Mobile, Transatel and XG Stream.

“According to all of the contributors, with the exception of existing mobile operators, the main issue inherent in the allocation of FDD frequencies in the 2.1GHz band is stimulating competition for the benefit of consumers,” ARCEP stated. The allocation of these frequencies is particularly significant for a new entrant, as it also includes access to the 900MHz band at a time when low-band frequencies are scarce.

Most respondents believed the entrance of a fourth operator would not only have a positive effect on the retail market, particularly in terms of pricing and service innovations, but also on the wholesale market, by improving conditions under which MVNOs are hosted, according to ARCEP.

“For most contributors, the development of virtual network operators is an adjunct to the arrival of a fourth MNO into the market - and does not contradict or replace such an eventuality,” said ARCEP. “In this respect, the existence of a fourth network operator is likely to have a positive effect on the hosting solutions offered to MVNOs.”

Not surprisingly, this view was not shared by Orange, SFR and Bouygues, which consider the current terms and conditions of MVNO hosting to be “relatively” satisfactory. They said the entry of a fourth mobile operator would actually have a detrimental effect on both the mobile sector and the economy, arguing that they could make more efficient use of the available frequencies than a new entrant.

However, Orange et al. stopped short of recommending that the new frequencies be issued only to incumbent operators, perhaps recognising the howls of derision that would follow, and joined the consensus that favoured giving a new entrant priority access to all - or some - of the 2×15MHz of 2.1GHz spectrum on offer. Can you guess which respondents wanted to grant priority access to only “some” of the frequencies? Two systems were proposed for awarding the spectrum: one reserving all the frequencies for a new entrant, the other reserving just 2×10MHz.

ARCEP said a procedure similar to the one employed October last year, when Iliad’s Free Mobile unit bid unsuccessfully for the 3G licence, would offer several advantages, including the deployment of a cost-efficient network, the ability to compete fully with existing operators by delivering innovative offers in the retail market and an increased ability to stimulate the wholesale market.

ARCEP rejected the bid by Free Mobile, the sole bidder for the licence, after it failed to agree to settle the ?619 million fee in one payment, as stated in the licence conditions.

However, Iliad remains interested providing the government puts in place “the conditions” allowing the emergence of a fourth mobile operator. “We are still interested in this licence,” finance director Thomas Reynaud said at the time. “There is a strategic and an industrial rationale to enter the mobile market, and we have all the assets to enter that market.”

Iliad requested a change in the financial terms of the fourth licence that would allow it to pay the fee in instalments.

Many responses to the latest consultation agreed that the financial terms should be different from those applied previously, and ARCEP agreed that since last year market conditions seem to have evolved sufficiently to justify a review of the terms.

“One possibility mentioned by certain contributors would involve decreasing the fixed fee of ?619 million [US$903.5 million] established in 2001 and/or spreading out its payment over a reasonable portion of the licence’s lifespan, with interest,” ARCEP stated. “Another possibility cited would involve an annual fee calculated in accordance with the scale provided for in the Opinion from the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Employment, dated 16 January, 2008, concerning payment of the fees for use of spectrum in the 900MHz and 1800MHz frequency bands.”

ARCEP will open a tender for the new frequencies by year-end, once the government sets the financial terms following a parliamentary debate. One way or another, the incumbents should prepare for tougher times ahead.

 
 
 
 
In The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams’ android Marvin suffered from acute depression since his brain was reputedly the size of a planet and thus the menial tasks of existence only ever occupied the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect. It’s funny how life sometimes imitates art isn’t it?

The world got a first look at Google’s very own Marvin earlier this week. The G1, running on the Open Handset Alliance’s Android platform, will be launched in the US under a partnership with T-Mobile USA. You’ll doubtless have read all about it by now, but just in case you haven’t, here are the basics: it’s being manufactured by Taiwanese handset firm HTC, it has a touchscreen and trackball as well as a slide out Qwerty keyboard, 3G HSPA, EDGE and wifi provide the connectivity along with GPS, while the camera weighs in at 3 megapixels. And it comes packed with Google apps including Google Maps with Street View, Gmail, Google Talk and YouTube, as well as a full HTML web browser and Amazon’s MP3 store. Phew.

The gadget hits shelves in the US on October 22nd but consumers are able to pre-order the device already. It will cost $179 with a two-year voice and data agreement. Europeans will be able to get their mitts on the gadget less than month later, with the G1 to be available in the UK in November, and across Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands in the first quarter of 2009.

Predictably, the blogosphere is split fairly evenly into love it/hate it camps. For the record, the Informer thinks it looks like a cross between the Photoshoped ‘iPhones’ we all saw before Apple launched its terminal and a Nintendo DS. It does also bear more than a passing resemblance to the T-Mobile Sidekick, but given its heritage, that’s hardly surprising. Still there’s no accounting for taste is there? The Informer loves Marmite and Mrs the Informer can’t stand the stuff.

Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page probably couldn’t give a monkey’s what the Informer thinks though, they’re so rich and famous now, they’ve reached the stage where they think it’s OK for grown men to rollerblade around wearing business casual. What’s the betting we’ll see Steve Jobs on a Segway before the year is out?

Staying with handsets, Sony Ericsson has followed Nokia’s lead (the cruel among you might argue the fifth placed terminal JV has little option) and announced the forthcoming availability of an unlimited music phone. PlayNow Plus, will go toe-tappin’ toe-to-toe with Comes With Music in the fourth quarter.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when SE lost its way. The Cyber-Shot and Walkman brands seem as strong as ever, but hardware alone is not enough these days. The firm’s latest marquee gadget was manufactured by up and coming Taiwanese vendor HTC and now it’s ripping off Nokia’s unproven business model of gifting consumers with a limitless music downloads which they can keep after their contract expires.

The Informer is not privy to the deal that SE has struck with the record labels, but if it’s anything like the deal Nokia is rumoured to have sealed, SE might well end up paying out as music hungry punters start a download frenzy. Guillermo Escofet, editor of Informa Telecoms & Media’s Mobile Media, says an internal source at Nokia suggested that the Finnish giant was paying each record label a royalty of $12-15 per handset sold, this covers just 35 downloads per user, beyond which Nokia will be paying the labels $0.60-0.70 for each download. “If the source is right, Nokia must be hoping that people don’t download too many tracks, or it’s likely to lose a lot of money,” points out Escofet.

Apparently, Nokia has done the math though. It reckons your average punter downloads just 35 tracks per year…um, can anyone out there think why we might expect that figure to ramp up faster than Evel Knievel when punters can help themselves at the musical buffet of plenty? Anyone? The Informer will let Escofet explain: “On subscription-based FTD services, in which people are normally given unlimited access to music catalogues for a flat fee per month, the typical download rate is about 30 tracks per month, after the novelty wears off. In the first month or so, the number of downloads tends to be much higher.”

Nokia, of course, might be able to afford what could turn out to be a bit of loss leader, while SE cannot. The firm lost its fourth place spot earlier in the year to LG and has been slipping down the handset league table with the same sort of inevitability that saw Motorola lose its second place spot to Samsung. The rise of the Koreans seems inexorable.

Over at KTF though someone’s taken the party out of Seoul. The chief of the country’s second placed wireless carrier has been arrested and charged with accepting bribes. Local press reports state Young-Chu Cho received bung payments amounting to more than $2m from equipment suppliers.

Staying in the Far East, Japanese operator Softbank will score a world first in January, when it becomes the first service provider to launch 3G femtocells in a commercial capacity. The carrier will be using kit provided by Ubiquisys.

The femto firm’s CEO, Chris Gilbert, quite literally had this to say: “The Japanese market has always led the world in mobile technology so it comes as little surprise that SoftBank is the first operator to deploy 3G femtocells. By quite literally turning their mobile network inside out, they are in the process creating a mobile broadband network with vastly more capacity and coverage than anything seen before.”

The Japanese market led the way with i-mode and also features the world’s only data-only mobile VoIP carrier. Neither of which innovations took off elsewhere. So it’s a bit early to use Japan as a benchmark for the success of femtocells. Still, with disruptive players like Softbank and Sprint backing the technology, it would be unwise to write it off, although in the rest of the world, the debate rages on.

Number crunchers at Informa this week predicted that by 2013, almost 60 per cent of mobile data traffic will be generated by users from the comfort of their own sofa. But while new gadgetry, sexier apps and cheaper tariffs all mean more data usage, the carriers also have to address the problem of providing capacity to meet this demand.

3G waves aren’t known for their ability to go through walls and users in busy urban areas will probably have to fight for capacity with everyone else in the same cell. But this is where femtocells come to the rescue. Informa reckons that by 2013, femtos will help operators offload up to eight per cent of total mobile traffic to fixed networks via the end users’ broadband lines. That’s assuming femtos become commonplace within the next five years.

Not so fast, say the crystal ball gazers at Ovum. “In general we would advise operators to hold back on deploying femtocells until standards-based equipment becomes available, unless the need to be particularly disruptive in the market is their overarching market strategy,” warned Steven Hartley, senior analyst with the research firm.

Hartley believes that until standards-based kit is available, Softbank and Sprint’s end user devices will be saddled with uncompetitive pricing because the ops won’t be digging into their pockets for heavy subsidies. The fact that mobile operators might also be using someone else’s pipe to carry their traffic also raises numerous quality of service issues, while the lack of standards means a greater risk of technical implementation issues, and resulting customer problems.

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, says Hartley. The technology and costs are not where they need to be to make femtos attractive mass-market consumer propositions, but until volume orders are placed the costs cannot fall to make them a mass-market proposition. Until then, femtos are stuck in business model limbo.

The Informer had lunch with a big name in the consultancy and network optimisation space this week, and much of the main course was spent chewing over the business case for femtos. The Informer’s lunchtime companion reckons there isn’t one, at least not yet anyway. Even in the US, where coverage is notoriously patchy, the consultant said the best solution is to pop down to Radio Shack and pick up a repeater for about half of what a femtocell would cost. So it looks like the jury is still out on whether femtos are in the running to be a disruptive technology.

Speaking of Sprint-backed disruptive technologies, the certification of Chinese vendor Huawei’s 802.16e USB dongle by the WiMAX Forum has been described by Disruptive Analysis’ Dean Bubley as an “industry milestone” and should give the mobile WiMAX market a significant boost in the near term.

“Given their track record of ramping up volumes, plus their enviable record at signing up distribution channels, the advent of the Huawei device signals to me that WiMAX is due to have one of its periodic upswings in confidence over the next few months,” said Bubley.

WiMAX has got a long way to catch up though. According to the analysts here at Informer Towers there will be four billion mobile subscriptions, worldwide, by the end of this year. The Informer wonders who the four billionth mobile subscriber will be. When he or she walks into the phone shop to become officially ‘connected’ will lights flash and claxons hoot? Will he or she be greeted at the door by a beaming Rob Conway and Craig Ehrlich, from the GSM Association, and have all expenses paid tickets to the Mobile World Congress thrust into their unsuspecting mitts?

Probably not, Rob ‘n’ Craig are likely to be too busy with the Association’s latest initiative. They’ve got one in the pipeline apparently. The Informer doesn’t know exactly what it is yet, as it’s not being officially announced until next Tuesday, but the focus is on preinstalled 3G, sorry, ‘mobile broadband’, in laptops.

The word from those in the know is that the announcement will be truly “surprising” and brings together the operator and laptop manufacturer and OEM industries. So what’s the big deal? Perhaps the GSMA will be unveiling a natty little “GSMA certified mobile broadband ready” sticker, which will be put on said devices. A bit like Intel Inside but …er definitely not wifi or WiMAX, OK.

Those WiMAX guys have already got their stickers, although they’re a bit touchy about where the WiMAX Forum Certified badge can go. It can’t, for example, be used on “promotional articles such as bumper stickers, coffee mugs, tshirts, baseball hats, flying disks, tie clips and the like.” Big lumps of iron only folks.

If the GSMA chiefs aren’t busy attaching 3G Inside stickers to computers in the run up to Christmas maybe they’ll be sticking pins into their Viviane Reding voodoo doll. The pesky EU killjoy has been sharpening her axe again this week, proposing to cut the price of roaming text messages by as much as 60 per cent by next summer.

The Brussels-based bureaucrat wants EU citizens travelling in other EU countries to pay no more than Eur0.11 per SMS compared to the current EU average of Eur0.29. A deadline of July 1st, 2009, has been set for prices to fall.

The Informer’s Teutonic cousin, Karl-Heinz Rummermonnger, was in town this week. With Orascom expressing an interest in Austrian operator Telekom Austria, Rummermonnger reckons Telekom’s main shareholder, the government, is now considering offloading a stake to Naguib Sawiris, with funding to come from the Orascom head honcho’s private equity business, Weather Investments.

Staying in Austria, the carrier One –which is joint owned by France Telecom and a private equity firm – changed its brand name to Orange. The Austrian operator has become the second company in as many weeks to join the Orange brand, following the recent launch of operations in Kenya.

Down in South Africa, meanwhile, Rummermonnger reckons Vodafone is on the verge of a deal with Telkom, with an eye to taking a larger stake in the Vodacom mobile operation. At present, Big Red holds 50 per cent of Vodacom, but has long been keen to increase its stake and has come close on occasion, although talks with Telkom always seem to break down.

It now looks like Telkom might be willing to sell Vodafone a further 12.5 per cent, following the break down of merger talks between Telkom and Nigerian mobile operator Globacom, owned by business tycoon Mike Adenuga.

In other M&A news United Arab Emirates operator Etisalat says it has struck an agreement to buy 45 per cent of Indian mobile operator Swan Telecom for $900m in cash.

Nine hundred million dollars, in cash. Wow. That’s quite the bundle, imagine how long it would take the cashier to count it out. “How do you want that sir?” “Oooh, tens and fives please.” The Informer’s crossing his fingers, his toes and his eyes today because it’s a Euromillions Lottery roll-over of £100m and his £2 stake in the office syndicate could well result in next Friday’s A Week in Wireless being written from a yacht in the Maldives.

It’s nice to dream, it could be you.

Take care

The Informer

 
 
 
 
Web giant Google has shown its hand. At an event in New York City this afternoon, representatives from Google, T-Mobile and HTC showed off the first commercial device based on the Android platform – the T-Mobile G1.

The fact that so much was known about the device already, probably robbed it of much of the hype that normally surrounds a launch such as this. There was also a distinct Apple-y feel to the promotional video that was used to showcase the gadget – and that’s not where the similarities stopped. But more on that later.

There wasn’t much to reveal about the hardware – an HTC unit with touchscreen and trackball as well as a slide out QWERTY keyboard. 3G HSPA, EDGE and wifi provide the connectivity along with GPS, while the camera weighs in at 3 megapixels.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of the SideKick when I saw the device in action, which given its heritage, isn’t surprising, even though it is made by HTC. But by this token, I can’t imagine it doing particularly well in Europe. It has too much of a ‘North American market’ look to it.

The software wasn’t much of a surprise either. The G1 comes packed with Google apps including Google Maps with Street View, Gmail, Google Talk and YouTube, as well as a full HTML web browser and Amazon’s MP3 store.

One of the cool features was the way Google Maps syncs with the GPS to allow users to view locations and navigate 360 degrees by simply moving the phone in their hand.

On a negative point the email client only interfaces with Gmail, naturally, as well as most other POP3 or IMAP mail services, leaving corporate email using Exchange etc. out in the cold. When questioned, Google said this leaves plenty of room for “third party development”.

The biggest surprise, but probably an obvious one in hindsight, was the announcement of the Android Market, which is a similar platform to Apple’s iPhone App Store.

The Market is accessed directly from the handset and allows users to browse for and download new applications. Initial offerings include a comparative shopping application, ShopSavvy, which allows users to scan the UPC code of a product with the phone’s camera and instantly compare prices; and a couple of geo-aware apps, which allow users to track their movements and plot new routes.

But all of this is superfluous to what the platform means to Google, particularly in light of the recent launch of the Chrome PC web browser. It’s just another pipe for Google to push its services - and hence its adverts - down. And in this respect Google probably doesn’t give a monkey’s what it looks like, or how much manufacturers rip off Apple. As long as there’s many and varied devices out there serving up app and ads, all is well.

The gadget hits shelves in the US on October 22 and consumers are able to pre-order the device already. It will cost $179 with a two year voice and data agreement.

Another surprise was that the G1 will also be available in the UK in November, and across Europe in the first quarter of 2009, with confirmed countries including Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

One of the ongoing concerns of investors weighing up the WiMAX opportunity has been that the price of base stations and CPE is too high to get an attractive return on their investment. This is particularly true in emerging markets, of course, where consumers don’t have the means to pay much for broadband access.

In Russia, wireless broadband operator Enforta focuses on the less price-sensitive markets of SMEs and corporates. The operator says fixed WiMAX equipment price points, while coming down, are still not low enough to make what it would believe to be a profitable play for the broadband consumer. (The average broadband consumer in Russia’s regions typically pays around $20 per month, while it is around $17 per month in Moscow and St Petersburg.)

In an industry yet to achieve significant economies of scale, the lower volumes are bound to create higher prices.

But there are signs that the price points on WiMAX equipment are not as a formidable barrier to the business case as they once were. In the 2.5GHz frequency band, the promise of large-scale mobile WiMAX rollouts by Sprint/Clearwire in the US and BSNL in India – along with on-going device development from the likes of Intel, Nokia, Samsung and no doubt Motorola – will inevitably drive prices down further.

Although there is a long way to go before the WiMAX community can come close to matching the device diversity and varying price points offered by the HSDPA camp, it can take heart from the success of its distributed IPR regime and the work done by the Open Patents Alliance to lower supplier royalties.

Xohm president Barry West, in conversation with WiMAX Vision last week, points out that the WiMAX eco-system – which includes more than 20 chipsets vendors – is delivering chipsets at around the $20 mark and that non-subsidised WiMAX USB devices will be available at Xohm launch (still scheduled for this month) at under $50, which looks impressive.

In the 3.5GHz frequency band, Onemax, which runs a mobile WiMAX network in the Dominican Republic (DR), reports that CPE is nearing the $100 per unit mark (a price point typically cited by WiMAX operators as the highest starting point to make a successful mass-market service proposition).

Onemax, however, is not aiming to increase market share by offering lower prices than DSL and cellular alternatives. Its monthly tariffs for consumers currently range from RD$1,090 ($32) per month – for a 256Kbps downlink and 128Kbps uplink service – to RD$2,990 ($86) per month for the 1.5Mbps/256Kbps package. The charges look expensive, particularly for an emerging economy, even allowing for the fact that each broadband plan includes VoIP and fixed /nomadic access within its coverage area.

It remains to be seen how far Onemax and other WiMAX operators in emerging markets can be successful by charging consumers a premium for their service on the grounds of higher speeds, better quality of service and quicker installation times than incumbent broadband competitors.

A decline in WiMAX price points does at least give them more room for manoeuvre on retail pricing, if they need it, without sacrificing margins.

 
 
 
 
When Taiwanese telecoms regulator the National Communications Commission (NCC) issued six 2.5GHz WiMAX licenses in July 2007, it looked likely that WiMAX would play a significant role in the country’s broadband market. But the landscape has changed drastically in the intervening 14 months.

One WiMAX licensee, First International Telecom (Fitel), has already confessed that its serious financial problems could jeopardize its prospects of even making it to a commercial launch unless it can attract new investment.

Of the other five, only Far EasTone, the only mobile operator to receive a WiMAX license, looks to be in a strong enough position to launch commercial services.

The rest - Global Mobile, Wei Mai Si Telecom, Tatung and Vastar Cable TV - do not seem to be in as hazardous a position as Fitel but are still nowhere near being able to mount a serious challenge in the wireless-broadband market.

Given that the Ministry of Economic Affairs has earmarked WiMAX as a potential major revenue earner for the country’s electronics manufacturers and has already secured a huge investment from US giant Intel, the NCC must be getting seriously worried about the state of play in the WiMAX market.

In particular, it must be ruing its controversial decision to not award state-owned broadband- and mobile-market giant Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) one of the six WiMAX licenses, which are valid for six years.

The NCC has already blocked CHT’s attempts to acquire Global Mobile in January and Fitel in late August, saying that the WiMAX licensees are not allowed to sell stakes until they have launched commercial services.

But it looks unlikely that some of the greenfield operators will even be able to launch commercial services, which brings the debate back to CHT and the unfortunate truth of Taiwan’s telecoms market: Nothing major can happen unless CHT is on board - a fact that is coming back to bite the NCC with some vengeance.

CHT’s exclusion from the WiMAX market means that the market giant has no stake in WiMAX’s success, and it has incited the operator to play hardball on crucial issues, such as infrastructure sharing with WiMAX licensees.

The problem for the NCC and for the government’s aim of making Taiwan a global WiMAX manufacturing hub is that CHT says it has moved on since missing out on a WiMAX license and is setting its sights on moving toward 4G, notably LTE.

This development is significant for WiMAX’s prospects of being successfully deployed in Taiwan, given that CHT’s sheer market power in terms of infrastructure and financial clout make it an essential player in any WiMAX rollout.

When it handed out the six WiMAX licenses - three for the north of the country and three for the south - the NCC left a carrot dangling for CHT, saying it would offer a national WiMAX license in mid-2009, which most local observers assumed would be awarded to CHT.

But with new Chairman Lu Shyue-ching positioning the firm to move aggressively toward LTE, CHT is indicating that it has moved past its interest in WiMAX and will use HSPA as its core wireless-broadband technology until LTE comes on board.

This would be a devastating turn of events, because there is no realistic way that the five greenfield WiMAX licensees and Far EasTone could offer commercially viable WiMAX services if CHT sat out WiMAX and decided to follow the wrecking-ball strategy of offering cut-rate HSPA wireless-broadband services, most likely bundled with its fixed-line broadband and IPTV services.

Of course, CHT’s suggestion that it is no longer interested in WiMAX could be a negotiating ploy to enable it obtain a more favorable deal for a national WiMAX license when it comes up for grabs in mid-2009.

CHT can argue to the NCC that it should be offered a sweetheart deal on its national WiMAX license, given that it is helping the NCC and the country’s wider economic interests by launching WiMAX when it is not really interested in the technology.

It is hard to take CHT’s insistence that it is no longer interested in WiMAX entirely seriously, since a national WiMAX license would at least provide the operator with some crucial spectrum, giving it some additional backhaul capacity even if it did not aggressively launch customer-focused WiMAX services.

Although it might be bluffing in this high-stakes game of poker with the NCC, there is no doubt that CHT is the beneficiary of the NCC’s shortsightedness in denying it a WiMAX license in 2007.

CHT can pretty much demand its own terms for a national WiMAX license because of the parlous state of the WiMAX market and the heavy bet that the government has made on WiMAX as a potential export technology.

The NCC finds itself in a tight spot because although it clearly needs CHT on board in the WiMAX market to save the technology from an ignominious failure, it will face a serious backlash - and maybe even a legal challenge - from the six existing WiMAX licensees if it offers CHT a national WiMAX license on favorable terms.

The unfortunate reality is that the NCC might have to eat some humble pie and bring CHT and the six existing WiMAX licensees back to the negotiating table to hammer out some kind of solution to the impasse.

This might mean that the NCC has to broker a deal to allow CHT to form partnerships with the most-troubled WiMAX licensees, most obviously Fitel and Global Mobile, finally giving it a seat at the table from which it should never have been excluded.

UK mobile operator T-Mobile launched a handful of prepay wireless broadband products on Friday, allowing users to get on the web without signing up to a contract.

There are three tariffs available starting at £2 for one day’s access, £10 for seven days or £20 for 30 days.

The data allowance is ‘unlimited’ but of course a fair use policy applies. Users will also need to pick up a USB stick at £49.99 to get onto the service.

The phrase “wireless broadband” has caught a lot of flack recently, with some professing it to be a fixed line replacement. But to T-Mo’s credit, the company does say it’s targeted at customers “that want to complement an existing landline connection with the flexibility of mobile broadband”.

An online poll of telecoms.com readers found that 35 per cent of respondents think mobile broadband should be pitched as a complementary offering to fixed. There was a tie between the proponents and the nay sayers, with 26 per cent a piece saying it ‘will not replace fixed broadband’ and ‘it is a clear threat to fixed broadband’.

A further 9 per cent say there’s ‘no such thing’.

Nevertheless, Richard Warmsley, head of internet and entertainment at T-Mobile UK, said: “We’ve seen massive demand for mobile broadband from a range of people, so we’re creating ways for customers to only pay for days they actually need. T-Mobile intends to make it as easy as possible for new customers to join the mobile broadband craze that is sweeping the country and to help with this we will soon be stocking our range of packages in a variety of new outlets such as supermarkets and popular high-street stores.”

 
 
 
 
…Or don’t. It’s been the kind of week, after all, where the crazy old people of social legend who keep their life savings stuffed into their mattresses suddenly don’t look so crazy any more. In fact, the Informer’s dear old Granny - whose funds were up until yesterday invested almost exclusively in insurance firm AIG - was told by her financial adviser to take the money out and keep it. The poor man couldn’t think of anywhere to recommend that she might make a new investment.

The Informer’s going to pay a visit to Granny at AutumnDaze retirement home this weekend, dressed in his sharpest suit and with a PowerPoint business plan presentation installed on his laptop. Because the Informer has an idea. He may well give the presentation to everyone in the sitting room, since they all seem to think he’s their son, anyway. It will be like a friendly, absent-minded Dragon’s Den that smells of mints and mothballs.

The Informer’s idea came to him on Wednesday as he sat at a roundtable hosted by ad-funded, UK youth MVNO Blyk. (Youth is defined as 16 - 24 years old in most developed markets apart from Italy, where you can be a youth all the way up to 30.) The firm announced 200,000 ‘members’ this week (they’re not called customers, users, subscribers or tricks, because it’s exclusive, innit) which is some way ahead of the uptake curve. The firm’s just shy of a year old and it was gunning for 100,000 in the first 12 months.

You can manipulate expectations to create the impression of strong performance, of course; a couple of hundred thousand users doesn’t sound like much in telecoms terms. But Blyk doesn’t see itself primarily as an operator. It’s a ‘Youth Media’ and, when benchmarked against others in this category - lads’ mags, etc - the firm insists that the numbers are strong.

They’ve got some interesting stats on the go, too. The average response rate to Blyk-delivered adverts is 25 per cent, which is sky-high, even accounting for the novelty of the medium. The advertiser’s cost per response is £0.05 and the firm is claiming 60 per cent repeat business from its advertisers.

Six out of ten members have joined Blyk on recommendation and 98 per cent of all customer care is self managed. The MVNO’s enterprising end users have established forums - by themselves - which answer the overwhelming majority of their own queries.

There was some bad news for other mobile players. According to Blyk, the young people of its acquaintance are largely uninterested in mobile content, which is the subject of the majority of mobile advertising efforts today. And UK CEO Shaun Gregory told an amusing story about trying to spend a £25,000 advertising budget with an unnamed but large UK operator. He said he had 27 touch-points at this operator before eventually getting through to someone who was able to talk to him about his spend. And he was given two agency recommendations for creative work and told to call back. That’s just an anecdote, of course, and the Informer cannot attest to its veracity. (Nor does he have any reason to believe it false.)

Anyway, back to the Informer’s idea. It turns out that a good portion of the 1,000 campaigns that Blyk’s run in its first year are focused more on trend spotting and analysis than on actually trying to stimulate sales. Blyk is proving a useful tool for finding out what it is that kids like. A high portion of responses are qualitative as well, the firm said. For some of these campaigns the number of members targeted can be as small as 18. And recommendation is the most effective means of generating interest and sales.

So, what we need to really make this kind of thing work is a dynamic database of individual youths that takes all of the information currently available and factors in real-time popularity. We’ll need a bunch of people monitoring social network sites to see how friend numbers fluctuate and to note how relationships are being impacted by behaviour. We’ll need to outsource live updates to playground monitors and dinner ladies in schools, and bar staff in pubs - the network’s in place, we just need to activate it.

Eventually we’ll have a popularity index for the segment that will enable us to target only the most influential youths at any given moment. The captain of the sports team gets dumped on his backside by the maths genius? His worth goes down, don’t target him. The lonely kid with the specs turns out to be responsible for all that top notch graffiti on the railway bridge? Quick, quick, target him, his influence is rocketing. It’s a brilliant idea, even if the Informer does say so himself. And you wouldn’t bet against it happening. You could even “incentivise” kids to provide real time updates themselves. And it’s copyright me, so don’t think about nicking it.

“So, Granny, what we’re talking about is a dynamic youth status database. We can mobilise the workforce at a moment’s notice and our burn rate should be entirely manageable. We’re forecasting ROI within 18 months and we’ll be looking to exit through acquisition inside two years. You get a seat on the board. With a cushion. It’s what we in the business call a win-win, Granny. Surely you see there’s significant upside? Granny? Granny? Oh, she’s fallen asleep again.”

It’s a better idea than investing in Nortel, anyhow. The Canadian firm told investors this week that it is “experiencing significant pressure”, tempering analyst forecasts of four per cent revenue growth with a reality checking two to four per cent decline. The firm is investigating “further restructuring and other cost reduction initiatives,” it said, before promptly announcing the planned disposal of its Metro Ethernet Networks business.

This is a flagship unit at Nortel and the timing of the announcements made them appear for all the world like cause and effect. Not so, said Nomura analysts, arguing instead that the sub-scale unit is worth more from a sale than it is to keep running. So not only is Nortel having a bad time financially, its message management needs a kick up the backside as well.

While we’re on troubled vendors, the hackles were up this week among Alcatel Lucent employees, many of whom launched a (probably futile) bid to persuade departing CEO and chairman - Pat Russo and Serge Tchuruk - to forego substantial severance packages. Russo is pocketing $9.4m in ‘thanks for nothing’ money. The Informer would like to make public his availability for the kind of job where you can get paid nearly $10m for presiding over massive losses. What a dream.

It’s all smiles at Nokia, though, which was lauded by environmental charity Greenpeace this week as the world’s greenest electronics vendor. It had been toppled from the top spot by Sony and its handset JV Sony Ericsson in last year’s ranking but, with improved product take-back and recycling practices, the Finn re-took the lead, with a score of seven points out of ten. Reflecting the current handset market share table, Samsung was in second place with 5.9, while erstwhile leaders Sony Ericsson and Sony took fourth and fifth respectively.

Motorola got a special mention for its tireless recycling of the RAZR form factor.*

The GSMA announced a green initiative of its own this week. The Green Power for Mobile programme is aimed at increasing the use of the cellular industry’s renewable energy sources. The target is to have 118,000 new and existing off-grid base stations in developing countries powered by renewable energy by 2012. This, said the GSMA, could cut annual carbon emissions by up to 6.3 million tonnes.

The organisation reckons that, today, only around 1,500 base stations around the world are powered by renewable energy sources, with ambitions in this area hampered by commercial (un)availability and viability issues and a plain, old fashioned lack of know-how.

When it’s not beavering away on matters environmental, the GSMA’s favourite pastime is battling with EU Communications Commissioner Viviane Reding over retail and wholesale pricing regulation. Well, some of it’s European members have taken the initiative; Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Vodafone have unveiled research from Frontier Economics to prove their collective point that enforced termination rate cuts are a Bad Thing.

The thrust of the findings appears to be a veiled threat, and it’s one that has been issued before. If the EU forces down termination rates, operators will be unable to cover their costs. So they will raise their charges in other areas, clawing back lost revenues from the hapless consumer.

Meanwhile, operators in Asia Pacific are being applauded by analysts for introducing capped roaming charges without ‘persuasion’ from regulatory musclemen. Singaporean player M1 has launched a new data roaming plan that caps usage costs at less than US$19 per day for consumption of 5MB or more. Below that level of consumption users pay $0.036 per 10KB. The deal is only good for users roaming on the Celcom Malaysia and SmarTone-Vodafone Hong Kong networks and only lasts until December, though.

Further west, Vodafone is expanding its presence in the Middle Eastern state of Qatar, where this week it won a fixed line licence to sit alongside the cellular one it claimed earlier this year. The UK-headquartered carrier expects to launch both services in 2009. Incumbent carrier Q-Tel has never faced competition on its home turf, so there may be a real opportunity for Vodafone to sheik things up!

The current financial crisis probably isn’t biting too hard in Qatar and - if Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse is to be believed - it’s not making itself evident in the US carrier’s consumer business either. The firm has spent the last few months clinging onto existing customers rather than focusing on bagging new ones but Hesse said this week in a webcast that the operator is ready to open its doors once again.

He also said that he expects the Clearwire deal to close by the end of this year. Earlier this week the Informer spoke to Barry West, who will become president of the new Clearwire, is Sprint Nextel’s former CTO and currently heads up the Xohm mobile WiMAX unit that - he promised - is still on target to launch commercially this month.

West reckons the macro-economic situation at the moment is working in favour of the new players looking to take mobile WiMAX to market in the near future, thereby stealing a march on the massed LTE community.

“The fact that it’s called 3G Long Term Evolution is indicative, in my view, of a little sleight of hand here,” he says. “This is not an evolution of 3G, this is a completely new 4G technology that requires investment in a new network. Given that the economic times we’re in at the moment are not easy, the big operators are not looking to invest in a new network any time soon. And that creates a huge opportunity for the alternative operators,” he said.

There’s been a disproportionately high amount of taxi-related stories this week, one of which involves Sprint, which has fitted out more than 6,000 New York City cabs with wireless data connectivity allowing them to offer customers the ability to pay by credit card as well as the more traditional philosophical insights.

In the UK, it has emerged that Londoners leave almost 10,000 mobile phones a month in the back of taxis, which is quite a haul. This was the result of a survey by Credant Technologies, which carried out a similar study in the US. It turns out that yer salt o’ the erf Lahdahn cab dwiver is more given to honesty than his New Yoik altoinative, with more than 80 per cent of London drivers handing in phones found in the back of their cabs compared to just 66 per cent in Gotham.

Oddly, and unrelated to wireless - we think - London cabs have been exploding with some regularity this week. The Informer rather suspects there’s nothing wrong with the cabs, it’s simply that some bumbling liberal has climbed into the taxi and said something along the lines of: “I think it’s wonderful that we’re giving a home to all these asylum seekers. And don’t you think it would be better if we got rid of the Royal Family?”, causing the drivers, not the taxis, to spontaneously combust.

And we’ll end on a driving story this week. British motoring organisation the RAC has concluded a study that reveals text messaging while driving is more dangerous than driving under the influence of alcohol or cannabis. Apparently reaction times in tests slowed by 35 per cent when 17 - 24 year old drivers in a simulator tried to read or write texts while piloting their vehicle. The figure was 21 per cent for consumers of herbal jazz cigarettes and 12 per cent for people that had drunk to the legal driving limit.

A whopping 50 per cent of respondents in the age group admitted to having sent or read text messages while driving. The cretins.

Take care (especially on the roads)

The Informer

* Actually, the Informer made that up.

Do-it-yourself global wifi network Fon claims to have recently passed the 1 million member milestone.

The open wifi champion, which was established in Spain, said it now has more than 400,000 registered Fon hotspots in over 150 countries.

The concept behind Fon is based on the idea that anybody with a broadband subscription can join the network by purchasing a Fon router. This router then enables members to share their internet connection with the Fon community and roam on all member hotspots for ‘free’ in return.

Fon’s ’social routing’ business plan is modelled on Aliens, Linus’s and Bills. Linus users let other Fon subscribers access the internet over their wifi connection in exchange for free access on any other Fon hotspot around the world. Bills charge for access at their hotspots and share the revenues with Fon, while Aliens are basically roaming users that pay to access Fon hotspots.

Several high profile companies, such as BT in the UK, Neuf Cegetel in France, Comstar in Russia, and ZON in Portugal have also partnered with the grassroots movement, embedding Fon sharing functionality in their own wifi routers.

 
 
 
 
Claims that the European Parliament is about to open the door to Chinese-style internet censorship are exaggerated and undermine the credibility of critics of proposals that are nonetheless dangerous.

A more sober assessment of the so-called “torpedo amendments” to the forthcoming telecommunications directive is that they do threaten some aspects of internet usage but Brussels is not about to turn into Beijing.

Conservative MEP Malcolm Habour’s proposals would enable internet service providers to vary “quality of service”, thereby opening the door to discriminatory distribution and giving priority to certain traffic.

Harbour insists that he supported “net neutrality”, but this did not convince Green and Socialist MEPs or internet-user organisations that question his interpretation of the principle whereby all content delivered over the internet is treated equally in terms of distribution.

Behind all this is the powerful lobby of “Big Content”, which wants to stop piracy of films, music and television programmes, above all via P2P file-sharing networks.

Cutting off access to P2P sites or massively slowing down access speeds (”throttling”), is one approach, the “graduated response” - otherwise known as “three strikes and you’re out” is another.

But looking at the issue from a free-market perspective, the P2P file-sharing sites are doing what the big corporations always promise - giving the customer what he wants at the price he is prepared to pay. The only problem is that the goods provided are not owned by the provider.

A long-term solution may lie less in draconian regulation and more in intelligent commercial action. Apple’s iTunes has shown that some consumers can be drawn away from illicit downloads if legitimate access to music is provided at a low price. A more radical approach was tried in the summer by music group Radiohead, which released its latest album online on a “pay what you want” basis. Users could pay a lot, a little or nothing.

This could prove a good solution across the audiovisual and music industries. Apart from anything else, Big Content would get a pretty clear idea of how people really value its products.