Facebook gets voice, telcos go mute
It might just be time for CSPs worldwide to get serious, really serious about the threat to the traditional revenues from the likes of Skype, Facebook, Google and another thousand or so messaging and...
View ArticleBig data, big deal?
I have to admit to being one of the unconvinced that big data was anything more than just a fancy name for data analytics and business intelligence (BI) or a great excuse for suppliers to sell more...
View ArticleLiving in a lead-lined cave
Ovum’s latest survey into consumer concerns about privacy and use of personal data may just be the tip of the iceberg. As more disclosures of data collection and storage become public knowledge, the...
View ArticleTelstra throttles, world watches
Newspapers in Australia report that Telstra is making a bold move to ‘throttle’ or slow the speed at which its ADSL customers download content through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in peak periods as...
View ArticleGoogle pays Apple $1bn – network operators get ?
Surprise, surprise! Google pays Apple $1 billion per annum to make sure it is the default search engine on all those millions of iOS devices out there. Money for jam you might say? After all, what...
View ArticleWalls collapse in the home of walled-gardens
The three major Japanese mobile-phone service providers in the home of ‘walled-gardens’ are making their smartphone content offerings available to rival companies’ customers as they focus more on...
View ArticleFeeling insecure? Therapy won’t help.
Hackers have had a big week. US claims that the Chinese military is allegedly hacking into US corporations and actively enticing the country’s best hackers to join up is one thing, but when hackers try...
View ArticleRegulator bashing – Is there an app for that?
You know it’s a ‘slow news’ year at the Mobile World Congress when the operators start ganging up on the regulators. Oh yes, regulator bashing reached new heights in Barcelona with almost every CEO,...
View ArticleBillions in big business as Barcelona beats blues
Like many suffering from post-MWC fatigue, I am trying to piece together how an event of this magnitude manages to keep bucking trends. The GSMA flagship is astounding not only in its size and...
View ArticleNo such thing as a free lunch
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that if you are offered anything for nothing these days there has to be a catch. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it – you just don’t get...
View ArticleIsis – iris or nemesis?
Excuse me for appearing to be confused about the state of play with Isis – the US-based NFC-based mobile commerce network spearheaded by Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobile and T-Mobile US. I liken its...
View ArticleGoogle bucks the system
So, it seems Google’s foray into WiFi provisioning leaps from ‘experiments’ in two US cities to helium-filled balloons over New Zealand and now to the sacrosanct coffee temples of Starbucks, all 7,000...
View ArticleCustomer experience or customer engagement?
CEM, or customer experience management, is one of those high visibility areas that everyone is aspiring to improve. There are so many interpretations of what the term actually means that it is not...
View ArticleIt’s all about ‘now’– even for billing
I am in the process of writing a new ‘billing’ training course for the TM Forum to replace the existing ‘Introduction to Next Generation Billing.’ The more research I do the more it seems It seems that...
View ArticleBin laden with technology
I remember reporting years ago on rubbish bins in public places that sent a message to base when they needed emptying. I thought it was a bizarre concept at the time until it was explained to me just...
View ArticleWhen will they grow up?
For my sins I possess and use devices that have Apple iOS, Android and Windows operating systems. I could spend hours outlining the features, good and bad, of all of them but, quite honestly, none of...
View ArticleDisrupting disruptive cloud services
At a time when cloud-based services are being touted as the answer to everyone’s IT processing needs comes a series of big name disruptions. Last Friday Google had an unprecedented outage that only...
View ArticleGlass not so rose-coloured
I’m sure you all thought that Google Glass was developed to be the next big thing and generate billions of dollars in hardware and app revenues. You were probably right but the latest theories are...
View ArticleBilling not quite dead, yet!
I was fascinated to read in the recent Openet research paper, ‘Charging and Billing for the Digital Economy’ that 87 per cent of operators surveyed believed that billing systems would be replaced by...
View ArticleSponsored data damned
Depending on where you stand, AT&T has either become the angel of mercy or the devil incarnate. Rarely have we seen so much vitriol emerging from the press over a data plan a telecoms operator has...
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