Blogwatch: The 4G picture becomes clearer, or does it?

LTE logo

Branding LTE, hedging bets over WiMAX, opening White Space in the US, doubts over mobile advertising and music, and Twits take over the world…

Last week we featured an intelligent critique of the GSMA’s branding policy, having umpteen acronyms for all the variants of evolved GSM, compared to the much easier to recognise WiFi products. Not really the fault of the GSMA mind you, more to do with the 3GPP. However, it looks like it has fallen on deaf ears, as this week sees the release of the 3GPP’s official logos for next generation LTE and LTE Advanced. Note the clever treatment of the initial ‘A’ in Advanced… a subliminal 4G message if ever there was one. According to the LTE Watch blog:

The official documents for the decision can be downloaded from the 3GPP. You can actually find some nice information on 3GPP’s ongoing marketing and communications efforts in the documents.

LTE Advanced is one of two technologies that are expected to meet the ITU’s IMT-Advanced requirements (aka 4G), the other being the Intel-led 802.16m WiMAX. However, just last week Intel said it would add HSPA connectivity to its Moorsetown chipsets. An admission of doubt for the nascent 4G technology, or a recognition that you need multiple options for mobile broadband? According to the GigaOm site:

This is great news for all of us waiting for truly ubiquitous broadband, especially since Intel previously abandoned an idea to put some sort of 3G radios in its Centrino laptops back in 2007, saying customers weren’t too hot on the technology. As for WiMAX, Intel will offer that for Moorestown too, but it will be a while before WiMAX has the coverage options required to support users traveling outside of a few WiMAX enabled cities.

There is a lot of debate in the US at the moment about the so-called “white spaces” in the wireless spectrum – the gaps between TV spectrum allocations – and whether or not they should be offered for new wireless services. The Federal Communications Commission issued a report last week favourable to the authorisation of unlicensed white space devices. The Ars Technica site spoke with Motorola’s Steve Sharkey, director of Spectrum and Standards Strategy, to discuss the vendors plans. According to Sharkey:

It’s hard to know where this will ultimately go. I think we’ve got some good ideas for services that we can provide now. It’s kind of like WiFi. When that first became available and the structure for WiFi was first approved, I don’t think that anybody guessed where this would ultimately go or how widely it would be deployed or how extensive it would be. That’s the same kind of opportunity that I think we’ve got here. This is something that we’re very excited about—the opportunity to provide these products. So there’s a lot of focus on moving forward as quickly as possible.

Staying on the subject of mobile, Andrew Grill over at the M-Search Groove blog posits that Mobile Advertising is Broken. It’s a length post that ties in with an LBS conference this week, but he concludes by saying:

One thing for certain: Mobile changes all the rules. We must all recognise and apply this in earnest. Mobile is a personal device, and we have to get personal. This means developing mobile campaigns that start by asking people their permission and inquiring about their preferences (while respecting and allowing them to manage their privacy). Only then, in my opinion, will the way be clear for mobile advertising to really take off.

Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson got al lot of mileage out of his take on the Long Tail theory, and indeed still does. Now he asks the question of whether it works for mobile music:

Apparently not, at least not with the current generation of phones that make music discovery difficult. Frank Taubert, CEO of 24/7 Entertainment, which provides 4.5 million songs to a wide variety of digital music services including the unlimited mobile music services Omnifone, told Popkomm attendees that a full 66 percent of those songs had never been purchased or downloaded — not even once. The lesson? More evidence that a Long Tail without good filters is just noise.

Moving on… News broke last week that Yahoo is set to fire at least ten per cent of its workforce. Silicon Alley Insider got hold of what it claims is the company-wide memo sent to all staff by CEO Jerry Yang:

yahoos, i feel it’s important for me to reach out to you after our earnings announcement, and before our all hands meeting tomorrow … because compensation expenses are the single largest part of our costs, we anticipate a reduction of at least 10% of our global workforce by year-end … having layoffs is very difficult, particularly in light of all we’ve experienced this year. but we don’t take these decisions lightly … as always, i thank you for all you do as yahoos. best, jerry

Spend enough time trawling the blogs and you soon come across some weird and wacky applications (trust me!). This one, spotted by O’Reilly Digital Media, is a cracker, and there’s even a YouTube video on how to do it:

Here’s a clever Web service: Find a DVD at Netflix or a CD at AOL, click the Paper Case bookmarklet (JavaScript link), and it will print the cover image and details. Then you fold the paper, tuck your disc inside, and slide the package into an album, saving lots of space.

Ever wondered what Twitter is all about? Take a look at TelecomTV’s own Twitter feed to find out. As for the business model… what business model, asks Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider?

We’ll stick our necks out here: Twitter could eventually be worth more than $1 billion. Why? Because they’ll figure out a revenue model eventually, just like Google did. Why is Twitter different than the 9,000 other Web 2.0 companies that are intending to figure out a revenue model eventually? Because people are obsessed with it.

Our TelecomTV feed is merely a test, but there are plenty of people out there using it for real. Mashable has a list of 25 Celebrity Twitterers… or is that Twits?

Blog Watch: Friday August 29th

Image via Wikipedia

Money for old rope, throttling the 3G package, and twits all round… when will the silly season end?

Dan Rayburn writes about a new Content Delivery Network that has received funding this week. Yes, another one! According to Dan, VC funding for CDN and P2P delivery networks has already exceeded $325 million in the past 18 months. Enter Conviva, formerly Rinera Networks, which has raised $20 million:

The one thing I really dislike, more than anything else, is a company that talks a big game while delivering nothing more than marketing speak. Instead of Conviva quietly raising the money and not coming to the market and pitching editors on the company until after they have a real story, customers, and product to talk about, they make a big deal now about the company, even though there is nothing to talk about.

And for marketeers reading this (‘marketeers’; what an awful word), why not crib some of the buzzwords in Conviva’s product details on their web site. As Dan Rayburn says:

It reads like a dictionary of the most popular buzz terms in the market today. They manage to get nearly all of them into just a few sentences including “greater brand loyalty”, “engage audience”, “site stickiness”, “monetize perishable content”, “target advertising”, “new platform” and “real-time Intelligence”.

Over at AppleInsider, it’s red faces at Orange. 3G iPhone users in France have accused Orange of intentionally capping 3G download speeds.

Many were furious, arguing that artificial limitation was in direct violation of the service agreements shared between the carrier and its iPhone customers, which theoretically should have allowed HSDPA speeds approaching 7.2Mbps. When contacted by FranceInfo, an Orange representative reportedly confirmed that that the carrier has been deliberately limiting speeds for all 3G capable phones on its network to 384Kbps, saying the move was aimed at ‘preserving the stability of the network.’ Following a meeting on Monday at its Paris headquarters, Orange said it will raise the download cap for iPhone users from 384Kbps to 1Mbps by September 15th.

Meanwhile, in Hollywoodland… The hit AMC series ‘Mad Men‘ is at the centre of an interesting case of viral marketing. Some of the fictional 1960s characters, including Dan Draper and Peggy Olson, are apparently Twittering away like crazy. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told the Silicon Alley Insider website that it has received DMCA takedown notices.

We’re assuming that means the notice was sent from AMC, and that the cable channel lodged some kind of copyright infringement claim. But can you claim a copyright on a character’s name? What if someone whose name is Don Draper actually wanted to use a Twitter account himself? Someone liked ‘Mad Men’ enough to create Twitter aliases for the show, and to proselytize on its behalf — and that AMC wants it stopped.

Happily, big bad Hollywood soon called off the dogs and saw sense. In an update:

Deep Focus, the Web marketing group that works for AMC, tells us that they gently nudged their client into rescinding the DMCA takedown notice they’d sent to Twitter. See, in Web marketing parlance, the Twitterers assuming the names of Mad Men characters are actually ‘brand ambassadors’ meant to be cultivated, not thwarted. “Better to embrace the community than negate their efforts,” says a Deep Focus spokesman. We agree!

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