Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Thursday 31 May 2007, 2:38 PM
Big companies eat things
The rate at which the giants of the internet are hoovering up minnows is phenomenal but consistent, which is why it's perhaps not worth writing up each acquisition as a full-blown front page splash. Here's a few of the latest from the last couple of days:
Google eats Panoramio
You know that layer in Google Earth which lets you see photos taken at various locations? The company which provides that is a Spanish startup called Panoramio - now it's part of Google itself.
News Corp eats Photobucket
More photo stuff. King Rupert (Murdoch, not Goodwins, obviously) has snaffled Photobucket, which often provides image hosting for his other online plaything, MySpace.
eBay eats StumbleUpon
That clever little toolbar which helps you randomly wander around the extremities of the interweb? Hands off - it's eBay's now.
Thursday 31 May 2007, 12:28 PM
Would you use free Wi-Fi?
It does seem like a silly question (free anything is good, right?), but take a look at this article about the "disappointing take-up" of the City of London's gratis metro hotzone. The piece claims that only 6,000 people have signed up in the hotzone's first operational month - I'm not sure whether that figure is really so bad, but there are a few interesting factors to take into account here:
a) The financial district ain't short of broadband connectivity;
b) The price of 3G-based data usage isn't as horrendous as it used to be;
c) The City is a bit short on parks and benches where you could sit and surf;
d) Being a financial district, perhaps security is a concern;
e) Maybe people don't want to wave laptops around in potentially rainy London?
Well, you folks are the target users for this kind of thing, so... have you signed up or would you sign up for free metro Wi-Fi in London or anywhere? Do you think it's a good idea but will take time to mature? We'd all like to know your thoughts, as - I'm sure - would the wireless operators implementing the networks!
Wednesday 30 May 2007, 5:08 PM
3 stung by termination caps
Pity poor 3. The streetfighting upstart of the UK operator community, it has been hit hard by Ofcom's decision to cap termination rates. In an interview with the Financial Times, the chief executive of 3 UK, Kevin Russell, has claimed that Ofcom's decision was "absurd" and "anticompetitive" - a position which will ring true (pardon the pun) with the more free-market-minded among you.
However, there is a flipside to this. As we reported a while back, much of this is to do with a rather odd discrepancy that existed between calling 2G phones from a landline and calling 3G phones from a landline. Simply put, there were caps on how much a 2G operator could charge to connect such a call, and how much a 3G operator could charge. Ofcom decided to fix it, seeing as 3G is no longer some freaky new technology, an awful lot of people have 3G phones and it's arguably a bit unfair to expect callers to know what sort of technology the person they're calling is using.
For most operators, this isn't so much of a problem - they run both kinds of networks and can take the punch. 3, however, only runs a 3G network. It never had any kind of cap on what it could charge for connecting calls to its network, and now it has - lopping around 45 percent off its revenue from such connections. Add to that the fact that, because 3 is a smaller network than its rivals, it pays far more to connect calls to other networks than those networks pay to connect calls to it, and it's no surprise that it's smarting.
3 is now taking its fight to the Competition Appeal Tribunal, claiming that it is effectively being forced to subsidise its rivals - slightly wonky logic perhaps, but not surprising given the circumstances. Ofcom's having none of it, of course, and is ready to defend itself "robustly".
All very complicated and behind-the-scenes, but it's an interesting case-study of what befalls the upstarts, not to mention a classic debate of market forces vs regulation.
Wednesday 30 May 2007, 1:09 PM
CSC scuppers iSoft sale
CSC, the primary contractor subcontracting work on the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) to iSoft, has blocked iSoft's proposed sale to the Australian healthcare firm IBA. Apparently it feels the sale would be bad for NPfIT.
The management and shareholders of iSoft must be incandescent right now. The last couple of years have been an absolute nightmare, what with software delays, plummeting share prices, sacked executives and all that. Of course, for the press it's a vastly entertaining serial story, so hey, do carry on.
Wait, hang on - we're also taxpayers paying for this mess... sort it out!
Friday 25 May 2007, 4:31 PM
PROTD: Bog-standard surfing
This press release of the day comes courtesy of T-Mobile, which wants us to know that its surveys show "15 percent of people in the UK are actually resorting to hiding in loo [sic] to use their mobile phones to get online and check their favourite websites and emails because bosses are not allowing them to access the web at work".
I'll be kind and not theorise as to what sorts of websites T-Mobile's customers need to access in the loo. However, the whole thing does somewhat remind me of this year's April Fools' Day prank from Google, the toilet ISP...
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