Long distance calls, bargain prices.

Ebay owned Skype, the internet telephone service, has announced unlimited long distance calls to landlines. Ideal if friends and relatives do not have a PC or internet connection (aka the Stone Ages). The call plan will cost between 2.95 and 8.95 eruos per month depending on the country you wan to call. The service is being offered in a total of 34 countries but expect this number to grow.

Hmm, I think it’s time I went and bought myself a Skype handset!

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Oldies denied access.

Paypal has announced a new initiative to help prevent phishing attacks where malicious attempts are made to extract information from web users. Browsers that are considered unsafe will be barred from accessing Paypals website. These products include Internet Explorer versions 3 and 4. The company also supports the use of Extended Validation SSL. This feature highlights the address bar in green when the site is deemed to legitimate. EV SSL is an add-on feature of Firefox 2.x and IE 7 but not Safari for the Mac and PC - Oops! I would expect that to be resolved soon.

This is good news from Paypal although not terrible helpful for users viewing through any of the  ‘unsafe browsers’. Some people may complain about the moves but, in the long run, I’d rather be safe than sorry.

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Internet juggernaut applies its brakes.

Do you have broadband? Well, according to AT&T, the good days of high speed internet access will soon come to an end if significant investments aren’t made. Jim Cicconi, vice president of AT&T’s legislative affairs, has warned that the current infrastructure components will not be able to meet user demands imposed on them. The problem resides with us, the users. The sheer volume of user-generated content, video’s, photo’s etc, has had a dramatic effect on internet utilisation. Cicconi suggested that within 3 years households will generate 20 times more traffic than they do today. Ouch!

Wallet moths.

How much will this cost? According to Cicconi, £27 billion ($55 billion) will be needed in the US alone. This rises to $130 billion worldwide. No drop in the ocean by anyones standards. So, who is going to pay for this? Have you guessed already? In the first instance, the service providers will need to inject cash into the adoption of new and existing technologies. Ultimately, this will be passed onto the consumer. The spat between the BBC and the ISPs over iPlayer may prove to become a bone of contention. The basis for this report was the quantity of data piped by the BBC to customers. Ring any bells?

HD video takes a slap in the face as well. The technology is said to be 7 or 8 times more hungry than current internet video distribution methods. Add this to the statement that 8 hours of YouTube content are uploaded every minute and you can see problems ahead.

Farewell to the halcyon days?

I don’t think so. Yes, the big players will have to make some huge investments in the web but can they really do anything else? Bandwidth capping is an option but would ultimately hurt the service providers if they impose draconian limits on customers.

Where to now? The major service providers will make the investment or fall behind the pack. Will it be in time? I don’t think so. I can see improvements being made but the telco’s simply can’t afford to ramp up this quickly. Also, I’m not sure customers would be happy being slapped with a huge rise in their bills to cover the investment costs. I suppose an alternative would be pay-per-use. But do you really want that? Maybe it’s time for a serious look at a consortium of the big players driving change forward.

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Come on, join the party.

O2 is coming in from the cold and joining the mobile broadband market. The move, announced yesterday, will mean that the last of the UKs big operators has finally joined the market. The major downside to this announcement is that the package will only be available to existing customers. Users signing up for an 18 month contract receive a free USB modem and a monthly 3 Gb download limit all for the price of £20 per month. However, if you want a monthly rolling contract you’ll have to put some money up to cover the cost of the modem - £120. Ouch! There’s an added sting. If an existing customer leaves any part of their existing O2 package in the during the first three months of mobile broadband usage then O2 will up your monthly charge from £20 to £30. At this point, I’m not so sure this is a great incentive.

“My arm, my leg…”

O2’s offering is definitely not the cheapest but, compared to, say, Orange, not the most expensive either (before you ask, it’s £25 per month for a comparable deal from Orange). The mobile operator is also investing around £500m in its 3G networks which should see mobile broadband speeds increase from the current 1.8 Mbps to 3.6 Mbps. This cash injection is part of O2’s commitment to providing the best mobile broadband service possible. Or is it so that they are ready for the release of the 3G iPhone? I’ll let you work it out. After all, O2 won the iPhone contract!

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MS Exchange under the bonnet.

Starting at $7.99 per month the hosted mail service from Verizon is aimed small an medium sized businesses. Oh, don’t forget the ubiquitous mobile worker. The service provides all the usual features you’d expect from Microsoft Exchange server: synchronising business users email to wireless devices. Synchronisation of calendars, contacts and tasks from a PC to their Windows based mobile devices.

Push me around.

Verizon firmly believes that businesses and professional need push email services to ensure they are responsive to customer needs, even on the move. The options are, apparently, designed to give users options that fit a specific need at an affordable price. Does that sound like a sales pitch to you?

VZEmail Services will cost $7.99 monthly access for a Basic Basic Exchange Plan which supports both POP3 and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) email protocols and includes 25MB of storage. The Premium Exchange Plan for $14.99 monthly access supports POP3 and IMAP and includes 100MB of storage. Customers also have the option of expanding the size of the hosted exchange mailbox for $0.75 per 25MB per month.

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In the fast lane.

It would appear that Nokia is seeking to compete with Intel in the wireless arena. NEC, Sony Ericcson and Alcatel-Lucent have signed up to plans for development of the new wireless system. All four companies have created a licensing framework for LTE (Long Term Evolution) in which royalty payments will be kept low to encourage adoption of the technology. In effect, this is regarded as the successor to 3G. 4G will provide communications at higher speeds and over greater distance than 3G and is currently being rolled out in the US and China (will we be the last, again?).

The world according to Intel.

Do you think Intel is sitting idly, watching events? Of course you didn’t. Intel is hedging its bets on WiMax. The hardware manufacturer expects the technology to have up to 10 million users within a year moving to hundreds of millions within a couple of years. Nothing like being optimistic.

As to which technology will win, only time will tell. But a point for you to note: Nokia has produced a WiMax enabled tablet but then pulled out of a deal. Creative differences or simply power games?

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Driving costs down.

According to Gartner, it would appear that the nature of Open Source will drive vendors toward the adoption as the platform for providing SaaS to end users. The relative ease of application sharing and associated cost reductions will push Open Source into approximately 30% of offered applications. An expected outcome of this will be a higher degree of code sharing leading to greater cooperation and flexibility in application development.

Robert DeSisto, a Gartner analsyt, has warned that users shouldn’t expect the cost of subscriptions to fall as vendors may seek to improve profit margins or channel more money into R&D. No change there, eh?

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Power to the mobile people.

Do you like to text? Want to do it for free? Watch Jaxtr, a startup that uses the internet to let users bypass a carrier’s international phone charges, for free. The initial offering will allow you to send mobile phone text messages between 38 countries.

Jaxtr members type their text messages into a Web form. The system will then send a text message to a mobile phone in any of the countries currently on the Jaxtr list. The receiver can either, reply with their mobile phone, or follow a link to the Jaxtr website and reply via the web form. New users will have to subscribe.

Over the past few years there have been literally dozens of companies offering free texting services via the internet. Typically, these services do require you to accept a usage policy which means they can send you adverts via text. Having used some of these offerings at various in the past I haven’t been on the receiving end of an avalanche of advertisements.

Jaxtr have sought to calm fears that may arise from the mobile carriers. The service requires a user to have a mobile handset to receive texts. This is in direct contrast with Skype which allows users to make phone calls and send messaging over the internet thereby posing a threat to the traditional phone companies. The rise of social networks has placed more pressure on mobile phone providers. Fears of a drift from mobile communications to free, web based interaction have prompted phone vendors and network suppliers to bundle an ever increasing number of features to keep users interested.

Jaxtr makes money from adverts. Did you really think there would be any other way? The ads will be delivered with text messages sent via Jaxtr. Plans are in place for the inclusion of fee based premium services but no official dates have been announced as yet. The service has been designed to attract continued use from user which will lead to a recurring revenue stream. Based on current figures, 10 million users and rising, Jaxtr would appear to be offering a compelling service. Most of these users are outside the United States.

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World domination: Phase 2.

Googles mapping format, KML (Keyhole Markup Language), has been accepted by the Open Geospatial Consortium as an open standard. The standard will be used for describing some components of geopraphical data. Within Google Earth, KML is used to manage the display of geospatial data when whizzing around Googles virtual repersentation of Mother Earth.

Although Google already shares the data format openly there are hopes that the OGC recognition will encourage more companies to adopt KML. Rivals such as Microsoft already use the format (could this be another case of ‘embrace and extend’?) in Virtual Earth and Live Maps.

How kind of you to offer.

Do you really think it’s about being nice? I don’t. Yes, I agree we need industry standards but I’m sure that certain parties have more of a vested interest. Once a file format is accepted as a standard the company that created the code has a huge say in how data is collected and presented. Just take the recent battles over the adoption of OpenDocument Format (ODF) versus Microsofts Open Office XML (OOMXL). Do you see what I mean?

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It’s decision time.

Not long ago, AMD seemed to have the world at its feet. The CPU builder used smart, agile tactics, coupled with a good ear for the customers views, to produce some serious gains against Intel. The Opteron is an excellent example of these business savvy moves. But times have changed. Intel have announced a range of details relating to portable and enterprise processors, memory technologies and wireless enhancements. In addition, the purchase of ATI has, so far, shown no real value. I wonder if the vultures are starting to circle.

Reorganise or perish.

In my opinion, there are a number of approaches that could be taken to revitalise the company. AMD needs to shed some of the fat. The Dresden fabrication plant could be sold off and expertise brought on a per case basis. Alternatively, AMD could replace the management. This may seem a little harsh to you but might the breath of fresh the company needs. But the most simple approach would be to take a leaf out of Intels book: make the management more accountable and disciplined then start to deliver on promises. Can you really say that Intel aren’t performing? Yes, I admit that the new technologies recently announced may not pay off in the long run but at least they are planning for the future.

So, the ball really is in AMDs court. Personally, I don’t want to see a single hardware company dominating the markt. It’s not good for innovation or the customer. What do you think?

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