Simon Perry

$150Bn CapEx Projected For Mobile Companies
Those studious fellows at ABI Research are projecting that the CapEx (Capital Expenditure) of the mobile/cellular business worldwide will exceed $150Bn, with the majority being spent on WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access).
Why the focus on WCDMA? Well, 3G runs on WCDMA and one of the strengths of 3G is that it likes handling data. As more applications and advanced data services such as mobile TV and mobile broadband rollout, demand for data will increase dramatically.
It’s not just about the aerials and cellular coverage. As ABI points out “To offer advanced data and content services with improved delivery and reduced network costs, mobile operators will have to invest in more leased capacity, upgrade to microwave technologies, and add fiber links where microwave technologies have been exhausted, in an effort to boost their networks’ backhaul capacity. Operators will also have to deploy advanced switching technology in the backhaul network, to improve traffic flow and maximize the performance of the backhaul infrastructure. ”
If you want to read details on this until your eyes bleed – like “In 2005, China Mobile’s CAPEX in China was $8.86 billion, more than Vodafone’s global total CAPEX ($8.74 billion)” – then ABI have just the document for you. They tell us that “Worldwide Mobile CAPEX Investments” examines global CAPEX spending by mobile operators on all major technology deployments, and forecasts the regional prospects for various technologies and equipment types.
With all of that cash being spent, it doesn’t give us that much hope that mobile data will get much cheaper – which we feel it must, as at current prices it’s just plain impractical for the man in the street to afford.
ABI Research – Worldwide Mobile CAPEX Investments
Wikipedia – WCDMA
18 September, 2006
Vodafone Casa Fastweb Comes To Life
In the general rush of all mobile phone companies desperately try not to get sidelined, Vodafone Italy have just announced a tie-up with Italian broadband provider, FastWeb.
Customers will be be able to use their normal Vodafone services on their mobiles, make mobile voice calls to fixed line phones at fixed rates whilst at home and have access to Fastweb’s broadband network, which covers approximately half the population of Italy at speeds of up to 20Mbps.
FastWeb bill themselves as “Italy’s leading alternative broadband provider,” and with under a million customers (874,300), they’ll benefit from having Vodafone selling their services from Vodafone shops around Italy as well as to their current 24m cellular customers.
If mobile companies don’t start offering fixed line services, they feel they’ll lose customers to people who do, with the single bill for all communications being the strongest pull.
We recently reported that O2 Germany has gone the same route offering DSL, Vodafone UK tied up with BT and Vodafone Germany launched similar services on 1 Sept.
Vodafone Italy
FastWeb
15 September, 2006
LonelyGirl15: Rumbled By YouTube Fans
YouTube is continuing to get attention for the content it has on it. Not this time for alleged copyright violations, but for a young girl who has been appearing in videos about the trial and tribulations of her life. Her moniker? LonelyGirl15.
The controversy? She’s not what she might first appear.
At first glance it looked all very innocent. The videos are primarily shot from the corner of her room, where LonelyGirl15, or Bree as she called herself. talks about her parents, school activities, and consistent themes like, “proving science wrong”.
We’ve used LonelyGirl15 as an example of noteworthy content, when working with consultancy clients, helping them understand the shift that are continuing with media. We selected it because, we found it just a bit too questionable.
What raised our suspicions? It had always been shot on a video camera, high above a standard Web cam and edited in a self-consciously amateur fashion. The subjects she spoke about appeared just too ideal for the majority-male YouTube – geeky with relationship questions. Of course she was also very attractive. It was also strange that the music that was used in the tracks was always fully credited. We wondered if Bree was eventually going to start talking about products.
During a session, we showed her videos to senior advertising execs, they immediately smelt a rat with the way the Hiking piece had been shot. It convinced them it was manufactured.
It appears that some people who it also didn’t quite ring true for, did a bit of digging and found out that email responses from LonelyGirl15 actually came from within Hollywood powerhouse talent agency, Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Hmmm… the mystery deepens. More details of what has been discovered are available in the LATimes article.
Discussion in the blogosphere continues as to the legitimacy of LonelyGirl15, with a popular theory being that it’s a creation to promote a horror film.
LonelyGirl15
14 September, 2006
News Corp Buy 51% Of Jamba For $187m!
News Corp has reportedly shelled out $187.5m to buy 51% in Jamba (Jamster in the US), the mobile phone ringtone company who came to prominence with the Crazy Frog ringtone.
What!, was the cry around the Digital-Lifestyles offfices. How much …. and for what?
Many had the same reaction when Murdoch bought MySpace for $580m a year ago. These same people had to quickly readjust their view as member accounts rose to 100m and they signed a deal with Google that brought in $900m.
Here’s a few of our theories as to why they might have splashed so much cash on this.
News Corp are very gun-ho about content to mobile … well actually all platforms now. It may be that they hoping to buy large amounts of Jamba’s already-paying customers. We saw Jamba at IFA in Berlin (where they’re based) and the stand was indeed filled with eager young-things, trying to look cool, in their self concious way – ideal clients for content.
The WSJ is reporting initial offerings are expected to be ringtones, wallpaper and short clips from the popular Fox animated series The Simpsons.
With this purchase, you could assume that News Corp want to move into this space very quickly, as building an infrastructure to deliver content to mobiles isn’t exactly beyond the realms of achievability. Jamba obviously have a lot of expertise in delivering content, primarily ringtones, to mobile phones.
Verisign bought Jamba for $266m in 2004 at the height of the Crazy Frog promotion. We thought at the time it was a very strange fit for a company that provides services.
Jamba
12 September, 2006
Sky Broadband DRM Woes Halt Films
Sky has hit the pause button on delivering films (known by some as movies) and sport via their Sky By Broadband service, due to cracks in Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM software.
Sky has put an announcement on their site,
In order to make an essential update to the Sky by broadband security system, we are sorry that access to all movies and some sports content has been temporarily suspended. This does not affect your computer and content can still be bookmarked for future use. We will keep you posted on progress and apologise for any inconvenience.
Clearly being a big bash for the service, it must be of great embarrassment for all concerned. Content owners from around the world – especially those within the News International family, Fox, etc – will be throwing a dizzy fit, having bought the technologies companies long-lasting pitch that DRM is essential for the survival of the content biz. You see, most of them feel their clients are not to be trusted with the content,that they’re so used to having.
Background
A couple of weeks ago, a little software app called FreeUse4WM appeared, that stripped the Digital Rights Management (DRM) from any content, be that audio or video, held in the Windows Media format.
Following this, Microsoft threw people at fixing the problems – they had to, as it laid bare all of the content that it was supposed to protect. Sitting back with a smug look on their faces (we imagine), they must have choked on their latte’s when version 1.2 of FreeUse4WM came out, cracking the DRM and exposing the content again. It’s understood that Microsoft are working on the fix for v1.2.
Security of all sorts is just a game of cat and mouse, with no absolute guarantees – security company created protection
12 September, 2006
Replacement Apple Batteries Arriving Early
The exchange of Apple’s might-catch-fire batteries is happening faster than originally anticipated.
When the news broke that Apple were recalling their Sony-produced batteries, they were talking about it taking four weeks to get the batteries out.
We duly went on to the Apple site and filled out the simple form, receiving a conformation mail telling us we should expect delivery in four to six weeks.
You can imagine our surprise this morning when what should arrive via the UPS courier, but the new battery, under two weeks from the original order.
It makes sense for Apple/Sony to swap these batteries as soon as possible, as many customers may be getting The Fear about their machines bursting into flames, I know that I’ve thought twice about leaving mine charging overnight.
If you’re interested, the batteries look identical form the outside, but we’ve found that the replacements have a higher battery capacity 4607 mAh vs 4400 mAh of the original. The new one certainly has loads more than 2846 mAh that our 14 month battery has ended up with. Translated – what you end up with is better than the original.
There’s a form and box to return the original battery, again via UPS. No wonder Sony estimated the recall could cost them as much as $257m (30 million yen).
7 September, 2006
Media In Transition Conference
7-8 September 2006 The Media in Transition 2006 Conference, hosted in Munich, Germany, will be discussing the structural transition in the media industry – how the Internet is modifying the way media is produced, distributed and consumed. We have invited innovative Internet media companies, researchers and strategists from U.K., Canada, U.S.A. und central Europe to Munich for two intensive days. Goethe Institute Munich, Germany http://www.mediaintransition.com/indexe.html
7 September, 2006
TrekStor MP3-RadioStation f.ox: IFA 2006
There are a couple of dilemmas for anyone who takes their MP3 player to play in the car. How do you get the sound to the car stereo and how do you stop the thing sliding about all over the place? The TrekStor MP3-RadioStation f.ox tackles these.
The TrekStor MP3-RadioStation plugs in to the cigarette lighter slot (or cigar if you’re posh), which means it’s easy to find and there’s no need for a separate power source.
Where do the tunes come from? There’s no storage on board, as the music is supplied via a USB memory stick that plugs in the bottom. This arrangement brings the advantage of low cost expansion and that the music storage is only limited by the size and number of memory sticks you’ve got.
Navigating tracks up, down and pausing is done by the button on the top.
To get over the challenge of getting the audio between the player and legacy car head-units, TrekStor have used low-powered FM transmission with a selectable frequency, available to some other players as an after-market add on.
To set it up, simply press the Channel button on the top of the MP3-RadioStation until an FM frequency that isn’t used by a radio station is displayed on the top, then tune your car stereo into that frequency. Bingo.
Sadly for UK users, devices like this can’t be used legally, as Ofcom don’t differentiate between low-power gadgets such as this that transmit over a short distance and a full blown radio station.
Expected release date is November 2006, priced at around €15.
TrekStor MP3-RadioStation f.ox
View larger images.
6 September, 2006
Austin Game Conference
6 – 8 September 2006 The Austin Game Conference (AGC) – now in its 4th year – is the definitive conference for online and networked game development, including massively multiplayer online games, casual games, online PC and console games. The event is marketed internationally and provides a venue where developers, technologists and business professionals can network with colleagues, learn from industry leaders, stay informed about the latest tools, technologies and techniques and get business done in a relaxed atmosphere. http://www.gameconference.com/
6 September, 2006
thelondonpaper: Murdoch Shows His Internet Vision
News International, MySpace-Murdoch’s newspaper enterprise yesterday launched a new, free newspaper and Web site for London.
We’re not going to bore you with the version that’s stampted on to dead trees, we’ll take a quick look at the site and see where Murdoch may be taking his empire with his re-found enthusiasm for the Internet.
The design of the site, is clear – blog-like, and in his opening comment page, the editor, Stefano Hatfield, writes on the launch of the site (my bold)
thelondonpaper.com also launches (as a beta site) today. In addition to breaking news, competitions and opportunities to contribute and vote, our website takes a broadband look at life in London with daily video coverage of news and entertainment across the city.
As we’ve seen already, Murdoch is applying cross media promotion to MySpace, the selling episodes on the TV program 24 by his Fox television.
This continues on at thelondonpaper.com.
No real surprise that Sky (his satellite TV biz in the UK) features large. Well … he’s just trying to help his son make his projected subscription figures isn’t he? Any media company-owning dad would do they same wouldn’t they?
Besides the centrally placed Sky adverts, there’s a competition to win Sky Broadband (his UK broadband service).
The release date of thelondonpaper was brought forward, and in the lower sections of the site, it starts to show. Going to the competition submission pages, we’re told (my bold)
Please email your answer to [email protected] along with your full name, address, daytime telephone, date of birth and your email address. Please do not use the submit button below.
Of course we did, expecting the whole of News International to come crashing down … it didn’t.
The other point of interest? Google text ads on the site. Them chucking $900m on the table to advertise on MySpace, clearly extended beyond that single property.
As to the video taking a ‘broadband look at London,’ well it’s pretty thin on the ground currently, but we found a couple of pieces including an interview with Fear of flying, which by remarkable coincidence, also has a link to …. their MySpace. What a lovely self-referential world it looks like we’re moving to.
thelondonpaper.com
5 September, 2006