2007/03/01

Replicability: the regulation of BT's retail business exchange line services | Ofcom

Replicability: the regulation of BT's retail business exchange line services | Ofcom

Ofcom is holding a consultation on whether BT can set its own pricing on certain business exchange line services to high value customers (£1m sales per annum).

Other telcos objected to this, as they still felt BT had SMP (significant market power) in this area. Ofcom has made BT change certain products so there is greater competition. Products affected are WLR (wholesale line rental), CPS (Carrier Preselect) amongst others.

This only affects a small part of the market, but they have significant spend power.

BT are making big inroads in being allowed to bunded retails products where one may susbisidise another.

BT Wholesale has been forced to maintain broadband pricing at a relatively high level to allow competition from new LLU entrants, but this is all going to change when 1.5m exchange lines are unbundled and ith will put further pressure on LLU operators.

Licensing in the 71-76 GHz, 81-86 GHz and 64-66 GHz bands | Ofcom

Licensing in the 71-76 GHz, 81-86 GHz and 64-66 GHz bands | Ofcom

Ofcom is making these bands available for short-haul fixed links on 8th of March 2007. They could allow very high bandwidth point to point links.

Ofcom will maintain a database/registry of links so interference issues can be minimised, however it's expected industry will self-regulate.

Unfortunately there's very little radio equipment available that operates in these bands and equipment costs will be prohibitive for all but high end users (the spectrum available will allow gigibit or greater link speeds), so it's more suited to intra-building applications (LAN extensions) rather than any kind of backhaul network. The license cost is also relatively high - £50 per link - again suiting more to very short-haul LAN extension links rather than a multi-hop backbone network.

2007/02/27

Tiggdo - Mobile personalization and other services for your mobile cell phone

Tiggdo - Mobile personalization and other services for your mobile cell phone

Another site that want promotion. At least their service seems sensible and they've already worked with the BBC to offer mobile personalised news to WAP enabled mobile devices.

The have developed sites in multiple languages based on BBC news.

http://ara.tiggdo.com - Arabic
http://aze.tiggdo.com - Azeri
http://car.tiggdo.com - Caribbean
http://chi.tiggdo.com - Chinese
http://fre.tiggdo.com - French
http://hin.tiggdo.com - Hindi
http://ind.tiggdo.com - Indonesian
http://kyr.tiggdo.com - Kyrgyz
http://mac.tiggdo.com - Macedonian
http://per.tiggdo.com - Persian
http://por.tiggdo.com - Portuguese
http://rus.tiggdo.com - Russian
http://ser.tiggdo.com - Serbian
http://spa.tiggdo.com - Spanish
http://tur.tiggdo.com - Turkish
http://urd.tiggdo.com - Urdu
http://uzb.tiggdo.com - Uzbek
http://vie.tiggdo.com - Vietnamese

Could be useful for your site.

Create your Free mobile website today with zinadoo - Create your FREE mobile service today.

Create your Free mobile website today with zinadoo - Create your FREE mobile service today.

A template driven mobile site generator. They keep SPAMing to write something about them so here it is.

Mobile sites are growing in popularity, but mainly for bigger operations and I'm not convinced there's a big consumer market out there how want such a service. Zinadoo seem to make their money selling .mobi domains and SMS services (where links can be put on a site to text friends and such like).

The basic service is free so have a look and maybe it'll have some kind of interest.

Tandberg TV go for $1.39bn

Ericsson is trying to buy Tandberg for $1.39bn, though ARRIS may yet up their bid.

Tandberg used to specialise in videoconferencing systems, though have moved in to the IPTV world and that's where the big money is going to be. Everyone will be watching TV through an internet connected set top box and everyone wants to be in that space.

Cisco bought Scientific Atlanta for the same reason.

Though IPTV is in its infancy, it's the future and everyone knows it - though the business models (and infrastructure) are still big unknowns. However the big players know they've got to do something now so they're in a position to grab the market when it does take off.

It's a big gamble, but one that is likely to pay off in the long term.

Microsoft fined $1.5B in patent suit

Digit Online

This is scary, very scary !!! Not even because the evil empire of Microsoft is involved, but because it's about MP3 encoding and decoding technology.

Pretty much everyone pays licenses to Fraunhofer who are the recognised body that collects royalties for MP3 patents, if the lawsuit sticks (and MS are appealing) then Alcatel-Lucent can attack every other MP3 licensee.

MyWebAlert - Website Availability Monitoring Service for only $4 a month

MyWebAlert - Website Availability Monitoring Service for only $4 a month

Hype or something useful? Well it's free (even though their page title [as above] states $4 per month), a service that monitors websites by testing http responses etc.

Though there's no mention of money, presumably there'll be a piad for version in the future.

The results of their probes are Emailed to you once per month, it does all seem very painless.

3G Rollout obligations | Ofcom

3G Rollout obligations | Ofcom

Ofcom has published a document re-iterating that 3G licensees must meet their rollout requirements as part of the license obligations (80% population coverage by the end of 2007).

This new document states how Ofcom will measure the rollouts and a timetable etc.

Hutchison 3 have been very vocal about this as they have had to build a network from scratch while the other operators already have 2G networks.

Vodafone and Orange have said they will share infrastructure (which will reduce costs in marginal areas).

WRC 07 agenda item 1.4 | Ofcom

WRC 07 agenda item 1.4 | Ofcom

There are several bands that could be committed for IMT (International Mobile Telecommunications) use and these are being discussed at the World Radio Communication Conference 2007.

410 to 430 MHz Bands which are attractive for the coverage extension of current IMT-2000 systems
450 to 470 MHz
470 to 862 MHz Coverage extension and possibly providing capacity requirements
2300 to 2400 MHz Bands which are attractive for providing the capacity requirements for IMT-Advanced
2700 to 2900 MHz
3400 to 3600 MHz
3600 to 3800 MHz
3800 to 4200 MHz
4400 to 4990 MHz

Ofcom is proposing that

* to support efforts to keep the IMT-Advanced family as open and flexible as possible;

* to support a non-binding identification of spectrum for IMT but keep this as generic as possible (i.e. for IMT rather than IMT-Advanced);

* to support changing existing identifications from IMT-2000 to IMT to foster greater flexibility in their use;

* to support the development of a European Common Proposal for a primary mobile service allocation in the band 470 to 862 MHz at WRC 07 and a Resolution for ITU R to study the band for an identification for IMT at WRC 11;

* to support the development of a European Common Proposal for a co-primary allocation to the mobile service and identification for IMT in the bands 3400 to 3600 MHz and 3600 to 3800 MHz;

* to oppose any change to the allocations or a IMT identification in the band 2700 to 2900 MHz at WRC-07; and

* to adopt a neutral approach to the remaining candidate bands.

Ofcom are expecting response to be in within 5 weeks to be in time for CEPT meetings of the Electronic Communications Committee Project Team 1 (ECC PT1) and the Conference Preparatory Group (CPG) in April, where Ofcom expect ECP’s to be finalised.