Monetizing Mobile Video - What Carriers Need to Succeed
Device manufacturers and carriers are touting the quality and speed of their offerings. They advertise how fast movies and videos can be downloaded, the quality of video streaming, and the sharpness of video quality. Meanwhile, television networks and other content providers are promoting the convenience of video on demand. Together, this provides an expectation among consumers that not only will they be able to view everything from football games to their favorite shows wherever and whenever they want, but that the experience will be similar to watching the same content in real time as it originally aired.

LBS, Consumers and Control of the Mobile Experience
Location-based marketing is the key to unlocking the next phase of growth for mobile operators. It's also the tool for carriers to combat the over-the-top plays from Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. The technology is fully formed and deployed to do this at scale today. The challenge is designing a user-friendly service that consumers find really valuable, not intrusive.

Addressing Live Video Latency
With video-friendly mobile devices proliferating, and wireless and wire IP networks offering increasing speed, viewing good quality video anyplace is increasingly feasible. For some content a delay (latency) of even several seconds is not a concern. However, for other events - such as real-time news gathering in which the studio converses with a reporter in the field while live video goes to a national or even international audience - delay is something to minimize, even at significant cost.

Clouds: The Big Change is on Business Structure and Processes
Clouds are generating lots of discussion these days, and even more confusion. Some talk of clouds as web services and mash-ups, others as hosted services, and yet others as distributed computing or infrastructure. The fact is, all are correct, but all underestimate the scope of changes that cloud concepts will have on our telco industry, because, fundamentally, clouds mean that CSPs no longer will have end-to-end control over services and infrastructure. I propose that we look at the cloud phenomenon as real, and as a force that will make CSPs rethink their operations processes from monolithic to modular.

Wi-Fi - Key for Mobile Data Success
Wi-Fi is a big deal. Wi-Fi systems carry much more data than is carried by all the mobile operators in the world. Cisco's VNI report puts total 2010 Wi-Fi traffic as 36 times greater than mobile data traffic. Of course, most of that Wi-Fi data was going to and from computers and other local devices that lack mobile access, but it's the scale of the Wi-Fi phenomenon that's important.

At Home with M2M
A friend recently reported on a lost soul from a major carrier (names projected to keep the guilty employed) who answered the question: What does the carrier need from a startup?

Will Microsoft Departure Kill CES?
Being in the North Hall of Las Vegas was so important, in fact, that companies acquired others so they could improve their location! And as the desire to be in an important location increased, show organizers decided to increase the sizes of the booths exhibitors had to take in order to remain in important halls. They even had an auction process pitting companies against each other to see who would bid most for the most important spots.

The Great Spectrum Grab
Just days before Christmas 2011, the company announced the end of its quest to acquire T-Mobile USA - a $39 billion deal that would've been the largest acquisition of the year. Instead, AT&T had to pay a $4 billion breakup fee and look for a new strategy to acquire move spectrum.

Wireless Spectrum for Mobile Data
Spectrum politics is big news in the wireless community. In the U.S., the short-term outlook is grim, as AT&T and Verizon corner prime spectrum and Congress discusses auctioning the hard won, license-exempt TV white spaces.

Do the Math

All Roads Lead to Rome: The Migration to the Next Generation of Mobile Networks

Devices

The State of Wi-Fi with Xirrus CEO Dirk Gates

Wireless Onslaught Requires Expanded Enterprise Networking Strategies

T-Mobile M2M Spinoff Expedites Onboarding

Enterprise Mobility Hits the Tipping Point for Managed Services

Beyond 3G