Magazine

Columns

On the Spot
Former Apple SVP Scott Forstall, Skeuomorphs, and Windows Live Tiles
OK, we all know that all good things come to an end. So when did Scott Forstall's good thing with Apple come to an end?

January 14, 2013 - 4:12 PM
Next Wave Redux
HD Mobile Voice Quality - Coming to the U.S. Last
When you use Skype or Facetime over good Internet connections, it sounds far better than any telephone call. It's like being in the same room. This kind of HD voice quality has been part of high-end videoconferencing systems for decades. It's much more affordable now but, although used by Skype since 2003, HD has been slow to penetrate the rest of telephony. Yes, there are enterprise PBXs with HD capability, some landline HD voice services in France and recently Sprint announced a mobile HD voice service, but these are small islands that don't interoperate. Finally that's changing, at least in Europe and parts of Asia.

January 14, 2013 - 4:10 PM
Monetizing Mobile Broadband
Caps Off to You!
4G LTE networks have created the opportunity for mobile subscribers to decide whether or not they really need their fixed broadband network connections. Mobile broadband connection speeds available before 4G LTE were not comparable in terms of bandwidth to fixed broadband networks. Today, we are seeing that mobile data bandwidth has increased dramatically to the point where it can realistically eclipse fixed broadband connections that are typically accessed through a local Wi-Fi network.

January 14, 2013 - 4:09 PM
Mobile Musings
The Coming Mobile Bandwidth Capacity Crunch
The combination of smartphone penetration with advanced wireless networks and subscribers' widespread use of bandwidth-hungry services such as video applications are already stressing service provider networks. And it's about to get worse. Mobile data is expected to increase significantly between 2011 and 2016.

January 14, 2013 - 3:59 PM
Look, No Wires
Surveying the Mobile Ecosystem and Personnel Trends
A while back, I commented in my TMCnet blog on rumors of a Sprint takeover by Google. At the time, many thought the idea was crazy. Fast forward a few years, tens of thousands of Android devices and a Motorola Mobility acquisition later, and Google is now reportedly in talks to launch a wireless service with a number of companies including Dish Networks.

January 14, 2013 - 3:55 PM
Eye on the Money
Service Agility Part Two: Catalog-Driven Agility
the last issue, I wrote about service agility as a holistic endeavor - neither a single magic bullet nor a series of Band-Aids. Rather, I opined that our industry was changing from a low-volume manufacturing paradigm (in which a small number of services are introduced) to a high-volume innovation environment.

January 14, 2013 - 3:52 PM
Caught in the Crossfire
Apple Can Compete, but It Would Rather Just Win
It's been an interesting turn of events. Apple is the dominant brand in most people's mind, and certainly has mindshare. However, as IDC recently pointed out, 75 percent of the smartphone market was Android, while Apple owned a little over 12 percent.

January 14, 2013 - 3:45 PM
Airtime
Musical Chairs
The last few months have been particularly busy ones in the realm of wireless mergers and acquisitions. You had Deutsche Telekom making a play for MetroPCS, SOFTBANK announcing plans to invest in Sprint, and Sprint in turn moving to up its stake in Clearwire. Industry watchers expect the DT-MetroPCS deal, which is being done as a merger, to be much more palatable to regulators than AT&T's failed effort to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion.

January 14, 2013 - 3:41 PM
On The Cover
VSS Monitoring Makes LTE Service Assurance More Manageable
The introduction of the iPhone set off the mobile data boom. Five years later, mobile data is no less explosive. In fact, it continues to gain power and speed. Data traffic over cellular networks increased 104 percent in the past year, according to CTIA.

January 14, 2013 - 3:32 PM
On the Spot
Car Connectivity Redefines the Road
In an always-on world, smartphones take pole position. From texting, e-mailing and surfing the web to location-aware retail and social media services, when it comes to completing a given task, smartphones are usually the first, closest and fastest method to get us across the finish line.

September 24, 2012 - 12:43 PM
Next Wave Redux
Fixing 'The Internet is Slow Today'
If you're the IT director for your household, you've probably heard a family member complain, "The Internet is slow today." This happens with Wi-Fi, 3G/4G and wired services. What's more, it usually reflects real problems that are present in many parts of the Internet today. The problem is bufferbloat, and it is interesting to see how solutions are being developed and applied in different environments like mobile networks, cable networks and consumer Wi-Fi devices.

September 24, 2012 - 12:40 PM
Monetizing Mobile Broadband
The Rollover to Data Plans
Mobile subscribers over the last 20 years have grown accustomed to paying for cell phone usage based on voice minutes. It looks like that era is gone. Mobile operators in the U.S. have introduced tiered service plans based on data usage only. Gone are the myriad service choices that represented a complex combination of voice, text, and data quotas to establish the base plan along with a list of individual feature options. This complexity was especially evident with family plans where line charges, group features and device types added another level of choices.

September 24, 2012 - 11:18 AM
Eye on the Money
Service Agility: It's Not a Single Magic Bullet
There is much talk about service agility in the industry. Some say that over-the-top companies will win the service wars due to their agility. This implies that our industry can't be agile. Others take the approach that we must become agile to innovate, compete among ourselves, and compete with other industry forces.

September 24, 2012 - 11:15 AM
Look No Wires
Broadband: How Fast is Fast Enough?
There is controversy surrounding who, if anyone, said 640k of memory is all anyone would ever need. Many in the press attributed the comment to Bill Gates, but he denies he ever made such a statement. But it's the concept which is more important to me than who uttered it first or at all.

September 24, 2012 - 11:12 AM
Mobile Musings
Service Providers Face Competition on Their Own Networks
Communications service providers today find themselves in a unique dilemma. Many global technology brands best known for Web services, applications and marketing strength are staking claims in the communications business by providing innovative over-the-top services on third-party service providers' data networks. These OTT services, which often include video calling as a standard integrated feature, provide subscribers an alternative to the service provider's core messaging and voice communications services.

September 24, 2012 - 11:10 AM
Caught in the Crossfire
Video Remote 2.0: What the Major Vendors are Seeing
Last year we had a great user design exercise at one of our events where we took a TV remote and tried to redesign it. It was amazing how many buttons and features the device was trying to manage. It occurs to me that the move to manage TV on the smartphone has the benefit of just bypassing the remote.

September 24, 2012 - 11:07 AM
Airtime
World View
As the world was watching the London Olympics this summer, a massive portion of the Earth's population was plunged into darkness and unable to use air conditioners, computers, fans, hospital equipment, trains, and any other devices or platforms that rely on power. As you probably have heard, India in late July suffered a major power outage - the biggest such event ever.

September 24, 2012 - 11:03 AM
On the Spot
WiGig Alliance Works to Expand Wireless Possibilities
The Wireless Gigabit Alliance was formed to meet this need by establishing a wireless technology operating in the unlicensed 60gHz band that promises data rates of up to 7gbps, or more than 10 times the speed of the fastest Wi-Fi networks available today. The band has much more spectrum available than the 2.4 or 5 gHz bands used by existing Wi-Fi products, allowing wider channels that support faster transmission speeds.

May 22, 2012 - 3:54 PM
Next Wave Redux
How Google or Apple Could Create a Major New Mobile Carrier
An open Internet is critical for companies like Google, Apple or Amazon and, while they may not want to become competing mobile carriers themselves, there is a way they could foster disruption that enables open access.

May 22, 2012 - 3:52 PM
Monetizing Mobile Broadband
Can We Handle the Flow?
Data traffic flowing across mobile service provider networks is going through the roof. And as quickly as the service providers are implementing faster networks, mobile device manufacturers are introducing products with higher resolution screens and processing speeds that consume much higher data rates. In fact, these two dynamics will never completely balance each other; operators will always need more network bandwidth and throughput at more economical pricing with exceptional quality of service.

May 22, 2012 - 3:51 PM
Mobile Musings
SBCs and Multimedia Capability: A New Necessity for Service Providers and Enterprises
While the world is moving more toward an all-IP infrastructure, the global communications scene still includes a large TDM component. So all-IP networks will still need to interconnect with existing TDM networks. This means there will be service delivery challenges encountered in making these disparate networks work well together. Because of this, a premium will be placed on technology solution providers experienced in connecting IP with legacy TDM networks; who know, understand and appreciate both sides of this mixed communications world; and who can develop solutions that can serve the broadest range of networking options while at the same time supporting a wide range of multimedia IP-based services.

May 22, 2012 - 3:49 PM
Eye on the Money
The Impact of Cloud Models on OSS and BSS
This is the same approach that manufacturers have employed for decades - in some cases for nearly a century. Interchangeable and standardized parts can be assembled into multiple different products. In manufacturing, this results in faster time to market, lower component costs, greater flexibility, and lower repair costs. (You don't need a master machinist to make you a custom screw; you buy one for 6 cents at the hardware store.) The same benefits accrue to management process support.

May 22, 2012 - 3:46 PM
Caught in the Crossfire
Figures May Lie, but Words Deceive
Sometimes, no matter the name of the law, the law's name is a counter intuitive to what the law accomplishes. The Patriot Act, The American Jobs Act, and Spectrum Incentive Auction all share an element of bath water staying with the baby.

May 22, 2012 - 3:45 PM
Look, No Wires
Goodbye Android, We Hardly Knew Ye
New research is showing that Android has some real problems. Obviously Google knows this, and it's part of the reason the company purchased Motorola and as Henry Blodget of Business Insider points out are opening an online tablet store. David Beckemeyer, the former EarthLink CTO, too weighs in with a chart showing just how dominant Apple is becoming.

May 22, 2012 - 3:43 PM
Airtime
Free Association
Much has happened in the wireless world since our last issue of Next Gen Mobility, so my column this time may be a bit like free association. But there's a lot to talk about.

May 22, 2012 - 3:22 PM
Mobile Musings
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.

March 7, 2012 - 1:37 PM
On the Spot
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.

February 1, 2012 - 7:09 AM
Mobile Video View
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.

February 1, 2012 - 7:06 AM
Eye on the Money
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.

February 1, 2012 - 7:04 AM
Next Wave Redux
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.

February 1, 2012 - 7:03 AM
Caught in the Crossfire
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?

February 1, 2012 - 7:02 AM
Look, No Wires
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.

February 1, 2012 - 7:01 AM
Airtime
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.

February 1, 2012 - 7:00 AM
Next Wave Redux
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.

September 1, 2011 - 9:39 PM
On the Spot
The Rise of M2M Means Standards Are Critical
The simple fact is that standards are most conducive to economies of scale if they are compatible worldwide. Technology standards in particular are critical as the world gets "smaller" and connections increase at an exponential rate. Perhaps one of the most important issues today regarding worldwide technology standards is in regard to machine-to machine technology. Beyond the 5 billion devices connected to the Internet, the potential for greatest growth comes from M2M deployments.

September 1, 2011 - 9:34 PM
Mobile Video View
Prepare a Checklist for Live Streaming Coverage of an Event with 4G
Basic live streaming coverage of events over the Internet is now available to almost anyone with a laptop and camcorder. New 4G networks are now rolling out from the major carriers - AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. The new 4G networks, together with widely available 3G coverage, provide options for independent TV producers to capture live events from the field without the hassle of arranging for wireline access to the Internet. Mobile studios are now very feasible and give you great flexibility.

September 1, 2011 - 9:23 PM
Mobile Musings
Public Safety and the Move to IP
Over the next few years, the way in which public safety systems deliver the necessary services to people will be changing fundamentally. The transition from traditional TDM-based public safety answering points, or PSAPs, to IP-based networks and capabilities has already begun, and has been driven by the National Emergency Number Association, which recently announced its formal approval of the i3 standard for next-generation 911 architectures.

September 1, 2011 - 9:21 PM
Eye on the Money
Management of SDP Services - the Long Pole in the Tent
Back in late 2005, TeleManagement Forum Chairman Keith Willetts and I shared the idea that the very nature of services was changing. Previously services were essentially facilities - voice/tie/DSL lines, etc. In mobile they were shared networks associated with a billing plan and a specific device.

September 1, 2011 - 9:19 PM
Caught in the Crossfire
If I Had a Million Dollars: Applying Concepts like Presence to the Legacy Wireline World
I have been privileged to be around a lot of good ideas, most of which morphed into markets and have lead to people being employed. So I will take it as a win. However, the good ideas are left out there like the punch line without the straight man.

September 1, 2011 - 9:18 PM
Airtime
Introducing Next Generation Mobility
This new quarterly publication from TMC will present and assess the most important developments in wireless as they relate to mobile communications in the business environment; key mobile applications in areas like health care and smart grid; wireless service providers' network builds and service strategies; content delivery; ecosystems; spectrum; finance; and the packaging, pricing and go-to-market efforts around all of the above.

September 1, 2011 - 7:24 PM
Look, No Wires
Adobe Edges in on HTML5
The move to HTML5 is one of the most exciting developments I have seen in tech as it ties together cloud, mobile and the concept that programmers should be able to write once and have their programs run anywhere. Moreover, the hundreds of millions of Apple iOS devices that do not support Adobe Flash do/will support HTML5. As websites slowly begin the transition to this new web standard, every tablet should for the first time be able to view most every webpage.

September 1, 2011 - 4:47 PM
Cover Story
Sprint Takes Holistic Approach to M2M
Machine-to-machine communications is expected to be one of the largest growth opportunities for the industry in the next decade, and Sprint says it's ideally positioned to outfit partners and end users with solutions on this front.

September 1, 2011 - 9:35 AM

Meet the Editorial Team

Rich Tehrani,
CEO, TMC
Since 1982 Rich has led TMC© in many capacities. Rich Tehrani is an IP Communications industry expert, visionary, author and columnist. He founded INTERNET TELEPHONY® magazine...Read More >>>
Carl Ford,
Partner and Community Developer, Crossfire Media
Today as a partner at Crossfire Media, Carl is developing programs that bring to light an understanding of the issues required for delivering broadband wireless Internet...Read More >>>
Erik Linask,
Group Editorial Director, TMC
Erik oversees the editorial content and direction for all of TMC. Erik has contributed literally thousands of features during his 5-year tenure, with a focus...Read More >>>
Paula Bernier,
Executive Editor, IP Communications Group
Paula oversees editorial content and operations of INTERNET TELEPHONY and Next Gen Mobility Magazines. Bernier is...Read More >>>
Paula Bernier,
CTO & Executive Technology Editor
om is executive technology editor for TMC® Labs, the industry’s most-well known and respected testing lab, and ...Read More >>>