WAC gone where, why?

Depending which way you look at it, the GSMA led Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) has either been a great success, or an abject failure. Set up to challenge and take advantage of the remarkable success of handset maker application stores and unite the fragmented...

Whatever happened to the five nines?

Every time a major cloud services provider has a problem it creates a field day for the press and doomsayers that want to bag Cloud at every opportunity. Why the preoccupation with Cloud one can only guess, but it is very much part of the telecoms and business world,...

Facebook follows Google playing telco, worried?

It may be a little premature to say Facebook is becoming a telco, as Commsday has, but its latest investment activity could be cause for alarm or joy, depending on how existing telcos see it. Facebook has just announced investment in a 10,000 km Asian undersea cable...

Is this the telco industry's new 'front man'?

It is finally getting through to the telco C-suite – innovate and unite, or suffer the consequences. The message came loud and clear (as reported by European Communications) when Cambridge Wireless chairman Dr David Cleevely, addressing the recent 2012 Future of...

NFC – New French Connection

Hot on the heels of a recent announcement that it was doubling the number of NFC-enabled phones being rolled out to subscribers by the end of 2012, to 2.5 million, Orange France will also begin its rollout of NFC-enabled SIM cards to all new postpaid customers in...

Spectrum as a savior – to whom?

Neelie Kroes, Europe’s Digital Agenda Commissioner, may have been stating the ‘bleeding obvious’ when she said recently that spectrum “doesn’t grow on trees.” Speaking at the Spectrum Management Conference in Brussels, Kroes intimated that better EU...

All the foresight of a blind newt

Keeping in line with the mobile telecoms industry’s long history of complicating even the most simple things, we are now seeing a proliferation of complex data plans to replace the very popular flat rate ‘all you can eat  (AYCE) plans.’ Yes, yes, we all know that...

New OTT players may steal the thunder

“In a world where the value of a device increasingly is measured by its ability to access online content, applications and services, scalable cloud-based services platforms enable new business models for always connected laptops, tablets, e-readers and other consumer...

Operators go forth ONTO DOON

I’m not not sure whether my consistent bleating about the telecoms industry needing to work together more, the threat of outside competition encroaching their space or from sheer economic necessity, but it seems co-opetition is actually starting to take hold....

Data only plans – only half the story

A fascinating article appeared last week in The Wall Street Journal. Not fascinating in its bare content, but more by its effect on traditional telco values and revenues. Not heavy on facts, the article mentioned that AT&T CEO, Randall Stephenson, had intimated...