Last Weeks Rant – Well That Was Disappointing

For those who didn’t notice I tried to use the mail merge tool and sent a note with the subject “Funny how the conversation has diminished with all the tools at our disposal” . It was suppose to lead into this email.
Other than three people with an unsubscribe request, I am not sure anyone opened it. Here is what I wanted you to read.

I was listening to NPR http://n.pr/KOwWSu this weekend and they were having a debate as to whether we were really communicating on the Internet or just falling in love with our voice (and those that agree with us). It occurred to me that I was not hearing like I used to from friends about my articles and posts.
So I am hoping you find something interesting in my posts and respond. I will post your replies on appropriate blog or keep them to myself if that is what you prefer.

Here are the places I posted last week.

First of all I gave a lecture at Pace University to a class the Internet as Universal Service. It’s an interesting contrast looking at POTS, IP, GSM and Wi-Fi. In the end I think Wi-Fi is going to be the only safe technology to trust as end to end. I say this since LTE is being deployed as proprietary as possible by the carriers. I understood that for the first few years since the drive was there to get something to catch up to data demand. However, it’s clear this is going to be the norm and not the early adoption issue. http://www.slideshare.net/alwaysoncarl/does-the-mobile-internet

Cooper’s Law may be thwarted by bad deployments and the opportunity for competition is pretty sad. Last week we saw Lightsquared give up the ghost, I swapped my phone from a lesser party back to one of the two big players. http://www.mobilitytechzone.com/topics/4g-wirelessevolution/articles/2012/05/16/290511-cancelled-my-4g-phone-evidently-it-wasnt-primary.htm I went to order from Clearwire and realized the process was going to drive me nuts so I gave up. Pretty Sad and it indicates why there is reluctance to leave the incumbents.

Candidly it’s easier and the fact that the cable operators sold spectrum co to Verizon Wireless points out how hard it is to break in. While our friends in WISPA, do a great job supporting cost conscious customers, the general consumer market is not very flexible. When companies like Lightsquared go under and Clearwire revamps it makes it harder for the next company to break out.

I have friends tell me that Apple and Google are the real carriers and looking at how resentful ATT is that the bulk of the bucks go to Cupertino you can see there is no need for Apple to hurry to buy a carrier.

However, the market cap on Clearwire is so low and the bandwidth is so great, now may be the time. Perhaps it will be Amazon.

I should also note that I was at Blackberry Jam in Orlando two weeks ago so I don’t mean my quoting of others to suggest I think that devices are going to be duopoly like the wireline. In reality I think Microsoft and RIM are both on the right track. You will hear more about this as soon as I get my interviews posted. Let me say this the closer we get to full compliance to HTML5 the more opportunity for end to end to win. This will come up when we do DevCon5 in NYC in July. Http://www.devconfive.com

Not to be pitchy, but that’s also why I added the Bring Your Own Device / Wi-Fi sessions to the 4GWE event (now called Mobility Tech Conference & Expo) http://www.mobilitytechzone.com/conference/ . The business of the mobile Internet is very nascent and while we can be glad the carriers have gotten past WAP. We still have a long way to go before the business is mature.

Hell we can’t even agree on what’s mature yet. Yahoo! As a stock finally found a new height, but we will see if it maintains. I was hoping for a new mobile commerce model from Scott Thompson http://www.imhocorp.com/?p=939 . I guess he may have to pull a Steve Jobs and rise like a phoenix from the Ashes. Speaking of Ashes, Facebook looks like a good buy in about another 98 days http://blog.tmcnet.com/4g-wirelessevolution/2012/05/facebook-you-still-can-judge-them-by-their-cover.html . Although based on the amount of stock already out there and NASDAQ faulty T+1 systems. I may have to add a few more days for the market to equalize.

Mark Cuban said this was the most important IPO ever and in some ways he was right http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-ipo-may-be-the-most-important-in-history-says-mark-cuban-2012-05 . The stock may have single-handedly killed the tech bubble on Wall Street. I don’t know if you watched but for almost every other tech stock in the market it was like a scene from “On the Beach’ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/ . Nothing was moving. Even Apple was dropping as the capital went out to meet up with Facebook.

The market however is efficient and is back to work. One thing that kept coming up on Wall Street and with Gigaom is that Facebook has yet to figure out wireless http://gigaom.com/mobile/will-facebook-adapt-to-mobile-or-will-mobile-adapt-to-facebook/ . So let’s end with a discussion of largest user of wireless – machines. I did a webinar with ATT and AXEDA last week that was very good but left me questions about the singularity being near. http://m2m.tmcnet.com/topics/m2mevolution/articles/290542-phases-m2m.htm

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my rant and linking you to most of the places you can find my thoughts. As always I like it best when the audience talks back. I hope to hear from you soon.

Kind Regards,

Carl

Making Smartphone Users Smarter

A friend invited me to come to a social network that was suppose to be about apps.

It was a good lecture by Richard Luna, CEO of Protected Harbor.

The fun part of the lecture was when he got on the subject of Blackberry’s. All of a sudden the Blackberry users pulled out their phones and learned how to access the apps.

It’s clear that Blackberry needs to make this point to their user base.

Mark Kelley Interview

Mark’s history mirrors the wireless industry closely and includes being the CTO of Leap and leading developments at Nextwave and Qualcomm. Today, he is doing some consulting and thinking about new opportunities in the market.
With all this history the discussion takes us to in-depth analysis. He blogs about various aspects of the industry and his life at http://spassmeister.com/ .

On this call, we discussed.
The History of GSM and CDMA and why we are at where we are.
The role of WiMAX in the market.
How it relates to wireless backhaul.
The issues of spectrum.
The smartphones impact on the carriers.
Demand and Costs are converging on the carriers roll out of wireless backhaul.
What business models are making sense right now?
What the opportunity for White Space in the market?

You can find Mark’s website at http://markkelleyonline.com/index.html

Consolidating for the future

ATT and Verizon are rapidly becoming the last teams standing as the focus is continues on wireless opportunities.  As I continue to hear that LTE is the clear winner.  I can’t help but think this cant be about a single device and a single service.  Is the iPhone all that we need?  Lets get serious.

As I sit here on my MacBook and see the tools that are missing that were part of my world, I know that I will probably buy another PC in the future.  Or at least reconfigure my bootcamp.

As i talk to people on my blackberry, I see the need for some better tools.

If innovation is fostered by discontent.  I am an Innovation Evangelist.

I want more than I have with the devices I have.  Is anyone else discontent?

Verizon Game Changing from my Google Watch

Will Verizon Wireless Give Away The BlackBerry Storm For Free?
InformationWeek, NY - 2 hours ago
Verizon Wireless’s UK-based partner, Vodafone, recently announced that it will give the BlackBerry Storm to users for free if they sign up for new contracts
Verizon mulls heavily-discounted BlackBerry Storm
CNNMoney.com - 2 hours ago
By Scott Moritz Free. That’s Vodafone’s (VOD) recently-unveiled price for the hotly-anticipated touchscreen BlackBerry Storm from Research in Motion (RIM)
Verizon considering crazy cheap Storm pricing?
engadget, CA - 36 minutes ago
by Chris Ziegler, posted Oct 31st 2008 at 5:33PM Any Storm hopeful in the colonies who’s taken a gander at Vodafone’s pricing scheme this week is probably
blackberry® storm™ 9530 smartphone
Mobile Computing News, UK - 21 hours ago
By Wilson • Oct 30th, 2008 • Category: Features, Smartphone News The much awaited BlackBerry Storm is finally out for smartphone lovers.