Good but short interview in the Financial Times this morning with Ed Whitacre, CEO of AT&T (prior CEO of SBC).
Some choice quotes:
If someone wants to transmit a high quality service with no interruptions and ‘guaranteed this, guaranteed that’, they should be willing to pay for that,†the AT&T chief said.
“Now they might pass it on to their customers who are looking at a movie, for example. But that ought to be a cost of doing business for them. They shouldn’t get on [the network] and expect a free ride.â€
Note that the cable guys have been virtually silent on this issue. Why? They already deliver video the old fashioned broadcast way and don’t face this issue. Eventually, they will have a harder time adapting to the non-broadcast IPTV model- but hey, why throw yourself in front of a moving bus when the telcos are willing to do it for you?
I’ve got to hand it to Whitacre for sticking to his message however unpopular it is. Even people who dislike what he has to say must admire his fortitude.
“We have to figure out who pays for this bigger and bigger IP network,†said Mr Whitacre, who was in New York ahead of AT&T’s annual presentation to investors and analysts on Tuesday. “We have to show a return on our investments.â€
Amen.
The secondary notebook display is another CES2006 product that failed to get widespread coverage. It’s called Microsoft Sideshow, and was exhibited at Microsoft’s (MSFT) booth under Vista. I learned today that the guts are built with Portalplayer’s (PLAY) ‘Preface‘ chipset. I thought Sideshow was pretty neat when I saw it, and once I learned more about the depth of this new platform the potential impact on Apple (AAPL) and their iPod became clear.
Continue reading ‘Microsoft Sideshow - iPod killer?’
Verizon (VZ) filed an 8-K with the SEC on Friday with some interesting information on FiOS.
Verizon also provided an update on its fiber-to-the-premises deployment strategy, known as FiOS, and indicated that the earnings dilution from FiOS is expected to be approximately 10–15 cents per share higher in 2006 than in 2005, or 25–30 cents per share.
Considering Verizon currently earns around $3 a share (and pays about a 5% dividend), giving up 10% of your profit to replace a 100 year old infrastrucutre seems like a small price to pay.
Rather than blather on about the fact Google is censoring search results in China, I thought the best thing was for people to see the results themselves.
Search for “tiananmen” on Google.cn image search
Search for “tiananmen” on Google.com image search
This is just an exercise in futility by the Chinese government. Google plays along to avoid making waves, but as the masters of the machina, they must know their efforts can be easily circumvented.
[Courtesy: Infectious Greed]
The WSJ writer Lee Gomes had a well thought out piece today on page B1 on the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray battle. I sent him a quick note to check out my perspective on the debate - that both formats will win their own niche.
An ex-Forrester research employee wrote an excellent counterpoint, and highlights the fact that Betamax also secured it’s own niche- Betacam. I like this quote:
The Wall Street Journal is citing the victory of VHS over Beta to guide our understanding of next-generation DVDs. Others have used it to predict that Apple’s domination of digital music with the iPod can’t last under an onslaught from Windows Media Player-based devices. But the loser in the VHS-Beta war made more money than the victors because of a better marketing strategy. And maybe that’s the real lesson we should be learning.
I think the current DVD debate will be settled when each technology finds it’s own application, and I think I know how that will happen.
Google is taking heat for censoring search results in China. Congress is requesting hearings on the issue. As ususal, the blogosphere is in a tither.
Continue reading ‘Google is a strategic weapon’
There was sufficient CES 2006 coverage by media outlets with more resources and talent than myself, but this was one nugget worth sharing from my trip to CES earlier this month.
Hisense, a Chinese manufacturer of flat panel TV’s (one of at least 20 companies with no discernible difference) made a rather poor HD contnet choice to show on the displays it was exhibiting.
Continue reading ‘Marketing Stupidity’
Reed Hastings, The CEO of Netflix (NFLX), had some of the most sensible and level headed words I’ve heard on the highly polarizing issue of Net Neutrality. I wrote about the subject in “More Government != Better Broadband“.
Continue reading ‘Netflix on Net Neutrality’
Good discussion on Huawei-3COM in this weeks Barron’s.
If you’re hot to get in on the Chinese Telecom/Datacom hardware trend, 3COM (COMS) is your best vehicle. I wonder how Huawei-3COM has approached accounting issues…
Continue reading ‘Huawei-3COM’
Are you ready for some Japanese ONU install and hardware pr0n? This is excerpted from research we did on Passave (PMCS).
All photos and component data (click to enlarge) are courtesy of a Japanese web page. I used Google to translate the page - available here. (I don’t think human translators have much to worry about yet). Zoro, whoever you are, thank you.
Continue reading ‘NTT GE-PON ONU Hardware BOM’
Ever wonder what the ROI would have looked like if you held onto all the post-1983-breakup components of AT&T? Birinyi Associates ran through the numbers, but only after plotting the taxonomy of mergers, divestitures, and acquisitions.
Continue reading ‘AT&T Valuation and Napoleons Retreat’
This week Huawei announced their 2005 bookings were $8.2BB. Most people have misinterpreted this number to be revenue- that figure has yet to be announced. What hasn’t happened is an independent audit of any of these numbers. That’s because Huawei views secrecy, including lack of independent accounting, as a strategic competitive advantage.
Continue reading ‘Huawei 2005 Revenue’
The WSJ published an article January 5th on the new emerging investor class in Korea. What really caught my eye (and my trusty buIIshlt detector) was the photo on the newsprint page. Click the link to the left to enlarge and see the official AP Photo caption.
Continue reading ‘Korea’s Emerging Investor Class’
If there was any doubt that home networks for media sharing are a complete mess, take a look at this illustration. Continue reading ‘Home Media Networks are Broken’
Here’s a radical idea. The Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD fight may never yield a clear winner as a two-tiered market for both technologies may emerge. The history that is repeating itself is not Betamax vs. VHS, but DVD vs. Video CD.
Continue reading ‘Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD Format War’
Lightreading wrote an article about Bay Microsystems, an NPU silicon startup that acquired Parama Networks, a SONET/SDH MSPP on a chip company. While I was at Vitesse I would have competed directly with Parama, yet we never saw them and they never seemed to be a real factor in the market.
Continue reading ‘Bay Microsystems’
It’s official, the processor wars are over. Apple just announced that their iMac low end computer uses the new Intel Core Duo processor exclusively, effective today. All Macs will be all Intel by the end of this year.
Continue reading ‘It’s Official - CPU Wars Over’
Microsoft is clearly working on integrating IPTV into the Xbox.
Continue reading ‘Microsoft Xbox 360 IPTV’
Just in case some people in the US are losing objectivity on the issue of outsourcing, here’s a refresher that the laws of labor supply and demand apply to those other countries they accuse of hoovering up jobs from the US. A WSJ article ($$$ link) takes a look at how the Indian labor market is adjusting to the huge economic boom - big surprise here - wage inflation!
Continue reading ‘Globalization and Flatness’
NTT has partnered with SKY Perfect communications to create a new company called OptiCast (.pdf link) that will focus on delivering Video over the fiber NTT is rapidly installing throughout Japan. OptiCast will be a joint venture between NTT East/NTT West and SKY Perfect, a CATV company with about 4MM subscribers.
Continue reading ‘NTT Video FTTH’
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