A bit of reading material (EuroTelco)

More good stuff from James Enck @ EuroTelco Blog. A bit of reading material Here are some excerpts … to make u link to his full post ;-).

• link to 203-page feasibility study on FTTP in San Francisco.
• link to GigaOm FTTH in US.
• link to Robin Good in UK (?) on his IPTV experience The “mood” link is a good description of what happens with Telco IPTV. This is exactly why DSL modems are migrating to RG’s. It is for the telco, not you.
• Enck’s slides presented at the Telecom Finance conference late last Friday afternoon.

  (Via EuroTelcoblog.)

Wall Street Research and Analyst Coverage (WR Koss)

Some people have lots of fun

WR Koss says he reads too much. I’d add that he post’s too much. This is a “funny” & “serious” post where he discusses an e-mail job offer he received for a Wall St Analyst position. The hours & tasks are UGLY ( makes my Packet Engines stint with its m-f 7-7 & sat 7-12 hours seem pleasant). He adds some good questions wrt “Who reads this stuff?” & “To what depth?”. Wall Street Research and Analyst Coverage (Via WRKoss - Tech & Geopolitics.)

For us individual investors. This post just adds more ammo to the conclusion’s of Burton Malkiel’s, Random Walk Down Wallstreet. His conclusions can be paraphrased as “A diversified portfolio of Index Funds/ETF’s is the percentage choice. The Wall St. game may be fun, but it is a game ….”

Clippings - Net Neutrality / Personal Security / Mobile-NG / Backup / Skype / VZ&iPhone

I’m catching up on my blog reading. Here are items that caught my eye yesterday.

Broadband Needs Political Leadership — ( Via GigaOm )

No kidding. The “Open Internet” or “Horizontal Internet” presents all sorts of issues. Today’s perception that Hosted Applications (Google) and Appliances (Apple) get all the “love” and that connectivity providers (telco’s, cisco, Lucatel) are getting “dissed” is the basis for this battle.

It’s not like Google, and users, are not paying for connectivity. It’s that Connectivity guys have finally figured out that they can’t make a “Walled Garden” ( or Vertical Market ) out of the Internet. They’ve actually got to compete in the “Application” and “Appliance” markets. Boo hoo, they’re now complaining in public.

From a political perspective, I believe that the massive job losses “suffered” and “to come” from connectivity providers will provide nice “fodder” for their ’cause. Also, the connectivity guys have had ~ 100 years of “vertical” bliss, they’re not prepared for a “horizontal” marketplaces.

The Telco 2.0 guys discuss this very well. The future is a “horizontal” Internet. Connectivity Guys, Get used to it! Stop whining and get on with the the new “horizontal” reality.

I was Hacked! -(via Mark Evans)

Notes on how his Paypal account was “breached” … scary.

Mobile NGN - a Real Telco 2.0 Opportunity? - (Via Telco 2.0 )

Next Generation Mobile Network alliance white paper review.

Dell’s Got Your Back(up) - ( Via GigaOm )

Dell’s getting into online backup game. Interesting notes on how it will be used for newly purchases computers. In backup there are ~ 100 players. If you’re like me the only players will be Dell, Amazon, Google, MSN, Yahoo, or the Telco’s (if they figure it out ). I’m using online backup for stuff that I don’t ever want to lose. Thus it has to be someone very trustworthy. It’s not the Box.net’s or Mozy’s. Sorry guys, nice services, but backup is “insurance”.

To open or not to open, Sprint - ( Via GigaOm )

Comments on whether Sprint’s WiMax network will be “Walled Garden” or “Open Internet”. You can easily guess the answer

Skype Use Gets Q4 Boost - ( Via GigaOm )

Highlights of Skype 4Q06.

Personal Information in the Web 2.0 Era. How Do You Trust? - ( Via GigaOm )

Mark Evan’s being hacked and selecting a provider of Online backup. Freaky! This is important.

Verizon, ya we dissed da iPhone - ( Via GigaOm )

Interesting commentary on what Apple likely got from Cingular.

Gump Worsley Passes :-(

The Gumper passed away on Jan 27th. What a guy! His stats were remarkable. He’s most known for being the last NHL goalie to play without a mask. The Globe and Mail has a fine obituary.

Fantastic — eMusic / Pandora Mashup

This Mashup of Pandora and eMusic is a “beautiful time-waster“! If you have an eMusic subscription, you’ll have to give this a try.

I was tipped to this via Om Malik’s blog. I’ve tried Pandora before, and it really didn’t do it for me. But this mashup only finds songs on eMusic. Fantastic.

Telcos Target Google in ‘Neutrality’ Fight (GigaOm)

I’m slowly catching up on all my blog reading. This GigaOm post has a lot of good discussion, and links, on the latest in Net Neutrality. For those who don’t already know, “It’s about cash … Google has it and the others don’t”. — Iain

Telcos Target Google in ‘Neutrality’ Fight: ”

The latest round in the battle over net neutrality has started, and as usual the telcos have their game plan sussed out and in widespread, synchronized action. The message? Google is bad, and wants to control the Internet to keep its cash pile growing. Telcos, meanwhile, just want to innovate, so please don’t write laws keeping them from doing so. [...] (Via GigaOM.)

Clippings-2007.01.26

I’m testing to see if this a good way to do clippings.

• MuniFi’s Weakest Link is Public Use
  — (Via GigaOM.)
  • Good points on MuniFi issues and link to Craig Settles report.
• For Cingular, 2007 is about 3G — (Via GigaOM.)
  • Add good read. Starts quick w/ “… 2007 is all about milking wireless”
• U-Verse, Line Losses Dog AT&T — (Via GigaOM.)
• Alcatel-Lucent, Tellabs, Infinera, Early Stage Fundraising and Short Form… — (Via WRKoss - Tech & Geopolitics.)
  • Ouch. Some nasty notes on WAN Networking Equipment.

• Digital Home - The Opportunity for Telcos: — (Via Telco 2.0.)

  Here is the opening. Telco 2.0 is great, there is actual meat in their releases.

  As you’ll have seen for ‘Digital Town’ here, we create detailed hypotheses as a brief for participants at the Telco 2.0 brainstorm . Next up is the Digital Home work stream on Day Two, which looks at the impacts of high speed broadband and wireless access, and the parallel evolution of other technologies, on the home environment. We’re delighted to have senior execs from BBC, Belgacom, BSkyB, FT-Orange, Slingbox, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor and others preparing special stimulus presentations for this. (Thanks again for input to Alan Patrick from Broadsight who is working with us on this).

  So, below is what we think is the ‘Situation’, ‘Complication’, ‘Key Questions’, and ‘Way Forward’ for ‘Telcos in the Digital Home’. [...]

Aargh — the Press Release ;-)

In part 4 of my marketing stream ( of unconsciousness ) I said that I’d write about Press Releases. What was I thinking. I don’t “really” want to do that.

To avoid writing about them I’ve been looking around for opinions that are similar to mine. Hopefully others can articulate my love/hate feeling about them. I always have trouble with that.

So far I’ve found that “real” PR people ( like Mark Evans @ b5Media ) have issues with them as well. I came across his post Don’t Kill the Press Release, which links to many many more posts on the good/bad//ugly of press releases.

I’m also going to do a thorough crawl of WR Koss’s blog (another press release non-lover) to see if he has anything to share on this topic. I like his Blogs Subtitle “The purpose of this blog is to provide a forum for ideas on networking, service providers, technology, venture capital, private equity and geopolitics. The objective of this blog is to offset the negative value of news that is broadcast on a daily basis. I do not want to know the news as determined by people who write press releases and those who cover press releases. I want to know what the people who make news do not want me to know.”

Subscription vs Download (A VC)

Fred Wilson has yet another thought inspiring post on how media will be purchased and consumed ( Subscription vs Download ). He really likes subscription ( vs iTunes style download ), but for those of us outside the USA most of these choices are NOT available. It’s filesharing or nothing This should change soon ( I hope ).

I lean towards owning. But owning brings on the huge problem of, “What to do with all the purchased stuff?” (ie Back Up ) Keeping Photos (priceless), Music (cost me $$$), and soon purchased Video ($$) backed up & safe is huge.

I’ve had one friend lose the family hard drive. The major point of pain was the photo library. It affected them all. They paid some good bucks to retrieve the data. Luckily it worked out.

I’ve been agonizing over how to tackle this back up issue for a long time now. I keep trying different things. All of them take a long time and require significant IT skill. I have most of my stuff backed up to a firewire/usb drive. I’ve got all my music and photos on DVDs. But this is complicated by 3 machine and 5 user accounts on two of them. Ouch. I’ve been flirting with centralizing on a home NAS. But overall, I’m thinking that the only way is to host it somewhere on the Net. This feels expensive, so I haven’t really looked.

My current thinking for home back-up is trying out the Amazon service. I’ll have to look into this. Probably is pretty easy.

That said — I’ve had good success with subscriptions at eMusic & Audible. I will be a subscriber of the video service that works like them. Each keeps a record of what I’ve purchased and allow me unlimited downloads of these as long as I’m a subscriber. I think I’ll do the same with video when such a service becomes available.

Living Vicariously Thru K-Dog @ the Hope (Golf)

Some guys have it good, very good. My friend Kevin just played in the Pro-Am at the Bob Hope Classic in Palm Springs last week. Most golfers know about the 16th at PGA West, here is Kevin’s post game review. It’s a treat. This would be sooooo much fun! Iain

The highlight of the day was on the 16th which is called double cross as one is supposed to cross over a canal and then back to the green. I sliced so far right that I never crossed over but bounced up into rocks and trees on the mountain side.

I found my ball, did like Tiger, and had my caddie, Bill, move about 5 rocks.
Then he took cover behind a tree. Being a Canadian Tour pro, my caddie, of course, thought that it was an impossible and dangerous shot, having never been in such trouble. But I have had lots of practice.
Anyways, to the cheers of the crowd I punched it out low, under branches and over rocks, and bounced onto the green and almost sunk it then and there.
I frustratingly left the return putt an inch short of birdie, to only par the hole like the pro (but still earn a net birdie for the team).
So quite a wild day.