hitting the wire*

The Red Bull X-Alps. These guys are having an incredible experience!

A race along the Alps.  Krippenstein (Austria) to Monaco.  800km.  30 athletes.  They can walk/climb or paraglide.  One ground based supporter, who is not allowed to use motorized or powered flight.  The race runs 24x7, snow or shine.  First one to Monaco wins.

A colleague at Storm, Keith Mould, who paraglides himself, pointed me to the website where you can follow the whole thing live - even using Google Earth if you choose!

The tracking data is apparently sent from Nokia N95 phones the guys carry.

I imagine days like this make all the pain worthwhile!

Has Mobile Broadband screwed up the GSM networks?

Most of you will know the story about boiling a frog:-  Drop a frog into boiling water and  it will leap out; slowly heat the water in which the frog is floating, and it will slowly cook before it realizes the peril.

'twas here that I posted about the quality of of the GSM networks in this country dropping off.  We're not going to have anyone from one of the networks officially admit it.  Why would they?  But I've had sufficient anecdotal evidence from people I speak to to indicate that the incidence of "network  busy" (or just unavailable) and dropped calls has increased in the last few years.

Just this last week, I was told (off the record of course) by a representative from one of the mobile networks that where they used to install two 2Mbps COFLs (Cellular Operator Fixed Links) to each base station (one to carry the voice traffic, one as backup/loadsharing), they now install six to eight, and despite the increase, those are often congested.  Why?  3G/HSDPA of course.  A 2G voice call takes up 9.6kbps (using "full rate"; "half rate" for calls when a base station is more than 70% saturated).  3G can take up to 384kbps (on downlink); HSDPA up to 1.8Mbps (on downlink).  The equipment at the Base Station and at the Mobile Switching Centre (MSC) for 2G & 3G is separate, but the backhaul from Base Station to MSC (the COFL) is used for both 2G & 3G. 

And there is the problem.  Congestion on the COFL's caused by mobile broadband affects voice calls.

So why don't they upgrade the COFL's?

Until recently, the Mobile Operators were obliged to get the COFL's from Telkom. Telkom can't keep up.  They've got fibre galore.  They have however, over the past few years, lost so many network planning & installation staff capable of handling the necessary roll-out of WiMAX, NGN, Metro Ethernet, COFL's, etc, they're running ragged.  And with others (like MTN & Vodacom) now rolling out similar networks now, it is unlikely they're likely to solve this issue soon.

Is it a wonder the GSM guys are gagging to be allowed to use WiMAX for backhaul; why they are rolling out metro fibre networks and NGN's?

One negative impact of a market that is growing rapidly is the lack of skilled resource.  Ask any recruitment agency right now to find you good ITC sales people, developers, network architects, etc.  Rocking horse sh*t is easier to find.

We need good broadband to be as accessible as possible in this country.  We have a way to go before we get there.  In the meantime we will have to accept that the way will be a little bumpy.

VoIPTopia @ the June 2007 CT 27 dinner.

I was honoured to be asked by Dave Duarte to give a brief presentation at the last 27 dinner in Cape Town.   The guys from MissingLink have made a video of my 5+ minute rambling available on Youtube.  Before (& if!) you watch the clip you should know that I showed the "VoIPTopia" clip which we created for the Broadband Summit in Feb, which I posted about here.  (that is me... I've just stopped shaving so often)

The last time I watched myself on video was when I participated in a roleplay where I was a CEO of a company guilty of some disaster like a toxic chemical spill on the N1 being grilled by John Bishop (those of you younger than 40 may not recall the sharp, incisive, rather intimidating style of the man).  I won a dare & a case of cider by holding up a mini "Hi Mom" banner at the start.  Ah me, I must try and dig out the VHS clip and get it digitised.  Would be a good for a laugh I'm sure.

Henk was most amused that my notes were in the form of a mindmap - there is no way I can speak from a prepared text:

that's me.

The rise of a new breed of Service Provider.

My first job in Storm, back in the late 90's was to add a Cellular LCR (Least Cost Routing) product to the International LCR product offering Storm launched with.  We were finding that we were losing deals to the likes of Orion and Telepassport because we did not offer "savings on calls to cellular".  TimWG's words to me were something of the order of "create a cellular product for us and just make sure you don't lose us any money".

None of us saw just how big the Cellular LCR market would be.  None of us realised just  how many more cellular phones than fixed line phones there would be by now.

Cellular LCR has always been a problem for the Mobile Network Operators.  The GSM networks were traditionally designed quite "thin", with some base stations only being able to handle 8 or 16 simultaneous calls from phones "passing through".  Installations of "SIM farms" or large Cellular Fixed Terminal CPE installations had the ability to "flatten" the networks in places.  An installation at PriceWaterhouseCoopers succeeded in causing dropped calls for anyone traveling past their offices in Sandton for weeks after their LCR installation went live.  The networks ended up spending many millions of capex to cater for LCR. 

Much better money was being made in charging Telkom to terminate calls originating in Telkom's network to cell phones.  But the fear of losing the LCR SIM business (and the traffic) to the other MNO network forced Vodacom and MTN to offer the likes of Storm attractive packages.  Once the LCR market had tapered off however, we saw them beef up "off-net" call charges to try and make more margin.  We had to become smarter about how we managed our base of SIMs.

Deregulation and the legalisation of VoIP has changed all of that.  Anyone who is trying to sell you on the idea that traditional cellular LCR is here for many years and it is worth committing yourself to a long term contract is blowing smoke.  The future is in aggregating traffic using either VoIP or once it is available a mix of CPS (Carrier PreSelect) and VoIP and passing traffic over interconnects.  Renewing LCR SIMs from now on is risky business.

The way forward is with the new breed of Voice&Data Service Provider (the EC Act calls them Communication Service Providers), who are geared to make most use of the changes in technology and regulations.  You just have to take a look at the M&A activity (traditional data guys buying voice guys, vice versa, and the likes of Vodacom starting their own ISP) to realise what Storm did years ago - the future is in IP.  LCR will be around for a while yet, unless either DoC or ICASA force some unwise and rather radical changes to interconnect rates.  The UK has one of the most competitive telecoms markets around, and cellular LCR is still alive with the likes of Westlake and True Communications.

Peter Walsh of DataRoom has written a good article on LCR on MyDigitalLife - worth a read if you're interested in a balanced outlook on this market.

VoIP snippets spotted today (2007-04-19)

• Vonage are in sh*t.  They lost the patent lawsuit with Verizon, which could set them back $58 million in damages and 5.5% of revenue (eina!)  But Sprint are looking to take a stake?
  
• Comverse Wins Best VoIP Product at IEC Convergence World Awards.  Comverse, a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, Inc., was honored with the Best VoIP Product award for their Converged IPCentrex™ solution from the International Engineering Consortium (IEC). The winners were announced at an award ceremony during the C5 World Forum in Milan.
  
• Jimmy Atkinson of VoIP Now has producted a list of "74 Open Source VoIP Apps & Resources".  He also has a very interesting post on "Cell Phones Causing Crop Failure". 
  Need to chat to my bee keeper friends on that one!
  
• A body of independent auditors and experts recommended last week that the state of California consider open-source software and voice over Internet Protocol telephony as two measures to cut costs. 
  Awesome boost for Open Source Telephony!
  
• BT Business have just announced the launch of Office Anywhere, a service that gives you Windows PC functions, but in a smartphone that’s small enough to fit in your pocket. Because it comes with VoIP as well, BT Office Anywhere brings the added bonus of saving you money on your mobile calls with free hour-long internet phone calls to UK landlines.
  Could you see Telkom doing that? - will be nice when we reach that stage!
  
• And the mobile networks in the UK are getting aggro about the VoWiFi threat.

ok, time to wind up business clock...

IT & Telecoms trends in 2007

At the beginning of March I was asked to distil my thoughts on what trends are likely to emerge during 2007/2008 in the local Information & Communications Technology market. I’ve held back on posting until now while Storm's overworked Marketing team get the customer newsletter out to avoid stealing all their thunder. As usual, this is a mix of “duh, of course, like that's news?” type stuff and some “what are you smoking!?” ideas that may well be way off the mark! Here goes:

Obviously the desktop hardware technology “refresh” will get going as IT budgets are approved and laptop and desktops using Intel’s new super fast core 2 duo chip’s start hitting corporate desks in earnest; followed closely by the early adopters of Microsoft’s much awaited new operating system ‘Vista’. (The more cautious of us will wait for Service Patch 1 or even 2 to appear!)

On the bandwidth front - Broadband, now far from broad, will continue to drop in price, but I doubt as much as we have seen in the last 18 months. I can't even recall who started the argy-bargy, but at one stage MTN appeared to have created a new benchmark at around R0.20/MB. It was allegedly intended to be a limited duration half-price special, but showed what could be done.  Sentech announced they planned providing more bang for buck;  Vodacom then dropped their price (by 61% according to their ads) after being almost double everyone else’s price. iBurst also dropped their pricing, but remain more expensive than Sentech for equivalent packages (sub HSDPA theoretical speeds). The unlicensed players like Amobia and Uninet are still an order of magnitude cheaper but don’t have the coverage advantage. It is all a bit confusing for the man in the street, but ultimately these changes will make getting online and staying there permanently, more affordable. Offerings should start to differentiate on quality (reliability of throughput) and you should be able to get fixed IP addresses – currently not available to ADSL users. This will facilitate hooking up remote offices for voice and data over IP.

More telco’s will announce moves to converge their voice and data networks onto IP based New Generation Networks like British Telecom’s 21st Century Network project. This will make networks more intelligent and flexible, but will unfortunately not impact on customers for some time to come.

Video on Demand is growing overseas (where real broadband exists) – people are prepared to pay a premium over the likes of Mr Video et al to choose their viewing for the evening from their armchair. Don’t hold your breath here – we’re too spread out geographically to make it profitable just yet (maybe satellite will save us). And Telkom still dominates the local loop.

IPTV is being touted by vendors as the next big thing. Again, dependent on broadband, and ownership of content will be key! It will not be over the Internet, but over managed IP networks.

Music and video downloads, both legal and illegal, continue to grow. More cell phones with better mp3 players will eventually make people wonder why they have a CD player, but probably not this year! Apple’s iPhone will develop a cult following but will hardly make a dent in Nokia’s global market dominance.

Instant Messaging (IM) will continue to grow. Local mobile phone based instant messaging service, MXIT (Think MSN messenger on your phone) will find ways of “growing up” and becoming more respectable. IM will start making deeper inroads into corporate culture with IT managers needing to develop policies on IM usage.

WiMAX equipment will drop in price as the economies of scale kick in and more networks other than Sprint Nextel in the USA do mass roll-outs. It will continue to disappoint those who believed all the hype w.r.t. 70Mbps @ 70 miles @ 70mph. Some Meshed WiFi networks will appear here in SA, whether legal or not, and we’ll continue to see a LAN technology play in open spaces it was never intended for. Unlicensed Mobile Access, with VoWiFi phones following along behind, causing Mobile Networks to get edgy.

Spectrum is being fiercely fought over. It is a scarce resource and it is unlikely that anyone other than a few established players will get licenses. There will be many frustrated wannabes.

Municipal networks are coming to the fore, with the Cape Town tender awarded, but challenged, eThekweni ready to roll but caught up with legalities, and City of Joburg now out on tender. They are unlikely to have any real impact this year. They do not really have much of a sustainable advantage in the long run, as they will have to allow others access to infrastructure and will find that building a telco is not trivial.

The Mobile networks will announce HSUPA with great fanfare. Mobile broadband will then be about as broad as it gets for a while, but as up- and down-load speeds will be around 5Mbps, it will make quadplay (or fourplay?) possible – mobile/voice/internet/video.

Mobile interconnect prices are due to come down by 20 to 25% shortly. This should allow Telkom to drop the price of calls to mobile phones – whether they will pass on the full benefit or not will have to be seen. Mobile packages are unlikely to change as a result though. Least Cost Routing will become more and more marginal and the shift to Communication Service Providers using VoIP will be become more obvious.

Asterisk, the open source “IPPBX” will continue to make some serious inroads into the PBX market, with damage being done at a “higher level” in the market than originally proposed – medium to large corporates instead of SME’s. Watch the call centres here – they’re the weather vane of change.

Hosted IPPBX’s will start emerging as broadband improves and investors in some of the early VoIP entrants who committed large capex in these sorts of solutions seek to get ROI moving.

Social Networking using web based applications like MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, Second Life etc will become more widely known and used as people get used to being online 24*7. We’re seeing South African flavours of these appearing.

DSL and SSL VPN’s will become more popular as DSL prices drop and quality improves and mobile broadband grows. Business will seek help to set up and manage increasingly complex networks of devices.

As broadband improves in throughput, price and reliability, ASP services will become more popular, with companies seriously considering (but possibly not committing to just yet) such things as Getting Things Done, Gmail and Office packages from the likes of Google rather than Microsoft (from one evil empire to another!?).

VoIP will start emerging as more than just a cost saving exercise with some of the first real value adds starting to come through, with integration into calendars, address books, CRM’s and PBX’s.

There will be a lot of consolidation in the next few years, with bigger players buying smaller, more niche players to fulfill the need to have broader voice and data offering.

Oh, and Neotel will start taking on Telkom in the retail market and Infraco will make its clumsy and controversial way onto the stage…

(and if I look back on my 2006 predictions... if we see half of these during 2007, we'll be doing well! :( )

Dave Gale

March 2007

VoIPTopia - when VoIP gets funky.

When it comes to VoIP, we've all got a bit fixated on the means to the end instead of the end itself, which is to make communications not just cheaper (a definite fixation here in SA), but easier and more productive. VoIP is a technology.  Actually it is a protocol, which in turn is only a predetermined method of communications between devices. 

This post is long overdue and I apologise to those who had given up hope of me ever providing a version of the animation we used at the SA Broadband Summit in Feb this year.  Truth is, I've been busy and I couldn't get the HTML right first go.  I've finally hacked it (helps to follow the programmer's instructions to the letter!)

Here it is, a maybe not so futuristic view of what (Vo)IP can enable for the knowledge worker.  There is much it can do for the consumer, but that is another story.  If it seems the narrative is a bit rushed, it is; MeshSmith, the animator, begged me to cut it as short as possible - after all I did give him an impossible deadline - which he made.  Hit the play button below and adjust the sound for optimal listening pleasure! ;)

that's me.  and no one yelled "fore!" dammit!

Is this war? Broadband(ish) style

 

Few things ruin your evening relaxing at a 5–star guest house in a lush Westville suburb (if you travel to Durban on business… there is no place like Ntengu Lodge – service as it should be defined at prices you pay at City Lodge!) like getting a call from SAfm’s AMLive to ask if you’ll comment at 06h35 next morning on Vodacom’s recent broadband price reductions (eh?  I thought it was MTN dropping prices?!).  Shove a microphone or camera at me and my palms wet themselves!  Not quite sure where they got the idea that Storm is a telecoms analysis outfit… need to work on our branding more! :/

So, armed with my HSDPA card and my coal-powered laptop, I started to catch up on recent events, but not before I’d asked Sentient to do some research.  Amazing how quickly one can assimilate info with an pseudo-broadband IP connection!  (please… you cannot call sub 2Mbps true broadband)

Is it a price war or not?  Opinions seem to be divided.  Roger from Sentient:

It may or may not be a price war... but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, there is a reasonable chance it's a waterfowl of species anatidae

I tend to agree, but then what is the difference between a brief skirmish and a full out war?  The determination to hold one’s position?  What difference will this make to consumers?  With all the recent jockeying, there is a lot of confusion over the various offerings.  MyADSL is always a good source of info on local broadband as Rudolf and his merry mates are fixated on it.  Yes, yes, I know… that why it is actually called MyADSL!

I have no idea if Telkom are going to fire a retaliatory broadside and turn this into a real firefight.  History leads me to doubt it.  But if they don’t, they will lose business to HSDPA, iBurst and MyWireless.  Even with self-install as an option, it is easier (and cheaper) to sign up for wireless.  Cheaper despite the fact that wireless networks are more expensive to deploy.  And don’t forget that the most of the copper has been in the ground way past its ROI period.  I certainly hope Telkom retaliates.

But price is only one aspect.  I want DSL that doesn’t fall asleep on the job, like some Cabinet Ministers we know.  Let’s see some differentiation on contention ratios for a start.  And I still have to hear when we’re going to get access to some of the fibre that is supposedly being force fed down cable ducts… <sigh>

Anyway, all this got me wondering how one can compare the various offerings so I took a stab at creating a graphic to make it a bit easier (click on the thumb-nail below).  I’m not convinced I shouldn’t have opted for bars of some sort, but after giving up on the bubble representation on the data in Excel, I resorted to creating a balloon farm of my own.  Let me know if you spot some errors. And lets have some bright spark track down a Web2.0 app we can hook up to MyADSL and make some sense of it all.

That’s me.

ps.  Joe has just chastised me (and rightly so) that I’ve left out Amobia and Uninet.  An oversight I will address after I’ve had some sleep!

knight or knave?

One thing that has always got up my nose is the practice of slagging off the competition during a sales or marketing exercise. If you can't sell your product on its own merits and must strengthen your position by denigrating your competitor, I immediately wonder what you're hiding. It often has the opposite effect on a prospect. I certainly hope no Storm sales person does so!

Now Richard Branson is someone I've long admired for his "goetspe" (how do you spell that word?!), his "do it and be damned" approach to business and for how he has built Virgin into a cheeky, sexy, yet successful enterprise. You can't help being drawn to the man.

But Virgin Mobile's positioning on their late entry into the SA market disturbs me. While the local Mobile Network Operators are far from saintly and their profits are probably in excess of the GDP some small African nations, and prices could be lower here, I'm not so sure Virgin are going to be any more chaste in the long run.

Are handset subsidies a rip off? Would we have the kind of penetration of GSM handsets here that we do without it? Do we choose not to upgrade our phones in return for a month to month contract? Strange that Virgin was the one company that failed to pitch at a recent ITWeb round table debate on handset subsidies. I fully expected them to arrive on white chargers brandishing broadswords. Maybe they were off tilting at windmills instead - who knows.

If they succeed in making telecoms in South Africa more affordable and give us a laugh to boot - all strength to them. Do it with cheek and humour by all means, but stick to cheap calls and can the cheap shots - it makes you appear more knave than knight.

Have I got the bull by the udder here?