Latest Blogs
Meet me next week at the CDN Strategies Summit
I’m particularly pleased to write that I will be charing day one of the CDN Strategies Summit. Why? Because the conference will address one of the most fundamental problems facing telecoms operators today: How they can work with Internet and media firms to support the growing burden of video and other bandwidth-hungry services travelling over their networks.
We at Informa first covered the concept of operator content delivery networks (CDNs) in 2004, when I wrote about a startup called CacheLogic that suggested that operators could put technology for restricting burgeoning peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing traffic to more positive uses (subscription required).
Much has changed, as this excerpt shows: Read more »
Even at US$3.8bn, Brocade’s attraction could extend beyond IT
Recent media reports that data storage and network kit vendor Brocade Communications has put itself up for sale have left the company with an all-time-high share price, a market valuation of US$3.8 billion plus and a number of possible suitors, some of whom could be in the telecoms sector.
Nokia Siemens Networks or Nokia Siemens Solutions?
One of my colleagues has already blogged about NSN’s new “solutions & services” marketing pitch unveiled at an analyst event last week. It’s always healthy to be sceptical about repositioning exercises of this type but nevertheless I reckon that some interesting and dare I say it genuinely transformational developments are happening at NSN. Read more »
Keys to success are elusive for iPhone apps developers
IPhone application developers don’t need to offer an inexpensive iPhone app in order to make a dent in the marketplace, but, that said, it’s sometimes the simplest applications that derive the most high-profile attention.
Those were two of the lessons I learned at the 360iDev conference last week. The 225 or so attendees at this event, held in Denver, appeared to be acolytes of Apple CEO Steve Jobs (though that is exactly how one attendee said he did not want to be described). For the most part, they didn’t seem interested in developing apps for Google’s Android OS, Windows Mobile, Palm’s webOS or anything without the Apple brand on it. Read more »
Oxford University’s wake-up call to superfast-broadband fear-mongers
I was pleasantly awoken by my clock radio this morning to hear an Oxford University academic go “off-message”, as PR people and government spin doctors call it.
Alastair Nicholson of Said Business School was appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to answer questions about a Cisco-funded study which found that 24 countries had better-quality broadband than the UK. “Does it matter?” asked a characteristically combative John Humphrys.
Nicholson’s answer left the newsreader somewhat bemused, if not wrong-footed: “Ah, I don’t think so. Not at the moment.” A short pause followed.
Read more »
Latvia in the top 5, UK 25th - what’s new?
The BBC picked up on the publication of the annual broadband ranking report from Cisco and the Said Business School. It ranked the UK 25th out of 66 nations, relative to average download and upload speed and availability.
I haven’t seen the report, but the interesting thing is that it ranks according to readiness for the future, rather than adequacy for the present. So, nations like Latvia and Bulgaria where FTTx has high market share, rank higher than the UK.It masks the fact that twice as many UK homes have broadband as Bulgaria. It’s about 50% more than Latvia.
Read more »
And then there was (The Network of) One
I’ve been in Munich for the last couple of days, listening to Nokia Siemens Networks executives tell us industry analysts all about the new company strategy. Bearing in mind who the parents of this joint venture are, old skool bastions of Northern European communications engineering, renowned for delivering solid products with solid performance, the company at first seemed to have gone all soft and fluffy. Read more »
Saudi Arabia is feeling the heat of competition
Saudi Arabia remains the biggest prize in the Gulf region for telecoms operators and vendors.
Although the more-populous Iran has overtaken Saudi Arabia in terms of mobile subscription numbers, Saudi Arabia has the largest economy in the region and a substantial population, of 24.6 million. Read more »
FCC adds two new network neutrality principles
In a speech yesterday at Brookings Institute Chairman Genachowski proposed two new network neutrality principles, “non discrimination of content on the Internet” and “transparency in how operators manage traffic on their networks”. Read more »
Confusion reigns over M&A in the Middle East and Africa
Progress on the region’s big M&A deals – the prospective sale of Zain Africa or a stake in Zain; and the cash and share-swap deal between Bharti and MTN – appears to have stalled. Read more »
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