Nextel Strikes Content Deal With Yahoo!

Wireless

Yahoo! made a deal with its fifth of the 5 major US wireless carriers to provide content and wireless applications to Nextel. The Yahoo!/Nextel deal will put e-mail, IM, games, and news content on Nextel’s Motorola phones. While this seems like a standard content deal, I’ve been advising my carrier clients for some time to be wary of what kinds of partnerships they forge with major portals. Specifically, introducing Yahoo! IM on the phone strikes me as a bad move. In business, we learn to focus on our core service, and gain efficiency by outsourcing non-core functions. Thus, carriers have outsourced games and content, for example, to portals, developers, etc. However, I propose that the core for carriers is, in fact, communications services (duh!). Now, doesn’t a Yahoo! IM app on a Nextel (or Cingular) phone compete directly with communications services powered by the carrier (PTT, SMS, voice calls)? Sounds like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Carriers who allow fully branded, competing communications services on their networks and subsidized terminals risk becoming dumb pipes – and earning the name.

Ericsson Joins WiMAX Forum

Wireless

In a move somewhat similar to Cisco’s, Ericsson has joined the WiMAX forum, and damned the standard with faint praise right as they announced their membership. Ericsson pointed out, as we have said for ages, that they see WiMAX more as a fixed play than a mobile play. (Of course, they have a bias because a mobile WiMAX would threaten their 3G business.) It could be that the forum membership of companies like Cisco and Ericsson are actually just strategies to “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. We’ve certainly seen a lot of examples where companies join forums to work against the technology the forum intends to promote. Ericsson is the biggest wireless infrastructure vendor worldwide, so now, expect the WiMAX forum marketers to spin the Ericsson membership as a grand step forward for the alliance. But is it?

Filed Under: wimax

ZigBee For Real?

Wireless

While it hasn’t seen the sort of fighting found in standards groups for just about every other wireless standard, there was some concern about in-fighting concerning pre-standard ZigBee products. It looks like it shouldn’t be that much of an issue, as the ZigBee Alliance has now ratified the ZigBee spec, which should lead to ZigBee compliant products hitting the market fairly soon. In the last few months, there have been more stories about ZigBee-ready products approaching the market, so hopefully a set spec will make sure that such products really are ZigBee compliant, pushing forward the low-cost, low-power, low-bandwidth devices which should be ideal for machine-to-machine communication — something that should continue the trend of blurring the lines between the analog and digital worlds.

Filed Under: zigbee

Court Says Blackberries Don't All Need To Be Turned Off

Wireless

from the ok,-breathe-a-sigh-of-relief dept

Last year we wrote about yet another one of these patent hoarding lawsuits, where a company named NTP won its patent lawsuit against RIM for their Blackberry device, and even had the judge issue an injunction banning RIM from selling any more Blackberries (though, this injunction was immediately stayed, pending appeal). The decision on that appeal has just come down, and while the patent infringement ruling holds, the injunction does not, and RIM can keep selling Blackberries, and Crackberry addicts all around can continue to require partners to carry Blackberries out of the belief that someone on the clock all the time can be more efficient than someone who actually, you know, gets to take a breather once in a while. Anyway, while the injunction would have been ridiculous, it sounds like RIM is still on the hook for patent infringement. This is another case where the patent is holding back innovation. RIM, who is at least doing some innovating, is being forced to pay a company that does nothing but hold a patent for an idea that’s fairly obvious, and which RIM clearly did not “take” from them.

NYSE Goes Wireless

Wireless

While many traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor have apparently been using well known wireless PDAs to better manage trades for a while, it looks like the Exchange has decided to outfit traders with custom made wireless devices from IBM. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t actually say much about the technology, and what kind of wireless connections it’s using — but you have to imagine it’s some WiFi variant. Of course, all of this still makes you wonder if the whole “traders on the floor” method of buying and selling shares is really all that relevant any more.

Interpreting Mobile Messaging Stories

Wireless

It’s a good news/bad news type of thing. If your business model requires MMS takeup to be good, you might be excited to hear the wonderful news that MMS use has doubled for those in the 25-to-34 year old hot demographic. Of course, then you might be disappointed to read this BBC article noting that MMS takeup is much slower than expected, and most people simply don’t seem to care about it. It all depends on how you want to read the stats and if you’re a glass half-full/half-empty sort of person. Doubling uptake is wonderful… until you realize what a small percentage you’re starting with (in this case 10%). In fact, trying to pitch that story as a positive is actually more likely to do harm. Almost everyone involved in MMS has screwed up the promoting of it — focusing on the wrong things, making it difficult and making it expensive, while somehow believe that people really do communicate in pictures more than words. Instead, it’s time everyone stopped focusing on MMS as some sort of more expensive, but less useful, replacement for SMS, and realized that it’s only going to be truly successful when much more innovative apps are commonplace.

Ericsson Hedges Bets, Reluctantly Joins WiMax Forum Just To Sneer

Wireless

Earlier this year, we wrote about how the “Nordic brush-off” of WiMax was stupid. At the time, Nokia had dropped out of the WiMax forum and Ericsson was saying they had no interest in joining. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why: WiMax, if it actually did do all those things its promoters claimed it would do (a big, big “if”), then it had the potential to eat into both companies’ 3G equipment plans. What was stupid about it was that, with the amount of hype surrounding WiMax, having Nokia and Ericsson stay out wouldn’t slow it down at all — it would just mean they had no say in what happened. However, soon afterwards, Nokia came back into the fold (it’s amazing what a little pressure from Intel can do). Now it’s been announced that Ericsson has reluctantly caved as well, joining the forum while going on and on about how WiMax really isn’t that cool, but they were feeling lonely hanging out on the anti-WiMax side of the room. At least now, both companies will be able to monitor the advancement of WiMax to see if it really does do some of those things we’ve been promised.

Filed Under: wimax

Nextel And Sprint: It's On

Wireless

WSJ has been scooping the fast-breaking story of the Nextel-Sprint merger, which is now more than a rumor. A Friday afternoon WSJ report confirms that the two carriers have reached a tentative merger deal valued at $36B. More on this shortly.

Flarion Signs Deal for CellularOne in Amarillo Texas

Wireless

Forgive me for linking to a three day old story, but the fact that we (and almost everyone else) missed this story is a testament to the hype vacuum created by WiMAX — it’s very hard for non WiMAX Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) solutions to get coverage, even if they are commercialized, successful, and more fleshed out than the 802.16 vaporware. To the point, Flarion has logged another success in a deal with CellularOne to provide a 100 sq. mile BWA network in Amarillo. It’s not clear whether CellularOne will target the DSL home market, or the more mobile market, or both. While this important announcement languishes in relative obscurity, the industry has been abuzz with new reports about WiMAX’s promising (and unproven) future, and cities talking up dubious metro WiFi plans. But while the press and conferences focus on discussions of the vaporware, carrier CTOs are much more focused on what will work for their company in the short and medium terms. The CellOne deal is an important win for Flarion, especially with their Nextel prospects in doubt as a side-effect of the Sprint-Nextel merger rumors. (If the merger happens, Nextel would be expected to go to CDMA, not F-OFDM.)

Who's The "Best" Carrier In North America?

Wireless

Who is the best carrier in N.A? According to N. Moore Capital Ltd. TELUS Mobility of Canada takes the prize, finishing nine points ahead of Verizon Wireless. The N. Moore Capital rankings are based on 5 financial and performance metrics, and while the methodology is subjective, it is without bias. Verizon’s #1 finish in the US was closely followed by Nextel. While two of the top five out of the 22 considered were Canadian, perhaps this is the result of a market with four carriers. I’ve maintained for a long time that a market with seven carriers faces excessive costs, the benefits of which aren’t matched by the marginal increases in competition.