CNN has a story that is a great validation for the growing popularity of blogs.  Merriam Webster, a famous dictionary publisher, claims that the word "blog" is their top word of the year, based on total number of web searches.  As a result, the word BLOG will be added to the 2005 version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary.

Note: The complete list of words of the year is available at the Merriam-Webster site.

Business Week had an interesting article today on the advent of XORP (the eXtensible Open Router Platform).  The concept is simple: provide enterprises cheaper and more flexible routers built on commodity hardware and open-source software.  The cheaper hardware comes from microprocessor vendors such as Intel (Nasdaq:INTC), whereas the software would be open-source.  The project has the backing of players such as Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and the NSF (National Science Foundation).  The first release of XORP came out in July, and more are expected in the future. 

Of course, this is still very much a work in progress, which at this point in time is still far from posing a threat to other router vendors such as Cisco, Extreme or Foundry.  Also, this is not the first attempt to create a software-based router based on open-source code.  But the backing of above-mentioned players lends some level of credibility to this work.  Perhaps another validation comes from the fact that nowadays, even Cisco has a line of low-priced networking gear based on Linux, that targets the pragmatic, cost conscious consumer.

But ultimately, the appeal of XORP is not only the lower cost, but also the level of customization that it empowers end-users with.  These end-users can configure the software to suit their own particular needs and/or applications.  Not only that, the network routing can be embedded as software inside a server or other devices.   

Back in September, Philadelphia's WiFi plans were discussed here. The ambitious project called for turning the city's entire main core of 135 square miles into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.  The plan was to offer inexpensive wireless Internet as a low-cost municipal service, charging end-users less than what is currently charged for DSL or cable broadband. That announcement generated a lot of optimism, since it epitomized the good that a forward-thinking government can deliver to its citizens.

Unfortunately, that did not initially sit well with the commercial interests of the local incumbent phone company, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ).  The RBOC did back House Bill 30 (HB30), a measure that would curb the ability of city governments to provide high-speed Internet access for a fee, effectively making providing a subsidized low-cost service illegal. High tech enthusiasts, activists and users at large are urging legislators and Gov. Rendell to postpone that bill's passage, or perhaps even kill it outright. Governor Rendell has until Nov. 30 to veto the bill or sign it into law.

For that matter, Verizon was not alone in trying to impede these types of deployments.  Other regional and long-distance phone companies (selling broadband Internet to consumers and businesses) have recently increased their efforts to quash similar creative municipal wireless initiatives, in locations such as San Francisco, Chaska (Minn.) and St. Cloud (Fla.).  Verizon has changed its attitude since coming out in support of HB30 and now states unequivocally that it will not block Philadelphia's WiFi plans.

Despite that, the marketplace consensus is that the RBOCs, IXCs and other broadband service providers are crying foul because they argue that a city can raise money via taxes, while a private company must pay interest on borrowed capital.  In the meantime, consumer advocates are claiming that cheap WiFi services fill a void that the operators either cannot or simply have no intention to deliver.  Philly's CIO (Dinah Neff), claims that Philadelphia currently ranks 33rd in the US in terms of availability of wired or wireless connections (less than 60 percent of the city's neighborhoods have the option of subscribing to broadband, either DSL or cable).

The bottom line is that the City of Brotherly Love can still deploy its network (according to this article), as long as it can be operational by January 1, 2006 (the city originally hoped for an in-service date of June 2006). 

But ultimately, the government will have the final say.  If the U.S. is to accelerate its broadband penetration and catch up to leaders such as Korea and Japan, more proactive measures that encourage these types of municipal initiatives are required.  And bills such as HB30 should be shot down, because having a legislature overturn a municipality's ambitious "broadband for all" plan - just for the benefit of a few service providers - does not make sense at all.

Note: Another couple of good articles on the same thread can be found here (another good insight from MuniWireless.com) and here (WSJ article, so password is required).

There have not been too many positives for Nortel's stock lately, whose performance has been plagued by the company's ability to get its financial restatements done in a timely fashion.  Because of the delays in reporting the results, Nortel (NYSE:NT) stock has been downgraded by the likes of Prudential, Goldman Sachs, and CIBC World Markets, among others.  

For most shareholders, the delay in the restatements has been an unfortunate development, particularly now that the company is making positive strides on the technology side of the equation.  For instance, in VoIP, Nortel has a leadership position in the Class 5 softswitching market, as reported on Light Reading.  Nortel has also a strong position in the wireless market, having been on the short list for many RFPs for CDMA and UMTS tenders.  Despite all the accounting woes, the company still is able to be at the forefront of cutting edge technologies, such as mesh networking.  And the enterprise IP PBX opportunity should be also a positive development, as the existing installed base begins to mature and starts transitioning from TDM to IP (Nortel has a substantial installed base of TDM equipment - Meridian PBXs and Norstar key systems).

Still, all this progress is not as relevant now, as the company focuses in delivering its results before the end of the year.  The bookkeeping blunders need to end in order for Nortel to avoid the unthinkable: delisting.  For instance, the NYSE listing can come up for formal review unless the vendor can file the restatements by year-end.  The company is working diligently in meeting that deadline.  Mark Evans, the technology reporter for The National Post, found the following gem (John Manley, a board member, offered the following comments on the accounting efforts):

Nortel shareholders hope that John is right and that this time around, all the numbers will be OK.  In the meantime, there was some good news this week.  Nortel claimed (following discussion with the Office of the Chief Accountant at the SEC) that it will not change its accounting treatment for optical product sales. This is good news, since it might be a clue that the restatements will not go back to the years before 2001.  Hence, it could also mean a higher likelihood that the 2001-2003 numbers will be filed within the next six weeks.  The other piece of good news is that Nortel confirmed what some Wall Street analyst firms (such as Solomon Smith Barney) already suspected to be the case: the NYSE will not begin a delisting review process until after December 30th, and Nortel would likely have an additional three month grace period.

So, in conclusion, Nortel would likely not be delisted (in a worst case scenario) until April 1, 2005. Right now, it looks more likely that NT will file at the latest by January 2005, so it should be able to avoid the bleak delisting scenario. All in all, the probability of such an event was decreased with this week's news. Hopefully, after the restatement becomes a reality, past accounting practices will no longer overhang the stock, and investors will finally be able to focus on the company's fundamentals, technology and market performance.

Broadcom (Nasdaq:BRCM) has introduced a new line of 802.11 chipsets geared towards increasing the range of WiFi networks by as much as 50 percent.  The new BroadRange 54g chips are enhanced with the company's BroadRange technology, which utilizes advanced digital signal processing techniques to deliver the highest receive sensitivity of any 802.11g chipset on the market. The general rule of thumb for WLLAN systems is that as the wireless endpoint (PDA, laptop, 802.11 handset) moves away from the AP (Access Point), the transmission worsens.  Hence, the WLAN system has to transmit at a lower bit rate to compensate for that.  With the BroadRange chips, the connection does not degrade as quickly with the increase in distance, and hence, higher throughputs can be achieved at longer distances away from APs.  Another important new feature supported by BroadRange is lower power consumption (as little as 9 mW in idle mode). 

As if users did not have enough worries about viruses hitting their PCs (whether at home or at work), the latest Trojan hit mobile handsets running Symbian-based OS.  The latest piece of malicious code has been dubbed "Skulls" by the anti-virus experts, and comes disguised as a theme manager for Nokia phones in the Symbian Installation Format, such as the 7610.   The virus kills off system applications and then replaces their icons with skull images.

But Skulls is not alone in Trojans creating havoc for cell phone users.  A program called Delf, was used in Russia to infect PCs so that spam could be sent to mobile users across Russia.  Similar viruses have been written to attempt to infect devices such as PDAs running on Windows CE.  Hackers will be increasingly focusing on creating viruses that can infect mobile handsets.   

Three years after spinning off its mmO2 subsidiary, BT (NYSE:BT) launched a new mobile service. The MVNO service, dubbed BT Mobile, offers a range of enterprise mobile services. The introduction is part of the company's new network agreement with Vodafone. BT Mobile will therefore act as "virtual network provider" with its customers' calls being carried over Vodafone's network.

The new agreement should supercede any prior arrangements, including former deals with mmO2 (allowing the telco to offer BT enterprise customers airtime on the O2 network) and T-Mobile (a deal geared towards consumer subscribers).    The 305 k existing wireless customers will be transferred to the new BT Mobile service within the next few months.  There are plans for plans for a combined mobile and fixed-line phone service.  BT also announced its plans to hold a wireless broadband WiMAX trial sometime next year.

Satellite radio has been getting quite a lot of press lately, particularly after radio celebrity "shock jock" Howard Stern signed a deal in October with Sirius Satellite Radio (Nasdaq:SIRI), one of two satellite radio service providers.  Many Wall Street analysts feel that Sirius was able to overcome some problems and catch up to its competitor XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq:XMSR).  Sirius has attained more than 700,000 subscribers (representing roughly a 20% market share) and relies mainly on two distribution channels: automotive OEMs (BMW, Daimler Chrysler and Ford) and aftermarket (via plug-and-play radios sold via Best Buy, Circuit City and Radio Shack).  There are some OEMs that are nonexclusive (e.g. Nissan and Toyota), and those are expected to have a 50/50 split between XM and Sirius.

This week's announcement that Mel Karmazin will take over as the new CEO of Sirius (with the current CEO Joseph Clayton becoming the Chairman of the Board) has been viewed very positively by the Street.  The optimism is due to Mr. Karmazin's extensive operating experience in the media industry (including his recent tenure as President and COO of Viacom for the past four years, his years at CBS, where he played a key role in the TV network's turnaround and his role at Infinity Broadcasting). Karmazin represents a great coup for Sirius, because it instantly makes a positive impact on the depth, quality and credibility of the company's management team. Moreover, he has a great reputation as a strong manager with a tight focus on cost controls, which could improve Sirius' financial discipline as it relates to advertising, distribution and programming deals.

More about the satellite radio industry:  many observers expect satellite radio will eventually be viewed as a traditional duopolistic market (with Sirius and XM as the two players). This is the prevalent thinking for the time being, because the FCC is unlikely to allocate additional spectrum for new entrants. Moreover, it would be very difficult for a new entrant to obtain funding, given the uneven history of the existing players and the long-term exclusive distribution contracts that XM and Sirius have signed.

Sirius and XM will be competing for talent both against each other and non-satellite radio operators. Sirius paid top dollar to get NFL rights and sign Howard Stern, whereas XM locked in Major League Baseball. Also, another factor that is still to be determined is whether or not the FCC will clamp down on content in the future.  Right now, Sirius is exempt from FCC decency regulations, which allows it to carry risque programming such as Howard Stern and Eminem.

Om Malik had a thought-provoking article on Business 2.0 about Microsoft's VoIP plans.  They are nothing less than ambitious: become the key enabler of the technology (via Longhorn - the next-gen OS that will include SIP addresses everywhere, a corporate IM client codenamed Istanbul, and its newest release of LCS).  Again, I personally believe that Microsoft will not quite compete against the likes of Avaya, Nortel, Cisco and other PBX/IP PBX vendors. 

However, there is little doubt that the folks from Redmond want to be an integral part of applications that will be key in providing the productivity enhancements that VoIP promises to deliver.  For instance, the tight integration of Istanbul and LCS can mean that a conference call can be simply initiatied by dragging and dropping (via MS OLE) a bunch of contacts from a Microsoft Outlook address book.  A phone number in that same contact list might have an embedded SIP link that will automatically spawn a VoIP call.  This means Microsoft will be, at least on the application side of things, the de-facto platform for VoIP in the enterprise (despite the fact that the currently, the only two vendors running Microsoft Windows OS on their IP PBX servers are Cisco, with the Call Manager, and Siemens, with the HiPath 5000). 

SBC (NYSE:SBC) became the latest RBOC to announce the availability of residential VoIP services.  The service provider expects to go live with VoIP in early 2005, and has already been testing technology with about 1,000 customers in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, and San Antonio.

The VoIP service will rely on DSL to deliver not only voice calling but also additional enhanced features, including a web portal and advanced call- management capabilities that make it easier for customers to manage their communications. Among these features are "find me" and "do not disturb," which enable subscribers to specify which numbers can ring through, in addition to a click-to-call capability allowing customers to call friends and family with the click of a mouse.

This comes on the backdrop of SBC's announcement of Project Lightspeed, an initiative to deliver digital TV, VoIP and super high- speed broadband services to 18 million customers in two to three years (via FTTN with VDSL/ADSL 2+). After the FCC's RBOC-friendly fiber ruling, observers expected these deployments to be accelerated.

Note: SBC also announced during the week that it has chosen the new Microsoft IPTV edition software for Project Lightspeed.  The deal, worth $400 million over 10 years, calls for the deployment of IPTV software in set-tops that will be deployed as part of the Lightspeed buildout.  SBC Labs had been testing the Microsoft platform since June of this year, and trials are expected in mid-2005, with commercial availability expected in late 2005.  Features include IPGs (Interactive Program Guides), customizable channel lineups, VOD, DVR, event notifications, instant channel changing and a security system that includes subscriber digital rights management technology to protect content across devices.

Motorola (NYSE:MOT) announced yesterday the acquisition of MeshNetworks, a Florida based startup focusing on wireless application development.  No financial terms were disclosed, and the transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.  Motorola had already been licensing MeshNetworks' software.

Mesh networking is a cutting edge technology that allows users of mobile devices "create self-forming and self-healing wireless networks" that can go above and beyond the range of established wireless hotspots.  In other words, mesh networking also empowers network operators to move beyond the limitations of 'hotspots' that typically restrict wireless service to within 100 meters of an access point.  Mesh networks can therefore augment the reach of wireless networks and offer continuous outdoor coverage over large metropolitan areas.

MeshNetworks relies on a proprietary technology called QDMA, which can send and receive data in vehicles travelling up to 200 miles an hour, compared with about 30 miles an hour for WiFi, which operates in the same 2.4GHz radio spectrum.

Another innovation milestone was reached by Korean manufacturer LG Electronics (LGE).  The company announced this week the introduction of the world's first wireless handset able to receive terrestrial DMB (Digital Media Broadcast).  In achieving this goal, LGE won the DMB satellite race, becoming the first cellular phone manufacturer to make handsets that allow consumers to receive satellite broadcasts to watch satellite programs while simultaneously speaking via a mobile phone.   

The Korean-based vendor incorporated the standard home TV antenna functionality into the new mobile handset to receive broadband DMB.  The total investment in this project was about 20 billion won (roughly 18.3 million dollars).  In achieving this feat, LGE's team of 130 researchers was able to solve issues such as power consumption and bulky terminal size.  The DMB receptor chip is currently an OEM, but LGE plans to make its own chip by the end of 2005.

One of the things I did while in Boston for the Fall VON show a month ago was drop by the old 'Tute (as MIT is affectionately known by all its students). The first night I got to Beantown, I crossed the Charles and went to Cambridge with another friend to get a quick tour (from 77 Mass Ave. to the Kendall Square, via the famed "infinite corridor"). Of course, on the way, I picked up a copy of The Tech (the student newspaper) and found an interesting insert on that particular edition.

I am talking about the G.L.A.T. (no, that does not stand for a type of Kosher food). I am talking about the Google Labs Aptitude Test. Apparently, Google had been on campus recruiting some talent, and wanted to leave a mark in testing future candidates.  Of course, some people claimed Google was taking a page out of Microsoft's book (by the way, there is an interesting book on the subject named "How Would You Move Mount Fuji?: Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle", by William Poundstone).  We are all familiar with stories of Microsoft interviews in which questions such as title of the book (or why are manholes round, etc.) are made to perspective employees. 

But Google had a few quite interesting puzzles to solve, and in my opinion, some of the questions were more geared towards also knowing the persona of a candidate (more or less like a hidden type of Myers Briggs test).  For instance, one question read: "It's 2 PM on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the Bay Area.  You're minutes from the Pacific Ocean, redwood forest hiking trails and world class cultural attractions.  What do you do?" Or what about this one: "This space left intentionally blank. Please fill it with something that improves upon emptiness."

So here are a few of the GLAT teasers (will have some more in a future installment):

Does anyone want to take a stab at some of these questions?

Outsourcing is also bringing a lot of contact centers to India.  The latest example is Dell, which opened up a 300 agent contact center in Chandigarh:

The Indian market has been quite hot in the past couple of years, with newcomers adopting aggressive strategies such as offering premium salaries for the agents and substantially discounting services, in order to get a piece of the $400 million Indian contact center outsourcing pie.  This has lowered margins even more in an industry already known for tight margins. 

Note: There is an interesting web site totally dedicated to the Indian contact center industry and offshore call centers: Call Centers India.

With the advent of VoIP, cable companies have started making a foray into the telecom marketplace by offering bundles of voice, video and data services (constituting the so-called "triple play"). In competing against the RBOCs, the MSOs have one compelling advantage (video), but also one potential Achilles' heel: the possibility of a "quad play" with wireless services. Hence, it was not surprising to see yesterday's story on IT Manager's Journal that the cablecos are considering launching a joint cell phone venture.

According to some insider information from the Wall Street Journal, the US largest MSOs have been discussing the possible formation of a joint venture geared towards offering cell phone service.  The informal consortium includes cablecos such as Advance/Newhouse Communications, Comcast (Nasdaq:CMCSA), Charter Communications (Nasdaq:CHTR), Cox Communications (NYSE:COX) and Time Warner (NYSE:TWX).

The idea of such a JV for these large MSOs has been floating around for quite sometime, but there have been rumors that the talks to carry out this plan have heated up in the past few weeks, with the cablecos interviewing investment banks to act as advisors for a potential deal. 

One alternative is the outright acquisition of an existing cellular operator.  Another more likely option would be to use the cellular network of an established wireless operator, reselling the service under a separate brand.  Virgin Mobile uses such an arrangement in the US (with Sprint PCS) and Canada (with Bell Mobility).  Ditto for Qwest, which also uses Sprint's PCS wireless service.  MCI and Sprint both signed contracts with Time Warner to carry and terminate VoIP traffic.  

The potential MSO cell phone JV can really add wood to the fire in the MSO versus RBOC war, improving the cablecos position on the "quad play".

Earlier in September, Technology Futurist reported Ericsson's pullout of Bluetooth development, which certainly did not bode well for the technology, given the fact that the Swedish vendor was one of the major driving forces behind that industry. 

However, Bluetooth prospects are looking a lot brighter this week.  CNET reported earlier today that the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) made public its roadmap up to 2006.  As part of the announcement, SIG also mentioned the approval of the much antecipated Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) specification.  One of EDR's main advantages is that it can offer three times the bandwidth of other conventional Bluetooth protocols. 

Bluetooth adoption in the U.S. has been lagging other regions such as Europe.  It is hoped that the update will help stimulate the uptake in the U.S., since these latest enhancements can potentially make the technology more popular with computer and device manufacturers.  EDR changes the signal encoding system used by Bluetooth to enabling it to transmit at throughputs up to 3 megabits per second (which is several times faster than the third of a megabit or so of conventional Bluetooth 1.1 devices).  Simultaneously, EDR lowers power consumption and is still backwards compatible with older products (at slower data speeds).

The plans are posted on SIG's home page (registration is required, but it is free). 

I got a flurry of e-mails today from colleagues, newsletters, etc. giving away some interesting information about the latest Microsoft-related news.  Among the latest rumors are the following:

Blogging has been light this past week, as I am in Europe with my wife for a mini-vacation.  Technology Futurist broke the 10,000 visitor mark, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to post something on the makeup of the people browsing this site.  One interesting fact: the share of folks using Firefox has definitely beek increasing.  Case in point: this past week, the share hit about 12%.  I wonder if the same numbers are being registered by other blogs.  Could this be an interesting statistical occurence or is there some substance to the fact?  Also, one has to take into account the fact that TF is a techie blog, and techie people are more likely to dowload the software.  The chart follows below:

Jap@n Inc has an interesting report on the CEATEC JAPAN 2004 show, held earlier in October. The event featured the latest technology products in areas such as removable storage, audio/video/displays, wireless technologies/communications and cameras.  Among the many new gizmos demonstrated, one product that caught my attention was the Panasonic next-gen Broadnow mini TV Tuner.  This prototype runs runs full D1 Video (Main Profile AVC/H.264, based on a single Media Processor), at 1.5Mbps (suitable for VDSL). The demo given at CEATEC used Moonlight's video Codec technology.  The Broadnow is of the first set top boxes supporting AVC/H.264 that will be coming to the market in 2005.

A group of vendors, spearheaded by Sun Microsystems, introduced last week a draft of Java Business Integration (JBI), a blueprint for facilitating the integration of Java SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) software.  The SOA standard was developed by 22 vendors and is endorsed by players such as Novell, Oracle, Apache, and JBoss.  However, one of the drawbacks of the spec is its lack of support of BEA (Nasdaq:BEAS) and IBM (NYSE:IBM), two of the biggest Java vendors.  One potential scenario that could arise as a result is that these two giants might decide to work on their own SOA implementation, which can lead to an additional fragmentation of the Java platform.

After attending VON last week, I was unable to go to the CTIA show happening this week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, but some of my colleagues attending have given me the latest scoop of some of the major developments and announcements at the event.  Among the major developments at the show were:

Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) announced today at the CTIA show that it will make a "significant" investment with Clearwire, a wireless broadband startup funded by Craig McCaw.  The partnership is geared towards accelerating the development and deployment of WiMax networks.  The agreement stipulates that both companies will be actively engaged working collaboratively to develop WiMax products and deploy WiMax networks as the technology matures.  The Intel VC arm (Intel Capital) did not disclose any specific financial terms of the deal. 

Clearwire already offers WiMax service in Jacksonville, FL and St. Cloud, MN.  The company is planning to offer services based on the emerging 802.16e IEEE standard (an extension of the original 802.16 WiMax standard that addresses the mobility aspect).  The plan is for NextNet Wireless (a Clearwire subsidiary) to use the newly unveiled Rosedale Intel chip in new WiMax gear.  The deal will be a catalyst for the fixed wireless broadband industry, and Intel believes that next-gen products supporting mobility and using its chips should be widely available by 2006.

The Cassini spacecraft is making today a closer approach towards Titan, the moon from Saturn that has not ceased to fascinate astronomers. The probe is expected to be roughly 1,200 km from Titan's surface and will be hopefully able to penetrate the satellite's dense orange haze. Later, in January 2005, the Huygens probe is expected to be released from Cassini and enter Titan's atmosphere, carrying out various science tasks right at the surface - if it can survive the landing.  NASA will be releasing new photos as they become available via the following link. 

The 2004 edition of the Fall VON Show was certainly a memorable one. It was by far the best attended of all VONs that I have been to, and it gave me a great opportunity to meet some of the movers and shakers of the industry. Om Malik wrote an entry in his blog about media hype, long meetings, not missing too much, etc. - and he might be partially right.  But Andy Abramson got it right on his blog - the reason to go to VON is... CONTACTS!  And it was a great event for that.  It is not everyday that one could meet folks like Chairman Powell, Sir Terry Matthews and his son Owen, Peter Briscoe, Charlie Giancarlo, Joseph Licata, Denzil Samuels, Henry Sinnreich, John Yoakum, et al - all in a single event.  No wonder I hardly had anytime to write blog updates during the event.

And from a personal perspective, going back to Beantown always brings back sweet memories from my undergrad days in this engineering school across the Charles River in Cambridge, where I spent a few great years of my life.  On top of that, the 3-0 come-back-from-behind win of the hometown Red Sox was really exciting (I am a Blue Jays fan, but choosing between the NY Yankees and the Red Sox is no contest - I always love the underdogs; I believe all out-of-town folks pretty much felt the same way and were cheering for the BoSox).

Quite a few interesting developments to note at the show, which will make into a few posts in the following days, but in the meantime, here are a couple of good links:

• The State of VoIP (regulatory outlook)
• Martin Geddes' take on the show

Tired of seeing people write about VoIP as just a mere replacement for the current PSTN, Jeff Pulver (VoIP evangelist and the CEO of Pulver.com, the organizers of the VON show) took matters into his own hands and launched pulver.Communicator a new SIP client offering functions such as IM, social networking (users can share their buddy lists), and direct VoIP calls to SIP contacts.  The point-and-click interface allows a user to initiate a VoIP call with a SIP contact simply by clicking on that person's name on the buddy list.  Another nice feature is the support of multi-chat across different IM networks (AOL, ICQ, Yahoo!). 

The social network aspect is also interesting, since it can be used not only to share buddy lists, but also to determine who can call any given users (e.g. friends only or friends and friends of friends).  The "click to call" feature is carried over the SIP-based FWD (Free World Dialup) network.  There is an option to allow for inbound linkage from the PSTN via LibréTel, a service also offered by Pulver.com (available for a monthly fee ranging from $6 to $12, depending on the country).  There were some demos at VON for beta versions running on the Palm OS, Pocket PC and RIM's BlackBerry.

The last few days have kept me quite busy at VON.  It has been the most attended VON event that I have ever been at, and there has been some electricity in the air (perhaps due to the rosier prospects of VoIP or maybe because the Red Sox have come back in dramatic fashion on a couple of occasions to force a deciding game 7 today against the Yankees).

Due to the great attendance at the show, the enterprise panel session in which I participated had a big audience.  This was a bit of a pleasant surprise to yours truly, given the fact that concurrently, Anoop Gupta, the VP of the RTC (Real Time Collaboration) Business Group at Microsoft was delivering his keynote speech (I heard that in Anoop's session, there was standing room only, and that auditorium was much bigger than the room in which the analyst round table discussion was held). 

As suspected, Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) unveiled its unified desktop client, dubbed Istanbul.  I was able to get the details from Ellen Muraskin, who wrote an article in eWeek about that session.  Istanbul, which runs in concert with the new version of the LCS (Live Communications Server), is a client application offering integrated IM, desktop videoconferencing, and IP telephony capabilities.  The product is currently undergoing beta testing and should become generally available in the first semester of 2005.

The key question is: does this mean that Microsoft will finally make a foray into the IP PBX marketplace?  I suspect that the answer to that question is no, at least not in the short term future.  However, in the longer term future, anything is possible, particularly if the traditional PBX/IP PBX model, as we know it today, goes through some changes (particularly for small and medium enterprises - SMEs).  The crown jewel of the PBX is the call processing software: that is the highest margin piece of the product. 

It is conceivable that in the future, some vendors might adopt a software-based model for SME products, and offer platform vendor independence (i.e. standard hardware/servers from vendors such as Dell, IBM, HP, etc.).  In that case, instead of the single, monolithic PBX, we would have call processing functions plus some standards-based hardware.  With this Istanbul move, Microsoft definitely makes a push into trying to control some of these functions.  However, from there to developing a full blown IP PBX, there is a lot of room.  It is more likely that Microsoft will initially want to become a technology enabler for some of these services.  As Gupta said: "We need a sophisticated ecosystem surrounding this. We don't build PBXes".

Much has been already written about the FCC decision on fiber and the impact it will have on the consumer broadband choices. Since I am in Boston for the Fall VON Show, here is a take on the subject by Hiawatha Bray from the Boston Globe.

But I also enjoyed Om Malik's opinions on the topic and its implications.  In one entry, Om states his disbelief that alternative technologies such as BPL or WiMAX can provide the competition necessary to make the duopolistic equilibrium price (i.e. the current set price of MSOs and RBOCs) lower - au contraire, the consumer bills will sky rocket.  In another story, Om focuses about how RBOCs like SBC will proceed with their plans: FTTH (FTTP) in some situations such as greenfields, and mostly, FTTC with ADSL 2+ or VDSL. 

I will zero in on the technical considerations of going with a FTTC with ADSL2+/VDSL solution. As the figure below shows, there is a tradeoff between the loop range and the throughputs (upstream/downstream): the longer the range, the lower the data speeds.  Distance matters for digital service lines, because they represent a "dedicated line configuration".

The implications can be arrived at from loop length analysis (data is available from several sources including DSL Prime, Telcordia, the NCTA, etc.).  Verizon, for instance, has about 50% of its loops in the 11,000 feet and longer range.  SBC has roughly over 50% of its loops in the 11k feet and higher range.  Bell South has about 45 percent in the 11k feet and more and the same is true for Qwest.  So what can be done with that?  One option is another location, sometimes co-located with the DLC.  This is in the Service Area Interface (SAI) or a cross-connect cabinet.  Hence, the rollouts that are being talked about the RBOCs are either FTTH (in a few cases only, for new greenfields, particularly after the FCC ruling) or bringing fiber to the above "neighborhood nodes" instead of to the curb.  Also, FTTC with ADSL 2+/VDSL will be used for the shorter distance loop lengths.

I really enjoy reading Paul Kedrosky's articles on The National Post and his blog, Infectious Greed.  The issue is that for the wider Internet audience, some of his great articles get lost behind the NP's "Subscriber Exclusive" policy.  Case in point: Paul's great article on this weekend (the Saturday edition), entitled "Is There a Business Case for Blogging?". 

Unfortunately, I cannot repost it here, because despite enjoying the article, being a subscriber and wanting to share it with you, I have to respect the author's and the newspaper's copyrights.  But perhaps I can just make a few comments on the main points that Paul brings up, while staying within the bounds of copyright laws.

The main inspiration for the story comes from the news headline that Six Apart announced it was going to receive a $10 million VC cash infusion.  So the leit motif is: will other VCs follow August Capital's lead and invest in the blogging industry?  Apart from Google's acquisition of Pyra Labs (the company that runs Blogger) back in February of 2003, this was the first time a VC invested on the idea of there being a business case for blogging.

So besides advertising (since blogs target specific audiences that could be of interest to some advertisers), are there other business uses for blogging?  Well, the article suggests that enterprises might become interested in blogging as a way to share information across several groups. 

My own take is that this sort of application is perhaps a morph between blogs and wikis - a major information depository for a firm, except that with wikis, anyone can collaborate, and in a blog, only a few people with access control the site.  But those lines can easily get blurred (for instance, with Blogware, the software that I use to run this site, the blog author can have a few trusted friends contribute with their own articles and in that fashion it sort of becomes a mini-wiki for those authors; similarly, some wikis can restrict the contributors and control who can post and who cannot).  When does a blog become a wiki or vice versa?  Obviously, wikis are of interest to firms, and this has been previously discussed here at Technology Futurist.

This past Thursday, Dell (Nasdaq:DELL) unveiled its consumer electronic products, just in time for the holiday shopping season. The lineup includes plasma televisions, new printers and a sleek personal digital music player targeting the same consumer segment as the iPod mini.

Obviously, the recent foray into consumer electronics is definitely indicative of Dell's strategy to continue to leverage its direct-sales model to sell a wider range of products.  But what about the $199 Dell Pocket DJ?  Can it take away some market share from Apple's iPod?  The new Pocket DJ has a nicer design than the older model, weighing 4.4 ounces and having a capacity of about 5 GB (good enough for about 2,500 songs).  Apple owns the digital music player market (using HDs as storage), with about 90 percent of the share.

What are the experts saying?  Om Malik had an interesting insight on his blog post, from Steve Milunovich (the Merrill Lynch strategy czar, whose opinion is definitely one of the most respected in Wall Street):

Here are a couple of more interesting reviews at Gizmodo, my favorite gizmo review site:

• DigitalLife: Dell DJ 20GB and Dell Pocket DJ 5
• Two New Dell Music Players

In a ruling issued on Thursday, the FCC has given carte blanche for operators to provide broadband over power lines in order to "increase competition and promote broadband service to all Americans".  The major goal of this initiative is to increase the availability of broadband to wider areas of the country because power lines reach virtually every home and community.  Moreover, in areas where broadband access is already available, BPL can greatly enhance competition by providing consumers with another broadband alternative.  The FCC also mentions the following BPL intangibles:

• “self-healing” network capabilities
• improved security from physical and cyber threats
• facilitating use of distributed generation
• customer and utility control of appliances and equipment energy use
• improved load management and electric grid utilization
• applications, including automated meter reading, extension of supervisory control and data acquisition functions to the end user level, outage detection, and equipment performance monitoring

As discussed in a previous post here, it is certainly conceivable to see in the not so distant future a few utilities acting as landlords, and leasing their feeder networks as a backhaul access to wireless broadband service providers.

But in the meantime, ISPs are already signing up deals with electric utility companies.  For instance, EarthLink will start offering Internet connections over Consolidated Edison's power lines in Manhattan.  Con Ed is teaming up with Ambient Corporation on that particular deal, and already began signing apartment building landlords.  Eventually, the range of service offerings can be quite ample, including not only Internet access, but also VoIP and other value added services, including: diagnostics, managing residential power load, monitoring electricity consumption, etc.

Since Avaya, Proxim and Motorola announced the initial results of their research on seamless roaming between 802.11 (WLAN) and 2.5/3G cellular networks earlier this summer, there have been a flurry of announcements of plans to converge cellular and Wi-Fi networks. Case in point: yesterday, Chris Rice, the CTO of SBC (NYSE:SBC), claimed that the carrier's public Wi-Fi hotspots will be used to carry calls from Cingular users by 2006.  The new modus operandi will be for phones to become aware when a WLAN Access Point (AP) is nearby and automatically handoff the call to the Wi-Fi network (what I call the ABC - Always Best Connected - model) 

Rice said that SBC can improve Cingular's cellular coverage by filling in the gaps, relying on Wi-Fi hotspots in places like restaurants, hotel lobbies, coffee houses, etc. to mitigate some of the spectrum demands on the wireless operator.  Achieving this goal might be a challenge from a timeline perspective, as there are quite a few details that still need to be worked out.  For instance the systems that can support the 3G/WLAN seamless roaming entail special client equipment, only working with APs supporting newer technology (e.g. 802.11e, which is the QoS standard that also enables longer battery life, due to the "deep sleep feature").  What about all the older APs that have already been deployed?  Nevertheless, it was interesting to see SBC give a sneak preview about its future Wi-Fi/wireless strategy.