The 2008 presidential election has drawn an unparalleled level of interest globally, and the Internet is host to a record number of young voters and people abroad looking for campaign updates. With so much at stake this election year, even the Republicans admit that Democrats have the edge, with Obama leading the pack in social networking (he has one million supporters on Facebook), Twittering to his fans and raising campaign funds online.
The latest Internet buzz informs us that in order to be the first to know his choice for Vice President we need to connect with Barack via txt or email. Imagine the number of people clamoring to get the news the moment it is released. The first election to be played out on the Internet begs the question, are providers ready for this potential surge in use that may come between now and November?
How do providers plan for an event like this? Whether it is a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, the Olympics or the 2008 Presidential Election, there are certain events that planners can expect to cause a surge in network usage not just in the United States, but the world over. But this can be especially difficult for carriers to predict and plan for - How do you determine the number of people who will be streaming, emailing, blogging, texting, Twittering and uploading event-related content? Carriers like Verizon have spoken out about the need for moving to real-time and “just in time” network planning, and perhaps an event like the election is good reminder of this planning goal. People want to access and share news in real time, not delayed network time, and proper evaluation and planning are the keys to ensuring a network that is prepared for whatever event comes our way.
Between now and November content delivered with poor quality or not at all risks losing key messages (and potentially voters). It’s up to carriers to deliver on their end, or risk losing as well.
With this week’s magnitude-5.4 earthquake in Southern California behind us, experts are saying that the worst is yet to come. Sufficiently shaken – no pun intended – everyone is making a move to step up their emergency preparations. But what about the telecommunications companies whose services are so crucial to people during emergencies?
Telephone service was disrupted in the wake of Tuesday’s quake, but not because of equipment damage. Instead, the problem was that too many people were trying to make calls, a problem that carriers call “network congestion.” Sprint had an 800% spike in calls. Verizon reported a 400% spike. Phone lines were so disrupted, in fact, that the California Office of Emergency Services asked people not to make phone calls to ensure emergency calls could be made to 911.
No doubt these carriers had disaster plans, but the actual demand far exceeded their expectations of the need. For carriers to effectively handle the influx of calls that come with a disaster, proper planning is needed. Beyond simple network diversity and resiliency planning, and even beyond preparing to handle occasional influxes of calls - like at midnight on New Year’s Eve each year- carriers must evaluate, plan and prepare for worst case scenarios in traffic spikes. Did they learn nothing after Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11 tragedies jammed up their networks? Hopefully, one very important call will be made now - a wakeup call to carriers that it’s time to start planning.
The first wireless device to be certified under Verizon’s Open Development Initiative (ODI) has been unveiled. As you will recall, Verizon surprised the world in the Fall when it said it would open its network to any (certified) device. Speculation had been rampant about the new handhelds and other consumer devices that would emerge to take advantage of Verizon’s and other open networks. Well, the first devices are appearing to be far less consumer-focused than all that speculation led us to believe.
The first certified device is a wireless modem that connects to a sensor in storage containers and sends a message when the tanks run low. At least with Verizon’s open network, it appears the consumer market is less of a driver of device development than the business benefits of the pervasive Internet that has been more vision than reality over the past decade. According to the article, most of the devices that Verizon is reviewing as part of the ODI are of this machine-to-machine (M2M) variety. Verizon has only had “‘a couple of conversations’ with some companies that are developing consumer cell phones.”
Another summer iPhone announcement, another explosion in the press and blogosphere speculating whether AT&T’s network can handle the demand. While the carrier seemingly has taken the necessary steps to prepare for the onslaught of 3G iPhone users, no one seems truly confident that it will be enough, and one thing is certain - this iPhone launch will be watched with far greater scrutiny than the original, and all eyes will be on AT&T.
I must say I’m a bit nervous for AT&T. If history and repeats itself and users face more network outages after escaping the ubiquitously slow EDGE for the HSPA, will the carrier be able to bounce back? Will it keep the iPhone customers because of its monopoly, but also hold a tarnished reputation for poor quality of service and unhappy customers? I can only hope AT&T proves everyone wrong.
Yesterday at Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, Steve Jobs discussed what he is calling “iPhone 2.0,” as well as a slew of new applications and services. The success of the iPhone has been huge for Apple since the device launched a little less than a year ago, but Jobs is pushing for more. More countries. More users. More applications. More developers. And yesterday he announced the 3G iPhone.
Scheduled to hit shelves July 11, the latest iPhone will run on AT&T’s 3G network, and promises faster data service for all of the new apps being developed using the iPhone SDK (20 in total so far, according to Jobs), including joint efforts with the Associated Press, TypePad, MLB.com and eBay. Good thing, too, because a remarkable 80% of iPhone users use 10 or more features, though the new applications (soon available through the iPhone App Store) can only be used one at a time. And starting at only $199 for the 8-gigabyte model, Jobs is also banking on a significant bump in new iPhone customers - adding to the already 6 million users this device boasts.
No doubt that while Apple is keeping its fingers crossed for this surge of new iPhone users, AT&T crossing its fingers in hopes that its 3G network can handle the flood, and not have a repeat of its initial iPhone launch on EDGE last year.
A little over a year ago Netflix introduced a service that delivered streaming video direct to customers PCs. Now, they’re taking it a step further with a product set to compete with Apple TV. Working with a small California start up, Roku, Netflix has created a box that allows customers to view content directly to their televisions.
It all sounds easy enough. For $99 you purchase the box, roughly the size of a paperback book, and with a little set up you instantly have access to over 10,000 titles from the Netflix library. What sets this product apart from competitors like Apple TV and Tivo (who works with Amazon.com to offer an similar product) is that it does not have a hard drive. Instead, video streams directly from the Internet through Ethernet or your home wireless network.
The potential downside? Performance will depend greatly on the network to which it’s connected.
Keeping in mind that video is the “killer app,” we’re going to be in for a rude awakening when it comes to the future of Internet video.
“Mobile marketing,” or marketing products and services through mobile devices, has 
become increasingly popular as technology advances and SMS continues to offer businesses a way to reach consumers faster and more directly. The latest innovations in this category are now making use of more exciting (and bandwidth-intensive) content to deliver the intended message more effectively to young consumers, and creative companies such as Google recognize and are beginning to capitalize on the huge potential that exists in mobile platforms. Many are even pushing to open them up for developers to create third-party applications.
To me, all signs point to this trend leading to the next big bandwidth tide in wireless, and I would be willing to guess that for this reason, we will soon be seeing the network as the third major category mobile operators focus on - supplementing the attention they’ve traditionally given to products and customers. For carriers to effectively capitalize on the opportunities of next-gen mobile marketing and become leaders, it is now more important than ever that they stop treating their networks as dumb pipes and put more intelligence into them. The network has to support more content-aware treatment of bandwidth, and the era has begun for mobile operators to act like responsible network operators.
In two words: transformation and customer experience (Ok, that’s three – but two
ideas). This buzz was bandied about by service providers, integrators and vendors alike, and it was no surprise to me that Telstra and BT were mentioned this week in the same breath more than once, as the pioneers with the courage to recognize that drastic times call for drastic measures.
One notable difference I’m finding this year is in the level of understanding and seriousness about business transformation. The discussion has matured and people are taking it more in-depth than in the past – which is a very good thing, if you ask me.
Thanks to Virgo Publishing for gathering the experts and industry leaders who have made this event so insightful for me thus far. I’ve enjoyed hearing the industry war stories and firsthand experiences in setting appropriate expectations and timelines for transformations. I’m also happy to report that capacity planning for those “new services” everyone talks about hit the radar screen in several sessions. However, if I were to give an award for Most Esoteric Buzz, it would go to the mosquito-repellent ringback tones from Korea Telecom Freetel - although not completely new, this time available in flavors, such as ‘city,’ ‘beach’ and ‘mountain.’
I can’t wait to see (hear) what buzz happens today.
Last week at CTIA, there was a lot of talk about wireless backhaul and the technology 
needed to address bottlenecks that high-bandwidth mobile services create, as described in a recent Telephony article. In this story, the head of Juniper Networks’ mobile and FMC segment calls backhaul one of the weakest links in today’s wireless networks, and reps from Ericsson and Ceragon Networks both say the move to Ethernet is inevitable, but that not every company is ready to make the leap. The article also points out that wireless operators are faced with the dilemma of having data services that are eating up all their backhaul bandwidth but not making significant revenue.
What I find most interesting is that the story features a number of solutions that can help carriers address the need to cost-effectively increase backhaul and deploy newer faster networks, but doesn’t provide guidance on how they can determine which one is a right fit. All the proposed solutions help carriers to determine what is necessary to support high-bandwidth services (the why), but leave them to figure out the remaning “W’s” - when, where and how - on their own.
Yesterday morning, many die-hard baseball fans got up extra early to watch the Red Sox/Athletics season opener in Japan, only to be given an even ruder awakening than the sound of their alarm clocks - a blank TV screen when they tried to watch the game. DirecTV (and some Comcast) customers missed most or all of the game because of what the company said was a “transponder issue,” and the web was abuzz with complaints from sleepy-eyed fans.
After reading some blog posts and story responses from angry customers, I couldn’t help but think ahead to the 2010 soccer World Cup in South Africa. Last month, the country announced its intentions to begin work on a submarine fiber-optic cable linking itself to Europe, fueled partly by the desire to provide enough capacity to broadcast the games from Africa to the rest of the world. Seeing the frustrations created by an outage only affecting two teams’ fans, I’d hate to think what would happen if this undersea cable met the same fate as its Middle East counterpart, and the entire world’s soccer fans were deprived of watching their biggest event.
As this type of damage is common, we can only hope that those in charge of designing the S. African network learned from the Middle East’s very public and costly mistake, and are planning to build in strong redundancy and disaster avoidance capabilities.
