Archive for the 'Communications' Category

Open Letter to Apple, Inc. Re: iPhone and AT&T (Cingular)

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 12-January-2007
in Apple and Communications
. Comments

Dear Mr. Jobs,

Recently at MacWorld 2007 you introduced the iPhone to raving audience and analyst reviews. I don’t remember any product that has been so eagerly anticipated and then exceeded our collective wildest expectations. I must admit, I want one, I want one bad. My wife wants one, even the Microsoft employees on my flight home from CES (I clearly attended the wrong show) want one! What’s not to like? Revolutionary mobile phone, iPod and Internet communicator all in one sleek device, we all marvel at how you folks at Apple do it. Congratulations to everyone at Apple on what will surely be more than just a successful new product, but a category redefining innovation!

However, during your keynote presentation you indicated that Apple has entered into an exclusive agreement with AT&T, in the US, as the mobile service provider for the iPhone. It is our understanding that the iPhone will work exclusively with AT&T and that consumers with other mobile service providers will not be able to use the iPhone unless they switch to AT&T. The question on many of our minds is why? Why tie this revolutionary product exclusively to AT&T?

We were all astounded as you demonstrated the many revolutionary capabilities of the iPhone. What stood out was the category defining user experience of the iPhone. You have left the traditional handset companies in the dust! What you must realize, is you have left an important part of the overall iPhone user experience in the hands of AT&T. While AT&T believes they have the most reliable network in the US, they certainly have the most reliably poor customer service. The iPhone, the network and the customer service all combine to create the “iPhone experience”. Apple has clearly done its part to create a wonderful user experience, are you sure you want to leave the rest in the hands of AT&T’s infamous customer service?

As you are probably aware, AT&T rated at the bottom of a recent Consumer Reports survey of 42,921 readers. My personal experience echoes that of the Consumer Reports readers. I work for a large multi-national company, part of the Fortune 500. We use AT&T, almost exclusively and have close to 50,000 (my guess based on our 70,000+ US employees) business accounts with them. Even with such a large account, I am rarely treated with the respect that is warranted such a large account. How will AT&T treat your (Apple) customers?

I was amazed at the press reports describing the statements from AT&T about their “agreement” with Apple. They certainly sounded arrogant and were gloating over “bending” Apple to conform to their terms. Is this true? For what possible reason would Apple need to “bend” to sign an exclusive deal with AT&T? Surely you have read the reports of AT&T’s gloating over at PCMag (you do read PCMag occasionally, right?). Cingular makes Apple Bend.

It certainly makes sense that there is a lot of work in putting together a feature like Visual Voicemail, and doing the work over and over with other service providers is costly. However, this cannot be the reason for linking iPhone exclusively to AT&T. Why then?

In stark contrast to the exclusivity with AT&T, your selection of GSM as the network technology was an excellent choice. GSM is a standard that allows the iPhone to be used almost anywhere on the planet and with leading service providers. GSM also allows for interchangeable SIM cards to link a GSM handset with a particular service provider. The iPhone has a SIM card slot and could therefore easily be linked to any GSM compatible service provider–a service provider chosen by Apple customers not by Apple corporate.

Mr. Jobs, please let us select our own service provider. Open the iPhone to other service providers or create an “unlocked” version of the iPhone. Let your customers decide which service provider to choose to complete the iPhone experience.

Best regards,

Ryan Petty

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Macworld 2007 Jobs Keynote — iPhone Introduction

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 11-January-2007
in Apple, Communications, Innovation and Microsoft
. Comments

Over on YouTube, the Steve Jobs Keynote from MacWorld 2007 has been posted. It is divided into 9 parts. I am including all 9 links here for your viewing pleasure. The official keynote is on the Apple website. Apple has also posted the iPhone portion of the keynote here:
Part 1 (Intro)
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Part 2 (New UI - leapfrog product)
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Part 3 (iPhone design)
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Part 4 (Widescreen iPod)
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Part 5 (Reinvent the phone)
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Part 6 (SMS & Pictures)
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Part 7 (Internet communications device)
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Part 8 (Safari)
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Part 9 (Google Maps)
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Urban Legends Reference Pages: 2006 Federal Excise Tax Credit

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 11-January-2007
in Communications, Personal and Politics
. Comments

According to the folks over at Snopes.com, this urban legend appears to be true.  They have a great explanation of the refund amounts as well as the reason almost everyone qualifies for this one time credit.  Make sure you take advantage of this and pass this along to everyone you know.
Urban Legends Reference Pages: 2006 Federal Excise Tax Credit

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Siemens vs. Microsoft on IPTV (Part One of Two)

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 6-January-2007
in Communications, Microsoft and Work
. Comments
Over at ITVT, there is a two part interview with representatives from Siemens and Microsoft debating their varying approaches to IPTV technologies and the market. Of course, I am biased as my team and I make many of the decisions about the Siemens approach to the market as well as many of the technology choices in our solution.
It will be very interesting to hear the Microsoft marketing machine as they respond to our perspective as captured in part one.   The Microsoft marketing machine has typically done a very good job in “responding” to critical reviews of their IPTV solution.
For those of you who don’t understand the approach Microsoft has taken in IPTV, it is typical Microsoft.  Take the best ideas from the market leaders (embrace), and modify the established approach to enhance your competitive position (extend).  Classic Microsoft.
For IPTV,  Microsoft used several plays from this well worn playbook. For example, Microsoft embraced much of the established ideas in IPTV, but they created a new concept they called “instant channel change”.  Before Microsoft came into the market, no one knew they needed and “instant” channel change, but Microsoft’s marketing team convinced the market that IPTV could be better only if it included instantaneous channel changing.  In my view, this is not exactly the kind of disruptive feature a telco needs to convince a customer to leave cable or satellite and move to IPTV.
What Microsoft did not tell customers, was that to achieve “instant” channel change,  it would require a completely revamped broadcast architecture, deviating from accepted IPTV architectures, extensive use of unicast, and a complete dependency on Microsoft technology (codec, DRM, streaming servers etc.).  Complete technology lock in and reliance on Microsoft.  Who really benefited from instant channel change, well Microsoft, of course.  As we and others began to question the market value of such a feature, the market took a critical look at Microsoft’s approach.
In the end, the technological complexity (think cost, $$$) required to achieve this effect and the fact that it relied on Microsoft server software (which everyone knows is not even close to carrier grade), could not be justified by the business case.  Will instant channel change come to a TV near you, possibly, but a number of vendors have shown how to achieve the same result in a standards based fashion–with no Microsoft lock in.
Instant channel change is just one example, but Microsoft has been very quiet about most of their competitive differentiators as of late.  Why?  Well, they are under the gun to get AT&T working beyond trial subscribers.  Of course the Microsoft marketing machine would have us all believe they have “launched”, well that is a matter of perspective.  My belief is that AT&T cannot deploy anywhere, anytime to any subscriber nor can they market the service at full speed because Microsoft is still working through service debilitating bugs and cannot show the scalability that AT&T needs to go full speed ahead.

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Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 27-November-2006
in Communications and Content
. Comments

Rafat Ali from PaidContent.org quotes Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang’s report on, Long Tail, but focuses on what he calls the mid part of the content and distribution value chain, where he sees the most value in the long run…that mid part is the part of aggregation-and-context players in the market, with the theory that “Value of aggregation and brands increases with exponential increase in content choices.”
This chart below has some detail:

Sweet Spot Graph

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Belgacom hits 100,000 subs, a full year ahead of schedule

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 15-November-2006
in Communications
. Comments

Siemens Home Entertainment’s largest European customer, Belgacom has hit 100,000 subscribers this month, a full year of schedule. See Belgacom press release. Forbes is running an article that also discusses this milestone and the cross-polination with Belgacom’s mobile division.

Congratulations Belgacom!

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Motorola Shopping for a Middleware Company?

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 14-November-2006
in Communications
. Comments

Friday, Light Reading reports that “several industry sources” have indicated that Motorola may have started their holiday shopping early and are rumored to be in the market for an IPTV middleware acquisition.

Plug for Siemens SURPASS Home Entertainment IPTV solution: “Siemens has done the best job of providing reliable middleware and currently leads all middleware providers in the number of households served. Microsoft has made IPTV a big focus for their company and has done an excellent job of getting IPTV contracts, but several companies have already complained at their inability to deliver on their promises, due largely to middleware issues.”

Original Yahoo article…

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Siemens Tops Microsoft In IPTV Market

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 20-October-2006
in Communications
. Comments

According to the most recent report from ABI Research, Siemens leads Microsoft in the worldwide market for IPTV right now, but the race has just begun. ABI just finished up a recent analysis of middleware vendors and found that Siemens was ahead of Microsoft in terms of bundling a broader set of technologies.

read more | digg story

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Siemens Pushes IPTV

Published
by
Ryan Petty
on 6-February-2006
in Communications and Work
. Comments

Tut Systems packetizes content from satellite broadcasters, such as TNT, CNN, and HBO, and makes it available for use on IP networks. Ryan Petty, vice president of product line management at Siemens Home Entertainment said the company also re-encodes the content into H.264, an ITU standard for compressing video.

read more | digg story

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