Living the broadband dream

BT has been feeling the heat this week from broadband competitors and from analysts saying the national operator will have to cut prices (and margins) for Internet service. Nobody's saying what the new prices will be - every £1 cut is £84 million off Ebitda says JP Morgan - but we can exclusively reveal the new BT BB rate will be £12.50 a month. This is what our art director was offered in a dream she had this week. In real life, she has been living the nightmare of Carphone Warehouse's 'free broadband' campaign

vodaland

just to rub salt in voda's wounds, informa does this. informa say mobile data is bigger than new zealand now...

Voda

Voda's KPIs here. It's wild to see how fast Voda is going down - apparently. No doubt analysts will explain the figures better. In the meantime there are some good-looking numbers on new products in there:

7 million + registered for Voda Passport
894k zuhause subs in Germany
1.22 million 3g in Spain
( but 'only' 1.23 mil 3G in UK - doesn't sound so great)

also:

Voice volumes in Germany +19.8% yoy
ditto in Spain +23.5% where 95.2% of net adds are contract customers

set against that Italian service revenue is -3.4% and termination rate cuts are biting

Goldman Sachs reckons Germans are spending a bit more, but the dreaded SARC (subs acquisition and retention costs) are catching up fast.

Credit Suisse has zoomed in on Messaging (Voda includes SMS, MMS and email). These account for 12.5% of group service revenues. Credit Suisse has tracked the quarterly trends and calculates that ARPU from messaging has fallen in three consecutive quarters in Germany, Spain and Italy.

still, as we highlight in the current cover story featured here, voda's not the only mobile operator running to keep up. There's trouble brewing for Vivo in Latin America too... just ask JP Morgan and/or the 'rebranded' Dresdner Kleinwort

NTT Europe Online

Verio in Europe has been renamed NTT Europe Online and will be integrated with NTT Europe, says its new MD Kaz Nishihata. If this sounds like cosmetic rebranding, it is not, says Kaz. Expect a big announcement and if you want to know about what, remind yourself of the story we broke in July last year.

Top 10

Don't confuse today's minor musicawards shortlist with The Awards shortlistWe can't promise Scritti Pollitti, but book tables for the gala dinner now!

WCA pictures

Check out our photos from the WCA judging on Wednesday, kindly hosted at the offices of multimap.
And enter our caption competition- details soon!

2+1 equals ?

It may just coincidence, but Asian carriers seem to be jostling for position in Europe again.
Singtel has appointed Barry Walsh, former Equant head of eastern Europe, as MD Europe. Barry is Singtel's first 'local' European MD although you won't find him here. He replaces Hock Yong Chua.
Next week we'll be meeting NTT Europe's new MD, Mr Kazuhiro Nishihata, who is also president of Verio Europe. NTT Europe has been without an MD in London for a couple of years so this is welcome news.
Last but not least we would have been meeting Sol Trujillo at Telstra Europe's centre in Docklands this Friday, but he's been called away.
It all adds up !

Two degrees of separation

We just about got our breath back from last week's 'structural separation' story when the EC delivers an upper-cut to the mobile industry.
Meanwhile businesses have to get on with figuring out where they fit in the NGN schema. Here's a little something to help them...

NGN in the night

Ovum pulled out the big guns for an evening NGN seminar this week. They must have read our comment.
Full treatment from Ovum's senior analysts on NGN tech, business case for/against, regulatory threats and promises.
Then great questions from Vodafone, Gamma, Global Crossing, BT.
Q "Doesn't NGN re-establish incumbent network monopoly?"
A "Probably, but it doesn't matter because we're all competing on service packages not connections - assuming we get shared access."
Q "What about mobile? Why doesn't mobile ever get mentioned in NGN discussion."
A. "Stop complaining there's plenty of FMC going on."
Q. "Are regulatory structures fit for purpose"
A. "NOOOO! Don't get us started on that one!"
Q. "What impact will Wimax have on NGN?"
A1. "None, don't lose sleep." A2. "Huge, its going to wipe out the fixed network"
Q. "See I told you mobile mattered."

Prize for snappy answer to a stupid question goes to Stephen Young.. When I asked "What's the risk these investments will fail?" he said:
"You don't need an NGN to drive your network into the ground.... plenty of telcos have."

glasshouse security

Just back from a very lively and interesting session on security at the Mobility Summit. Wish I had been able to make the whole two days, based on this panel, engagingly moderated by Charles Brookson of GSM Association.
This is basically an enterprise event - the panel comprised public research, consultancy, banking and technology vendors. They agreed security is essentially a "people problem" (you can only throw so much tech at it, you can't control behaviour etc) and there were some great anecdotes from the floor e.g 50% of delegates in an IT security class (yes!) responded to a phishing message sent out by their class leader.
But it was a bit ironic that a delegate from a major international mobile operator should ask "what can operators do to help manage security"
Try not tapping or hacking their own users?
To be fair, when I put this to the panel at the end of the session, they were very concerned to stress that service providers do everything they can to protect end-users from inside-network dirty dealings. Today's panel was, as the moderator pointed out "about revenue risks to organisations" first. But as David Lacey said it's a big problem with "no solution."

Wall St Jnl article - Day four

"While U.S. consumers still mostly use their cellphones to simply talk -- or perhaps send text messages to their friends -- their Asian counterparts are increasingly using mobile phones to help manage their spiritual, social and everyday needs. A host of companies are cropping up offering services for cellphones like the text-messaged prayers to Ganesh, ways to track praying schedules and even dating services. Some cellphones also contain technology that allows them to double as debit and credit cards."


(Ed - OK, I'm going to stop this thread since nobody seems to get the joke, and its 4 july....)

Heavy LLifting

Today's the day BT switches on its Bulk LLU Handler. No they are not diversifying into shipping or aggregates; its a system for letting altnets switch BT lines across to their broadband services quicker and in numbers.
So good news for Pipex & co. But while the mechanics of unbundling may have changed, the economics don't necessarily.