29 September 2006

Offshore

Always a pleasure to read bah's monthly mag (registration)

there's a thought-provoking centrepiece article on outsourcing which once you've picked through the consultancy-speak (their top tip: 'Be a Visionary' We know!) is actually very helpful on the difference between outsourcing and offshoring. Outsourcing is a P+L moment - as Accenture telecoms manager Meredith Rose told TT yesterday "The minute that outsourcing contract is signed, the building blocks are already being put in place to take those activities back in-house" - i.e it is not clear it is a "strategy" at all. It needs to be managed, but as these Germany-based consultants point out, a typical multinational HQ has 0.3 people in strategic planning. But offshoring: that's a bit closer to forever (your IT and CAD centers are gone to Bratislava or Mumbai) and is where the serious money is going. Hence IBM's 6 billion USD investment in India. Namecheck some of the big-hitters like Subramanian Ramadorai, CEO of TCS (Tata Consulting - which had a good presence at our Carriers World conference this week.)

BAH's article is based on a survey by Duke Uni CIBER unit and Booz Allen which claims it "is the first ever to track the complete range of offshoring activities — including IT, business processes, engineering, and product design — across a broad array of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, technology, computer technology, media, software and programming, energy, defense, and automotive" Good data charts at the end of the final page.

26 September 2006

Brandilicious

BT has rebranded Albacom as BT Italia. Telefonica rebranded its Czech operations as 02. Is there no end to the imagination?
One European telco that needs a brand overhaul is Deutsche Telekom. "Too clunky!" "Not international!" How about "mytelco" ? It's so global, so Internet, yet no other service provider is using this - only a few weirdo software vendors. There'll be no charge for this.

FTTH not worth a kopek

France Telecom CEO has nixed the FTTH. "No investor would put a kopek in it," says Didier Lombard.
Isn't this a huge volte face? Or at least a surprise rethink? He certainly sounded different in February, when he announced FTTH trials in the Paris region would start mid year. It also might be news to his chief network officer.
Is this all Sol Trujillo's fault? Or does Lombard think he can be smart and let Iliad burn up on the fibreway? Analysts don't think so. JP Morgan reckons Iliad will get 105 million euros annual cash flow for its 1 billion investment (after 10 years), but they also don't think Deutsche Telekom will get more than 60 million euros per annum incremental revenues on its hybrid VDSL network in Germany (cost 3 billion). So what's a kopek worth?

Vanco figures up

Vanco just posted good revenue figures for H1 although not on its website yet. Stated turnover up 31% and good gross margins too. But watch for cash flow margins down from 13.0% to 9.1% (this is a managed services business not just a VNO - managed services is more expensive) and double check the order book. Contracted total is up 19.0% to 327 mil GBP year on year but hasn't moved since January this year.

21 September 2006

Hurrah for Chua

Ms Chua Sock Koong has been chosen CEO at SingTel. Her appointment will double the number of female telecoms CEOs in the TT Global 100 report (out next week everyone) assuming Theresa Gattung holds onto her place at TNZ in 2007...

19 September 2006

Russian mobile goes global

Altimo, the telecoms investment holding company for Vimpelcom, Megafon and other mobile assets of Russia's Alfa group, has appointed sir Julian Horn-Smith, one time Vodafone deputy CEO, to head a new international advisory board, although it is not announced on the website just yet
Altimo/Alfa's ambitions have been brewing all year When we met Alexey Reznikovich, Altimo CEO, in January, he said Altimo was looking "to put all its investments into one telecoms holding company which would own the majorit of invetsments. We would join efforts with a major operating company in an international strategic partnership." Seems that time has arrived. It has not escaped notice that there are one or two prime opportunities for big mobile, even today. For one, several analysts' reports suggest there's room for a new big entrant to the US market as the summer spectrum auctions open up a new market front.

13 September 2006

state of the enterprise

The team at Forrester is always worth paying attention to - here's the heads up on their latest report on The State of Enterprise Managed Service Adoption. Clunky title, but if you want to hear from one thousand N American and European corporates on where they are taking their network business, check it out.

11 September 2006

Dutch

Dutch digital TV station Sport1 is launching simultaneous streamed Internet service for Uefa Champions League matches. Sport1 is the latest TV broadcaster to sign up for these rights under Uefa's new deal for the 2006-09 seasons which mandate web broadcast live at the same time as trad TV/pay TV broadcast. Telcos where are you? NTT Com is making the best of it, but it's uphill because telcos are slow to hook up for multicasts.

06 September 2006

UTStar colours up

UTStarcom has unveiled a colour screen handset for mobile WiFi users. Our RabbitMobile is an F1000 fromRabbitpoint; the new one is an F3000 and you can use it on Mobiboo, which claims to be the UK’s first commercial VoIP WiFi network operator.
UTS's other big product line is in IP DSLAMs. Aren't there signs the DSL broadband project is running out of steam? Not for David King, UTStarcom SVP international sales - he says the company has shipped 1 million IP DSLAMs in eastern Europe where it is concentrating on altnets like GTS (see our upcoming CEE telecoms supplement), and tens of thousands of lines equivalent in fixed wireless systems in Africa and central America.
These are tier 2 regions right now, but there's some bigger news to come in India, where King says to watch for a $70 million deal in broadband access lines. He says UTStar will build its own manufacturing facility there.
If operators want to build fibre networks, UTS is developing an FTTN system for SBB (SoftBank)
China? There's still confusion over 3G, but UTStar has IPTV systems in place as well as fixed mobile networks called PAS (sort of PHS).
The fixed wireless data stuff is great according to King. OK its CDMA-based and there's a damper on those networks right now, but that's a royalties issue that'll get sorted out between mobile operators and their IPR supplier.