homie David Pogue explains why AT&T is running scared

Are U.S. Cellphone Carriers Calcified? - Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog -- David Pogue, son of Dick, or Richard Pogue, and now also home-boy expatriate in the NYC area, explains why AT&T was so frantic to jam SB117 up our nether parts, and all with the mindless cooperation of our elected lightweights at the state level: They're losing ARPU:

The cellular industry is going through insanely rapid change. Almost everyone there—800 attendees from 200 phone companies in 65 countries—was running scared of VOIP. That’s voice over I.P., better known as Internet phone. VOIP includes cheapo unlimited home-phone service like Vonage, as well as absolutely free computer-to-computer calling with programs like Skype. It’s all growing like crazy, which is making a huge dent in these companies’ ARPU.

Oh, yeah—that’s Average Revenue Per User. Telecom companies live and breathe ARPU. The talks at this conference were all about “Improving Your ARPU.” (They *love* acronyms in this business. Typical seminar description: “Learn how ISM and FSM can decrease your OPEX and CAPEX and boost your ARPU!”)

Most of these carriers intend to fight off VOIP by growing into a Double Play, Triple Play, or even Quad Play.

What, you don’t know those terms either!?

If you’re a single-play company, you just provide landline service. Add cellphone coverage, and you’re a double play. Add Internet service and TV, and you’re a quad play. You can see the same syndrome here in the U.S., too, as cellphone companies try to deliver TV service, cable companies roll out phone service, and so on.

T-Mobile heralds the death of the landline

http://laptopmag.com/Review/T-Mobile-HotSpot-at-Home.htm -- Here's an interesting phone technology that works off both Wi-Fi and GSM. It can also lower your monthly expenses if you're currently paying for a cellphone and POTS, or a cellphone and VoIP. Not only could you get the phone lines off your house; you could also dispense with the cable. Ponder how this impacts all cable service, and how AT&T is so far behind the power curve. But, if you can't innovate, legislate, and now we have to watch the sad, clumsy cable-carrier maneuvering made possible by our state politicos and SB117.

here's another reason for the SB117 full frontal assault

DirecTV May Test Broadband over Powerline - News and Analysis by PC Magazine -- It seems that AT&T may be outflanked here, by just about everybody--the cable companies, the VoIP providers, the cellphone companies, the satellite providers, and now, to add insult to injury, our friend the electric company, and that more than likely accounts for AT&T's haste and desperation in ramming through the bad-for-everybody-but-them legislation known here in Ohio as SB117, sponsored by Lance Mason and Bob Spada.

If we can get broadband over our electrical power lines or through the air or over cable, and we can get VoIP over broadband, we don't really need all that legacy POTS that AT&T has held onto for years without improving, all the while charging premium prices for it. It seems that this is reckoning day for AT&T, and they're trying to dodge their demise by cozying up to our state legislators and trying to put their signature tin boxes on every treelawn between here and Cincinnati.

In the process, they're making us a technological laughingstock and pointing up our technological illiteracy and innumeracy as a community.

Remember, we don't owe AT&T anything. Let the market forces prevail. Let them fail. Do not let AT&T prove the sad old theorem we last heard from the open-source man, Bruce Perens: "If you can't innovate, legislate."

everything that rises must converge

InformationWeek Weblog: Travel Tools That Let You Leave The Laptop Behind -- Mary Flannery O'Connor gave us the phrase "everything that rises must converge" years ago, and today we see it in action. Here's a great article about crossovers and synergies. Especially slick is the click-through to GrandCentral and the fact that the New York TIMES is now following InformationWeek leads, and with as little as a 6-week lag. The GrandCentral blog talks about today's "David Pogue impact", as well.

I just signed up for the GrandCentral beta, which gives no-charge full-featured access to the entire service. Moreover, after the beta period ends, GrandCentral promises some level of on-going free access. Check it out. It can give added levels of functionality--recording, screening, archiving, messaging, another email--even to those who have only one line.

Verizon implies, Vonage denies

Vonage VoIP Forum Digest, February 22, 2007--we use Vonage and Skype for all business and personal calls and subscribe to an internet fax service; all of things are made possible by Time-Warner service on a cable modem. Our average monthly bill went in mid-2005 from around $350 a month to about $130 a month, and the base rates haven't risen since. Our totals including the fax service (Send2fax) still hover around $150. Here's the dispute as framed by both sides, succinctly:

Vonage Denies Verizon's Charges

Vonage and Verizon started courtroom proceedings in Verizon's patent suit against Vonage.

Verizon, which is asking for $197 million, says Vonage is infringing on a total of five Verizon patents for billing and fraud detection in services such as call forwarding and voicemail, as well as for the use of Wi-Fi handsets in a VoIP network.. Vonage denies all these claims.

"Vonage, using our patented technology, is able to lure customers away from our landline service," Verizon lawyer Daniel Webb told the jury in opening arguments of a two-week trial in Alexandria, Virginia. "That's what this case is all about."

Not only does Vonage deny infringing on these patents, but they also deny the "luring" charge.

"Verizon has lost millions of customers, and they've lost them for a variety of reasons, not because of Vonage," Vonage attorney Roger E. Warin, said to the jury. "This case is about choice and competition, which should be decided in the marketplace not the courtroom," he said.

regulatory price creeps piling onto the new technologies

I spent some time today on my Vonage account, waiting online for my SoftPhone to be removed from our business account--no complaints, but we just didn't use it much once Skype caught our attention.

What really caught my eye as I clicked through the invoices of the past year and a half was the steady creep of charges ancillary to the basic bill of $49.99; I assume most of them are caused by government, regulation, and lobbyists. Enlighten me, any of you, if I'm being unfair. But even more to the point, lighten my load. Here are the details of the 482% creep:

Sep 18, 2005:

• FET Tax $1.50
• Regulatory Recovery Fee $1.50
• Total added charges: $3.00

Jan 18, 2007:

• Regulatory Recovery Fee $2.97
• Emergency 911 Cost Recovery $2.97
• Sales Tax $4.95
• Federal Universal Service Fee $3.56
• Total added charges: $14.45

new iPhone is not made by Apple?

This morning, one of our tech friends alerted us to the great technology behind the new iPhone, and in searching for more information, we came up on this December 19th AP release--

SAN FRANCISCO - The iPhone has arrived, but it's not made by Apple Computer Inc., which was widely rumored to be working a cell phone-iPod combination of the same name.
Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems Inc. that makes networking equipment for the home and small businesses, unveiled the new line of Internet-enabled phones this week.
The phones use the increasingly popular Voice over Internet Protocol, better known as VoIP, and also allow users to switch over for traditional landline calling.

They also can search the Web and allow users to see when friends are online and ready to accept calls. Several other companies have similar offerings.
But the name has caused a stir. Cisco has owned the trademark on the name "iPhone" since 2000, when it acquired the company that originally registered the name, InfoGear Technology Corp.
Industry watchers have speculated that Apple was close to releasing some kind of iPod and cellular telephone combination, possibly for unveiling at Macworld in January. Until the Linksys announcement, the name "iPhone" was a logical guess.
Much of the speculation about Apple's activity centers on an application the Cupertino-based company filed with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for a "portable computing device capable of wireless communications." The company has not discussed its plans, and declined Tuesday to comment on "rumors and speculation."
Analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies said a convenient naming option for Apple may have been eliminated, but the Linksys announcement will likely have little impact on Apple's plans.
Apple is believed to be working on a cell phone with music-playing ability, a markedly different technology than a VoIP phone, and still may have a surprise in store for the naming of any such device, he said.
"In our industry, naming the thing is almost as hard as creating the technology," he said. "It's pretty clear it's not going to be called 'iPhone.' But Apple's still pretty clever. They still could be very creative."
© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

don't forget this month's SKYPE special

While I'm thinking of telephone service, don't forget to take advantage of the $14.95 Skype-out service, which will go up in price at the end of this month.

Unlimited Calling gives you a full year of unlimited calls to anyone, on any phone, within the US and Canada for just US$14.95.(US$29.95 after January 31st 2007)
Use SkypeOut to call anyone, anywhere in the world. Just buy Skype Credit to pay low per-minute rates. The credits are deducted as you make your SkypeOut calls.
With the unlimited you get:12 months of unlimited calls to any phone in the US and Canada - right from your computer. More than an hour of international calls*.
Over $50 in coupons to get a Motorola headset, Netgear WiFi phone, and a Polycom speakerphone.

free at last, the final cleansing

Today, I threw out my old AT&T Yellow Pages and AT&T White Pages, dated July 2006. We don't appear in them any more and haven't used AT&T since our last major altercation with them, stretching from the summer through the fall of 2005, during which time we transitioned to Vonage. We've cut our bill by 2/3rds, even including the cost of the Time-Warner cable service to carry the VoIP line--it used to be in the area of $350 monthly. We kept one of our old numbers, the back line, but lost our main business line in the switch--AT&T got nasty and/or grossly inefficient, and we couldn't transfer a number we'd had for business purposes since the mid-1980s.