Google Voice vs. AT&T – The battle of the sex lines

Once upon a time, there were two competing services that would help people talk to each other. One of them was a corporate titan, large and powerful, able to buy just about anything that stood in its way. This company had a history of poor customer service, and because they were one of the biggest in the land, there was no reason for them to change their practices. As they saw it, customers were unlimited resources that you could squeeze money from whenever you needed to. This company was named AT&T

One day, another company crossed into the land of telecommunications and saw an opportunity to provide the citizens of the land with a free service that would work as well, or better, than the existing service that they were getting. This service was free, but only available to certain members in this land because this company felt it was important to thoroughly test new offerings before providing them to the general public. This practice of offering free service had made this company well known and loved across the many regions of the internet. This company was named Google, and the service was called Google Voice.

AT&T had been aware of Google, but didn’t feel threatened until AT&T felt that Google didn’t have to play by the same rules as AT&T. One of the things that AT&T was upset about had to do with the rules dictated in the Communications act of 1934. To paraphrase the act, there are some areas in the community, serviced by rural local carriers that have the ability to exorbitant termination rates to the long distance carriers (like AT&T), and then use deception and trickery to get customers to call their numbers. Offers of free adult chat and teleconferencing were presented to the rest of the nation and these rural carriers were able to charge a fee to the phone companies to connect to their lines. The rural carriers would then split the extra income back to these “traffic pumpers.” AT&T had been forced to provide service to these rural carriers, but since these costs could be transferred straight through to their existing customers, AT&T wasn’t that upset with the situation.

A few weeks ago, AT&T became aware that the Google Voice service was able to block access to the numbers in the rural carrier community, and decided to bring this to the governing body in this land – the FCC. After much lobbying persuasion, ATT&T convinced the FCC to investigate the invite only, open phone system that Google Voice provided. The FCC issued a letterto Google, asking them to explain why they feel that they are above the Communications Act of 1934.

Over the next few days we are going to investigate this story so that you can better understand this situation. We here at thetelecomblog.com will provide you with the information about the two companies, Google Voice and AT&T, to ensure that you have the facts to form your own opinion.

Is this Goliath v. Goliath, or is this more like comparing apples to oranges.

Stay tuned!

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

Verizon helps you prepare for natural disasters

Verizon want’s to save your life!

All too often you hear that companies only take-take-take. Well Verizon is showing that sometimes, it’s important to give back to your community – and not just to those that are your customers.

To honor the 20^th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, Verizon has teamed up with some other major sponsors to fund “The Big Rumble” – an initiative to help communities prepare for natural disasters.

Here are some tips from Verizon to help you prepare for an emergency:

• Know how to use call forwarding at home. If you have to evacuate, forward your home phone calls to your cell phone.
• Conserve battery power and free-up wireless networks for emergency response agencies by limiting non-emergency calls.
• Keep a cell car-charger in your vehicle in case you must evacuate.
• Save emergency phone numbers in your cell phone for one-touch dialing.
• Store back-up batteries for electronic devices, including your cell phone.
• Consider using text messages to communicate.
• Understand your cell phone’s capabilities: email, weather updates and news reports are all tools that can help after a disaster.
• Small business owners can help employees stay connected to the Internet, email and company databases with high-speed data services for laptops.

It’s too easy to be cynical and just write stuff like this off as PR. You might already know these steps – but you probably know someone that doesn’t.

Spread the word, tweet it, facebook it, blog about it – but take action – don’t just read and leave.

Or be part of the community – what should be added to this list?

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

Apple patching up iPhone jailbreak

Cupertino is apparently getting into the security business, locking down an exploit that has enabled ambitious users to unlock the previous versions of the iPhone.

Since shortly after the introduction of the first iPhone, development teams have been able to exploit a flaw in the phones OS, enabling them to create a modified OS with the ability to install whichever apps the user wants – legal or not. This process also enabled users outside of the US to use the phones in their home country (yup – I was one of them!)

The fine folks at mobilecrunch have a great description of the process:

“If you want the full technical rundown of the exploit, you can find it here. In its simplest form: as with all computers, the iPhone requires something called a “Bootrom” to startup. During the startup process, one stretch of code in the Bootrom fails to ensure that the content being loaded is within a certain size limit. By throwing more instructions at that chunk of code than it’s intended to handle, exploiters are able to make the iPhone do damn near whatever they want; in this case, the jailbreaking process.”

Does this mean that the next version/release of the iPhone won’t be able to be jailbroken? Possibly, but like all other computer systems – if the people that want it bad enough put their minds together, they’ll be able to crack the new code in no time at all.

Good luck to the dev team!

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

$100. That’s it. That’s all T-Mobile is giving customers for their Sidekick dataloss

Given the choice of being either Kanye West’s PR spindoctor, or anyone on tech support for T-Mobile Sidekick – my choice would be easy. No matter whose acceptance speech Kanye interrupts, it’s still going to be less damaging than what’s going on at Sidekick these past few days.

A quick timeline of events:

Oct 1 – 10 – T-Mobile Sidekick users experience intermittent random data outages. Some customers remove/replace battery to troubleshoot problem. Phones are unable to communicate with the servers, resulting in loss of data on devices. T-Mobile advises customers do not let batteries run out completely.

Oct 10 – T-Mobile announces that there might be a problem with their servers, and this might impact the users. Sidekicks were pulled off the shelves. Customers offered up to $20 credit for inconvenience (equal to 1 month of data service)

Oct 12 – T-Mobile offers $100 credit for customers that experienced “significant” data loss

T-Mobile has this on the Sidekick website:

T-MOBILE STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION, MON., OCT. 12

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

We are thankful for your continued patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on preserving platform stability and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers. We have made significant progress this past weekend, restoring services to virtually every customer. Microsoft/Danger has teams of experts in place who are working around-the-clock to ensure this stability is maintained.

Regarding those of you who have lost personal content, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger continue to do all we can to recover and return any lost information. Recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible. We will continue to keep you updated on this front; we know how important this is to you.

In the event certain customers have experienced a significant and permanent loss of personal content, T-Mobile will be sending these customers a $100 customer appreciation card. This will be in addition to the free month of data service that already went to Sidekick data customers. This card can be used towards T-Mobile products and services, or a customer’s T-Mobile bill. For those who fall into this category, details will be sent out in the next 14 days – there is no action needed on the part of these customers. We however remain hopeful that for the majority of our customers, personal content can be recovered.

Sidekick customers can continue to visit T-Mobile Sidekick Forums (http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick) on a regular basis to access the latest updates, as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption. The Forums also offers tips and suggestions for rebuilding content on your device.

******************************************************************************************************

What is the right amount of compensation for customers that experienced data loss? Is $100 too much, or not enough? If you only have one backup, you might as well have none – but was this communicated to the T-Mobile customers? What is “significant” data loss ?

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

What is PRI ? What are carriers charging ? A sample quote from the US and Canada

Have you ever heard of PRI ? How do PRI rates compare from city to city ? Country to country ?

A brief technical explanation: PRI, sometimes also called Megalink, digital, or fiber, is a TDM, ISDN type (circuit-switched) type telco service which is rapidly replacing the older style analog line. A standard PRI service in North America has 23B channels and 1 D channel – if added together you have 24 channels. These 24 channels are comprised of 24 channels of 64 kbit / second, or 1.544 Mbit / second (24 X 64). The PRI is a similar service to the T1 – a T1 is made up of 24B channels, or 1.544 MB as well. The T1 has 24B channels, and the PRI has 23B + 1 D channel. The PRI is used for voice, and the T1 is used for data.

The PRI is a digital service, which means that the sound quality is near perfect. Unlike an analog line, which sometimes has a 6 to 8 dB loss, the PRI service has a 0 dB loss, making the sound quality that much better.

The technology has been around for some time – Digitcom.ca has been installing PRI circuits for our clients since the mid 90’s. It is a very mature technology, with obviously, a very high adoption rate in the small, mid, and especially enterpise Telecom markets.

Next question: Is your current PRI contract competitive, and how do American and Canadian rates vary ?

I did a quick price survey – 1 in downtown Miami (with the help of my friend TJ Spohn from CPT Florida) and the other in downtown Toronto, 2 typical North American cities. Prices from the carriers are as follows:

Down Town Miami:

Nuvox
Rate / month $425
Install charge $0
Contract term 24 months
Lead time for install 30 days
LD rate .05 intrastate / interstate

Paetec
Rate / month $550
Install charge $0
Contract term 36 months
Lead time for install 30-45 days
LD rate .03 intrastate / interstate

AT&T
Rate / month $650
Install charge $0
Contract term 36 months
Lead time for install 30-45 days
LD rate .05 intrastate / interstate

Down Town Toronto:

Allstream
Rate / Month = $615 (10 DID’s included)
Install = $0
Contract term 36 months
Lead Time for Install = 4 to 6 weeks
Long Distance = $0.02 / minute North America

Bell Canada
Rate / Month = $672
Install = $0
Contract term 36 months
Lead time for Install = 3 to 4 weeks
Long Distance = $0.025 / minute North America

Telus
Rate / Month = $653
Install = $0
Contract term 36 months
Lead time for Install = 4 to 7 weeks
Long Distance = $0.025 / minute North America

Rates were coming down for some time, but seem to have stabliized over the last few years. Paying more ? Call your carrier !

Written by: Jeff Wiener. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

FCC to decide on Net Neutrality rules – Who plays internet COP ?

According to a recent Associated Press article, it looks like the head of the FCC, Julius Genachowski, will make an announcement on Monday which will propose prohibiting ISP’s from throttling, blocking, and “policing” the internet traffic going through their networks. This is part of a pre-election pledge that Barak Obama made promising net neutrality with laws prohibiting the carriers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T from blocking traffic going through their networks.

Of course the ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) and major carriers want the unencumbered right to decide what traverses their networks, and to some extent, rightly so. There are of course many issues which need to be addressed with regards to net neutrality, but, the carriers should have some control over what, and how much travels across their networks.

Federal and state highways have the right to decide how much of a toll charge they charge cars that travel across their highways. In the same manner, it does seems reasonable that a carrier should have some control over the bandwidth, quantity, and speed they provide to their clients. Those customers needing more bandwidth, speed, and less intervention pay more of a toll charge, and those customers needing less pay less. As applications become more bandwidth intensive, the carriers need to spend massive infrastructure dollars upgrading their networks, and equipment, capacity … all of which costs money. Unless the US Federal Government wants to subsidize these infrastructure upgrade fees, they should allow the carriers, to some extent, decide how much, and what fees should be charged for anything crossing their networks.

On the other hand, what I have objection to is the carriers selectively choosing certain applications, specifically the ones which compete with their own services, as the ones which need to be throttled. Voice over IP, and Internet TV is specifically sited as the traffic the carriers would like to throttle. VoIP services, like Skype, cost the carriers long distance revenue, and Internet TV cost the carriers lost cable revenue. For them to selectively decide to throttle that specific bandwidth is anti-competitive and the government should step in. They should treat all bandwidth equally, and charge network usage on a fair basis, not based on kind of traffic.

I have a problem with the carrier controlling the pipeline and the content on that pipeline and selectively choosing which services to throttle based on anti-competitive measures. I don’t have a problem with the carrier publishing rates for usage and speed. Let’s see what happens at Monday’s FCC’s commission hearing.

Written by: Jeff Wiener. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

Twitter: Tweet to Talk – Telecom 2.0 here we come ! Introducing JaJah@call

Now here’s a neat technology.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about Telecom 2.0. I also wrote a post about my “ah-ha” moment with Twitter. I called it – Twitter – the light bulb moment. Over the last couple of weeks I started using Twitter more often (and my wife is now calling me a Twit). I won’t tell you what I have started calling her !!

Now, let’s combine Telecom 2.0 and Twitter. What do you get ?

First, let me recap my Twitter post from a couple of weeks ago: (and I quote from that post):

Just as Google has stretched their dominance into so many different elements of the web, Twitter has the same potential to be a technology game changer. The chatter that happens on Twitter is text driven, but, it could be voice, video, or any other form of multi-media driven.

And then, from a customer service perspective, there are so many touch points that hit a service based organization. Phone, email, fax, and new media (like Twitter). Integrating Twitter and other forms of social media into an organization’s operations. For example, someone needing live help could activate a real time command and voice or text into a service organizations help desk.

I was really just speculating, but, expected that in the not to distant future we would see some form of “Tweet to Talk” app get developed for Twitter.

I also did a post on Telecom 2.0 and mentioned the following:

What does Telecom 2.0 look like ?

Speaking along the lines of paradigm shift, the next generation of phone systems will be a highly intelligent server, much as they are now. The talk/communicate medium will not necessarily be the bulky phone on your desk, but rather a variety of end point devices.

Skype, Google, Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, Blackberry – these all-in-one appliances will be the talk/communicate path, and the server at the back end will bridge these technologies together. And with the recent news of Silver Lakes (Avaya’s parent company) being part of an investment group buying a 65% stake in Skype, it will now bring together the old and newer emerging technologies.

OK. Enough of the background – I have set the stage for a new app from a company called Jajah@call. I have pulled this description from their web site:

JAJAH gives short messages a voice. With the new JAJAH application, Twitter users can make free phone calls on their favorite microblogging service. Now in Beta, JAJAH@Call allows you to make a free two minute call (the verbal equivalent of a tweet) to other JAJAH@Call users. It’s free, it’s easy and works no matter how you use Twitter, whether it’s on your cellphone, via Seesmic, TweetDeck, or any other way.

TELECOM 2.0. This is what it’s all about.

Written by: Jeff Wiener. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

Time is not on Nortel’s side: An appeal to the US, EU, and Cdn Govt’s to expedite the process

The future of Nortel is now in the hands of the Canadian and EU governments, as well as the US Department of Justice.

The objections from Verizon have been rejected, but the fate of Nortel is still in limbo waiting for regulatory approval, and it’s important for the regulators to realize that the waiting will only hurt the sale process. If any individuals reading this blog have a say in the regulatory process, please step in now to help ensure the sale of this potentially diminishing asset.

The DoJ needs to determine how to measure the marketing power that this integration creates. If they look at the whole North American market, including small and mid-sized products, the impact isn’t as severe. But if you “slice and dice” (a term used by Gruia) up the market into the various segments, and examine it on a product-by-product basis, Avaya, Nortel, and Cisco are clearly the dominant players in the large enterprise arena. And with the Avaya/Nortel combination resulting in over 42% of the contact centre product’s market, dangerously close to the key threshold level of 43%, some analysts feel that the antitrust regulators will require Avaya to sell off assets to gain approval.

“The key issue is the DoJ rubber stamp,” according to Ronald Gruia (analyst for Frost & Sullivan). And the longer it takes to get the approval, the bigger the chance there is that the existing Nortel customers will seek other vendors through RFP’s. Gruia explains that Avaya can walk away from the entire deal if they don’t meet the regulatory requirements.

“The more pain for the customers the more likely it is they will take it to an RFP” said Gruia.

This issue could prove problematic moving forward. The channel, customers, employees need some certainty with regards to direction, and the “dark cloud” hanging over the deal’s head and uncertainty it brings will make it difficult for Nortel to continue the sales momentum moving forward. It looks like Nortel’s asset will rapidly decline in the next 6 months as their current customer base erodes and the dealer channel awaits a final seal of approval.

Avaya has set aside US$15 million for employee retention, which should provide some comfort to the 3100+ employees that are waiting for the sale to go through, but neither Avaya nor Nortel have released how many of the jobs will be kept after the sale. But if the sale doesn’t go through soon, or if the regulations are too prohibitive, Avaya will win, and Canada loses.

Some good news, the Canadian government has declared that they will not be blocking the sale of Nortel’s wireless division to LM Ericsson of Sweden, claiming that the agreement will be beneficial to Canada. Since the Liberal government has announced that they have the same position on the Avaya deal as they did on the Ericsson acquisition, another roadblock might be soon removed.

The US and Canadian governments have approved the bankruptcy sale, but there are still a lot of “If’s” in this development: If Avaya is forced to sell off the Nortel Symposium products, and If the DoJ looks at the market in individual segments, and If the Canadian government decides to block the sale – but It’s hard to say what will happen because no one really knows. And the waiting game will only make it more difficult.

The combination of an indecisive Canadian government and an unrealistic, overly protective American government might delay this process unnecessarily. So, hurry up the process and get this approved !

More:

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed

AT&Tractive – AT&T rolling out HSPA 7.2

AT&T is looking fast and furious – rolling out HSPA 7.2 in six cities by the end of the year.

Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami AT&T customers will be able to take advantage of up to 7.2 Mbps (theoretically) – providing they have the handset for it. AT&T is hoping to have 6 new handsets and 2 new laptop cards to help customers capitalize on the new speeds. The iPhone 3Gs is supposedly capable of achieving these new speeds.

President and CEO of Operations, John Stankey, says that the expansion “will enable our customers to continue to ride the leading edge of emerging devices and thousands of mobile applications.” Shifting from 1.9GHz to 850MHz has allowed the company to speed things up for over 90% of their network, and this upgrade is paving the way to the LTE speeds of the future >10Mbps

Bigger, faster, stronger, longer – AT&T is putting their money where their mouth is.

Written by: Jason Finnerty. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed