It’s a very smart move on the part of Apple, which highlighted the change in the way the company is operating by changing its name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. , reflecting the fact that they are no longer just a computer company.There were a few interesting items of interest, though.

For starters, no mention of how the phone will sync up with a computer. Are we to assume that it’s Mac Only or will it synchronize with computers running Windows too? If so, does that mean that a new set of applications will be available to Windows users to sync their address book, calendar and email with systems like Outlook or will the device require to manage those things specifically using Apple applications on Windows?

The other thing that was interesting is the announcement that the phone will run on quad-band GSM and will be using EDGE network. This means that the phone will get decent but not great data service. Perfect for email and light web browsing but not quite fast enough for video streaming. However, the introduction of WiFi in the device, which many other companies have avoided for fear of losing battery capacity, could take care of that.

The other interesting thing is that the operating system on this device is OSX. This seems to point out to two possible issues: First, what does that mean for PortalPlayer, which has traditionally provided Apple with the operating system (embedded on a chip) for the iPod? The second question is what does it mean in general: What Apple has introduced is basically a mac in a small form factor, which could easily compete with the UMPC specifications introduced by Microsoft. It’s pretty clear that Apple has a lot of plans in the future for that device but they didn’t say much about the significance of OSX, providing it almost as an aside (and what does it mean for the next version of OSX, which was not mentioned during this keynote at all, a surprising omission in itself.)

Who loses?

Judging from the reaction on the stock market, it’s pretty obvious to see who loses: Palm (makers of the Treo), RIM (makers of the Blackberry), and Motorola and Nokia will obviously not be thrilled with the entrance of Apple in this market. The exclusive deal with AT&T (ooops, sorry, Cingular) will also have a negative impact on Verizon, Sprint, and T-mobile as Verizon will see a number of users switching to them in order to get their hands on this device (in informal discussion with a number of fellow geeks, the disadvantages of moving to Cingular were far outweighted by the coolness of this device).

Let’s take a quick look at specs and see how the difference devices fare against this new entrant:

So looking at it, this phone is pretty expensive (you pay for the Apple premium) but packs a lot more features than other phones in the same category. It’s got a better camera, more memory and a larger screen as well as WiFi. It’s talk time (for the category) is actually pretty good (only bested by Nokia’s E-62) and it is a little heavier than the competition. For a first entry in the market, I’d say that Apple has a winner on its hands.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title The iPhone is here. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Mobile

Last year, I declared that video would be big in the Internet space and this year, I believe that mobile will be a major focus.

The devices

While mobile devices will continue to grow on the existing curve, adding more processing power and more memory, they will also add a number of features with are significantly different from the ones we’ve been accustomed to see on a mobile phone. Cameras will increasingly become just a tick on the feature list and location-aware devices will become more prevalent (they will sport a GPS chip).

The new features will come in 3 key areas: first, more mobile devices will be able to multi-task, allowing users to use functions on their phone while making a call at the same time. The multi-tasking will extend to wireless services too and people will be able to surf the web or use internet-based application at the same time as they are making a phone call. A key hardware change in those mobile devices will be an increase in the number of phones (and other mobile device) that not only have a GSM or CDMA chip but also sport a WiFi receiver. This will allow the devices to run across a variety of networks. I suspect (and am probably going out on a limb here as my guess is that this would be early) that some of the devices will conform to the 802.11n WiFi standard, and will use that technology as a bridge to 3G because 3G deployment in the United States will be slow.

The second big hardware innovation in mobile devices will be the presence of RFID readers and chips that will allow users to use them for person-to-person or person-to-business commerce, turning mobile devices into electronic wallets. Deployments in Near Field Communications for credit cards have already started to happen on a trial basis in cities like New York.

The third big hardware innovation in mobile devices, in my mind, will come from the fact that some devices will be DNLA certified, allowing them to exchange, photos, music and videos with other devices in your house.

The services

This year, the rise of mobile services will be powered by a sharp drop in the price of data service offerings from mobile operators, with some operators offering flat-rate all-you-can-ear services to their customers.

In the content arena, the most popular type of service will be near-CD-quality audio downloads. There may be some offerings in the streaming audio market but I suspect that those will be very limited. The second most popular content service, in the mobile space, will be mobile video, with TV and user-created content (mobile YouTube and competitors) filling that gap. Those services will be advertising supported, with revenue sharing agreement between the mobile operators and the content providers.

Map services will also enjoy some level of success. The recent introduction of Google Maps on the Treo platform can be seen as an example of that trend and location-aware device will offer richer experiences in that space, with live traffic info, weather, and maybe some advertising being part of the offerings.

However, content will not take the forefront on mobile services, which will still be dominated by communication as the primary type of application. In that space, though, regular phone service will not be the predominant form of communication. SMS and MMS will be integrated with instant messaging platforms and email, to provide a complete communication package. Expect features like the ability to send text messages to multiple parties at once to start appearing, allowing for chat-like interfaces on phones.

As a result of those changes, social networks will also start integrating mobile applications more closely this year. MySpace and other networks like it will offer integrated solutions for mobile blogging, podcasting, and vlogging, as well as integrated chat and location aware social networking services. Dating services will be another arena to go mobile with the ability to identify matches within your general area.

Wrapping up the offerings will also be limited trials in the videophone space, leveraging off new next generation 3G infrastructures. The videophone trials (and 3G in general) will still be limited offerings by the end of the year, due to the high premium charged for such services.

On the voice end, the introduction of WiFi on some mobile devices will give rise to VoIP mobile applications. If the devices sport 802.11n receivers and such infrastructure is deployed, services around that space could eclipse traditional voice traffic.

Apple

Due to the added power mobile phones now have, the iPod is threatened. Apple makes a defensive move by unveiling the Apple ecosystem, centered around use of media in general and of the Apple iTunes store in particular. With the introduction of its own offering in the mobile space (an iPod with phone functionality and not a phone with iPod functionality) and in the living room (the already pre-announced iTV components), Apple presents a strategy that allows for simple integration of all their components into a digital lifestyle offering.

In the non-media space, Apple bundles blogs and wikis with the new version of OSX and starts offering Web 2.0-like functionality on its Xserve servers, in a bid to get a spot in enterprise racks. They will also merge in social networking features in their calendaring and address book applications, allowing for a more integrated experience.

In another bid for enterprise positioning, Apple will include virtualization of other Operating Systems natively in the next version of OSX, allowing their computers to run Windows and OSX applications side by side under OSX. The feature will take some of the existing Apple bootcamp attributes and turns them into an equivalent of Parallels.

In a surprise move, Apple will also announce that it has signed a partnership with Google, which will offer the Google Apps for your domain as a replacement for the .mac service offered by Apple. The service will now be available either as a free ad-supported service, or on the same premium service offering as before without ads.

On the hardware end, Apple will endorse 802.11n as their standard for media distribution, equipping all new computers and the iTV device with receiver cards so it can leverage off the higher speeds offered by that standard. Because of its long-standing relationship with Sony, the company will also decide to side with BlueRay as their standard for next-generation disks, equipping their new laptops with drives following that standard.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s oft-delayed Windows Vista will finally be released but adoption of the new operating system will be lackluster as few of today’s computers can support it. The same will be true of the release of Microsoft Office 2007, as most users feel perfectly OK with the version of those products they have running on their desktops.

With the major release of updates to the Windows and Office platforms behind it, the company will focus efforts in other areas. In the console market, Xbox 360 will become the dominant game platform, due to slow adoption of the PS3 platform. Microsoft will innovate heavily on that platform, leveraging its positioning in the living room to offer more movies, more TV shows and other types of services around it. Meanwhile, the company will also work on a major revision of their Zune offering, offering a new version of the iPod competitors that will be better received than its predecessor. However, Zune 2.0 will not make a major dent into the iPod market. On the web end, Microsoft will consider the acquisition of either Yahoo! or AOL as a way to shore up its MSN offering and adopt a more aggressive stance in its fight for online advertising revenue.

Virtual Currencies

There will be more talk about the digitization of money this year. Microsoft will use its Microsoft points as a new form of currency that can be used not only on the Zune marketplace and the Xbox live marketplace but also as a way to pay for goods and services online with approved merchants. This will be followed by support for a payment solution (like Google Payment or Paypal) in a stake to get a stronger foothold in that space.

Google will continue pushing its Google Payment engine, moving it to an international base before year end. Meanwhile Paypal will continue expanding its lead in the space and will start offering virtual credit card numbers that will be usable on any system and tie back to Paypal on the back-end.

But the big stories in the virtual currency space will be around the rise of virtual worlds like SecondLife and others, which will see their own virtual currencies rise against the dollar. Their will be discussion about the power those virtual worlds operators have over money flows and calls for regulations of those currencies (and possible taxation of revenue made in those virtual worlds) in several countries around the world.

Virtual Worlds

Speaking of virtual worlds, there will be a continuing explosion in the growth of this phenomenon. By year end, SecondLife alone will have over 15 millions residents, but will be experience growth pains. At least one other major virtual world operators will appear in the space but most corporations will rush to SecondLife.

The initial hype that started appearing in the mainstream press about SecondLife will give way to a number of negative stories, probably talking about some of the darker aspects of the virtual world phenomenons, including gold farming, the sex trade, and gambling. Some politician will use the negative press as a way to grab headline by calling for a government inquiry in the dealings of virtual worlds operators.

While I declared 2007 the year of mobile, virtual worlds will come of close second in terms of highlights for the year. I suspect that LindenLab will surprise people by announcing that it will open up its platform and present the underlying components as a new standard for the web. The company will then start offering their grid software as a standalone application that corporations can install on their own servers if they want more control. LindenLab will also allow companies to use customized version of their thick client that could be branded with company destinations and other goodies.

Due to LindenLab’s strength in the space, many companies will consider acquiring it but many will be turned off by all the negative press and potential for government involvement.

Media

Mainstream media will continue trying to co-opt successful bloggers and will also turn its attention to successful podcasters and vloggers. New stars will emerge online, develop followings there and make the jump to mainstream media, while the reverse path will be taken by mainstream reporters and actors, who will increasingly start vlogging and podcasting (they’re already blogging).

Pressured by lower viewership in their traditional timeslots, TV stations will start posting more content online, with at least one TV station offering all its primetime slate online in and advertising supported fashion. Smaller video distributors, in the meantime, will start investigating using bittorrent for distribution of their content. Some old TV show will see its archive fully posted online and will start receiving a new stream of revenue as a result of that online appearance.

Meanwhile, ad revenue will continue to shift to web, and media will reluctantly follow. By year end, most newspapers will have combined their print and online newsrooms, and many will be cutting back on print to focus more on their online presence. As part of this shift to online, we will also see increased reliance on user generated content, with some newspapers offering blogs to their readers and encouraging active participation in making the news.

However, most of those efforts will not generate the expected returns as Google gobbles up increasing share of overall internet ad revenue, and starts expanding to audio and video. Discussion in the traditional media will start shifting to whether Google is too powerful for everyone’s good.

Death of the website/webpage

Another important shift in the media space will be the death of the concept of traditional website or web page as a result of increasing consumption of content via RSS or through distribution of widgets that can be embedded in other people’s sites. People will move away from the term web site and start talking about web properties. Because content will not necessarily be consumed in the creator’s site, there will be discussions of a new for new advertising/revenue models for such content and a need for new metrics to identify reach and audience. This will present a new opportunity for companies in the web analytics space.

As the web page is no longer seen as the best way to measure the success of a web property, the CPM will be on its last gasp as a model for selling online advertising, replaced largely by cost per click (CPC) and increasingly by cost per action (CPA) as the way to sell ads online.

Web 2.0

There will be increasing verticalisation in the web 2.0 space, with social networks, search, and web service offerings becoming more focused this year. However, this will also mean that many companies that were only single features will not be able to adapt and will die. Others will continue to be acquired for sums in the under $100 million category and few, if any, will go public.

Tagging will become more and more implicit, with less and less users actually doing the tagging and more and more tags being generated algorithmically. More applications will start looking at people’s behavior and creating the appropriate tags or making the appropriate modifications in the background.

But it’s not all doom and gloom for web 2.0 as Enterprise 2.0 becomes a reality. Use of blogs, wikis and VoIP behind the firewall commonplace at most large corporations and other technologies introduced as part of web 2.0 (AJAX, podcasting, etc…) will become more common in Global 100 corporations.

And speaking of the enterprise space, enterprise search will be huge, with Fast and/or Autonomy being acquired by Oracle, HP, or Microsoft. More focused will be paid on creating strong search solutions for the unstructured data on intranets and IBM will be a major player in the space.

Conclusion

At year end, many of those predictions will be wrong but a few will be correct. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep everyone up to date and hopefully will keep providing great content throughout the rest of the year.

I think 2007 will be another banner year and believe that we are looking at another existing set of new developments. Feel free to comment below and tell me what you think I may have missed (or point me to other prognostications, as I haven’t had time to get to my aggregator since Christmas).

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title 2007 Predictions. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Understanding the mobile landscape

In a lot of ways, the mobile phone landscape in the United States could be considered a case study into how sometimes the free market fails end users. Let me explain: in the late 80s and early 90s, there were two different types of technologies available in the US for mobile phone delivery: CDMA and TDMA. However, due to vendor differences, the market fragmented even further with Sprint PCS (now Sprint Nextel) adopting a different flavor of CDMA than Verizon. Meanwhile, Nextel (now part of Sprint Nextel) adopted a proprietary technology called iDen, which was based on TDMA while T-Mobile and Cingular adopted GSM, a flavor of TDMA that has become the global standard outside of the US.

The bottom line on this whole acronym soup is that most mobile operators in the United States cannot operate on each other’s networks because they are using different technologies. This is why foreigners visiting the US generally lament about the poor quality of the mobile experience in this country and why the US is falling behind in the global mobile race. This is also why most American mobile phones don’t work abroad.

Because Cingular and T-mobile used the same GSM technology, they agreed to share their networks, allowing their customers to use both networks transparently, in a situation similar to the one one would witness outside of the US. The fact that they use GSM is also why a lot of cool phones make it to their networks before they are available to other providers. Verizon is now hedging its bets by introducing hybrid CDMA/GSM phones under the heading of Global Phone Service. To many outside the US, it looks like GSM is already the winning format in the standards war.

Enters Apple

Traditionally, Apple has been known for its exceptional industrial design (creating hardware people lust after) and marketing (also known as the reality distortion field). However, one of the other interesting features of Apple is the company’s willingness to take a standard and move forward with it. For example, by rebranding the 802.11b standard into Airport and later the 802.11g standard into Airport extreme, Apple pushed forward usage of wireless networking. Apple was also the mainstream PC first company to decide to drop disk drives being installed by default on their machines, prompting the rest of the industry to follow suit. The recent removal of modems from their new laptop lines does, in my view, harbor the death of modems being built into computers by default.

Meanwhile, the recent success of the iPod eco-system has gotten many vendors to rethink their strategy when it comes to the portable media player.Microsoft is now creating a closed system called Zune, following the Apple iPod + iTunes strategy and Sandisk and Real Networks are working on a similar walled garden approach. These trends seem to be defying common wisdom as to the progression of markets, whereas markets would generally tend towards standardization.

But what does all this have to do with mobile, you might ask?

Well, the question here is how successful Apple can be. If it creates a product that is so compelling that users will be interested in switching carrier for it, Apple may actually tip the scale on adoption of GSM in the United States. Going back to the ThinkSecret piece

insiders say Apple is internally estimating that shipments of the iPhone will top a staggering 25 million in 2007 alone

According to Gartner, roughly 700 million phones will be sold this year so it’s not improbable that Apple would try to sell 25 million, which would garner it a marketshare of 3 percent. But the overall market numbers may be misleading as many of those mobile phones are on the lower end of the price range, aiming at the developing world, a market Apple is not current going after. The numbers get more interesting when one considers single operators: for example, Cingular is the largest US operator with 56 million subscribers. If Apple were to work its magic here, Cingular could see anywhere up to a 10% growth or more in their subscriber base just on that one product. These users would move to a GSM network and away from CDMA technology.

From there, two possible scenarios could evolve: Apple could decide to license CDMA technology from Quallcom (CDMA is a proprietary technology so every vendor has to pay Quallcom for its use) or say that they are happy in the GSM-only market. If they were to do the latter, they could potentially tip the scale in a life-long fight in the US, making GSM the standard.

But why is Apple interested in mobile?

When considering rumors about an iPhone, one might wonder the interest Apple may have in that marketplace. After all, it’s not one that the company has ever entered and there doesn’t seem to be much overlap with their current existing products.

However, one has to look at the natural progression of the music business to understand why Apple would be interested in this market segment. While its current iTunes store sells roughly US$2 million a week of tracks, the ringtone market is much larger and the margins are supposedly better. So Apple is getting into the market for two possible reasons: first, it needs to protect the market it’s created with the iPod and sees mobile as the next evolution and a potential competitor to their single use device. Second, the company sees a market it wants to dominate. So that adds up to a new phone

But can Apple tip the scale on GSM?

As it stands, GSM in the US is supported by 2 of the big four operators. If Apple is successful, one could see defection from the other two. It’s not going to be an overnight kind of thing but, much like Apple has forced its competitors in the music field to reconsider their position, it could happen in the communication field.

Of course, all this is predicated on those standards still being relevant further down the line. If phones move towards more of a VoIP model, as I suspect will happen over the long run, this may all be irrelevant but, for the time being, a major shift of that kind could have tremendous impact in the telecom world.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Could Apple Solidify GSM in the US?. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Freshness vs. Convenience vs. Value

When watching movies, I have several options. I can

• Go to the movie theater
• Wait for the movie to be available on video or DVD and rent it
• Wait for the movie to be available on video or DVD and buy it
• Wait for a movie to show up on pay-per-view and rent it
• Wait for the movie to be available online legally and download it
• Wait for the movie to show up on free TV and watch it or record it then
• Download it illegally

Those are basically all the options I have. Let’s examine what the drivers behind a particular choice my be:

• Freshness: I want access to the latest movie as soon as it’s viewable
• Convenience: I want to watch the movie where and when I decide
• Value: I want to pay a fair price for the entertainment value I get out of that movie

If we start mapping each of those against the currently available options, patterns emerge: In order to get freshness, I have to sacrifice convenience (since I have to go to the movie theater and watch the movie at a set time) and pay a value premium (since I have to pay the price of a movie ticket, which also gives me access to a larger screen, better sound, and a shared experience). In order to get convenience (download, rent, or buy), I have to give up freshness (as movies are released in theater first and available in other media later) and pay a little extra (price of rental or purchase) than I would if I waited for the movie to be free on television. Last but not least, if I want to watch the movie for free legally, I have to give up freshness (since movies are released to TV stations at the tail end of the release cycle), deal with less convenience (I either have to record the movie or watch it on the station’s time and date and, if I want the completely free option, I have to agree to watching some ads in the middle of the movie) . If I’m willing to break the law, I have to give up convenience (have to hunt down the movie on a peer to peer network, then make sure the download works properly, then check that no virus has been embedded. To add to the problem, the quality of “fresh” movies available over those free networks is generally bad, with sound and image generally being of low quality.

DRM can be good

Now imagine a system where I could get all three. A system that I would call “FairShare.” In a FairShare system, I get access to everything for the right price and with maximum convenience. If a new movie is released, I can pay a premium to have it immediately available in my house on the same day as it is available in the theater but here’s the catch: I have to pay for that extra convenience. So I may have to pay more for that movie than if I went out to see it in the theater but I get the convenience to play it at home on my own clock. How much would I pay for that convenience? Well, it depends. Part of the pricing here is the value equation: do I want to watch it alone at home or am I having a party with friends. Is this a movie I really want to see now or can it wait a week, a month, or longer. Can I haggle over the price?

That last part is important. Looking at the Ebay economy, we can now figure that there are certain price points for just about anything and that those price points, when left to the customer to decide, are generally within a standard deviation of the actual price of an item. What if there were marketplaces for movie download rights? Let’s take a highly anticipated release (the next Star Wars, for example). Some people would probably be willing to pay a high premium in order to see it at home with their friends? Just looking at the US box office returns for Episode 2, Attack of the Clones one clearly sees the importance of freshness: The movie made $110 million in its first week (bolstered by a first weekend take of $80 million), $90 million in its second week, and $31 million in its third week. That means people would have been willing to pay a premium to see the movie in week one and two but less of one in week 3.

Once the price has been set, it then only become a question of proper DRM licenses being available. For example, I use a service called Movielink. It’s got a collection of movies that can be downloaded for anywhere between 99 cents and 5 dollars. In that price range, the movies are about the cost of a video. However, I don’t have to worry about returning them and, while choice is currently limited, it’s pretty convenient. Granted, I’m not the regular user in that I already have a computer connected to my big screen television, but the convenience is worth the price.

I think I could technically make a copy of a movie I download and give it to a friend. What would happen when they run it? Well, the same thing that happened to me recently. I wanted to rewatch one of the movies I rented and had watched previously. When I went to start it, a screen popped up, asking me if I wanted to re-enable rights for 24 hours at a substantial discount (99 cents vs. the $4.99 I had previously pay for the rental). Had I rented that movie in the video store instead and wanted to go through the same experience, I would have paid for the price of a rental twice. Once I started using the service, I noticed it also altered my buying pattern. When I rented a movie I liked, I might buy it on DVD if I wanted to play it more than once. The cost of a DVD generally is between 10 and 20 dollars. However, when I started downloaded, the replay for 99 cents feature started to make the cost of buying a DVD look expensive by comparison. While I do replay movies I bought, I don’t replay them often enough to warrant a 20 dollar price point (that would be equivalent to replaying a moving I downloaded 15 times.)

What happens here is that the product is priced properly and even competitively, compared to other alternatives. In a FairShare model, those prices would vary and all movies, either still in theater or released decades ago, would be available at prices that would fluctuate based on demand. For example, movies from 1890 may not be very popular but I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of people around the world who might want to watch those. At a couple of dollars a piece (or local currency equivalent), that’s thousands of dollars left on the table. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands and you’re talking about potentially billions of dollars left on the table by business and potentially tens of thousands of gems that are currently unavailable to the public.

Shopping for legal music

Of course, all this works because I am dealing with a single device and a single model. However, DRM becomes evil when it is limiting and tries to tell me what to do and where I should do it (hence reducing my convenience). For this, I will bring up another example. I recently heard a music album that sounded good. Now, in the post napster, free-music-for-all, world we live in, I could have easily downloaded it from a P2P network and kept it at that. For my own enlightenment, I decided to actually look for the album (not a single track but the whole album) on one of the P2P networks, confirming a suspicion I had: Popular tracks do show up on those networks but less popular tracks from an album do not. As a result, it is impossible to get a good feeling for an artist’s work beyond the hits.

My curiosity satisfied, I decided I would go and try to buy the album from a downloadable service. Before I go any further, let me explain what I expect from tracks purchased online: I own several computers running several operating systems (OSX, several versions of Microsoft Windows, and Linux, primarily); I also own a Treo, which I use as my portable MP3 player. Why that device in particular? Because it combines my GSM phone, PDA, and MP3 player all in one and can hook up to the different operating systems I mentioned above. It’s the ultimate in choice and portability as I do not want to carry multiple single-use dedicated devices.

First stop was the iTunes music store, which frequent TNL.net readers will recognize as the target of many posts. Well, turns out that it might be a bit of an issue. Apple doesn’t seem very interested in selling music to play on non-iPod devices and as far as transferring a song to Linux, well… I guess I’ll have to wait for the Linux version of iTunes which should come out just around the same time as blizzards blowing through Hades.

Next stop, Real. After all, they made a big stink a while back about fighting Apple and protecting openness. They’ll help me, right? Looked like the Treo would work but I was annoyed to learn that you had to use the RealPlayer to play the tracks. Where was the freedom of choice in that? Why would I be forced to install their player in order to play the tracks? What if they went under and their player were no longer compatible with my operating system? In one felt swoop, they eliminated a whole bunch of stores to visit: basically, the ones that force me into using the Real player in order to play music I bought legally.

Warily, I approached, the remaining giant in the space: Microsoft. The good news was that they had a program called “Plays for Sure”. Finally, someone willing to go with a real guarantee that my music will play anywhere! The tag line, right there on the homepage said it all:

Choose your music. Choose your device. Know it’s going to work.

That sounded really great: finally my music, my Treo, my different operating systems would all work harmoniously… except for the fact that PlaysForSure is another marketing name for Windows Media Player. Basically, it’s the same deal as Real: if you use their player, and their player works on the device you want to use, it’s OK. Otherwise, you’re on your own.

I gave up on the online download sites and bought the CD, which I then ripped to MP3 tracks myself.

DRM can be evil

What happened in that case was a case of what I would consider evil DRM, where the consumer is treated as a criminal by default. Because it is assumed that I will abuse my right, the system forces me to work within a walled garden. I can either get my content from Apple on Apple devices, from Microsoft (and partners) on Microsoft powered devices, or from Real (and partners) on devices that run the RealPlayer. This is not choice, it’s entrapment. If I were to follow the same logic to the extreme, I would have to have a different television in order to watch different TV channels. In other words, the case of music downloads shows that DRM can be mis-directed. Why? Simply because of companies trying to maintain certain monopolies and force the users to do their bidding.

DRM dependencies

Looking at the two scenarios above, you might start noticing some interesting trends. First of all, DRM is situational. A single DRM strategy does not fit all offerings. Why is that?

I would venture that the reason is one of expectation. The expectation that I have of a music track are different that the expectation that I have of a movie or TV show and it is largely related to the interaction with each media type. In the case of a music track, I want something that will be portable and can move relatively quickly from one device to another; this is largely due to the fact that music is consumed on the run, and more often than not, it is consumed while doing some other activity. Movie or TV watching, however, is something that requires more involvement; it’s hard to read a book, drive, or run while watching a movie or TV show! As a result, mobility is not as essential and the need for a movie to run on multiple device is not as high. if it runs on my TV, maybe on a laptop too and can be transferred to a secondary TV, it’s OK. The universe of devices on which it needs to run is smaller and generally more tied into the net anyway, which makes the DRM interaction more seamless.

What I am trying to highlight is that while proponents and opponents of DRM solutions both see the world in black and white, they may want to start a dialogue and realize that there’s a lot of gray areas out there.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title DRM is not binary. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

So what is number portability?

Well, effective today, you can change mobile phone provider without having to worry about changing your phone number. For example, if your phone number is (646) 555 1212, you can still keep the same number but choose between different mobile phone providers.

An added extra is that you can also take your land-line phone number and port it to a mobile phone line.

What’s the catch?

Mobile phone operators sometimes work on different networks: GSM, CDMA, or TDMA. If you are switching between companies that are using different networks, you might have to change phone.

If you are switching between GSM providers, all you may have to do is change your SIM card. If you are using a CDMA or TDMA provider, you might have to go to the store to get your phone reprogrammed with the new number.

If you are still under contract with a provider, some penalty fees will be assessed. Make sure that you are no longer under contract with your mobile provider if you want to avoid those charges.

How long does it take?

The FCC estimates that it should take about 3 hours but providers seem to have a different view on this. Estimates vary from provider to provider, however 3 days seems to be the average. Do not turn off your old provider immediately as you may find yourself without service if you do. Wait until your number has been moved to a new provider before canceling your old service.

At the current time, about 70% of the USA has access to wireless number portability. Full coverage for the rest of the country will take effect by May 24th, 2004.

How much does it cost?

This varies from provider to provider. However, most of the providers will attempt to lure you by lifting off any charges relating to porting your number.

Did I hear you say I could move from a land line to a mobile line and keep my number?

Yes, you did. While the industry is still trying to fight this provision, it is now in effect so you can change your land line to a mobile one without having to change your number. However, the availability of this may vary from region to region as wireless and land line companies argue over what land lines can and cannot move.

What else?

Wireless number portability is going to herald a new age of competition in the mobile phone space. Expect wireless providers to start offering much better deals as they now have one less way to lock you up.

Today is a great day for wireless consumers so have a happy P-day!

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Number Portability FAQ. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Thursday was a regular day at the office… until about 4pm. At a few minutes ’til 4pm, something happened to the lights in our building. I was looking at my computer screen and noticed a slight dim. As I was wondering whether this was due to lack of coffee or a sugar low, or just general dizziness due to too many hours staring at the screen, the lights went out for a few seconds, and every computers went dead. A few seconds later, the power came back up in the building. Across the street, above the building in which our web servers are hosted, a giant cloud of black smoke erupted. It was at that point I realized we had not only lost electricity for a few seconds but were now running on borrowed time. My phone rang. It was my wife calling to tell me that they had lost power in her office. I told her to stay put and that we would talk soon.

Meanwhile, the building fire alarm went off. A message telling us to evacuate the building was streaming through the different alarm system. After making sure that everyone on my team was heading out, I made my way down the 11th flights of stairs, no real big deal. As we got downstairs, I tried to call Amy. Phone signal at that point was already spotty (as thousands, if not millions of cell phone users tried to make similar calls). I sent Amy a text message instead and this would be our primary form of communication over the next few hours. The wonders of text messaging is that their light load tends to trump phone calls, making them easier to carry on overloaded networks. The same is true for most kind of data traffic currently available on either GSM or GPRS service. Based on that idea, I decided to try to get a little news. Everyone was getting a little edgy, especially considering our past experiences with September 11th. The question on everyone’s mind was, of course, whether it was terrorism. We didn’t know. I tried to calm people down by telling them that we could only assume the best for now.

A connection to CNN.com provided a few more details, highlighting the fact that other major cities were under the same kind of conditions. This made us all feel better as it provided some basic deduction that Indian Point, the local nuclear power station, was not the only part to have blown up. After 15–20 minutes, CNN had a full report with the mention that terrorism had been ruled out. With this in mind, and based on the fact that things were not going to be fixed any time soon, I headed for the Ferry landing with a few co-workers. There, people waited patiently to get their tickets. One of the thing I must add in order to explain that kind of behavior is that most of the people now working in the neighborhood I work in (the Pavonia Newport Center in Jersey City) had been relocated there after September 11th. As a result, many of them were actually veterans of that last disaster and realized that the best way to behave was to be calm.

Apparently, that lesson had been lost on some people on the other side of the river. When we arrived to the 38th street Ferry Landing (about 6:30pm), thousands and thousands of people were trying to do the reverse trip into Jersey. Many of them were very unruly and my fellow passengers and I had to fight our way through the crowd to get out of the area. At that point, my best guess estimate is that there were close to 5000 people congregating in the area. Considering the potentially dangerous combination of large crowds and pissed off people, I decided to head back home by the least crowded route. I assumed side streets would be less crowded than main arteries and that the bike path along the west side might be the best way to move south quickly. Within a few minutes I was on 28th street, walking east from the river.

The street was a little eerie. While I have left behind throngs of people, I now found myself in a neighborhood that was completely deserted. For two blocks I walked without bumping into another soul (a glance up and down the avenues showed that people were still congregating north on 34th street and south on 23rd). By the time I made it to 10th avenue, the crowds had returned. There, civilians had stepped in, attempting to replace the traffic lights by directing what could only be described as traffic pandemonium. Every car in every direction wanted to move. Some cars were trying to head the wrong way down streets and avenues. The result was total gridlock. Once again, figuring that I was planning on getting home and wasn’t trying to be particularly heroic, I walked on.

A few minutes later, I was on the corner of 28th street and Lexington. There, only half a block from home, I felt I could contribute and started trying to direct traffic. Let me just say that this little experience (only about 45 minutes worth of work) gave me new respect for traffic cops. First of all, when directing traffic, one realizes that trying to get a car driver to do your bidding, when you’re just a foot soldier, is not as easy as it seems. For starters, cars are bigger than you are. Secondly, car drivers do not really care that much for pedestrians trying to tell them what to do. So a lot of work went into cajoling drivers into doing the right thing. Some did, got out of the intersections, and let traffic through. Others (and I hope Dante has a particularly bad circle of hell built up for those) could not be bothered and had to have their way, gaining no advantage whatsoever by moving in the middle of intersections and blocking traffic coming from main avenues.

Tired from trying to get all this moving (and a little less optimistic about the good nature of drivers), I went home. Amy was waiting for me in the lobby, wondering where I was (she had gotten home a lot faster than me). We went up the dark stairs with a light lent to us by the doorman and, while there was still light out, gathered up candles, matches, flashlights and oil lamps. After doing so, we filled up the bathtubs with water, figuring that water could be going next. We then called our parents and a few friends to reassure them that everything was OK. I asked mom to hit my site (TNL.net) and she told me it was down.

This all took a few hours, during which we brought more candles down to the lobby (due to our recent wedding, and our indecision as to what the proper candle arrangement would be until the last minute, we found ourselves sitting on what could be consider a godsend on blackout day: a large collection of candles) and Amy started to cook stuff that was in the freezer. We left our door open to throw some light in the hallway and, every so often, a neighbor would stop by. We ended up having a massive dinner with one of our neighbors, during which we talked about just about anything but the blackout. One would hardly have known that we were in the middle of a national crisis, save for the fact that a quick glance out the window showed, well not much, it was dark.

Later that night, we went out for a quick walk around the neighborhood. People had pulled out chairs, beers, and candles, and were generally hanging out. The whole neighborhood had a party feel to it. A few bars and restaurants were still open, cooking on barbecues or running through whatever alcohol they had. A few blocks down, a sushi place for offering dollar sushi. To light their little stand, they had parked a car sideways and were using the car headlights. The streets, surprisingly, were more crowded than they are on a regular day as a lot of people must have figured that no light was the perfect excuse to go bar-hopping. Down on 23rd street, National Guardsmen were directing traffic. Along Park avenue, a few buildings (notably the New York Life Building) were running on generator. With this quick observation, we went back home, climbed up the 8 floors and went to bed.

The alarm clock on my Palm can be a very handy thing in a black-out. Just set up wake up as an event, set up the alarm and you’re done. I woke up at 7am on Friday, as usual. The only difference was that the electricity was gone and my paper had not been delivered. Dropping a bucket into the bathtub and using a washcloth, I did my best to take a quick shower over the toilet, using it as a drain. I then put on some clothes and went down to the computer room. The wireless connection from the Wi-Fi station provided by Verizon seemed to be down. My own DSL router was useless too. However, the phone line was working and the battery on my laptop was still good. I got online using a dialup line (for once, AOL picked up on the first ring, probably because very few other people were trying to get online). There, I received an IM from Charles Rawls, who heads Dorsai. He had gotten juice back around 6am and was working on bringing machines back up. One of those was TNL.net and I posted a quick message telling people I was fine. I sent shot a few work-related emails off, just in case I might not be able to reach people again. I also tried to reach a few of the sites we were hosting at work. All of them were responding OK so I knew that things were pretty much under control at the office. However, the site for our US division, the one where I might be able to get some information as to who to contact in the US, was down.

I tried calling my boss, but he wasn’t answering. One of the things we take for granted in this day and age is the ease of accessibility to people. Mobile phones give us direct access. Answering machines give us delayed access. Without electricity, neither is good. Mobile phone towers only store electricity for a few hours, a critical flaw that, hopefully, will be investigated and resolved in the future. Answering machines are pretty useless without electricity. I tried to reach other people at work but no one was available. So I decided I would hike up to corporate headquarters. Walking up, I passed a few restaurants that were serving barbecue-cooked breakfast. I also passed a few banks that had employees sitting around. Stopping by one of them to check on the ATMs, I learned that all ATMs were down, with suspicion that the whole ATM network may be out. This was bad news so I just tried to head straight to headquarters where, if the ATM network was out, people like myself could be of use.

There, I was told that they didn’t have any information, and was given a phone number. I called but it was ringing busy. With nothing to do there, I decided to just head home again. On my way home, I passed a deli stand that was selling the New York Times. I picked up a copy, figuring that I could read that while redialing the business contingency line. Got home and started dialing. After a few hours of redialing, I gave up. A few hours later, my boss, having received email from me, called me and said that things were under control and that the day was going to go on skeleton staff. With no way to get to the office anyway, I figured I would just stay home, which I did.

We read for a while and then started to get hungry. Food in the fridge was starting to spoil so we decided to throw that away. Through the informal network of people chatting on the phone, we’d found out that other parts of town had power. So we headed out in search of electricity, a laptop and two cellphones in a backpack, and hopes that we would find a place with ATMs, electricity and water. As we were walking out on a power-rich part of town (lower 20s on the west side, around 4:30pm), Amy said that we might want to hike up to the upper west side, where her aunt and uncle had power). A quick call and we were up there, enjoying the power of warm showers and available outlets). We then went to get some prepared food at a nearby store and headed back down to our neighborhood late in the evening. There, we sat down with some of our neighbors for dinner. A few minutes before our arrival, power had finally been restored, to the loud cheers of a neighborhood ready to rejoin civilization). With prepared cooked foods and champagne, we celebrated our good fortune, happy to have survived the blackout of 2003.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Back from the Black-out. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

It’s an interesting trend and one that reminds me of some of the early efforts by Transmeta, which introduced the concept of a software-based computer chip. In both cases, engineers looked at a problem and realized that the best way to address it was to use software instead of hard coding the solution into hardware.

This, of course, represents a compromise in a way as software based solutions cannot be as optimized as hardware based ones. On the other hand, they are offering cheaper alternative to building devices. If you look at today’s world, there are millions (if not billions) of chips with proprietary solution tied into them. Will we see a day when those chips become commodity and software becomes more of the way to go?

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Software Trumps Hardware. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

The Hybrid World Lives!

Many of you may remember the February 10th issue about Hybrid Computing. While talking with Birger Steen, CEO of Scandinavia Online, I discovered that the concept is not that far off the market. It is his contention that WAP-enabled phones are largely a pain in the back when it comes to interface. Having to key in every letter on the small phone keyboard is far from the easiest thing in the world. As a result, Scandinavia Online has developed a set of services that allows users of their portal jump on their site and configure their WAP view on the web. From his point of view, this is the best service he can offer now to wireless users.

The point was reiterated by a few people around the conference that told me that going to the web to configure a cell phone was the best way to deal with the small screen interface problem encountered by most WAP phones. Anne Rasmussen, of WAPportal.net demonstrated how their company plans to offer a similar service in a hosted fashion for corporate sites and others. The word around Scandinavia is that if you want to find the best way to configure a WAP phone, you have to go to the web via a computer to do so.

M-Commerce Huge … but not for Etailers

Another significant trend is the rise of M-commerce. In Finland, and to a lesser extent Denmark, Norway and Sweden, people can already use their WAP phones to buy from vending machines. The vending machine has a telephone number on it. You dial that number and a credit is added to the machine, to be billed on your phone bill. With the introduction of security in the new WAP standards, a few people were talking about how in the future the question “will it be cash, check, credit card, or phone?” may not sound silly.

What they envision is that WAP phones could become the new credit card.

A recent survey found that in Scandinavian countries, 82% of the people would go back to get their cell phone if they forgot it before leaving home, while only 64% would do the same thing if they forgot their wallet. The basic concept is one that may be foreign to those of us who live in the United States and revolves largely around the fact that GSM phones are equipped with a small identification chip called a SIM card. You can take the chip out of one phone and put it in another and you don’t have to worry about changing phone number or contact info.

Because of the emergence of such a way to do billing, some of the speakers at the conference predicted that the long run path for mobile phone operators would be to merge with financial institutions as their services will increasingly resemble those of credit card companies.

However, few people were optimistic about the prospects of etailers when it comes to mobile phones. “When I’m in a store buying something, I’m not going to go up on the web to check if it’s available at a web store,” told me one attendant. “I want to get it now and not wait a few days for it to show up in the mail.”

As a result, the promise of m-commerce is good for software vendors (who will sell packages that allow operators to set themselves up as currency clearinghouse) and mobile phone operators (who could become the next big financial force) but unfortunately, current etailers will not fare as well.

Content is King… in a Wireless Republic

The promise of advertising supported content on wireless phone has been hailed by some as a new way to support content sites. Unfortunately, few content providers will survive in the wireless space as demand for those services does not seem to meet expectations. Talking with people from the Scandinavian arm of large American companies who have tried to go the wireless route as a distribution channel, I discovered that there was not much demand for those services. “Sure, people do check the price of their stock on the phones but they still call our voice line to place their order,” said one executive from an online trading company.

As a general rule, the demand for content seems to be limited to a few areas: entertainment (bars, clubs, and restaurants locators), financial (stock prices) and sport-related (latest scores). However, many of the people involved in those areas told me that they were still looking for a proper business model. The locators are looking at a coupon-like scheme, whereas bars can offer a special coupon and people can go to a bar and show the phone coupon to get a rebate on drinks (“It appears that beer is the hot wireless app” quipped one panelist). Financial services and sports services are currently looking at possible subscription based models or at deals with operators whereas they would share a portion of the revenue they are generating for the operators.

CN U RD THS

On the other hand, communication in the hot wireless app. SMS has clearly become the hot app when it comes to wireless service across Scandinavia and across Europe. Because operators are charging lower rates for data services than they are for voice traffic, short messaging has become the quickest way for people to get in touch. A new lingo is starting to pop up around SMS as people are trying to economize the number of keystroke they type (SMS messages are limited to 160 characters). As a result, the headline for this section would translate from CN U RD THS to Can you read this?

Convergence in the Making

I also talked to a bartender who told me that the previous night a woman was in the bar looking for some of her friends and asked him if he could change the TV channel to a particular teletext page (in a lot of European countries, TV channel use the extra bandwidth to carry data. As a result, while watching the BBCyou could switch to the BBC teletext channel and read the latest news, etc… on there). The channel this woman was using allowed her to converse with several of her friends in a TV-based chat room by using her phone and an SMS gateway. True convergence in my book but the problem here is where revenues for an online operator are. Unfortunately, the only operators who will make money on this will be the phone operators who are racking up extra data minutes of usages.

Smaller, Faster, Cheaper

The good news, from a user’s point of view, though, is that those services are coming in a smaller package. A lot of the phones I saw over there would put our American phones to shame. On average, European phones are now weighing about 2.78 ounces (79 g.), a form factor of 3.9 X 1.75 X .6 inches (101.5 X 44.5 X 17 mm.), and a battery life that allows for either 150 hours of standby time or 4 hours of talk time. Of course, they come equipped with voice recognition (so you can have the number dial based on a name you give to it), predictive text input (a new set of tools for SMS which allows the phone to predict what word you’re going to type based on your input), and are WAP ready. The most interesting thing is that they usually are priced under $200 which makes me feel that we’re overpaying in the US.

The future is now?

The new thing around that space, though, is not a smaller phone or a better way to do e-commerce but a new set of services around higher speeds of access. The first step in that direction is GPRS, which offers about 20kb per second and has been rolled out around Europe. This is seen as a way to distribute such services as music and better news on the phones. However, the real discussion is centering on UMTS which promises wireless throughputs of 2Mb per second or more. Portions of the UMTS spectrum have already been allocated in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Norway and Finland, with the rest of Europe moving quickly on allocating this space. UMTS proponents envision the use of wireless video conferencing and a better Internet experience to result from this new development.

Euro Fighting

One of the big challenge in terms of doing business in Europe is location. Because most of the European countries are too small to create an actual market for digital services, European operators usually have to provides sites in multiple languages, and support multiple currencies. As a result, European etailers tend to be in favor of the Euro, which would make their lives a little easier. However, as the currency is slowly deflating in the currency market, opposition to the Euro is growing across Europe. On September 26, Denmark is holding a vote on whether to join the Eurozone or not and this election is seen across Europe as a big test for the Euro’s power.

The reason it the Danish election is so important in Europe is that if the Danish vote fails, England’s upcoming vote will probably do so too. As a result, there is a lot of concern across Europe about this election. Many etailers I met in Copenhagen told me that they were trying to organize themselves to push for adoption and work across borders when it comes to those election. Danes I talked to told me that British conservative politicians (who are opposed to joining the Eurozone) had been lobbying in Denmark. This is a race that etailers both in Europe and the United States should pay attention to as it will most probably dictate the viability of the Euro as a currency and, if the Euro succeeds, could mean less headaches to all of us.

Going beyond Economic matters, support or lack thereof could mean either an acceleration or a slowdown for eEurope, a new initiative by the European Union to become a force in the information age by normalizing rules related to e-commerce across the difference members of the EU and offering incentives to companies that want to bring net services to the EU marketplace. Among the initiative supported under eEurope are net access in public schools and public centers, lower access costs for businesses and individuals, agreement on common specifications for a smart card infrastructure, financial support for emerging tech companies and a number of social support and government services becoming available to all via the Internet.

All and all, what eEurope would mean is that countries would work in the EU government to set up rules about the Internet. I do not need to tell anyone reading this that it would be better for those of us in the industry as we would not have to lobby several governments in order to get the proper support for our industry.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title From Scandinavia With Love. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Last week, while on a business trip in California, I bumped into what may be the largest barrier to a wireless Internet: lack of connectivity.

San Francisco had OK coverage but the Silicon Valley, supposedly ground zero for the Internet revolution, seemed to lack the proper infrastructure. At any moment, your connectivity is jeopardized and a move of a few feet can make all the difference in the world between connection and lack thereof. All and all, a sad state of affairs.

However, it was perfectly understandable, considering all the hills and valleys covering the area. What is more worrisome is that I have yet to find someone else addressing this issue. In the last week, I have talked with several people in that area and most of them looked at wireless internet access as somewhat of an oddity. All the people I talked to are actively involved in the Internet industry, either as I-builders, content developers, or software manufacturers. All of them took it for granted that bad cellular coverage and lack of reception was a fact of life. A lot of them were involved in wireless development.

What does all this mean? It means that we are dealing with people developing applications without really using them. Is that good? I doubt it. From my point of view, one can only make truly revolutionary advances in a field if he or she lives within that environment.

So the progress will have to come from somewhere else. Last year, I warned of Europe potentially becoming centerstage to the Internet revolution; This year, I am starting to see proof of that.

In Finland, Nokia has already connected most of the country with a very impressive WAP network. 65% of the people have cell phones and most of those are WAP enabled. Want to check a movie time or restaurant reviews, you can do so, using WAPit, one of the largest portals in the world for WAP applications (unfortunately, most of the content is in Finnish so if you dot know the language, is pretty difficult to use).

Most people over there send short e-mail like messages over the SMS protocol. At 160 characters per message, you cannot say much but is enough for “Meet you at the movie theater at 7pm” or “Lunch?”

In Spain, Motorola and Packet Video recently demonstrated wireless video over a GPRS ( the next generation of high speed GSM) network. For the Barcelona exhibition, both streaming and live video content are being provided from the Internet and a selection of web cameras, and transported across the Motorola end-to-end GPRS solution to the end-user device. The web cameras are situated at PacketVideo’s headquarters in San Diego, at the Barcelona congress centre itself, and at the Invisix centre of excellence in London, a Motorola/Cisco joint venture says the press release.

In Japan, the revolution is in color. A recent survey by Nikkei Market Access showed that over half of the Japanese phones produced this year will have color LCD screens. Those will be use to not only surf the web (in full color) but also potentially to do videoconferencing over GPRS.

Why is progress happening outside to the US? Quite simply put, because they have agreed on a standard (GSM) and are now all working on building its next generation. In the US, we are crippled by a number of different proposals from each of the providers, which has crippled progress as each company goes its own way developing its own proprietary network and technology.

What is needed now is for the American wireless service providers to sit down and agree on implementing GSM. Once that first step is accomplished, they will then need to figure out a system to charge each others back for carrying a competitors traffic on their network. Here’s how it would work. At some set times, the wireless service providers would sit down and agree on a standard and a rollout schedule. Once that is accomplished, they would jointly rollout GSM networks all over the country and work on building a system that would allow anyone to use anyone else’s wireless network. The companies would then charge each others back at the end of the month for all the minutes that non-subscribers have spent on their network. The result would be increase coverage for everyone, but may be a little more expensive than the service we have nowadays.

Where phone companies would innovate is on package of new services they could offer and still on the discounting schemes they already offer.

The customers might have to pay a little more for service from their provider but they will not have to worry whether they are running on AT&T, Sprint, or someone else’s network.

Crazy concept? I dot think so. Do you worry about whose network you’re running on when you are making a long distance call on your landline? No, you do not and the kind of agreement I am talking about already exists among telcos in that space. Why should it be different in the wireless world?

You’re probably wondering why any company would agree to something like this? How about to regain a leadership position in the world market and allow to use your phone anywhere. If such a plan were to be put in place, you could technically have the same phone whether you are in the US or in another country and the wireless provider could expand into overseas markets more easily. Foreigners are already starting to get onto the American market (British company Vodafone, for example, merged its American wireless operations with Bell Atlantic). If American companies want to continue their growth, thell have to expand overseas.

Last but not least, the Internet industry will have to eventually push for something along those lines if it truly wants the wireless revolution to happen. Otherwise, the US will still remain one of the most disconnected country in the world.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title It’s Connectivity, Stupid!. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.