Versatile Amphibian

France became the latest country in Europe to successfully allocate its 800MHz spectrum today, achieving a rather higher sum than they expected. Not much more to say on the subject, expect that Orange France came within a whisker of breaking the record for amount paid per-person, per MHz for the LTE spectrum. Only T-Mobile in Germany paid more - EUR0.73 vs EUR0.71, demonstrating that even the current economic malaise hasn't dented enthusiasm for next generation communications.

I’m firmly of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye this week. Digital media Worth a flick through, although interesting that the website is buggy if you’re not using Chrome. Sign of the times? http://www.googlezeitgeist.com/en# The arrogance of the music industry is astounding – why should Megaupload take down something that was legitimately produced and paid for? Do you think there might be a reason the labels and publishers are dying out? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/judge-gives-umg-24-hours-to-explain-takedown-spree.ars Emerging markets Old news that I’ve just stumbled on again - I believe that these gateways hold the key for African telecoms networks as onshore cabling becomes more widespread. Malawi is land locked, but could still play a hub role in onshore connectivity. http://www.te...

This morning, O2 announced that it would offer a handset leasing proposition for UK mobile phone customers . Regular readers will recall that I've been thinking about this for a couple of years now and blogged about it in May 2010 (if only I'd talked to O2 about it). On the specific deal in question, I thought it was worth working out who benefits from this deal. The answer, to put no finer point on it, is O2. Financially, that is. The total price of 12 months of £55 a month contract is £660, but you have to take off 12*£20 = £240 for the airtime, so the handset cost equates to £440 for a £499 phone, which would be worth £325 in perfect condition after 12 months. If you stumped up the full amount for the handset then you’d have spent a net of £174 for the device. If you leased from O2 you’ve paid £440, so the effective cost is £266 for a new phone every 12 months. A great model for O2, as they’re effectively pocketing that £266 in addition to their profit on the service. c.20%...

A short list from me this week as I’ve been travelling and therefore reading on the iPhone! Breakthrough technology If Intel can pull this off then it will give them an advantage against ARM in the mobile processor space. Our ability to fab smaller, faster architectures makes it possible to create processors with more tailored computing units, increasing efficiency and therefore decreasing power consumption http://www.mobile-ent.biz//news/read/putting-ar-on-the-chipset I just like satellites – an amazing piece of technology http://holykaw.alltop.com/a-short-history-of-satellites-video The baseband processes radio signals and manages the wireless transmissions of a cell. Moving this processing into the cloud will be a trend in network builds in 2012 as operators seek to create more dense, but also more cost-efficient radio networks. http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2011/12/08/korea-telecom-plans-worlds-commercial-cloud-ran.htm Media business models I’m perplexed by this judgement too – t...

$907Mn of investment in African telecoms was announced in November, much of it related to deepening of mobile network capacity in markets where subscriber growth is ongoing. One of those may well be Nigeria, where regulatory action to enforce subscriber registration has led to a reduction in SIM numbers to about 93Mn. Interestingly, this action has co-incided with 5th operator Etisalat pledging to invest in an additional 1,000 basestations next year to take advantage of what now looks like substantial headroom for growth.

I’m firmly of the belief that participants in the TMT industry need to read widely in order to understand the present and future dynamics of the market. To that end, this post is a collection of the articles that have caught my eye this week. Technology evolution Tiny steps towards standardised communications in cars, but positive. The big, long term gambit must be to connect the cars themselves together to enhance safety and navigation, while reducing fuel consumption. http://www.reghardware.com/2011/11/28/bmw_and_fiat_join_connected_car_consortium/ More bad news for AMD. This time they’ve compounded the error of creating an architectural dud by alienating the fab that makes said dud (and used to be a part of AMD). The implications are potentially disastrous for AMD’s 2012 and 2013 line ups as switching fabs means redesigning the product. Bad times in Sunnyvale. http://www.extremetech.com/computing/106217-manufacturing-bombshell-amd-cancels-28nm-apus-starts-from-scratch-at-tsmc The ra...