Versatile Amphibian

Last week was a bit of a busy one, but I still had chance for a bit of reading. Here’s a brief roundup of stories from the TMT industry that caught my eye. This week: Google vs Facebook in Internet Risk, goodbye  Google TV, cars drive themselves (but not in Canada), kids break Murdoch’s tabs Traditional business models FT says that its print product will henceforth derive from the digital. I’m not so sure that’s really practical. There’s a big difference between the fast twitch, unlimited word count world of the web and the more structured, quality-first print product. There’ll be two newsrooms for a long time yet. http://gigaom.com/2013/10/09/financial-times-our-print-product-will-derive-from-the-web-offering-not-vice-versa/ BT bows to the inevitable and goes back into mobile. I think they’ll do well, since BT Retail has seemingly figured out how to do product marketing. Bad signs for O2 though, who now have the poorest spectrum asset in the UK and seem to be goin...

One of the big themes at this year’s Mobile World Congress was the integration of multiple radio access standards into a single, seamless wireless connectivity system. Variously called “off-loading” and “small cell”, the idea is to provide mobile device users with seamless access to many different technologies simultaneously, providing a massive boost to quality of service. I visited many of the major vendors at MWC – what follows is a few words on the small cell market. Wi-Fi has been a growing part of the industry for a number of years, particularly in densely populated countries like the UK and cities like New York, however it has hitherto been a somewhat unsophisticated system, requiring separate authentication and lacking decent quality of service. All that has changed in the last year or so as technologies from the cellular industry, such as beam-forming and handover techniques have found their way into mainstream solutions. The objective is to create a system that aggregates mac...

I just read this story about Ian Livingstone's comment that bidding for Digital Dividend spectrum was not high on BT's agenda. I find this astonishing! Fibre rollout is all very well, but in my opinion BT desperately needs to find some engine for growth in its business. With its fixed network assets it would be perfectly positioned to deploy an LTE network rapidly and efficiently, not to mention bundle mobile services into its fixed packages. Selling Cellnet was a necessary evil back in the day, but to pass up an opportunity to re-enter the market seems madness. With Orange and T-Mobile now merged and Three a pauper, there is spectrum waiting to be acquired at a price that is surely far, far below that achieved in 3G (if the pattern seen to date in Europe continues). I do hope this is a bit of casual game theory from Mister Livingstone as a non-LTE capable BT Retail should be easy prey for the mobile telcos and Virgin.