According to Reuters news, Juniper said on Monday its new software includes Juniper Traffic Direct which, used together with its MX 3D routers, can help mobile carriers reduce network congestion and infrastructure costs.

Another software product, Juniper Media Flow, will be targeted specifically at helping wireless carriers deliver applications like video and music, the company said, adding that they will be available from the second quarter.

Kim Perdikou, executive vice president and general manager of Juniper’s infrastructure products group, said many of the
company’s mobile carrier customers were struggling with the costs of managing wireless Internet traffic.

“As smartphones started to be implemented over the past two years…, the actual economics of how much traffic is delivered to the smartphone is beginning to break,” she said. “It’s not as though revenue is rising with the cost.”

I have call into Juniper to get more info and I will be in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress. Hope to have more of an angle by then. Right now I'm waiting for some information to come in that might make this story more interesting.

For now looks like mobile continues to be hot! Just this past weekend I wrote a story about the Mobile Meltdown. This market is so hot that I believe that we might just be heading for a meltdown.

It is expected that at next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Juniper Networks will launch products that integrate mobile networks into its MX 3D Universal Edge routers and let third party vendors integrate their applications into mobile networks.

Open Is The New Black

According to Computerworld it is being reported that the Junos Space network application platform will be an open mobile core network for third-party developers and the operators themselves, so they can develop and run their own applications, The products and platform will ship next quarter.

There was some article recently that said no one can challenge Cisco. I think that fundamentally an open strategy can be a "judo like" strategy for a Juniper and others to take down Cisco. If Cisco underestimates the convergence and pushes it's same old agenda of one vendor at all costs (when the world is going multi-vendor) then they could get tossed in key markets.

For mobile carries the question about Cisco is the conflict question as I wrote about last week. I said

Now, I'm seeing many service providers focusing on making money by delivering and monetizing user interactions (content and services). So what I'm hearing is that many service providers are saying to Cisco "Are you a content provider or a you an over the top yourself".

Growth in Network Usage - A Tsunami of Packets

Meanwhile, Stacy Higginbotham at Gigaom posts a study that validates this growing mobile broadband market. The report was released by Cisco which puts some meat on the bone to the obvious speculation that the network is growing leaps and bounds.

The Cisco study also highlights the battle between Juniper and Cisco or for that matter Cisco verses the world.

Stacy writes:

Cisco forecasts that by 2014 we will be using 3.6 exabytes a month on mobile networks worldwide, according to its Visual Networking Index figures released today. (For those pondering an exabyte, it’s equal to 1 billion gigabytes or half a trillion MP3 files.) And by 2014, we’re apparently going to be sucking down 40 exabytes annually from our mobile broadband networks, up from a total of 1.08 exabytes in all of 2009.
Some snapshots of the study
* Global mobile data traffic has increased by 160 percent over the past year to 90 petabytes per month — the equivalent of 23 million DVDs.
* Global mobile data traffic today is growing today 2.4 times faster than global fixed broadband data traffic.
* Smartphones and laptop air cards will drive more than 90 percent of global mobile traffic by 2014.
* Of the anticipated traffic, Wi-Fi offload and other offload will only reduce mobile data use by 25 percent by 2014.
* Global mobile video traffic is forecasted to be 2.3 exabytes per month by 2014.
* By 2014, more than 400 million of the world’s Internet users will access the network solely through a mobile connection.
* Today, smartphones are only 10 percent of all handsets in use, but generate over 50 percent of global mobile data handset traffic.

It's an exciting time for developers and anything cloud / mobile and the ability for carriers and cloud providers to deliver value in services and applications. The delivery of the applications is all about the successful and correctly deploying and aligning and assuring the availability of resources for the entire application. People have to get out of the notion of single network mindset and into the concept of an application as a network service. This is game is changing and an opportunity for upstarts to challenge the market leaders.

For an interesting take on cloud and infrastructure listen to my interview with Simon Crosby the cofounder of XenSource and not CTO of Citrix.

Mobile News: Juniper Getting Stronger In Mobile – Research Validates The Market is a post from: SiliconANGLE Subcribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

1 Comments

furrier says: February 9, 2010 9:27 am Juniper announces new open mobile core – http://bit.ly/bvNFb9 – i’m digging into this further more later This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

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Here is the entire conversation. You can download the MP3 or listen via the embedded player below.

Enjoy the conversation. I know that I did.

Select notes from my conversation with Citrix CTO Simon Crosby

Talk about Citrix as compared to VMWare

Most people think of virtualization as hypervisor based virtualization. From Citrix’s perspective this is only one aspect of Citrix’s view of virtualization. Citrix is an application delivery company and having a set of tools of which fall into the virtualization category is handy. Virtualization of the hypervisor variety is just an emergent property of Moore’s law. It seem ridiculous to purchase a new server (from Intel) with a bunch of processors in them, and then to pay VMWare to be able to use all the capacity is just nuts.

Citrix view is that the layer of stuff should just be free. It's a component of the stack. The value and the things to charge for comes from putting that layer of technology to work for some task for IT.

Citrix philosophy entirely different than VMWare. Citrix comes from the application delivery angle down. Having a hypervisor is an important component, but not the most important part. Citrix virtualizes the presentation layer, virtualizes between application and OS, virtualizes the user profiles, and dynamically compose virtual machines, etc.

It is really the dynamic composition of the IT stack on the fly based upon identifying who the user is, what the application is, where to run it, and how it should to run. This is where the composition notion becomes very powerful where virtualization plays a role – delivering the ultimate flexibility and the lowest cost of management.

What’s New In The Virtualization Market

It’s been amazing to see how rapidly the cloud thing has happened. The whole concept of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds would not have happened where it not for Xen. Lets be clear about one thing. The cloud came from open source, and that drove the adoption of platforms like Amazon.

VMWare had nothing to do with the cloud trend.

It’s great that IaaS clouds are maturing their offerings and that CIOs are all talking about cloud deployments. What isn't being talked about much though is the notion of handing out certain core competencies or IT tasks to 3rd party. Ultimately the cloud is about a labor issue.

CIOs are looking at moving their silo’d organization forward into something more dynamic. This is the big deal. There are two ways of moving to the cloud.

1) go down the internal private cloud path which requires retraining staff around the concepts of cloud

and

2) just start using public clouds and that has taken off in a big big way – big providers like Amazon.

Cloud is a big deal and it’s happening now.

On VMWare and Cloud

VMWare is handing it’s stuff out at massive discounts to try to get into the cloud game. VMWare has a flawed cloud strategy. VMWare's cloud strategy is flawed on two of their main assumptions:

VMWare Flaw #1:

VMWare say to the cloud that you have to run VMWare because the enterprise runs VMWare. The assertion is that the VMs created in the enterprise won’t run in the cloud unless the cloud is built on VMWare. If it turns out that the enterprise customer has to demand that the cloud vendors run on VMWare then the whole concept of the cloud is broken.

VMWare Cloud Flaw #2:

VMWare has a prescriptive notion of what the services are that one can offer in the cloud – they built the entire stack. This offers no differentiation and this means that most cloud providers (running on VMWare) will go out of business. If everyone goes off an builds a VMWare based cloud the ones that will succeed are the ones that can build the biggest cloud the fastest.

I don’t see any viable opportunities for cloud vendors if all of them are offering a homogeneous set of services designed by one company called VMWare. That whole concept is broken.

In general, what Citrix is trying to do is provide a rich palette of service functions that cloud providers can expose and then decide which ones to expose to their customers. Moreover, Citrix is actively working on architectural structure with various clouds and vendors to enable enterprise class cloud service then have been possible in the past.

Security Feature on VMWare – VMSafe Is All Nonsense

There isn’t a single vendor that can use VMWare's security features. VMSafe can inspect packet flow, inspect block IO, and inspect memory of any running guest. The black hat community has documented that ‘cracking’ the memory of a guest will open up the entire jewels of every guest on the hypervisor. This is a big problem for VMWare’s security model.

VMWare unveiled VMSafe over a year ago and no one is using it.

Should Cloud APIs be standardized? If there was a standard then all the clouds would look the same. Why would the cloud vendors want that? Also the internals of each cloud vendor is different and differentiated.

Where is the value added?

Goal is more security and more performance. That is to push functions to the hardware. The software role of the hypervisor will decrease with better faster hardware. Soon IO bottlenecks are going away completely, and the hypervisor simply becomes a provisioning entity and scheduling entity with very light interactions with the guests. It’s a new locus for injection of policy for the dynamic control and securing of workloads in the infrastructure.

Challenge for Virtualization

The big challenge for virtualization is to get up and out of the IT mindset. Think about it the whole concept of virtual machines. It's an IT administrator thing - around a "M" a machine to manage. At the end of the day the IT job is to deliver applications, and those applications today are sophisticated things composed of multiple runtime entities or multiple virtual machines.

The delivery of the applications is all about the successful and correctly deploying and aligning and assuring the availability of resources for the entire application. People have to get out of the notion of single machine mindset and into the concept of an application as a unitary thing that gets managed though its’ lifecycle of the infrastructure.

Next big step up is to understand the metadata that wraps around an application - how it configured, where it runs, what access to storage and networking, how it is secured, and to holistically managed through its’ lifecycle. This is where the game is changing.

Ecosystem Game – Citrix Will Buy Right Company and Partner With Others

Citrix will buy companies that have important features that Citrix customers want. Other areas they are open to partnering. Citrix is a multi-vendor player. Security is top priority and partnering with folks who are core in that is Citrix’s goal. Citrix is a very open company.

Opportunities

People building hardware have an opportunity to build hypervisor on the board. In general storage is far from done. The big area where there will a glorious fight over the next few years will be networking.

The last hop switch is now on the server and that presents a challenge to the incumbent players (like Cisco) because their value prop has been the last hop and implement all the IT services layers. Given that the old networking companies are not the last hop, gives an opportunity to new players. New players can come in and do way cool things in networking that were not possible because barriers to enter that market have in past been high. Those barriers are now reduced.

Citrix CTO Simon Crosby: “VMWare Had Nothing To Do With The Cloud Trend. Their Strategy is Flawed” is a post from: SiliconANGLE Subcribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

7 Comments

furrier says: February 9, 2010 9:14 am posted my interview with simon crosby cto of citrix and cofounder of xensource http://bit.ly/9pcf51 This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

furrier says: February 9, 2010 9:14 am simon crosby was critical big time of VMWare http://bit.ly/9pcf51 some VMWare data here that’s interesting This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

furrier says: February 9, 2010 9:15 am crosby says Lets be clear about one thing. Cloud came from open source $ that drove the adoption of Amazon http://bit.ly/9pcf51 This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

sldfjd says: February 9, 2010 9:22 am [ff] John Furrier: posted my interview with simon crosby cto of citrix and cofounder of xensource http://bit.ly/9pcf51: http://url4.eu/1M0Aj This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

sureddy says: February 9, 2010 9:25 am Simon: delivery of the apps is all abt deploying & aligning & assuring the availability of resources for the entire app http://bit.ly/9pcf51 This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

sureddy says: February 9, 2010 9:25 am RT @furrier: crosby says Lets be clear about one thing. Cloud came from open source $ that drove the adoption of Amazon http://bit.ly/9pcf51 This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

Surendra Reddy says: February 9, 2010 9:43 am I do agree with Simon on: The delivery of the applications is all about the successful and correctly deploying and aligning and assuring the availability of resources for the entire application. People have to get out of the notion of single machine mindset and into the concept of an application as a unitary thing that gets managed though its’ lifecycle of the infrastructure. . Proliferation of all kinds of scripted automation and lack of uniform or cohesive way to characterize the application and its operating environment characteristics lead to tying up the application to the hardware. Metadata will liberate applications from the Iron and Network; provides comprehensive metrics/metadata about the applications and its environment enabling it much smarter than ever before. As Simon stated, Networking is going to be another interesting area open for innovation and game changer opportunities. Reply

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Mobclix has struck a deal to integrate Nielsen’s ad targeting data into its mobile ad exchange, the two announced today, the latest effort to deliver highly targeted mobile ads. The pact allows Mobclix to resell Nielsen’s PRIZM and ConneXions products, which slot consumers into more than 150 segments based on lifestyle and usage patterns. Marketers will be able to target pitches based on a user’s age and gender as well as location, spending power and tech savviness.

I think it’s more telling what isn’t said by both the press releases as well as the write-ups as to what this actually means for the mobile monetization business.

Both John Furrier and I have pretty full experience in the podcasting world, and we both watched the Association for Downloadable Media form, and the effects of Nielsen joining both the organization and the world of podcasting itself.

It’s important to note that what happened there, and the subsequent certification of analytics of outfits like Wizzard Media is not what’s happening here with Mobclix.

First of all, it’s important to note that the Mobclix-Nielsen relationship is an exclusive one, meaning they won’t have this sort of relationship with any other mobile provider, regardless of size. Given that the big companies like Apple and Google are already jumping into the game with programs of their own as well as acquisitions of their own, it’s unlikely that a cross-platform certification is going to happen as it did in the world of podcasting.

This, I think, will hinder the more mainstream acceptance by Madison Avenue type shops the idea of commoditized mobile advertising.

Even Nielsen Doesn’t Have a Handle on This

There’s a reason why Nielsen’s PR flacks are trumpeting this announcement as loudly as Mobclix: this is a credibility-building exercise.

About six months ago, John Furrier and I sat on the phone with experts at Nielsen while we were vetting Millennial Media as a potential sponsor for the site, just to get a handle on the business.  While the call with Nielsen was valuable, it was quite clear that they didn’t have much of an idea as to what was going on with the world of mobile advertising the way they did on the Web or with podcasting.

The word used repeatedly was “nascent.” There are just too many ways to advertise and too many ways to measure it for a standard to have emerged yet, and this move by Nielsen with Mobclix will help them get a better handle on it so that they can make their next move – certification of CPMs, or whatever other factors (like engagement) they decide to run with.

[Editor’s Note: Millennial Media, a player in this sector, is a sponsor and early partner company to SiliconANGLE. –mrh]

What Does the Mobclix-Nielsen Deal Really Mean? [Reading Between the Lines] is a post from: SiliconANGLE Subcribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

3 Comments

furrier says: February 8, 2010 1:54 pm RT @siliconangle SiliconANGLE — Blog — What Does the Mobclix-Nielsen Deal Really Mean? [Reading Between the Li… http://tinyurl.com/y8lqcs9 This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

sldfjd says: February 8, 2010 3:12 pm [ff] John Furrier: What Does the Mobclix-Nielsen Deal Really Mean? [Reading Between the Lines]: http://url4.eu/1LY5v This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

furrier says: February 8, 2010 10:06 pm RT @siliconangle SiliconANGLE — Blog — What Does the Mobclix-Nielsen Deal Really Mean? [Reading Between the Li… http://tinyurl.com/y8lqcs9 This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

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Pretend it’s still CES…it’s been a long month.  As Editor Rizzn says, you don’t read us for quick snippets, you read us for analysis.  Maybe even insight, at least occasionally.

When we left off four weeks ago, I’d just broken the news that magicJack was stirring up the telecom market once again, with the announcement of their forthcoming femtocell, which I (and now most others) call the “femtojack”.  After Dan’s team published their release on the femtojack, I was inundated with a ton of technical and regulatory questions.  I’m not going to attempt to answer them here—not only is doing so magicJack’s job, but I’d rather focus on a topic I consider more compelling—customer service, particularly in the context of making things right.

What’s the secret to success for just about any company?  Ideas.  Innovation.  Passion.  Execution.  The magicJackers are short on none of these.  Borislow and his team exude passion, whether discussing hardware, software, networking, saving consumers money, or their competition.  I have to laugh at some outlets taking Dan to task for swearing when describing a competitor.  You know what?  Good for him—this walking-on-eggshells, politically correct world in which we live today can be stifling.  I enjoy hearing someone call it like it is.  Precious few entrepreneurs are willing to publicly call out their competition, out of fear that doing so might hurt fundraising efforts.  Less need to raise capital means less need to do or say the politically correct thing.  Free the mind, and the mouth will follow.  Or something like that.  Exhibit A: Mark Cuban.  He’s having fun.

(Speaking of having fun, just for goofing around sake, we conducted a fairly unique magicJack call—Dan’s laptop using a magicJack connected to the world via a Sprint 4G modem to my Mac using a magicJack connected to the world via my a Verizon MiFi.  And it worked!)

While most people think “magicJack” (which is how I refer to them for simplicity’s sake) as the company itself, the actual parent company is named YMAX.  YMAX owns magicJack, but they also own and operate a voice network, and own companies dedicated to software and hardware development, among other things.  What makes this particularly cool is that Dan has assembled the entire end-to-end ecosystem to minimize risk in his business equation.  While owning each component by no means ensures success, ownership enables integration on a scale all but impossible for the typical system developer—and rest assured, magicJack is a system, rather than a couple of best-effort Internet clients common in most VOIP offerings.

Case in point—magicJack’s silicon subsidiary has developed a chip integrating unheard-of capability for the cost.  Don’t believe me?  The femtojack’s core silicon contains technology for echo cancellation; serial flash; a CD-ROM emulator; controllers for GSM and the femtocell; audio codecs; and subscriber line (SLIC) and USB interfaces—and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting.  When you do the math on the bill of materials to bring this type of device to market at a price of $40-$50, you begin to understand just how large-scale this integration actually is.

Right then.  Back to customer service.

A year ago, I had no experience with magicJack.  When I showed up at the It Won’t Stay in Vegas CES party, one of the pieces of swag was magicJack.  I grabbed a couple, both for testing use in the lab and for use from overseas.  During the sign-up process, I was dismayed to see a really lousy effort on privacy, with the user required to give up a bunch of personally identifiable information (PII) before even seeing magicJack’s privacy policy.  That was bogus, and I called out magicJack, challenging them to resolve this.

Shortly after my post, I received e-mails from both magicJack’s PR person and from Borislow himself.  I couldn’t quite figure out if I’d lightly struck a nerve or thoroughly pissed him off, but we ended up parrying in a conversation both on the blog and privately on e-mail.  Dan stressed how much progress they’d made in improving their customer service ratings over the previous year, as well as their commitment to ongoing customer care.  As most readers know, all too often this type of talk isn’t worth the paper it’s not written on—basically, it’s bullshit with a capital BULL.

Except, in this case, it wasn’t.  Dan made the commitment that they were going to get better, and they did, going from an F from the Better Business Bureau to an A- today.  That’s snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.  Yow.  You don’t make a transition like this overnight…so how did they do it?

Dan realized that he had a company-defining issue, one requiring an innovative solution that a typical call center couldn’t handle.  As part of reinventing magicJack’s approach to customer service, he set some very aggressive goals—first and foremost, establishing customer communication in less than five seconds.  How could a company with this type of growth rate achieve such a high customer satisfaction rate while keeping costs low enough to maintain margins and operational efficiency?  Off-shoring.

But, not your typical off-shoring.

Most readers are familiar with the debacle so many companies have encountered when off-shoring technical support, leading to lost customers, negative press, and eventually re-on-shoring (perhaps coining a term…maybe “repatriating” would be better.).  magicJack decided to offshore to countries with a wealth of competent English writers/readers—but to only offer support via online chat.  Why?  Economies of scale.  An operator taking a voice call can address a single issue at a time.  An operator conducting an online chat can handle up to five incidents simultaneously, maintaining the efficiency that magicJack must have to deliver quality service at a cut-rate price.  Beyond that, the percentage of English-fluent readers/writers is (in Dan’s estimation) as much as ten times higher than the pool of English-fluent speakers—meaning, someone who has learned written English is a great tech support employee for magicJack, regardless of how well that person actually speaks English, or how strong a spoken accent might be.  A bigger pool of applicants means better-qualified customer service agents, a more competitive internal support environment, and a better overall solution.

Dan had one of his team members walk me through their back-end support setup, allowing me to watch typed chat exchanges between real, live customers scattered across the globe.  I must say, magicJack’s system is pretty sweet—efficient, effective, and extremely beneficial from a cost standpoint.

I mentioned that agents service multiple customer support chats simultaneously.  Eavesdropping on the screen of an agent half a world away who’s conducting three, four, five simultaneous chats made me think of two things—instant messaging and intentional latency.  Watching an agent move from chat window to chat window to chat window reminded me why I don’t use traditional IM clients, and why I only log into Skype when I actually need to chat with someone.  If a bunch of chat windows were my job, I think I’d be great at it, but since it’s not, I’ll remain largely IM-free.  “Intentional latency” may not be the exact term, but it’s a concept that’s stuck with me since taking a class from Jim Carlini at Northwestern two decades ago—the concept that an automated call distribution (ACD) system is as valuable for routing calls to the proper operator as it is in training customers to not expect the phone to be picked up on the first ring. 

Outside of Southwest Airlines, I can’t think of the last time I called any service provider who didn’t make me go through a phone chain to reach the proper person.  (Thanks, Southwest.)  I’m conditioned to deal with some amount of delay (and angst) before reaching somebody who can actually help me out.  With magicJack’s agents supporting multiple chats at once, customers can see a delay of 10-20 seconds or more from the time they end up typing a response until the agent begins his or her own response.  But, since that’s set as the norm, I don’t think customers do too much teeth-gnashing.  Chats are initiated quickly, usually in less than five seconds; agents keep the customers engaged; and most importantly, customers anonymously grade the agent at the end of the chat.

Grades.  Not just for schoolwork any more.

I love the grading concept.  I wish that more customer service interactions could be graded immediately upon completion.  A couple of weeks ago, United had a big fail at ORD, when their inability to get a jetway to a gate-arrived airplane for 11 minutes caused four of us on a flight to SFO to misconnect, even through the SFO airplane was still on the gate; based on the number of us who were ready to burst out of the starting gates to get off of our plane, I know that we weren’t the only four who ended up missing connections we should’ve easily made, but didn’t.  United, you earned an F. 

A few days earlier, I’d pulled into a Marriott property with an unplowed parking lot, even though it hadn’t snowed in days.  I don’t typically mention stuff like this to the hotel, but this was egregious, particularly since I ruined a new pair of shoes trudging in from the lot.  The front desk agent shrugged off my comment about the lot not being plowed; even when I pressed her on the issue of why it wasn’t plowed, she showed no interest in providing an explanation. 

Marriott, you earned an F—but you raised it to a B courtesy of the property’s general manager dropping me a note within 48 hours of my website complaint, offering to pick up the cost of my shoes and put some extra points in my account.  Here at the Marriott Wardman Park where Shmoocon attendees are currently enduring (?) the snowpocalypse, Marriott gets an A+, having kept employees on-property last night to ensure that they could meet the expected level of service for the ~1500 of us in attendance.

Anyway, back to magicJack support.  I think they’re light years ahead of what most companies are doing—not all, but most.  They’re using tools to not only manage customer service, but to measure customer service, then act upon that data.  The idea of tracking agents’ output for purposes of reward, penalty, or compensation certainly isn’t new.  But, the ability to combine the server-side monitoring of agents with customer-side innovation (such as setting a 24-hour tracking cookie on a client’s computer, and immediately escalating the chat to a “superagent” if the client initiates a second call in a 24-hour period) is compelling.  Tying that together with the ability to remotely take over a customer’s machine via LivePerson to actually show them how to resolve the issue, or simply fixing it for them, makes for a further compelling solution—one which ideally leads to a customer grading an agent as an A.

The three call regions are staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with an average of about 120 agents in service at any given moment; roughly ten or so of the highest-rated agents (superagents) are on duty at any time, ensuring escalation coverage no matter the hour.  Average chat length is about 16 minutes; with agents supporting up to five chats at a time, the efficiency factor works out well.  Sure, you might say that single-tasking a chat could result in a faster time-to-resolution; but, when you think about the time that troubleshooting takes (plug in your magicJack, make sure your phone cord is tightly seated, tell me what’s on your screen now, etc.), multitasking becomes much more attractive.

Even more interestingly, agents are compensated based on their call volume—and a grade multiplier.  Meaning, an agent can’t simply rush through support calls to ring up a high number of calls complete, regardless of quality.  The grade multiplier ensures that agents will provide due care to each caller (or at least, to the vast majority); sloppiness leads to low grades, which leads to less compensation, which leads to no longer being a customer service agent for magicJack.

I’m intrigued by this story and this model not because I got a couple of freebie units last year.  I’m intrigued by this story because to me, this is really a case of “ain’t necessity a mother”.  Or something like that.  magicJack had a serious, serious problem a couple of years ago, when their Better Business Bureau rating was an F.  Folks, it don’t get much worse than that.  Memories are long, hearsay even longer.  I had dinner at CES with a buddy of mine who’s in the VOIP space.  He mentioned that he’d seen my femtojack post, and asked how I could respect a company whose BBB rating was an F.  I told him that I couldn’t respect a company whose BBB rating was an F—and asked him if he’s bothered to check magicJack’s BBB rating recently.  When I told them that magicJack had improved to an A-, he mumbled something along the lines of “they suck”, then ordered another drink.

Well, yeah.  magicJack did suck.  And, some portion of geekdom and the phone-calling public will continue to think they suck—but for a pretty high percentage of their user base, magicJack must be doing something right.  Shelf space in Wal-Mart and Best Buy isn’t cheap to obtain, and is even tougher to hold onto if product return rates are too high.  Units are obviously selling in, selling through, and being used with a decent level of customer satisfaction.

I’m hopeful that the femtojack will achieve similar or even more widespread success.  No, I don’t know whether YMAX is going to be able to overcome the wrath of mobile carriers, and whether they’re on the verge of an avalanche of grief from the FCC.

But I can’t wait to find out.

Exclusive: magicJack CEO Dan Borislow Interview, Part II is a post from: SiliconANGLE Subcribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

2 Comments

sldfjd says: February 8, 2010 1:01 pm [ff] John Furrier: Exclusive: magicJack CEO Dan Borislow Interview, Part II: http://url4.eu/1LTxD This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

casaretto says: February 9, 2010 8:37 am RT @siliconangle SiliconANGLE Exclusive: magicJack CEO Dan Borislow Interview, Part II http://is.gd/7XldI This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

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The SAP Executive Board, in agreement with the SAP Supervisory Board, has appointed two Co-CEOs: Bill McDermott, head of field organization and Jim Hagemann Snabe, head of product development, both already members of the SAP Executive Board.

Dennis Howlett, on ZDNet, writes that Mr Apotheker's departure wasn't unexpected. But it was surprising that the company acted so soon.

The choice of new leaders should not be surprising but hardly imaginative. In effect, SAP has chosen ‘last men standing’ rather than taking what some of us thought might be a bold move by appointing an outsider.

SAP is headquartered in Germany and has a large presence in Silicon Valley. The company beat analyst estimates for Q4 but profits fell 12% and revenues were down 9% from a year ago.

It Takes Two Men to Replace SAP CEO Léo Apotheker is a post from: SiliconANGLE Subcribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

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Note: according to PPCGeeks all the information may not be entirely official, although it's definitely rumor worthy. It is not uncommon for vendors now to leak key news prior to big "noisy" events to get pre-buzz build up. Apple and Google do this all the time.

I am a long time fan of Microoft from my old school days so I hope they can pull this off. However, many are questioning Microsoft. They don't reach out to us or anyone in techonlogy from my standpoint and have a very big negative brand image in technology. From my seat Microsoft is a joke. Will someone change my mind or even better how about a product that is solid.

Most recently, a ex Microsoft senior executive Dick Brass came out publicly to say that they can't even get out of their own way to meet basic customer needs and that Microsoft is on a path of destruction.

Dick Brass confirming my opinion on Microsoft above:

Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.

On the wPhone here are the leaked or rumored details (thanks PPCGeeks). Here are the details as reported by PPCGeeks - the Microsoft wPhone or Windows Phone 7

-At the Mobile World Congress event on February 15th, 2010, Windows Phone 7 will be unveilved, although at this time plans are only to unveil the user interface of the new platform . Specific indepth functionality of the device will most likely not be shown.

-The User Interface is based upon codename “METRO”. It will be very similar to the Zune HD User Interface with a complete revamp of the “Start” screen. The UI is “Very Clean”, “Soulful” and “Alive”

-Unfortunately there will be no Flash support at the get go as there was not enough time to implement these features.

-Windows Phone 7 will only support application installation through service based delivery. (i.e Marketplace). Application installation via storage card will not be possible.

- No Multi-Task support. Applications will “Pause” when in the background, however will support notifications via push notifications.

-Marketplace will now support “try before you buy” as well as an API

-No NETCF backwards compatibility. This means the original rumor of no backward compatibility for applications holds to be true. That being said, there are high hopes of porting the NetCF to the newer platform easily.

-Microsoft is confident that devices will be ready by September 2010

-Full Zune Integration

-Windows Mobile Device Center will no longer be used. Zune software to take over syncing via PC.

-OEM Interfaces will not be allowed to run on the device. Say goodbye to Sense UI / SPB Mobile Shell / Point UI / Infinity, etc, etc

-Full XBOX Gaming Integration (Gamer tag, achievements, friends, avatars, merchandising, etc)

-Full support for social networking

Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft Launching Windows Phone in Barcelona is a post from: SiliconANGLE Subcribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

14 Comments

furrier says: February 7, 2010 10:10 am one last tweet for today – microsoft wPhone coming ?? rumor http://bit.ly/ay6D0j Microsoft will screw this up me thinks This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

withinsight_LLC says: February 7, 2010 10:37 am John Furrier: one last tweet for today – microsoft wPhone coming ?? rumor http://bit.ly/ay6D0j Microsoft will scre… http://bit.ly/aseyDL This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

Tech_Circus says: February 7, 2010 11:18 am Tip @Techmeme http://tinyurl.com/ygt6zap “Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft Launching Windows Phone in Barcelona “ This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

Solacetech says: February 7, 2010 11:18 am Tip @Techmeme http://tinyurl.com/ygt6zap “Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft Launching Windows Phone in Barcelona “ This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

HiphopPhire says: February 7, 2010 11:18 am Tip @Techmeme http://tinyurl.com/ygt6zap “Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft Launching Windows Phone in Barcelona “ This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

TecBuzz says: February 7, 2010 11:39 am Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft Launching Windows Phone … http://bit.ly/bE2egq #microsoft This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

ingresosnuevos says: February 7, 2010 11:39 am Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft Launching Windows Phone … http://bit.ly/bV8tNY This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

jhonsonimcool says: February 7, 2010 11:51 am SiliconANGLE — Blog — Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft …: On the wPhone here are the leaked or rumored… http://bit.ly/bWgdtg This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

Sprocking says: February 7, 2010 3:15 pm Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft Launching Windows Phone in Barcelona http://ow.ly/14MjZ RT @siliconangle This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

jess_rainey says: February 7, 2010 4:13 pm SiliconANGLE — Blog — Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft …: However, many are questioning Microsoft. The… http://bit.ly/bWgdtg This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

JasThompson says: February 7, 2010 4:13 pm SiliconANGLE — Blog — Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft …: However, many are questioning Microsoft. The… http://bit.ly/bWgdtg This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

DanielleFishers says: February 7, 2010 7:20 pm SiliconANGLE — Blog — Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft … http://bit.ly/dclZTx This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

Raportt says: February 8, 2010 8:45 am Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft Launching Windows Phone in Barcelona http://ow.ly/14MjZ RT @siliconangle This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

StevenParrott says: February 9, 2010 9:20 am Mobile Rumor: The wPhone Coming? Microsoft Launching Windows Phone in Barcelona http://ow.ly/14MjZ RT @siliconangle This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

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Here's the problem: the networks are melting under extreme pressure.  Let me explain - the networks that are running this "New Robust Mobile Network" were engineered for cellular phone calls only.  All of these smartphones are running both voice and data now.  5-8 years ago they only were built for voice.  Data requires more frequency.  Some say that a data connection (using iPhone, email etc) is the equivalent to making 5 phone calls in terms of bandwidth.  That's a minimum of 5x of extra strain.  Now add subscriber growth and usage and the picture is scary.

Data is clogging up the system - the system being those big cell towers or basestations that exist to provide Radio Frequency (RF) access to mobile devices and the networks that carry that data to the Internet (mobile core backhaul).  We are heading for a meltdown.  More towers and better engineering is needed.  The carriers now this and are working hard.  It is difficult to do and cost billions to upgrade.

There just isn't enough capacity.  Think about all those dropped calls that you used to get.  The cellular service got better years ago because the carriers upgraded the towers -but that was for voice.  Now carriers are racing to upgrade the towers for data - mainly driven by the smartphone's ability to use the web and the consumer uptake on smartphones.  What's worse is that the overall network capacity is overloaded and needs more speed.

AT&T has pledged to be better (we are hearing that day in and day out).  Just recently during its fourth-quarter earnings conference call, AT&T admitted that its 3G coverage wasn’t good enough, promising that the company has a plan to improve it, adding more cell towers and connecting them with fast fiber-optic lines. “Wireless is our No. 1 investment priority,” said John Stankey, head of AT&T’s Operations division.

Now the FCC see some issues (as always they are late to the party - I can rant all day about their spectrum policy screw ups).  Particularly with the new iPad. Here is a their comment (via Macnn.com)

The iPad could potentially cause serious havoc for US data networks, say people writing on behalf of the Federal Communications Commission. Updating an official blog, Phil Bellaria, director of scenario planning for the Omnibus Broadband Initiative, and John Leibovitz -- deputy chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau -- observe that the device may put extra strain on already problematic networks. "With the iPad pointing to even greater demand for mobile broadband on the horizon," the pair write, "we must ensure that network congestion doesn't choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing or frustrate mobile broadband's ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy."

The situation could become serious enough, say Bellaria and Leibovitz, that it might echo the problems of AOL dial-up in 1996 and 1997. After opening up to unlimited use, AOL's servers collapsed under the load, preventing people from getting any sort of consistent access for several months.

Although avoiding direct insinuations, the post makes clear references to AT&T, which will be the only initial American carrier to support the 3G iPad. The carrier has had enough trouble supporting iPhone data traffic, particularly in New York City in San Francisco. It is feared that the iPad, designed to be treated more like a computer, could overwhelm some AT&T nodes.

Leaders in the networking business are addressing this. Just this week Juniper Networks announced a big speed boost for service providers of which wireless providers can benefit from - a new generation of silicon that pushes up 4 terabits per second (Tbps) compared to Cisco's 120 Gbps (Gigabits per second). Huge gain.

Without new innovations at the networking and antenna levels mobile web will continue to see slow and spotty coverage. This will hold back new services. The good news is that the mobile internet is good enough in terms of service to provide basic value and companies and entrepreneurs are inventing away on new technologies.

As they say in business there a big "addressable market" in mobile.

Are Mobile Networks Melting? – Growth Puts Massive Pressure on Carriers is a post from: SiliconANGLE Subcribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

15 Comments

furrier says: February 6, 2010 8:46 am RT @siliconangle SiliconANGLE — Blog — Are Mobile Networks Melting? – Growth Puts Massive Pressure on Carriers http://tinyurl.com/y9s2q25 This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

furrier says: February 6, 2010 8:48 am Are the mobile networks are melting http://bit.ly/csJhEl massive capital expenditures are needed in the billions This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

dvellante says: February 6, 2010 8:50 am @jfurrier – it’s so true – products like the ipad will crush data networks http://bit.ly/csJhEl This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

peglarr says: February 6, 2010 8:51 am RT @dvellante: @jfurrier – it’s so true – products like the ipad will crush data networks http://bit.ly/csJhEl This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

withinsight_LLC says: February 6, 2010 8:59 am John Furrier: Are the mobile networks are melting http://bit.ly/csJhEl massive capital expenditures are needed in … http://bit.ly/d8b0qE This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

alan W. says: February 6, 2010 9:27 am John, you are conflating the allocation of RF channels, backhaul, server capacity, and a million other issues. They are not the same. within any slice of spectrum the number of channels is fixed, and the cell re-use is via topographical and RF field surveys. The ratio of voice to data, is I think, flexible in CDMA and not in GSM systems, perhaps a real engineer can weigh in here. I was a cell system tower engineer in the early 90's, testing and POP was my game. In some systems you can choke down voice QOS to grant more data throughput. Some systems use statistical techniques to re-use silence in the conversations to create more channel capacity. Dropped calls are an RF and control problem, due to multi path, S/N, dead spots, etc. The lower frequencies are more robust than the 2+ GHz frequencies in non LOS situations. ETC . We all want better service, but the tech press and blogs are going to need a tutorial. Reply

John Furrier says: February 6, 2010 9:39 am I am not an expert on the issues of how data and voice allocation happens on the RF architecture - I was told by a friend who is so I'm oversimplifying that tech aspect and probably getting it wrong - that being said I am correct on the high level issue of tower capacity - and you are correct in that it's very complex. Alan: i'd love to get your perspective and see if we can get a breakdown on the thesis of "Are Mobile Networks Melting" and look at the entire value chain - antenna, backhaul, network, server ..etc I a writing this post to understand deeper the issues. I am well versed on RF coverae and networking and server but this entire equatioon is complex. Can you expand on a post? Do you think the mobile nets are melting? Reply

Erik Schwartz says: February 6, 2010 9:49 am The inevitable corollary is that flat rate unlimited mobile data is doomed. Reply

alan W. says: February 6, 2010 10:27 am It would be disservice to the readership to place myself in the expert's chair. In other words, I can criticize you, John, but I cant write an authoritative article. My time in the RF SMR business was in 89-92, but I still attend some professional training and read up. How about it wireless engineers? Where is the weak link? RF Site survey's? Channel overloading?, Multipath? Improper Band Plan for the terrain? Step us guys! It cant all be back haul. Reply

MsTechAngel says: February 6, 2010 2:50 pm SiliconANGLE — Blog — Are Mobile Networks Melting? – Growth Puts …: AT&T has pledged to be better (we are hearin… http://bit.ly/cA6E4Q This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

Solacetech says: February 6, 2010 8:01 pm Tip @Techmeme http://tinyurl.com/y9s2q25 “Are Mobile Networks Melting? – Growth Puts Massive Pressure on Carriers “ This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

Tech_Circus says: February 6, 2010 8:01 pm Tip @Techmeme http://tinyurl.com/y9s2q25 “Are Mobile Networks Melting? – Growth Puts Massive Pressure on Carriers “ This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

HiphopPhire says: February 6, 2010 8:01 pm Tip @Techmeme http://tinyurl.com/y9s2q25 “Are Mobile Networks Melting? – Growth Puts Massive Pressure on Carriers “ This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

listfilmschool says: February 7, 2010 11:12 am Are mobile networks melting? 8211 growth puts massive pressure on carriers laquo siliconangle… http://bit.ly/aNtUXi This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

SiliconANGLE — Blog — Mobile News: Juniper Getting Stronger In Mobile - Research Validates The Market says: February 9, 2010 9:20 am [...] now looks like mobile continues to be hot! Just this past weekend I wrote a story about the Mobile Meltdown. This market is so hot that I believe that we might just be heading for a [...] Reply

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This is what happens when you have unpaid or low paid writers. Daniel Brusilovsky, a reporter for Techcrunch, was sacked after someone accused him of asking for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a company.

Mike Arrington, founder of Techcrunch said that all of his posts have been erased from the archives. And that Mr Brusilovsky did manage to get at least one computer from an unnamed source in exchange for coverage. [An Apology To Our Readers]

He was described as an 'intern.' Which means he was unpaid, or paid the minimum California wage.

Some observers said that he didn't know what he was doing because of his age, 16. But he spent nine months at Techcrunch and saw how things are done. He knew what he was doing.

Are other reporters and bloggers for online news sites vulnerable to bribery? Yes, they are, especially if they aren't paid or low paid -- which is the case with most. Low wages are endemic because advertising supported news sites don't make that much money per post.

I'm surprised more stories haven't surfaced about this type of behavior. It's no wonder that the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer found a large fall in trust for all media.

[Editor’s Note: Tom cross-posted this at Silicon Valley Watcher. –mrh]

Foremski’s Angle: Brusilovsky Situation a Result of Low (or No) Wages is a post from: SiliconANGLE Subcribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

3 Comments

SiliconANGLE says: February 5, 2010 3:01 pm SA> Foremski’s Angle: Brusilovsky Situation a Result of Low (or No) Wages http://goo.gl/fb/biNj This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

rizzn says: February 5, 2010 3:08 pm SA> Foremski’s Angle: Brusilovsky Situation a Result of Low (or No) Wages http://goo.gl/fb/TwdB This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

withinsight_LLC says: February 5, 2010 3:10 pm John Furrier: SA> Foremski’s Angle: Brusilovsky Situation a Result of Low (or No) Wages http://goo.gl/fb/biNj: http://bit.ly/bYiMCc This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

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Psychologists from Leeds University say they’ve found “striking” evidence that some avid internet users develop compulsive  habits in which they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites.

The lead author of the study wrote in the the journal of Psychopathology that the study “reinforces the public speculation that over-engaging in websites that serve to replace normal social function might be linked to psychological disorders like depression and addiction.”

Wow, That Explains a Lot

What the study didn’t glean is which comes first: excessive internet use or depression. In other words… are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?”

Here is one more interesting quote I just have to share:

“While many of us use the internet to pay bills, shop and send emails, there is a small subset of the population who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities.”

This is a really interesting study.

Read more about it here in Science Daily, and come back and tell me what you think.

Oh, you can also read the complete abstract with methodology and other pertinent information at Psychopathology.

[Editor’s Note: Angela cross-posted this at her personal blog. Incidentally, go congratulate her on the new gig! –mrh]

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5 Comments

SiliconANGLE says: February 5, 2010 1:16 pm SA> Chicken or the Egg: Link Made Between Depression and Social Media http://goo.gl/fb/8fBY This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

rizzn says: February 5, 2010 1:27 pm SA> Chicken or the Egg: Link Made Between Depression and Social Media http://goo.gl/fb/oJdq This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

withinsight_LLC says: February 5, 2010 1:36 pm John Furrier: SA> Chicken or the Egg: Link Made Between Depression and Social Media http://goo.gl/fb/8fBY: http://bit.ly/9ZmlXo This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

steveaustin16 says: February 5, 2010 6:22 pm SiliconANGLE — Blog — Chicken or the Egg: Link Made Between …: What the study didn’t glean is which comes first:… http://bit.ly/bcCx8u This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

prsng says: February 6, 2010 11:52 am Chicken or the Egg: Link Made Between Depression and Social Media – http://bit.ly/apJM8T This comment was originally posted on Twitter Reply

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