GigaOM

Another reason to thinkin about moving back to the Big Apple. Damn even NJ is more wirelessly advanced than SF.

In a nutshell, the Sonos DMS is a series of Linux-powered wirelessly networked amplifiers on steroids. More!

If you think the del.icio.us user interface sucks, (like I do), then you will truly get a kick out of this AJAX-based web UI. mmmmmm! good! link

Et Tu Greg?

Greg Maffei, had the world on a string as the CFO of Microsoft. And then he was overcome by the fumes, and decided that he wanted to be part of the optical boom. So on he went to 360Networks, one of the many fiber networks with millions of mile of fiber but no profits. 360 went bankrupt, and now has restructured by becoming a smallish player. The plan to rule the broadband world didn’t exactly work out - so he is back to crunching numbers - as Oracle’s yet another president and CFO. The good news is that unlike other broadband CEO/CFO types, he is scandal free! GMSV reminds me of all the acqusitions made by Greg when at Microsoft. AT&T, Comcast etc, got Money from MoneySoft. Funny those things still haven’t paid off!

They are sending a letter sent to Capitol Hill today, the groups urged Members of Congress to support legislation that will ensure that local governments are not prevented from providing broadband networks to their residents and businesses. Senator John McCain is leading the charge in Washington. Supporters are bringing out the stars-and-stripes, and falling american competitiveness, and other factors which make it important to have cheap broadband everywhere. (The Letter)

Microsoft has been trying hard to push its own digital video compression standard, Windows Media 9, but apparently MPEG4 compression codec is becoming quite popular with telecom operators who are rolling out IPTV networks. MPEG4 is said to be ideally suited for HDTV transmission running over IPTV networks. “But so far, encoder vendors report a clear preference among North American telcos for the MPEG-4 codec,” says Light Reading. Light Reading says companies like Tut Systems and Harmonic, both of them having introduced new MPEG4 based gear in recent days are finding a lot of takers. Tut for instance has been supplying gear to Farmers Telephone Cooperative, which has about 60,000 subscribers in South Carolina. Tandberg and SkyStream are two other companies with MPEG4 based gear. Now we are waiting for new set-top boxes that can decode and take advantage of MPEG4-HD video. Shouldn’t be long - chip makers like Broadcom, Conexant and STMicro - have made announcements in recent days that they are almost ready with their chips. Some believe that the delay in chipsets is one of the reasons why Microsoft’s IPTV efforts are having hiccups.

Far from the maddening crowds, there was a big brouhaha between the two brothers - Anil and Mukesh - jointly known as the Ambanis and the owners of Reliance Group, a $22.5 billion conglomerate, that is as indispensable to the Indian economy as Intel is to Silicon Valley. The empire was built by their father, a piss poor school teacher turned trader, with blood, sweat and tears. Some guile and palm greasing involved as well. But such is the way of business in India. The brothers, smart as they might be, are not a patch on the grand old man, who truly empowered the individual investors and changed the ways of the world. When Dhirubhai died a few years ago, everyone cried, felt sad, for he had made many rich beyond belief. Think of him as Bill Gates of India. I am an unabashed fan. Then came the split between the two brothers. It felt as if some Bollywood script writer was taking his script, and replacing The Ambanis as main characters. It got so ugly, that even the normally jittery stock markets shut down.

The impact was felt here in the US. Remember Qualcomm expressed some queasiness about overseas sales. You could track that back to Reliance Infocomm, one of the big customers of CDMA related phones and hardware. Reliance’s telecom arm has been in holding pattern for a while. And believe me I am being polite when I say that. Mukesh used to run the Infocomm business, which had a lot of question marks. Anil is said to have hated that business. Anil charged that Mukesh had taken 55% of Infocomm’s shares at 1% of their real value and distributed them to some politicians. He had managed to get a loan from parent company, Reliance Industries, at about 7% interest, even though the company gets 20% return on its investment. DoT and state owned phone companies took Reliance to court for tariff related fraud and Reliance Infocomm had to pay back the missing tariffs - $100 million or so - along with $30 million in penalty. Whatever - there was ample proof of wrong doing.

Ironically, as part of the settlement, Mukesh gets the $19 billion a year petrochemical business, and Anil gets energy and telecom. Reliance Infocomm has a big broadband rollout planned and many told me that things were moving at the pace of a lonely farmer tilling his field at high noon in Central India. Whatever the outcome is, the delay has been a big help to Reliance Infocomm’s rivals, Tata in particular which after slow start has managed to get its act together. Hopefully this will also help accelerate the broadband and IPTV rollout in India.

Business Week has full details.

John’s got the full details. Apparently my scoop machine is still working!