Orange, a UK ISP and mobile phone company, is reportedly close to signing a deal with an ad-supported mobile virtual network called Blyk that would offer certain Orange customers credits on their service in exchange for receiving text-based ads on their mobile phones. According to an article in New Media Age, Orange has been in talks with Blyk for months to offer subscribers aged 16-24 credits of £15 ($25) if they receive ads on their phones. The partnership looks similar to an effort by German carrier E-Plus to offer lower-cost mobile phone service to customers in exchange for ads. Continue »

The two national agencies responsible for allocating $7.2 billion in broadband grants as part of the stimulus bill today released the rules governing the process and said the government would provide about $4 billion in loans for the first of three funding rounds. That money will start flowing to projects in November. It’s a bittersweet moment for folks hoping for better broadband in the U.S., as the rules don’t mandate faster speeds or abide by current net neutrality regulations, but will send a lot of money to both states and private companies hoping to build out Internet access. Continue »

Globalstar today closed on $738 million in financing, while rival satellite operator TerreStar launched its new bird, TerreStar-1. Globalstar plans to use its money to fund operations and launch a new generation of satellites in 2010 that will deliver all IP-based voice and data to its customers through 2025. Before celebrating, know that Globalstar’s new constellation of satellites will  provide speeds of up to 256kbps down.

Like the slow data speeds, the financing is less exciting than it first appears. Continue »

CenturyTel and Embarq today announced the completion of their $11.6 billion merger, which results in a phone company that will serve 7.5 million customers in 33 states. The combined company will now be known as CenturyLink — and the aging copper-based DSL lines it offers to most of its subscribers will certainly act as a link to the previous century for customers of the new entity. As part of the FCC approval for the merger, the agency imposed several conditions on the combined company, presumably to ensure that consolidation doesn’t hurt consumers. Continue »

Only 2 percent of the world lives in a country where broadband penetration has exceeded 80 percent, according to a report out today from TeleGeography. The report noted that worries over broadband saturation are really only appropriate in 10 countries out of the 127 the firm tracks, and the U.S. isn’t even one of those saturated markets. There are 36 countries where broadband providers serve less than 5 percent of the population.

So while there’s concern in the U.S. cable and telecommunications industries over growth in their fixed line businesses, what we really should be pondering is whether or not the low-hanging fruit of fixed-broadband access has been plucked, and if so, how do we get broadband to the rest of the world? Continue »

They say it takes money to make money, but it you want to be in the top 100 apps in the Apple App Store, it’s gonna take you $1,875 per day to buy enough ads, according to a report out today from AdWhirl. The company, which operates an advertising platform for the iPhone (and would love to sell more ads, presumably), looked at how to propel iPhone apps into the upper echelon of popularity without spending too much on advertising. Instead of spending almost $2,000 a day, the study found that releasing a free app seems to help drive usage. That use, in turn, gives developers a target market to which they can advertise a paid app, or capitalize on for viral growth. Other findings include:

• Untargeted cross-promotions generate conversions at approximately 0.2 percent or less from each impression (20 downloads for every 10,000 ads displayed).
• Targeted cross-promotions convert at approximately three times or more.
• Free apps with fewer features that can be upgraded to paid apps can increase sales up to five times, without cannibalizing sales of the paid version.
• It only takes about 2,500 downloads per day to break into the Top 100 Apps.

Cisco today outlined its plans for delivering IT services over the web (aka cloud services), and as part of a conference call, showed off a great slide that illustrates exactly how many companies this former networking gear maker wants to take on. If I were to boil it all down, I’d say the company’s cloud strategy relies heavily on its hardware to make its WebEx-branded collaboration software run economically. Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s CTO, said the company sees the cloud as having four layers, with the bottommost layer being the hardware infrastructure provided by Cisco’s new servers. The top three are the more traditional infrastructure-as-a-service offerings, platforms as a service and software as a service (see slide). Continue »