Om Malik
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Friday, May 2, 2008 |
3:06 PM PT |
I’m no fan of the phone companies’ tactics of stifling competition in broadband through the strategic deployment of lobbyists in Washington. Thanks to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, they have gotten what they needed. Perhaps that’s why I was struck by this Ars Technica headline: “Grab your wallet: Qwest wants release from line-sharing rule.”
The Ars report points to a study by QSI Consulting which concludes that: “Qwest’s bid for local deregulation will unleash $1.14 billion in higher charges annually for customers in four major Western markets if approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).” Wow, that’s sure to get everyone’s attention — especially mine, since I’ve been watching the slow asphyxiation of the 1996 Telecom Act for some time now. (I should note, however, that I also am skeptical of claims made by the study, mostly because QSIConsulting counts XO Communications as a customer and the study was commissioned by XO.)
If Qwest gets its way, it won’t have to provide its lines (and facilities) on a wholesale basis, which essentially means there is no way independent companies can exist unless they build their own facilities. And that, of course, is why XO Communications is up in arms. The arguments to deny Qwest’s request are many and valid. Verizon also wants to back away from giving wholesale access to its competitors. I think this is a crummy move by the phone companies. They got everything they ever could have wanted out of the 1996 Act; any concessions they had to made they’ve since sneakily reneged on. XO is right.
Om Malik
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Thursday, May 1, 2008 |
7:03 AM PT |
So all the noise, anger and finger-pointing at Comcast’s cheap traffic tricks didn’t impact its broadband business. The company just reported a decent enough first quarter, but what got my attention: It now has 14.1 million high-speed subscribers, compared to 13.6 million at the end of 2007. That translates to about 500,000 new subscribers. Given how broadband sales have slowed down for DSL providers (but not for FTTH services), this is pretty significant. Karl on DSL Reports is taking a glass-half-full approach to the earnings but writes that things are slowing down. Seems like extra speeds are helping push the revenues as well, according to the company:
The strong subscriber and revenue growth in the first quarter of 2008 benefited from the introduction of additional promotional offers and speed tiers, including Comcast’s BLAST and Performance Plus services (8Mbps or higher service) and Comcast’s Economy Internet service (768Kbps service).
Another astonishing number: Comcast added 639,000 Comcast Digital Voice (CDV) customers during the first quarter — penetration reached 12 percent or 5.1 million customers with revenues of about $587 million in the first quarter of 2008. Time Warner Cable also posted a similar kind of growth, adding 280,000 phone customers and 304,000 high-speed customers in the first quarter. In comparison, the phone companies keep losing landline customers. No wonder phone companies are worried.
Stacey Higginbotham
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008 |
11:00 AM PT |
About two months ago, I wrote about my decision to get rid of my land line and rely strictly on my cell phone — with its unlimited plan — for my voice needs. It was a mistake. My social network (namely in the form of my mother-in-law) couldn’t take it, so my husband and I capitulated and returned to AT&T for a basic land line with no frills for about $20 a month.
I should note that when we lost the land line, neither my husband nor I really noticed. There was one awkward moment when I had to send a fax and realized I couldn’t unless I went down the street to the grocery store, but other than that, I never missed the cord. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, a wonderful woman who still carries around a copy of the Yellow Pages in her car for when she needs to look up a number or an address, was very uncomfortable with the idea. Continue »
New Skype For Windows Released, Fixes Video Bugs:
Skype has released Skype 3.8 for Windows, and it has better audio, thanks to some improvements in the audio engine. Hopefully it will translate into better call quality and fewer dropouts. The best and most useful feature of this new release: If you change your headset, headphones or microphone, there’s no need to mess around with the sound settings — Skype adjusts everything automatically. Skype folks tell us that they have made a “number of video-related bug fixes” and added their own “UPnP implementation.”
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Om Malik
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Monday, April 28, 2008 |
9:47 PM PT |
Jajah, one of the many callback service providers, is slowly trying to transform itself into a voice platform, offering others the ability to use its network and back-end billing and fulfillment infrastructure. It struck up a partnership with Jangl back in November 2007. This managed services focus seems to have gotten a big boost, thanks to a deal with Yahoo. Yahoo and Jajah share a common investor: Sequoia Capital.
Jajah co-founder Daniel Mattes tells our friend Alec Saunders that Yahoo will outsource voice services for their 97 million Yahoo IM users to Jajah. Mattes says it now has 10 million users, about 8 million of them joining Jajah over the past 12 months. I guess if you include widget users and people using services on other networks, the 8 million additional Jajah users starts to make sense.
Continue »
Om Malik
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008 |
10:00 PM PT |
Ooma, a Palo Alto, Calif-based company that launched with much fanfare last year had run into a wall in recent months. It lost some key executives and failed to live upto its promise. Ooma promised free voice calls for life married to slick hardware was a classic case of too much sizzle, very little steak. Lately there were signs that the company was staring down a dark abyss.
Ooma is not dead, yet. In a bid to try and regain some of its lost momentum, Ooma is cutting the price of its Hub and Scout package by $150 dollars to $250. The company is going to sell a premier service package that is going to cost $12.95 a month or $99 a year. The company is refocusing on the consumer electronics retail channel, said Rich Buchanan, a former Sling Media executive who just joined Ooma as chief marketing officer.
Continue »
Om Malik
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Sunday, April 20, 2008 |
3:44 PM PT |
Earlier this morning I met with Sarik Weber, co-founder of Hamburg, Germany-based mobile callback service, Cellity. He brought me up to speed on his company, but he also mentioned that they had launched a Facebook application that allows you to send free SMS messages to anyone worldwide.
I signed up for the app but also looked at the competitive landscape and found that there are around three dozen (free) SMS-related apps, but they have little or no usage. Even the best ones get about 500 users a day, though most have fewer than 50 daily users. (Related story: 5 Ways to SMS for free.)
The state of these SMS apps is no different from many social voice applications (voice widgets). The only difference being that the VoIP widgets have high incidence of installs but comparatively low daily usage. Continue »
Om Malik
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Thursday, April 17, 2008 |
7:45 AM PT |
One of the most important calls I make during the week is the one to my mother, followed by another one to my baby brother. These are international long distance calls, and for the first 15 years of my American life, those calls went over AT&T’s wired or wireless networks, forging a very special bond with Ma Bell.
This past year, however, that bond has been broken. AT&T has been replaced by Truphone, a UK-based mobile VoIP company that offers better quality voice calls at lower rates and doesn’t require me to own a landline. A WiFi-enabled Nokia phone is all it takes. (These days, I am totally in love with my Nokia E61.)
Truphone has become indispensable to my work and personal life, and perhaps that is why I’m glad to learn it just raised a whopping $32.7 million in Series B funding from “new investors,” although the company wouldn’t name names. Previous investors who have pumped in over $24.5 million in Series A funding — Burda Digital Ventures, Eden Ventures, Independent News & Media and Wellington Partners — came back with more cash as well.
Continue »
Om Malik
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008 |
11:17 PM PT |
Om Malik
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Monday, April 14, 2008 |
1:15 PM PT |
Freeswitch has been quietly growing in both popularity and stability, not as a direct competitor to Asterisk, but as a fully featured, carrier-grade Softswitch. Get the full lowdown on Freeswitch over on Ostatic, our open source blog.
