Blur

What a week. It's all fading into an impressionistic haze, but here are some highlights. For my money, France Telecom really nailed the state of visibility in the sector on Tuesday when it discussed plans to shorten internal reporting lines and cycles (the latter to weekly). The Financial Times discovered that financial analysts have apparently discovered a need to cross sector silos (I done told ya and told ya). Vodafone followed T-Mobile's lead in admitting that it's Google's world and we're just living in it. M&A feeding frenzy moves into higher gear with Tele2 (whose Russian assets might make an interesting way for Telenor to exert some pressure on unruly Russian partners) and KPN (given Telefonica's balance sheet and strategic priorities, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a breakup exercise involving some private equity partners) now moving into the crosshairs.

A Platinum Club mega-uber value reader on the front lines of the industry writes in to ask:

"I was wondering why is that there is no comment in the blogs about IBM's role
in the VoIP space. They claim to have some 128 Million Notes users. They offer
an integrated same-time interface with an independent client and web access for
IM, VoIP and other presence applications. Works very much as the GTalk client
and is also integrated with the Notes e-mail and collaboration tool. They use
GIPS. It's based on open standards like, JAVA, SIP... and it's interoperable
with GTalk, MSN Messenger... It has a click to call functionallity incorporated
(with click to call servers). It has break-in and break-out integration through
these previously mentioned agreements. It's integrated in the Blackberry client
for the full set of functions, including VoIP. That means you have a flat fee
for mobile voice through your Blackberry service. For me, as a Telco man, this
presents a much more important shift than the Skypes of the world, as it
means that all the transactions (voice included) between corporates can be done
with no cost in a secure and trusted way (and higher quality, more
features...)."

Sounds serious to me. Look for it in Q2.

Lastly, another Platinum Club mega-uber value reader, himself one of my telco analyst brethren, writes in with a much-needed morale boost:

"I have been reading your blog for over a year now - your analysis is very
insightful and with all the stuff we have to read, it helps me keep on top
of lots of developments - keep it up!"

Will do, and as it happens I have a raft of meetings and calls lined up next week which should yield some interesting posts. That is, if I survive my weekend hunting trip with Dick Cheney...