Five pretty pictures

Internet infrastructure stocks are on a tear, indeed they are veritable "pitbulls on the pantleg of opportunity" following a set of strong Q1 results and broadly encouraging guidance. Bear in mind that if you view these charts after this writing - 30 April, 2009 - they may look very different, but what they show now is Akamai up 10% today, Savvis hanging tough after a 16% rise yesterday and having more than doubled since its March lows, Switch & Data has also doubled, Rackspace up 74% since early March, and Equinix up 68% since its own March nadir. I know a rising tide generally lifts all boats (NASDAQ up 41% over the same period), but these have gone airborne. We're back to "picks and shovels" here, but I think this time the market has it dead right.

The magic of flipping a light switch and escaping the dark is experienced at home, but the real magic takes place in an unseen power station miles away. The magic of Facebook actually happens in a number of deeply un-sexy, harshly-lit, sterile rooms with well-above-average air conditioning. Without the humble server jockey, tending his flock of racks, the code geeks got nothin'. Our dependence on web services of various flavors will inevitably intensify from here (especially if we end up working and studying more from home), and I would be very surprised if the critical infrastructure components of what the father of the internet, Senator Ted Stevens, once sagely called "a series of tubes", did not continue to grow strongly throughout this downturn and beyond. I think this pie could get very high indeed.

Teleporkalypse Now!

Today my elder daughter came home from school with log-in details for an online virtual classroom service, which she had never heard mention of before. It's kind of a private email/virtual homework site, a sort of very low-quality version of Facebook. Part of me suspects that this has been in the works for months, is for purely educational purposes, and that the timing is just coincidental. Another part of me thinks that some bright spark is ahead of the curve and is expecting a lengthy period of school closures. But that may be giving the local government too much credit. Tomorrow will tell, perhaps. Meanwhile, I continue to monitor newsmap and HealthMap with interest. I'm increasingly fascinated by how decentralized news flows can inform, and perhaps mis-inform, in times like these.

UPDATE (in DEFCON 1 flaming red): What's interesting about the Bloomberg article is the observation that Obama wants $1.5bn to deal with an outbreak. So, it takes a paltry $1.5bn, practically a rounding error by recent standards, to deal with something which could cause the deaths of tens of millions, when dealing with the fallout from fictitious bank assets apparently costs $X trillion - and counting. No wonder Mother Nature is out to kick our collective ass. We have achieved Koyaanisqatsi, on steroids.

LSE study on the benefits of investing in digital infrastructure

Put this in your pipes and smoke it (hat tip Jim Baller).

"While the report does not advocate a specific level of investment it models the benefits of £15 billion spent across the three areas:

• £5 billion on broadband networks (creating or retaining 280,000 jobs) with spending focused on getting broadband to unconnected areas, increasing network performance in low-speed areas (3 Mbps or less) and encouraging household take-up of broadband. Spurring more and higher speed broadband would boost business productivity.

• £5 billion on intelligent transport systems (creating or retaining 188,000 jobs). ITS would also improve traffic flows through measures like adaptive traffic signals and electronic tolls and provide travellers with real-time traffic information, The report also finds that extra spending on ITS would deliver environmental benefits and make the country more productive.

• £5 billion on developing a smart power grid (creating or retaining 235,000 jobs). By using two-way communication and sensors, the report argues, a smart grid will deliver power more efficiently and reliably. Houses could be fitted with smart meters which allow people to use electricity at cheaper times of day and which could work with smart fridges or washer-driers to perform high-energy cycles at times of low demand. One US study suggested this could cut 10 per cent from utility bills. The smart grid would also allow the deployment of new greener technologies including plug-in hybrid electric cars."

Unintended consequences

Much crowing from the content industry over last week's Pirate Bay verdict (hardly surprising when you hang out with the judge), but is this really the sort of reaction you want to prompt?

Hey you, get on to my cloud

Check out these piping hot videos just out from Akamai on the environmental benefits of cloud computing.

Semi-random links drive-by - 21 April, 2009

Just dashing off to a meeting, but here's a few tidbits of interest(?).

Take the Design Council challenge and help take the profit out of "mobile theft for fun and profit."

Fitch Ratings (annoying registration required) is concerned that DOCSIS 3.0 deployments could kick some telco butt, at least in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal. I agree, though the asymmetry problem is getting worse.

UK consumer misery loves company - more online time devoted to social networking, less to shopping.

Last night I heard a good joke:

Q: How many people work at BT?
A: About half.

If you're looking for something to do over your lunch hour, why not give a listen to some classic songs reinterpreted, excruciatingly, in Esperanto? Volare is particularly scintillating. With support like this, I now understand why I have only met one Esperanto speaker - ever.

Eyes Wide Open

There seems to be some major outrage about the IPR issues surrounding Skype, but I'm happy to say that I reported on this way back in 2006 - as always, read the fine print...

As I quoted at the time:

In November 2003, Skype signed an agreement with a software development company [could this be the one?] which granted Skype a perpetual non exclusive license on its software, with exclusive use of the software for the limited purpose of providing P2P telephony, multi-directional video communications between end users via the internet. The founders of this software company are also founding shareholders (and senior management) of Skype.

The Joltid license is something I have mentioned frequently in presentations, but it has always seemed to me that no one has ever heard about this before, and people have always reacted with astonished expressions. The 2003 - 2005 Skype filings are still up, by the way, you can find them here.

I've always assumed that beyond the long-term commercial rationale for housing the Fast Track IPR in another company, it was also a shrewd defensive move given the legal onslaught against KaZaA at the time. It still doesn't answer the question as to what eBay management were thinking (or smoking) at the time, but it's clear that they felt a $4.1bn level of comfort with the arrangement.

Sharper vision

I know, I've been a baaaaad blogger recently, but I won't bore you with the reasons why. I have, however, resolved to mend my ways, so here's a micropost.

I've been working on a freelance project recently which seeks to explore some of the ways in which broadband, or whatever we end up calling it, can spur innovation. I'm trying to focus on non-trivial examples where broadband is either a critical enabler, but not the end service itself (as in the smart grid), or where the existence of broadband forces innovation elsewhere (as in the prevalence of cloud-enabled applications, which forces innovation in the data center).

My point of departure in thinking about this was a conference I attended a couple of years ago, where the CFO of an incumbent telco in Europe was asked about the rationale for FTTx deployment in the company's home market. The response was that the pay TV market in the country was deemed to be suitably competitive already, so it was difficult to make a case based on return on investment. Ergo, fiber = video. I am trying to write something which prompts a move away from this sort of thinking. Anyway, we'll see how it turns out.

Meanwhile, here's another item for your list of reasons why fiber is good for you - it improves your night vision.

Pimp my grid

This may have been blogged already by one of my esteemed Dutch friends closer to the action, but sadly I have been too absorbed to notice (sorry guys - if you have, send me a link to point to), but I just stumbled across a link to a presentation delivered last month in Italy by the Almere Grid, which I wrote about here in those heady days of 2006. Looks like a predictably interesting piece of joined-up thinking from the Netherlands, combining an access strategy, shared backup services for SMEs, academic research, and city planning. It's ironic to discover that Almere is twinned with Milton Keynes...

Take the U.S. broadband census, wherever you are

One of the email discussion lists I subscribe to has seen some coverage of this site, which claims to be collecting data on US broadband speeds, to what end I know not. Based on what I've seen, I only hope that the data they harvest is not employed in any sort of lobbying or policy-making initiatives. Here's why.

Initially it makes some credible-sounding statements about the role of broadband in American society:

"More and more Americans depend on high-speed internet service for education, commerce and entertainment. Broadband is the gateway to the information superhighway."

Hey, 10 bonus points for using "information superhighway" from the get-go!

It continues:

"BroadbandCensus.com is dedicated to providing the most comprehensive public and transparent collection of data about local broadband speeds, prices, availability, reliability and competition. You can help us fill the broadband data gap by Taking the Broadband Census."

Sounds good, happy to help. How else can I get involved? Maybe I should join the research committee, after all:

"The Research Committee will help the Broadband Census' efforts to map out broadband availability, speed, competition and price in an empirically sound fashion."

I like what I'm hearing. So, feeling patriotic, and in the spirit of courteous driving on the information superhighway, I took the test - twice, once claiming to be a Comcast customer, once as an AT&T customer (selecting "fiber" just for laughs). Here are my results:

Thank you for taking the Broadband Census. Your input is appreciated. It will help educate broadband consumers all over the country.

Promised Downstream Speeds: NA

Actual Downstream Speeds: 3.75299 Mbps

Promised Upstream Speeds: NA

Actual Upstream Speeds: 0.444 Mbps

Go to your ZIP code: 38117

Go to your provider's page: Comcast

Promised Downstream Speeds: NA

Actual Downstream Speeds: 4.33679 Mbps

Promised Upstream Speeds: NA

Actual Upstream Speeds: 0.476 Mbps

Go to your ZIP code: 38117

Go to your provider's page: AT&T

It looks like the data might go straight onto the site with no mediation. I checked out the 38117 ZIP code page after my test, and there was only one result from an AT&T user, who had given the service four stars - the rating I gave it in my second test. I have to assume this was my response. I could repeat the test to confirm, but I'm getting bored now.

There are huge problems here. I am in the UK, which is where I took part in the U.S. "census". As the speed test requires no identity assertion, and clearly does not exclude non-US IP addresses from taking part, I would assume that anyone can submit as many bogus entries as they want to, from anywhere in the world. Not that I would ever suggest or endorse such behavior...

UPDATE: Despite what I initially wrote and pathetic as it may seem, I actually did subsequently go back and take the test for a third time, claiming to be an AT&T subscriber again, but this time giving the service only one star. At this writing, the 38117 ZIP code page contains only two ratings for AT&T - a four star, and a one star, leading me to the inescapable conclusion that both of these results were generated by my bogus entries, taken at face value, despite coming from a legacy ntl.com IP address, which various free analytics tools clearly identify as being based in London. A for intentions, F for execution.

The pipe giveth, and the pipe taketh away

My last rant consciously avoided the symmetrical/asymmetrical connection issue, mainly because it raises my blood pressure to dangerous levels. But the tireless Om has written a nice piece on the issue, and I would like to share the pain. 

I'm on a Virgin Media 10Mbps package, with which I'm very happy on the whole. It is very reliable, and I often get my nominal download speed, and quizzically sometimes higher. I guess it doesn't hurt that if I scan the neighborhood for Wi-Fi routers, I get a lot of BT and Sky SSIDs, suggesting that the contention levels on my node may be low because DSL seems to have won battle for the block. 

In any event, the nominal upload speed on my package is 512kbps, making for a 20:1 asymmetry between download and upload. I have a JungleDisk account, and it's a great service, but my quick and dirty calculation is that my music collection, as it stands now, would take 22 days to back up to the cloud. 

That's painful enough to convince me not to even try, but perhaps I should, because this situation will only worsen as the asymmetry gap widens. Virgin's new 50Mbps package has an upload of 1.5Mbps, or an asymmetry of 33:1. So the consumer has a vastly enhanced capacity to acquire content, but backing it up via the wonder of cloud storage becomes disproportionately more painful, because the rate at which content can be acquired expands faster and in greater increments than the upload. 

Time for a new term?

I've been struggling to keep my head above water, which is a suitably vague explanation for the dearth of posts recently. One project I've been working on has me pondering broadband in the broadest sense. There's certainly no shortage of data to ponder, what with the newly released Akamai report, and last week's WEF Networked Readiness report and updated analysis from Point Topic. 

One thing I have been thinking about is the long-term viability of the word "broadband." As SamKnows has demonstrated in the UK, one man's "broadband" is another man's "dial-up" in practice. When we talk about a global average access speed of 1.5Mbps, as observed by Akamai, we're clearly a long, long way from ubiquitous broadband Nirvana for all. Still, it's faster than dial-up, so technically it's broadband. However, when I see Korea with an average speed of 15Mbps, 69% of all connections at more than 5Mbps, and 94% of all connections at more than 2Mbps, the term seems to be almost meaningless. 

"Broadband", as with terms to describe other previous technology innovations, such as the "horseless carriage" and "wireless telegraphy", currently seems to be defined more by what it isn't, rather than what it is. In a market like Korea, where virtually no narrowband exists anymore, what does broadband mean, exactly? Connected, basically. And more broadly, when a single term can be used in various markets to indicate a range of >256kbps to 1Gbps and above, isn't it essentially a nonsense? And don't even get me started on the asymmetrical vs. symmetrical connection issue. 

The video industry has been extremely successful in carving out a brand identity for HD as separate from SD TV - no one would claim that an analogue broadcast and 1080p are the same experience, though both are broadly defined as TV (okay, I know there's been a lot of marketing fudge in practice, but the standards say either it's HD or it ain't). My sense is that we need to start looking for a new term (or terms) to use in place of "broadband", both because it doesn't mean much today, and is likely to mean even less in future. 

Anyway, I'd be curious to hear any suggestions out there as to long-term alternative descriptors. Now it's time to crank up my broadband, get on the Infobahn and download some "talkies".  

Greetings from Hong Kong

This jet lag is a mo-fo, but what a place! Looking forward to catching up with my friends from HKBN this evening. Meanwhile, their ad campaign continues to deliver hilarious, but pointed, messages.

Let's peel that onion

On Thursday night, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation and discussion with the team from SamKnows, hosted by the Broadband Stakeholder Group. In case you weren't aware of it, it's the SamKnows database which powers availability checkers on broadband consumer comparison sites and some of the sites of individual ISPs in the UK. The discussion mainly focused on the outcome of its study of broadband speeds which form the basis for OFCOM's recent report.

This involved installing Linksys WRT54G routers between the routers and modems of over 2,000 volunteer panel members. Each Linksys router was modified with a client which would run a pre-scheduled routine of diagnostic tests on a number of performance indicators at times when the panelists' networks were judged to be idle, and report this data back to home base for analysis.

The results, as seen in the OFCOM report, show a wide range of variation in maximum and average speeds beyond what could be attributed solely to loop length (pages 30 - 32). Possible explanations include everything from poor customer network configuration and wiring problems, to contention, throttling, and insuffucient backhaul provisioning.

Some of the causes could probably be inferred from the data collected by the Linksys devices, but the mandate from OFCOM was to focus on speed. I find this ironic, in that I have heard members of the OFCOM consumer panel advocating incorporating other KPIs, such as latency, in ISP performance claims and marketing.

Sadly, there was no discussion of individual ISP performance in the session, despite the fact that SamKnows obviously has a high level of insight in this regard. My reading was that OFCOM is keen to avoid this sort of disclosure, because it might somehow distort the market.

I'm intrigued by how the outputs from SamKnows' data could be married with data from other sources, such as the Measurement Lab, Akamai, Level3, and the Internet Storm Center, to build a better-rounded real-time picture of what is actually driving the quality of the customer experience. I'm sure a number of telcos and broadband service providers wouldn't want to subject themselves to that sort of scrutiny for obvious reasons.

On the other hand, if exposed to the end user community, it could also be a powerful marketing and customer care tool. Transparency of performance claims, backed up by hard evidence from a number of sources, would be a great selling point, and if customers have some visibility on what's behind their service problems, presumably they will be less inclined to bombard call centers, especially if they can see that the problem likely lies either in their own CPE/network, or on the other side of the local access network.

Anyway, the thing that really excited me was that the SamKnows team clearly wants to expand their study methodology beyond the UK. I can think of a number of readers of this humble bloglet in various markets around Europe and elsewhere who would make great local partners, so don't be shy.

Not there, but definitely not square

I unfortunately missed eComm again this year, though I remain optimistic that I will make the trek one day. Looks like my friend Martin Geddes was also unable to attend, but sent an impressive video talk, which is definitely worth your time.

A modest proposal

I have a candidate for a new question on the "Life in the UK" test:

"Identify the defining characteristic essential to survival in the UK."

The answer, among the multiple choice options, is, "An enduring and inexhaustible capacity for absorbing disappointment."

Starless and Bible black

It's bad to feel that each sporadic new post on this humble bloglet requires an apology for the yawning gap since the last. But I fortunately have a good excuse, having been stranded in Africa for the past week. I write this from a net cafe in Freetown - please send money, and also the PIN to your bank account and credit cards if possible. 

Sadly, this is not true. I have been absorbed in start-up activities - investor presentations, brainstorming with my wonderful colleagues, work on the pipeline, meetings with external partners, and generally absorbing the astonishingly black newsflow which overwhelms us all (thus the pretentious title of this post - King Crimson, yes, but I had in mind the description of night in the opening line of the original source, Under Milk Wood). Pretentious it may be, but I think it fits, as we are in an economic night both starless (as in no star to steer by), and Bible black, because there are none more black.

If you can detach yourself from the fear and anxiety permeating the world at the moment, it's actually quite exhilarating to think that we, the human race, are in totally uncharted economic waters, though the climate change campaigners would yawn and rightly say that we've been there for years - it's only when there's an abstraction like money at stake that people sit up and take notice. 

For anyone born in the West after 1945, up to now, no matter how bad things were at home, the truly bad stuff always happened elsewhere. Globalization, however, is one hell of a leveller. How we handle the current crisis will define how we see ourselves as a civilization for decades to come, and indeed whether there actually are decades to come as a civilization. 

So far, I'm not encouraged. Seeing Ben Bernanke yesterday being interrogated by a group of Senators whom I would describe collectively as relatively ill-informed and inarticulate at best (one stumbled several times over the word "chaos", which he apparently encountered unprepared in the statement written by his aides, which he was obviously reading for the first time during the hearing) really drove home how little policy-makers seem to grasp the mechanics of the capital markets and banking world - yet they seem all-too-eager to prescribe remedies and feel-good soundbites. 

I also had the dubious pleasure yesterday of reading a note from Bob Janjuah of RBS, who is glumly entertaining to read. Cutting to the chase, he's talking about a 4% contraction in G7 GDP in 2009, followed by 0% in 2010, S&P 500 at 550 (vs. 765, where it closed today), multiple credit rating downgrades for "solid" investment grade credits, etc. I would add that the market still doesn't seem as worried at present as it should be about company pension blackholes, nor does anyone really know where a huge amount of senior corporate debt on the balance sheets of banks is actually marked - my guess is unrealistically high. 

And I had a fascinating meeting today with someone in the restructuring space, who made the interesting observation that the severity of the current downturn may eradicate the relatively rational, consensual niceties which surrounded restructurings in the previous downturn, in favor of more aggressive, irrational behavior and litigation. Good news for bankruptcy lawyers, but I'm not entirely sure what existing investors or other stakeholders can make of all this.    

So what does this mean to the average geek? Apple-obsession, gadget-porn, Google-worship/bashing, et al, are nice pastimes, but sadly they don't count for much in the very difficult meatspace we all occupy now. I have written previously about the defensiveness of telecom and the potential for meaningful reinvention arising from the current nightmare, but reading it again today, nearly six months on, it seems a bit contentious. I also produced a piece a few months ago, which was fundamentally satire, but underpinned by a genuine concern that this problem could end up being much more serious than anyone was willing to admit at the time. 

Between the two pieces, given the evidence to date, I would now have to clearly fall on the side of the latter. In other words, while I firmly would like to believe that mobile and broadband are fundamentally services which should easily displace other forms of discretionary spending under "normal" conditions of duress, what remains highly uncertain is the denominator - i.e., how much consumers will have to spend in the first place. Or, indeed, how many "consumers" there actually will be out there a year from now, and how they are captured and retained. Over to you telecom - good night and good luck.

Fiber, schmiber

In the wake of the Copenhagen fiber love-in last week, a multi-platinum mega-uber value reader alerts me to a review of the event published by NLkabel, the cable trade association previously known as VECAI. My Dutch isn't what it used to be, but my source tells me that the main conclusions are - wait for it - that there are no new services for fiber, that the social and economic benefits are unquantified, and that the main driver of fiber deployment to date has been the competitive dynamic in markets where it has occurred.

I'm more intrigued by the choice of images in the report. Look at the photo on page 2 - don't you think that the attitude of the woman's shoulders betrays an underlying depression, because fiber events are boring and the whole endeavour is ultimately pointless and doomed? Or the picture on page 3 of the man looking wistfully into the middle distance from his perch at an empty display stand, wishing he'd had the foresight to train as a CATV installation technician - instead of becoming a lonely FTTH-loving loser... Or the two photos at the bottom of page 3, which definitively prove that a) video looks blurry over fiber, and b) fiber dudes are misfits who look like they come from the ranks of a ZZ Top tribute band.

It's subtle stuff...

Meanwhile, if you, like me, are skeptical that we will see any meaningful deployment of fiber in the UK before the ending of this song, then you probably won't be any more encouraged after reading this news snippet. I have often heard it said (and indeed have said it myself) that BT is a gargantuan pension fund with a small telco attached, but this really brings things into perspective, or as Spinal Tap would say, too much perspective. Should the worst happen, what do you suppose the government's appetite for a £30bn fiber deployment could be once it has absorbed BT and crystallized its financial obligation under the Crown Guarantee?

Distracted 2.0

Well, mega-uber value readers, it looks like I'm failing miserably in my intention to post more frequently. It just happens that I'm preoccupied with pre-launch preparations, investor meetings, and the like. Very exciting stuff, and I promise to share what I can in due course.

Greetings to all my erstwhile fiber geek friends whom I'm missing this week in Copenhagen. This is the first conference I've missed in four years, so please don't have too much fun without me, though in Copenhagen in February, that may not be too much of an ask...

However bad it might be in Copenhagen (disclaimer: actually it is a wonderful city - I'm just jealous), at least there's more fun to be had than in some corridors of power in Brussels, where it appears that a cat-fight may be developing between Ms. Reding and "Nickel" Neelie Kroes. Dutch version is here, Google translated English here. I have no real insight into the implied allegations contained here, but no doubt if there is any substance to them, then it is pretty explosive stuff.

In any event, given that I have little to say, and that any market commentary from me would be mostly negative, I thought it might be best to focus on the ridiculous, for a change. So, here goes.

Firstly, via the NANOG list, check out this amazing gallery of cabling nightmares. Words fail me.

Secondly, I recently stumbled across this bizarre collection of lovingly-crafted Dictionaraoke tracks. AC/DC fans click here, Black Sabbath fans here, Beatles fans here, Smiths fans here.

Lastly, I have rarely laughed so hard that I both cried and choked at the same time, but this piece of video from the incomparable geniuses at The Onion takes the prize. If you're easily offended by strong language, or are a member of the Sony legal team, you should skip it. For everyone else, and for anyone who has ever struggled with the installation of a piece of consumer electronic paraphernalia (Sony or otherwise), take a deep breath and enjoy.

Watch your back

Happy Friday. If you're finished reading your copy of the Financial Times, whatever you do, don't give it to a friend or colleague - you might find yourself on the wrong end of a lawsuit... Silly me, it looks like dramatically different rules apply between the physical and virtual worlds, to cover identical content. The disclaimer in my physical copy of the paper only talks about copying, not about sharing. Still, this sort of thing is good news for IP lawyers, or at least those who haven't moved over into bankruptcy practice, where all the real fun is. Not that IP lawyers have any shortage of career options, at least not in the US, where government beckons for some. It's intriguing to think about what's going on inside an administration apparently committed to universal availability of broadband and net neutrality (whatever that really means), but with a legal team like this on the bench. How do you spell change?

Taking the fiber challenge

It's not often that I copy and paste an entire press release, but it's not on the site yet, so here goes. This is another very clever (though not entirely unexpected) move by KPN, which is a nice incumbent validation of point-to-point fiber and more generally of open networks. And one has to assume that this is very unwelcome news for UPC, which still derives around 15% of EBITDA (at a nice margin) in the Dutch market, centered on Amsterdam. 

KPN participates in fiber roll-out in Amsterdam

KPN announces that it will participate in the fiber network roll-out in Amsterdam through its Reggefiber joint venture. For this purpose, the Reggefiber joint venture takes a majority stake in Glasvezelnet Amsterdam (GNA), an existing joint venture with the municipality of Amsterdam and several housing corporations. The Reggefiber joint venture does not require additional cash contributions from KPN for increasing its stake.

In the coming years, GNA will be responsible for a further and gradual fiber network roll-out based on Fiber-to-the-Home (FttH). During the first stage, it intends to realize some 100,000 homes passed on FttH in the next years. KPN intends to offer services on this network.

For KPN, participation in GNA via the Reggefiber joint venture is a next step following the establishment of a joint venture with fiber construction company Reggefiber in 2008. This joint venture is focused on the roll-out of FttH networks in the Netherlands and the company will roll out the Amsterdam network as well. Just like Reggefiber’s other fiber networks, the network in Amsterdam will be opened up to KPN and other service providers.

KPN is currently involved in pilots in ten cities for fiber, five of them with FttH. In the second half of 2009, the results of the pilots will be used to determine the speed and direction of a possible further fiber roll-out. After delivering the first 100,000 connections in Amsterdam, it will be assessed if and how a further roll-out in Amsterdam would be appropriate.

The proposed joint venture is subject to approval from the competition authorities. 

Snowy Sunday

Tomorrow may be Stormy Monday (at least that's what they call it), but this evening we are having heavy snow in London, which is quite surprising given that snow has been rationed here since 1943. 

I have been very quiet of late, largely because my focus has been on setting up the new fund. So most of my time in the past couple of weeks has been absorbed in working on the pipeline, doing some writing, and taking in the sheer immensity of the problems facing the market. Without saying too much, I think it's sufficient to note that we are seeing some situations (admittedly not in telecom) which are stunning in the rapidity of their deterioration, and we are also seeing some pieces of capital structures trading which don't trade in normal circumstances - suggesting that there may be a further unwinding of positions (possibly under duress) taking place.

On top of these sorts of capital market-centric indications of what's going wrong, there is plenty of other evidence in support of the view that we are in for many nasty new surprises. Which makes it surprising to me to read that 33% of respondents to a survey on distressed investing seem to think that the bottom is upon us now. 

I disagree, and the moment of epiphany for me last week was reading that NBC's final unsold Super Bowl commercial slot went to a glorified pawn broker. Super Bowl ad slots have historically been a showcase for global consumer brands to make their most memorable statements for the year ahead. During the boom/bubble era of extravagance, the easy-going zeitgeist was reflected in the ads - now we have an interloper in the form of a company serving people feeling frightened and vulnerable enough to sell their gold for cash, despite the fact that the "smart money" is actually doing the opposite. 

I was also somewhat taken aback (though, in retrospect, I'm not sure why) by a release from Equifax (not yet on the site at this writing) suggesting that a large proportion of UK respondents have at most a one-month financial cushion in the event of redundancy. It's not pretty, and thus I don't buy all this talk of a second-half recovery, because I think the stress in the system, at the small business and personal level, is perhaps more negative than many are taking into account at present. And none of this seems to take into account the specter of new nationalism and grassroots anti-globalization, which has never been a particularly positive force.

I am worried, but what the hell, it's a new week ahead. No doubt there will be worse and more ridiculous to come.

If you're finding it hard to get to sleep, here's some recommended reading material:

• Monash University Australia - three winning papers on broadband and the environment;
• Interesting photo essay on FTTH/FTTN in rural Texas

I will endeavour to post more frequently!

And now for something completely insane...

Thanks to a newly-crowned Palladium Club mega-uber value reader, check out this exceptionally detailed pictorial essay on domestic fiber installation in Japan. 

Thursday bummer

I spent today in the West End, beavering away on the project, but my concentration was frequently broken by the torrent of bad news filling the wires today. First BT (oh dear), then Nokia, which ended the day in the Minus 10 Club, nicely matching its 2009 industry outlook. Then came Microsoft, and then Freescale announced it has drawn part of its revolver, which didn't seem to inspire huge confidence. Overall, a hideous day for news, but thankfully not entirely devoid of comedy. As I've always said, when the sun shines out your backside, it's advisable to rest said derriere on a $44,000 chair.

Streaming tears of joy

I'm very busy at the moment. However, in the wake of yesterday's historic events on Capitol Hill, the geek wannabe in me just couldn't help stopping to take note of some of the impressive statistics coming out of the likes of Akamai and Limelight, as well as the associated thread on the NANOG list. Now, back to building my own future...

Virtual late lunch, 14 January 2009

Much to catch up on, but first, a moment of silence for Nortel. The 2009 fun and games have officially begun. 

For the datacenter lover in you, Digital Realty Trust had another set of encouraging numbers yesterday, and the stock had a nice bounce, though the appalling US retail sales numbers and fallout from Nortel are taking their toll today.

Then again, look on the bright side, looks like PCs and game consoles are going to get even cheaper!

Disdain for fund-of-fund managers is the new black, and Telenor is draped in it from head to toe.

If you live in the EU and have been putting off that plasma TV purchase, time may be running out.

Very interesting report on the smart grid and its potential contribution to fiscal stimulus. This is discussed in an upcoming Telco 2.0 post, so I'll just point to it for now. 

On a purely personal point, I continue to be amazed at the power of this web thingie to connect and reconnect people. A couple of days ago, I received, totally out of the blue, a bunch of old photos from a group of schoolmates I haven't seen since or communicated with since 1974, when we moved to Memphis. We are now emailing and Facebooking one another and exchanging stories. In true Woody Allen fashion, it seems that no one has ended up doing what I expected them to do back when we were kids, including myself. And it turns out that a nice, unassuming kid I often played with has ended up as a pretty well-known writer it would seem. It's all delightful stuff, and highlights that without this awesome series of tubes, we would probably all be in the dark about how life turned out for us. Now there is a Facebook group and even some talk of an attempt at a reunion. 

Back to 2009, FTSE -4.4%, S&P -3%. Ho hum...

Broadband bombshells

A couple of mega-uber value readers have pointed me towards a couple of interesting reports hot off the presses:

OFCOM's survey of broadband speed and performance characteristics, carried out by the awesome SamKnows, looks like the most comprehensive study of its type ever produced, and I look forward to reading it.

Likewise, OPTA has released an interesting-looking report (and spreadsheet) commissioned from AnalysysMason comparing costs of various scenarios for fiber deployment in the Netherlands. I have only scanned it very quickly, but if I'm interpreting the cost comparisons correctly, it would seem to point to a significant cost disadvantage for sub-loop unbundling. 

Back in action, mostly

A belated happy new year to all mega-uber value readers. Still trying to locate my brain through a jet-lag fog, but normal posting should resume soon. I'll spare you the typical "2009 predictions" post, because my view is that all bets are off for this year, apart from rising corporate defaults and human misery, which are dead certs. Working through a mountain of email today, I came across a couple of items on companies near the top of Santa's naughty list in 2008, so I will content myself with these for now:

According to this article, Phorm (a company which has succeeded in inspiring a jaw-droppingly unique level of negative press and public disdain) is apparently considering financial incentives to secure user acceptance. I wrote something recently wherein I speculated that this might be one approach, but one which is at odds with the company's business model, which is based on share of incremental ad revenue with ISP and channel partners. I'm not sure I really understand what's going on here, if anything. I think a company like Phorm really only has one incentive to attract users, and that is the promise of greater relevance in ad content, though I think consumers are far from comfortable with this proposition at present. Perhaps advertising fatigue has not reached the critical level yet. 

Elsewhere, Sandvine, the people who brought you the great Comcast Controversy, have started off the year with six major customer wins, though I'm not really sure what constitutes a "tier 1" DSL operator in Japan, where DSL is in terminal decline. If anyone has any ideas about who the European mystery company is, please let me know.

Finally, I've been commissioned to write a report for a major international organization, on the topic of broadband's role in stimulating and enabling innovation. This is a very broad remit, and I have lots of ideas, but I'd be very interested to hear yours, no matter how unusual.  

Season's Greetings

Happy Holidays and best wishes for 2009 (though, if we're honest, I think we all know it's going to suck, barring some intervention from a benevolent advanced alien race)! EuroTelcoblog will be embarking on its 2008 North American Roadshow from 27th December, which in practice means an extended engagement in Memphis, Tennessee, with minimal to nil posting. I know of one amazing story which may break during my absence, so if I miss it, I miss it - but it's a good one. Anyway, back in service on 7th January. All the best until then. God bless us, every one! 

FTTP = Fiber to the People

I've been suffering blogger's block recently, partly just busy with other things, and partly desperately in search of some positive news to restore a sense of Christmas cheer. I just got a press release (not yet on the site) from my friends at City Telecom in Hong Kong, alerting me to the fact that the company is going to sponsor 25Mbps service for two years for 1,000 underprivileged families with school-age kids. Thinking about some of the appalling telco PR fumbles of the past, I'd just like to say well done folks, this is how it's done. Merry FTTX-mas!

Friday shock and awe, again

Well, it's a grey and dismal Friday afternoon in London, and the shelves are most definitely half empty. No shortage of surprising, shocking and ridiculous news, so why not dive straight in?

Too bad Nortel's not an American company, because then it might have a decent crack at some TARP funds. Perhaps an emergency merger of the US and Canada can be arranged over the weekend to allow this - hey, rules were meant to be bent. 

Alcalu says, "I ain't going out like that," and brandishes its Web 2.0 credentials, threatening to escalate to Web 3.0 if necessary. Oh, and they're going to fire, sorry, I guess that's "de-friend" in Web 2.0 parlance, 6,000 people just in case. I hope this Web x.0 escalation meme doesn't catch on, because if Cisco gets onboard, we could very soon find ourselves stuck right in the middle of Web 9.0 by next weekend, and Huawei will always promise 10x more Web x.0 for half the price. It's a slippery slope. 

(Meanwhile Ben Verwaayen has issued a friend request and superpoke to Gabrielle Gauthey of ARCEP. All joking aside, she was gracious enough to give me a private meeting at her office back in 2007, and I found her to be hugely impressive. To say she is well-regarded and connected is an epic understatement, and if Lucatel is in search of people of substance, they would struggle to do better.)

Different day, same old cable stress. Will we see the formation of CARP?

Nobody can lose $50bn like "The Ponz." 

I guess I could keep going, but it's Friday for God's sake, there's got to be some good news somewhere, and indeed I have precisely two items:

• In a time of eroding corporate earnings, Netia in Poland has today increased guidance for the year, which means more cash.
  
• My friend Thomas Anglero at WiHood gave me an exclusive demo of the alpha version of WiHood Mobile. I can't really say any more, but I was extremely impressed. No doubt all will be revealed in due course. 
  

Now, go home and have a good weekend. 

Virtual bedtime story - 10th December

Apologies for the dearth of posts, I have been otherwise engaged. Anyway, as you prepare for your slumber, here are a few of the interesting things which I have happened to notice through the fog:

Oh, to be in Switzerland, now that fiber has come...

The EC welcomes EC2...

The mother of all self-destruction. I continue to be in disbelief that anyone could have expected to get away with deception on this scale. Even more quizzical is the choice of name for the property venture. As far as I know, Kandahar is an inhospitable place where interlopers typically get blown to bits. Actually, maybe the name is appropriate.

How to serve advertising to people who are hellbent on avoiding it. 

Do you believe in reincarnation? I do. 

Only 21 more shopping days left!

Recessionary Christmas
Originally uploaded by jimiinc

From the latest Equifax consumer survey:

"Following the Bank of England rate cut at the beginning of the month, 10% of those who responded to the Equifax survey said they planned to use the savings on their mortgage to pay off other debts and 11% planned to put the saving towards day to day living expenses. 4% said they planned to put the saving made on their mortgage back into their own savings. However, only 2 respondents planned to use the extra cash for Christmas gifts and celebrations."

Virtual afternoon tea - 3rd December

 

Apologies for the lack of structured posts, but I've got to focus on topping up the Christmas Club account... 

Here's another snapshot from the inner circle of hell - the iTraxx Europe Crossover moving above 1000. Without going into the tedious details, this is a proxy for the perceived creditworthiness of a basket of 50 sub-investment grade companies, which is reshuffled every six months. As we're talking here about spreads on credit default swaps, the higher the number, the uglier the picture - and 1,000 is a very high number. But the equity market is having a quiet rally...

A friend alerts me to a chilling montage of videos of Peter Schiff - it's quite edifying in hindsight to see the derision with which his predictions were received at the time, though it's all common knowledge today. I particularly like the commentator who touts Merrill Lynch at $76... 

Currently working on a report on how telco assets can be best utilized in advertising and marketing, I happened to stumble across this little snippet of AT&T thinking outside the call-box. It's not particularly relevant to what I'm working on, but I found it oddly refreshing.

Seeing Carlyle's Hawaiian black eye brings to mind a conversation I had recently with a friend in the more mainstream telecom consulting world, who intimated that he is seeing more interest from PE backers of telco/cable assets. My reading, and only my reading, was that the backers are now expecting to be running these companies for longer than they originally thought, which I think is a safe assumption.

Call for assistance

I know that occasionally, Googlers drop in to read, so I make the plea that, if you can put me in touch with someone at Feedburner, I'd be much obliged. I have an intractible dilemma which I need help with. 

UPDATE four hours later: Who said Google doesn't do customer service? Within two hours of my post, a Googler has been in touch to ask what the problem is and to say that he will endeavor to connect me with the right people. I'm truly impressed. 

As to my problem, it's tedious, but if you're curious, my somewhat embarrassing problem is that when I set up my Feedburner account years ago, I stupidly used my Daiwa (old work) email account, and also managed over the years to forget my password. So even if I try to reset my password, the new one is sent to a non-existent email address. I'm really curious to see what sort of subscriber base I have, but at the moment the only option is to create a new feed and ask everyone to resubscribe, which seems a bit silly. 

And the reason behind my curiousity is that, it seems to me that during my 16 month hiatus, adoption of newsreaders, particularly Google Reader, increased dramatically, at least based on the source of traffic to the site (less from search, more from newsreaders, iGoogle, MyYahoo, Zuka, NetVibes, and the like) compared to the pattern before I went underground in April 2007. The net effect of this is that my daily traffic seems to be about 1/3 of what it was at the peak during the blog's previous incarnation, and I want to see if this is an actual decline, or a large migration to newsreaders.  

Virtual water cooler - 28 November

A few non-random links for a very wet and nasty Friday:

The Guardian thinks we may have to resort to local action to get fiber in the UK. Maybe that's partly intended as a joke, but it's not such an outlandish idea. If it ever stops raining, maybe we should consider it.

Act locally, bottleneck globally.

I didn't think it was possible to have data center envy, but I have now changed my mind.

If, like me, you didn't have time to watch the Akamai investor event last week, you should. It's fascinating. 

In case you're hungry, here's more tasty fudge, fresh from the oven.

A few interesting new articles over at the Telco 2.0 blog, plus a couple by me...

Drip feed

One down, 299 to go!

I've never much cared for fudge...

"The industry welcomed the Commission's fresh commitment to broadband but many regretted that today's crucial Telecoms Council (27 November) will not propose to review rules to facilitate building new networks in its overall reform of the telecoms sector.

Telecoms ministers are instead set to approve a text based on the original proposal from the Commission, which did not include references to new infrastructure: so-called Next Generation Networks (NGNs). Amendments by the Parliament, widely referring to NGN policies, will not be taken into consideration (EurActiv 17/11/08).

The Council will only discuss future networks in a separate debate regarding a different Commission proposal , which is still at the first stage of the legislative process. Many are concerned that, by not including NGNs in the telecoms package immediately, the topic will be postponed even further, delaying private investment and running contrary to the urgency highlighted by the Commission in its recovery plan.

The gap between the national and Commission positions in terms of broadband is not limited to NGNs. The Council does not share the bold objective of reaching a broadband-for-all target by 2010, as proposed again by the EU executive in its recovery plan (EurActiv 17/03/08).

Moreover, ministers do not agree with the radio spectrum "revolution" called for by the Commission to exploit the digital dividend. The Council will today reject Brussels' proposals and instead adopt a rather conservative line in support of the current primary holders of frequencies: broadcasters. The Commission pushed instead for reallocation in favour of internet providers as means of exploiting the digital dividend to tackle the digital divide."

And the video just keeps on flowing

Another surprise video, this time from Telco 2.0. Also check out the Werner Vogels presentation, which brought the house down, and Martin's masterful audience ambush.

Virtual nightcap, 25 November

It's been a busy day, but here are a few midnight musings:

ONO Q3 results - Decent EBITDA, but oh dear, the churn rate of 21.9% is a marked deterioration. I didn't get a chance to listen to the call, but will do so ASAP. It's tempting to assume that this is merely household destruction reversing the trend of household creation in Spain, but it's unclear to me now. Bonds were weaker on the results, and I assume the halls of Telefonica HQ echoed with nervous laughter today.

Dutchness - Regarding yesterday's post on the Netherlands and related themes, there have been a number of comments to the blog and also offline. One of the latter, from a mega-uber value reader who prefers anonymity, suggests that the core network traffic data analyzed by Andrew Odlyzko excludes, to an unquantifiable extent, the local and quasi-local traffic generated by edge applications, which is presumably a major incremental issue for last mile providers. 

I agree this is an issue, but unfortunately not easily monitored, as is also the case for bilateral peering of traffic between major incumbents. My crypto-mega commenter also cites raw throughput as something of a red herring in isolation - preferring to focus on performance measures such as latency. This is reasonable and also seems consistent with what I have heard previously from the OFCOM Consumer Panel on potential new definitions for performance metrics. Seems to me there is an opportunity for someone to come up with a sort of reverse DPI application for broadband users, to monitor and report local network conditions for analysis (I first heard this idea suggested by Jonathan Zittrain in late 2006 on a panel we shared, and I still think it's great.). 

Meanwhile, KPN issued a press release to calm people down, and friend Vincent Dekker produced an interesting map of fiber in the Netherlands (green dots = FTTH roll-out complete; orange dots = roll-out in progress; blue dots = actively attracting customers but no roll-out yet). 

Streaming surprise

I didn't realize at the time that it was going to be put up on the Interweb, but I just stumbled across a video of my panel from the Streaming Media Europe event several weeks ago. 

Welcome to the Playground

Breaking news from Norway. Congratulations to my friend Thomas Anglero, whose WiHood service is as of today on the Telenor Playground platform. Thomas and I spoke about WiHood here back in August, and he has on many occasions shared privately with me his hopes, challenges and frustrations in making the WiHood vision a reality. I'm thrilled that he has reached this milestone. This is virtualization at its most human and mass market level, folks, and I think it's particularly interesting in a Telenor context given its mobile footprint. I would expect operators with similar emerging market assets to be interested, if they are as far up the learning curve as Telenor seems to be. It's a great illustration of the telco API meeting with an innovative startup to achieve what neither can easily do alone - break out the Akvavit!

Fiber envy, fiber shame

It's really too late to begin a blog post. I'm mostly braindead, but very much enjoyed a dinner meeting ealier tonight with some interesting old friends (more on this as appropriate). I returned home to find a flurry of interest around the release of OPTA's NGA review, which has been interestingly analysed in hyperblog mode by Rudolf (now asleep), and also by EuroTelcofriend Yves Blondeel.   

Just working for now on a crude assumption (generally based on the DSL experience) that the wholesale pricing might equate to around 1/3 to 1/4 the end retail price, this suggests that symmetrical fiber services of various flavors might be available for EUR36 - 70 per month - a range which looks (at least to an outsider) highly competitive with cable and DSL. Afterall, it needs to be pitched to the consumer at a point on the price/benefit curve to ensure uptake/switching, so I assume this is the sort of pricing we will see. I need to digest all this a bit more before attempting any more informed comment, and it's late, so I'll content myself for now with just pointing to Rudolf and Yves' fine work.

One thing I do know for sure is that UK residents shouldn't hold their breath for similar developments, at least not if they are expecting significant public sector participation. We may be doing well just to keep the lights on. 

Lastly, just to complicate things, the ever-impressive Andrew Odlyzko has published an update on web traffic growth, which seeks to moderate somewhat the "exaflood" argument upon which the "fiber imperative" is based. I firmly believe fiber migration is a necessary and noble goal, but I also have a soft spot for contrarians and believe we should not ignore empirical data in preference to preconceptions. 

Now, goodnight.

My pipes runneth over

My brain is certainly running over after the fascinating conferences of the past three weeks, and I increasingly feel like I'm ten steps behind where I should be. This post is an attempt to partially catch up, and the plan is to also write something more structured on takeaways from the conferences on the Telco 2.0 blog. So, without further ado, here are some thoughts around vaguely connected themes. 

Telco 2.0 event - I believe there is going to be an official Telco 2.0 post on highlights from the conference a couple of weeks back, so I won't attempt to reinvent the flywheel here. However, as I stated in one of my presentations at the conference, from a purely personal perspective as the one who delivered the very first presentation at a Telco 2.0 event, it's encouraging to see just how far the industry has come in its thinking since the first event, but I was also struck by the recognition that we have an awful long way to go yet. 

There is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that a number of telcos now have teams dedicated to exploring and developing Telco 2.0 themes suited to their individual situations, which is great. On the other hand, while it seems that the industry has grasped and internalized the theory, it is in the process of looking at the practicalities of making this stuff work in real life where reality becomes significantly more complicated. Much of the discussion at the conference revolved around identifying, analysing and exploiting the valuable metadata around telecom services - i.e., the metaphorical wood shavings from the process of delivering connectivity, voice and data, which heretofore have fallen to the workshop floor and been swept away. The central problem, it seems to me, is that telcos have never regarded this data as important beyond the purely operational level, and probably haven't given much thought, until now, to the possibility that someone else might find it highly instructive, let alone to how to make it a usable resource. Which is why the analytics and behavioral targeting industries are the domains of very different companies. Nevertheless, the giants have awoken, but now have to grapple with all the technological and cultural aspects of making this come together, which is not a trivial undertaking. One innovative company in the data management space which I spoke to recently said, when asked about key competitors, that their biggest hurdle is typically not "competitors" but telco IT departments, because they are either distracted, threatened, or both, by the prospect of something which cuts across data silos (and presumably knocks down the gate which they get paid to keep). However, that's precisely what's needed, and fast, as Werner Vogels' presentation seemed to underline, to the dismay of the audience. 

Monaco Media Forum - Overall, I thought the MMF conference was pretty amazing, though I'm told by those who attended last year that things seem to be moving in a more obviously corporate direction (high impact sponsorship, a few fairly blatant company pitches, etc.), though I guess this is the inevitable product of the success of an event such as this one. In any event, the hosts and sponsors did a great job and were very generous with their hospitality, and the content was of a very high caliber. One thing which impressed me about this event was the high ratio of presenters/panelists/moderators to audience. In other words, an awful lot of people in the audience appear onstage at some point, which is refreshing and seems to get people really engaged in networking during the breaks, as the gulf between audience and messenger is narrowed. My only criticism would be that it seemed like the pent-up energy from the sessions was stifled somewhat by having lunch on both days as a structured event with presentations the delegates were obliged to listen to, when what they obviously wanted to do was get to know one another better. Apart from that, I think the content was top-notch on the whole, and I gave a few examples here. I would encourage you to trawl the YouTube archive for the MMF videos, as most are very much worth the effort. 

In terms of overall themes, it struck me that there were a number of parallels with our beloved telecom industry. One moderator of a break-out session (this is another criticism - I think the breakout is dead. Most parts of the technology value chain touch on many/all others these days, so it is likely that many/most delegates will be interested in everything, so why make them choose, particularly if the other sessions are all covered by Chatham House Rules? Otherwise, please stop using the word "convergence".) related his experience at a media conference the preceding week, in which, during the breaks, the traditional media people stood in one corner, while the internet hipsters stood in another, with a vast DMZ in between. This is ironic, as the clear message from this conference (and generally from Telco 2.0) is that both camps need each other, and can each benefit from the other's complementary assets/skills. Afterall, despite the premature predictions of demise for a range of "traditional" media, all still hang on and occasionally surprise (please see Jeff Cole's fascinating talk). What most have in common is a shrinking revenue base, commonly described at this event as "swapping analogue/print dollars for digital pennies," but most survive, at least for now. The challenge is in aligning structure, culture and costs with the reality of the situation, and also in defining what their real strengths are and finding ways to harness the internet to remain relevant and interesting (James Murdoch's interview has some interesting examples, as does Avinash Kaushik's presentation - I 

particularly like his statements on the need to move from the offline/online schism to a concept of "nonline."). Surely this is a highly relevant message for telcos. 

OFCOM conference - I only attended day one, which unfortunately ended with an evacuation of the Bloomberg building (as happened on my last visit), but it was also a very impressive event from the standpoint of content and quality of presenters - though again the breakout bias in the afternoon worked against the audience, I felt. I was particularly impressed by Vittorio Colao (both of whose names were misspelled on the delegate list - what the hell, he's only the CEO of Vodafone...), whose message about the historical "misunderestimation" of mobile uptake rates and its implications for current conservative views of the potential of mobile data resonates strongly with someone who just got his hands on an HTC Touch HD handset. There was a lot of discussion throughout the event of the broadband incentive issue, with some (in my view) rather loose statements apparently endorsing the Olivennes graduated response approach - every time I hear this view spouted by executives from the content world, I think, "Be careful what you wish for." 

Other interesting discussions revolved around the increasingly localized nature of regulation, which leads me to speculate that incumbents in Europe may over time opt to divest certain local access businesses - potentially putting them in the hands of players who can deliver something very different from the status quo. Perhaps the most interesting part of the conference for me occurred during the NGA breakout, when a delegate from Singapore stood up to discuss the open network project there. He volunteered that monthly wholesale pricing at layer one is $9, and that retail pricing for 1Gbps symmetrical service should be in the neighborhood of $25 per month - needless to say, this is intensely inspiring, but also depressing, for the average European resident. I heard some rather optimistic views during a coffee break about how the proceeds from spectrum auctions in the UK might serve as a "digital dividend" to counter my pessimism over NGA funding prospects, but frankly, I'll believe it when I see it, given all the other pressures on national finances. 

Moving on from the conferences, a Platinum Club mega-uber value reader takes me to task a bit over my piece for OFCOM, suggesting that I could have been a bit more positive and discussed "safe harbor" funding structures such as the one employed by Amsterdam in its metro fiber project. I agree wholeheartedly, but I was trying to be controversial, and in any event, my sense is that the debate in the UK hasn't even reached this level yet, sadly. Even if it had, there are structural and timing issues which make this a very different kettle of pickled herring: the absence in the UK of entrepreneurial capital (with the possible exception of Redstone) focused on NGA (the Netherlands has been fortunate to have Dik Wessels - and let's remember that he has owned and understands construction/civil engineering businesses), and the state of the capital markets (appalling now, versus bouyant at the time of the Amsterdam project investment) make the prospects fairly depressing for the UK. The Singaporean delegate to the OFCOM conference referred to above made a haunting statement, to the effect that any incumbent which remains wedded to its copper network over the next five years faces a very nasty surprise. I strongly suspect this will be true, probably sooner than five years, but I have to admit that, having seen the UK response to infrastructure issues in transport, for example, I am not encouraged. 

Elsewhere, in the miscellany department:

Akamai layoffs - I guess telcos should be somewhat concerned about their nascent content distribution aspirations when a relatively lean and mean player in the space, with 70% global market share, starts to shed staff despite ostensibly being the key beneficiary of the content explosion. This seems to underline just how brutal the CDN space has become - tread carefully.

A friend pinged me on Friday to call my attention to Todd Underwood's final post for Renesys, and it's a fairly downbeat one, though I can't find any reason to disagree with his points.

Finally, on a positive note, I understand my friends over at VoiceSage are getting some pretty serious customer traction, well done guys!