free Wi-Fi on the British train..

The other days, my buddy Panos was getting inpatient and nervous on a 5 hours train ride back to Newcastle, IMing me how boring his trip was. Always believing that Europe is ahead in wireless services and digging into the British rail services, I found that rail passengers on the London-to-Scotland east coast main line will get free Wi-Fi. A service that was offered for free only to first class service, now it will be free for everyone as British Rail decided, since it is taking over GNER's London-Scotland line.


Now, how cool is that, if it expands over Europe, now thats a huge difference, convenience and the technology is there - combination of 3G-GPRS-satellite broadband and Wi-Fi. Hopefully the news will travel to our Amtrak and start thinking of that one day..Heading to the future with high speed trains- TGV that inter-connect Europe and now also with high speed Internet-Wi-Fi, seeking for more!

-E

Congratulations AT&T and Alcatel- Lucent!

I was reading the other days, that AT&T is deploying 500 new U-Verse connections per day, serious rush, the picture is talking by itself. Fire to Fiber To The Node (FTTN) equipment in Houston. It can get worst, when in Japan NTT uses the Fire, sorry Fiber To The Basement (FTTB) technology, finishing the last much less than a mile with VDSL.

Do you feel safe now? On the one hand we have the gas pipe explosion in Mid-Town, cause it was old and on the other Alcatel-Lucent's on fire cause its new and the technician perhaps did not pay attention to the safety installation rules..

-E

IPTV- yeah bro...on Demand!

Recently, I did some research on Passive Optical Networks and I realized that it is a hot engineering topic with many dark areas. There are 2 different lanes, the Asian fast lane, Korea and Japan on the one hand and the Western lay-back world that are a little behind, cause everything will be accomplished in life in a type of magic, trust me! The latters click though on the IPTV deployment. In some cases lacks national standards. Alcatel-Lucent is participating in almost 70% overall of the IPTV deployments projects, implementing exclusively Microsoft TV solutions.


My personal take is that the future is in interactive TV, with careful network planning, advertising and triple play pricing. Since I hardly ever watch TV, dont want to be a poor cable TV fan, only news, perhaps some smart ad spots that could be also YouTubed in most of the cases, rarely sports and the rest is boring or stupid. It turns out that UK is ahead in this game with various recent accomplishments. But I am also excited about the IMS based IPTV that will extent tele-education, tele-gambling, and online shopping, enabling person-to-person and person-to-content communications. Even new services, similar to Video on Demand Karaoke on Demand, Dating on Demand, Fitness on Demand, My Bad Luck on Demand, Get Lost on Demand, iWant More! bla bla


Perhaps, more TV excitement the next decade then, always on Demand!

-E

Google and the Telecom growth

The future of the cell phone market is in the data services. For 2006 in the USA, the average data ARPU climbed 50% while the average voice ARPU declined 7% since EOY 2005. Overall ARPU declined 1% from 2005 levels, with Verizon having made impressive stride with its data revenues up 101%.

Google is making the right move, helping out the cell phone market and itself, creating specs for cell phones to increase revenues through the ad market, where traditionally is a source of wealth in the media industry. It is investing millions of dollars in collaboration with the wireless operators. The cell phone advertising market is new and has amazing opportunities of a tremendous growth till 2011 with a projection of $14 billion in spending compared to the $1.5 billion today.


If it is not Google, and its funny part, that even might suck, then who else can it be? This is something that we use today as a candy. Google tries to be always the first mover and they do not hesitate to spend as a much capital as needed, with Yahoo a follower, learning lessons and acting as the skeptical one. The cell phone market is suffering and there is need and space for innovation. It looks like the ad market is the way to go, with lots of negotiations, 3G networks decisions and agreements and user rights and regulator's approval on the content etc.

This goes along with my current research, targeting to prove empirically what directly affects the ARPU in the USA and the EU zone.

Google is preparing the industry for a big bomb, it sounds like its phone project is reaching out different sides of the Telecom to achieve the best and flexible outcome without depending on operators as Apple did.

Check out how a media guru is scanning the iphone's functionalities in the best review I 've ever read so far.

-E
"my blog was blocked for spam, the last weeks and finally was released - lol"

Hellenic networking in NYC

As a member of the Greek Orthodox Young Adult League, I invite you at our summer meeting/reception next Thursday, 07/19/07.

WallSt./Manhattan Hellenic Professional Society
Kellari Restaurant 19 W. 44th St. b/t 5th and 6th
Thursday, July 19, 2007
5:30-9:00 pm.
Complimetary mezedes

For planning purposes, please RSVP if you expect to attend, drop me an email or a comment.

Sounds like an interesting event, you should attend, if you are around and not on vacations. Mr. Progressive will be there, if you wanna chat.

-E