Greece in national emergency and mourning!

Greece has been slammed from fire waves the last 4 days that have destroyed land and killed citizens. Over 60 people were killed either cause they got surrendered from the fire flames or fighting the flames. The worse curse or nightmare is happening in Greece. Peloponnese is experiencing one of the biggest historical disasters. The sun is obscured, people cannot breathe and the fire is racing all over leading its anger to the main cities, Athens and Patras.


Whole villages and land were destroyed. Freaking scenes and stories of people burnt alive or having their relatives watching them dying, in a case a son was watching his father, a sheep man dying slowly, cause he couldnt reach him for help and save him. Last minute they managed to save the Olympic Games birthplace and the museum from the fire. But part of the Olympic Stadium was destroyed and the Kronos hill was engulfed by fire. The strong wind and its changes are transforming the flames into a non-mercy killer. Fire crews from Cyprus and France are helping tackle blazes in Greece.


Its really depressing; the Greek economy is going seriously to struggle the following years. This disaster will bring the country at least 10 years back. Greece is a country that mostly depends on tourism and agriculture, and all these now belong to past due to the disaster. Anger and frustration of the citizens helpless in some cases trying to save their property or running scared to save their lives.
A nation with no strategic planning, when they know that this happens every August and weak coordination between the firemen and the army. It is obvious that is lacking leadership, a few weeks before the national elections.
At least the last time I visited ancient Olympia back in 2000, I had the opportunity and time to take a huge tour in the green amazing ancient area, but now..ashes all over.

Lets pray and wish that no more people will get killed!

-E

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"