Category: Telecoms

ABC Nightlife February 2013

For February’s ABC Nightlife segment Tony Delroy and I are looking at software prices, the new breed of smartphones for seniors and the future of the telco industry

Paul Wallbank joins Tony Delroy on ABC Nightife across Australia to discuss how technology affects your business and life. For February 2013 we’ll be looking at the software rip-off, smartphones for seniors and Telstra’s roadmap for the mobile economy.

The show will be available on all ABC Local stations and streamed online through the Nightlife website.

Some of the topics we’ll discuss include the following;

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

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Explaining the NBN on 702 Sydney ABC Radio

The myths and challenges for the NBN in 2013 as the project to roll out fibre optics to most Australians begins to struggle

I’ve covered what the NBN is previously on the ABC for Tony Delroy’s Nightlife and on Technology Spectator last year looked at the challenges ahead for the project in 2013.

The National Broadband Network was always going to be one of the key issues in the 2013 Federal election, The Liberal Party’s policy launch on Sunday and Malcolm Turnbull’s comments on ABC Radio station 702 Sydney on Friday illustrated how critical it will be.

His assertion that wireless should be affordable is laudable, but the indications are that it is increasingly going to become less affordable.

It also puts the coalition in a bad position, losing the three to four billion dollars expected from the spectrum auction wouldn’t help their budget position.

One comment from Malcolm that particularly sticks out is on subsidies;

If I could just make one other point Linda, possibly the most important. The government as we know is spending a stupendous amount of money on building a national fibre to the premises broadband network. And the subsidies there run into the tens of billions of dollars –

The member for Wentworth is facturally wrong; there are no subsidies for the NBN, the government is providing the capital for the project which they hope will be paid back by 2018.

the value of the network once completed will be a fraction of what the government is spending on it.

On what basis? Certainly fibre has a 25 to 40 year expected life cycle, but that’s true of a roadway or an office building; does Malcolm suggest we don’t spend on that as well.

you could make a very powerful argument that the form, the channel of broadband communication which adds the most to productivity is in fact wireless broadband.

Possibly, but let’s see that argument. Currently data downloads to fixed lines still dwarfs mobile, both are growing exponentially.

Malcolm actually touches on the problem we’re facing with wireless — the shortage of bandwidth.

The government has been very slow at getting it out. As of the last report there was only about eight and a half thousand premises connected to the fibre optic network that they’re building throughout all of Australia

This is true, the rollout so far of the NBN has been disappointing. This is what observers are watching closely on this.

The Fibre to the Node setup also creates another problem – that of ownership. If Telstra retain ownership of the copper cable from the node to the premises, it means providers have to deal with two wholesalers one of whom is their competitor.

In fact it creates a whole rabbit’s nest of problems for retailers and could very quickly find us in a situation where telco access requires dealing with two monopolies — Telstra and NBNCo.

One the disappointing things about the National Broadband Network has been the poor debate around the topic, indeed the whole debate at times has been wrong headed. Any hope it’s going to improve during the election campaign isn’t likely

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What happens when software is wrong

A phone company software glitch puts one man’s life and the safety of thousands at risk. It reminds us that computers are not always correct.

The Las Vegas Review Journal yesterday told the story of Wayne Dobson, a retiree living to the north of the city whose home is being fingered as harbouring lost cellphones thanks to a software bug at US telco Sprint which is giving out the wrong location of customer’s mobile devices.

While it appears funny at first the situation is quite serious for Mr Dobson as angry phone owners are showing up at his home to claim their lost mobiles back.

Making the situation even more serious is that 911 calls are being flagged at coming from his home and already he has had to deal with one police raid.

While the local cops have flagged this problem, it’s likely other agencies won’t know about this bug which exposes the home owner to some serious nastiness.

That a simple software bug can cause such risk to an innocent man illustrates why we need to be careful with what technology tells us – the computer is not always right.

Another aspect is our rush to judgement,  we assume because a smartphone app indicates a lost mobile is in a house that everyone inside is a thief. That the app could be wrong, or we don’t understand the data to properly interpret it, doesn’t enter our minds. This is more a function of our tabloid way of thinking rather than any flaws in technology.

The whole Find My Phone phenomenon is an interesting experiment in our lack of understanding risk; not only is there a possibility of going to the wrong place but there’s also a strong chance that an angry middle class boy is going to find himself quickly out of his depth when confronted by a genuine armed thief.

For Wayne Dobson, we should pray that Sprint fixes this problem before he encounters a stupid, violent person. For the rest of us we should remember that the computer is not always right.

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ABC Weekend Computers – should you buy an iPhone 5?

On ABC Sydney this weekend we look at whether the new iPhone is for you.

With the usual hooplah, Apple announced their new iPhone last week. Should consumers drop their existing phones and buy the new iPhone?

On ABC 702 Sydney Weekend computers this Sunday, September 16 from 10.15am Paul Wallbank and Simon Marnie will be looking at the choices in the smartphone market.

Some of the topics we’ll discuss include;

We love to hear from listeners so feel free call in with your questions or comments on 1300 222 702 or text on 19922702.

If you’re on Twitter you can tweet 702 Sydney on @702sydney and Paul at @paulwallbank.

Should you not be in the Sydney area, you can stream the broadcast through the 702 Sydney website and call in anyway. Everyone’s views are welcome.

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The tough world of smartphones

Competing in the smartphone market is tough as Dell have discovered.

Dell’s announcement they are going to exit the Smartphone business – for the second or possibly even third time – comes on the same day Nielsen release a survey showing smartphones are now the bulk of US mobile phone purchases.

For Dell this shows the problem they have in being locked into the commodity PC business, what was once a lucrative business is now suffering softening margins and slowing sales. In desperation they are looking to other product lines but struggle to differentiate themselves in other markets.

The difficulties of doing this in the smartphone sector is shown in Nielsen’s analysis of what phones are selling.

Of those sold in the last three months, a whopping 43% were Apple products while 48% were Google Android devices.

Even more frightening in those Nielsen figures is Blackberry’s collapse where the Canadian product has 12% of the market but only 5% of sales in recent months. It’s little wonder Blackberry’s owner RIM is laying off senior managers.

For Microsoft, that only 4% of phones were “other” than Android, Apple or RIM show just how tough the task of selling Windows Phone is going to be, something that won’t be helped with dumb marketing stunts.

Google’s apparent success in mobile isn’t all that it seems either; while the Android platform has nearly half the smartphone market it doesn’t appear to be particularly profitable.

The Guardian’s Charles Arthur looked at a number of legal cases involving Google’s mobile patents and extrapolated the claimed damages to get an estimate of how much Google earns from Android.

Arthur estimates Android has earned Google $543 million dollars between 2008 and 2011 which, given Google’s mobile revenues last year were claimed to be $2.5 billion last year, indicates Google makes more money from Apple devices than it does from its own products.

While Arthur’s estimates are debatable, they show how Apple’s profits dominate the smartphone market. Google, like Dell in computers, are locked into the commodity, low margin end of the market.

Just as Dell have learned that entering new markets doesn’t guarantee success, Google may have to learn the same lesson.

To be fair to Google, at least management are aware of being too dependent upon one major source of revenue.

Whether mobile services built around the Android platform can provide an alternative cashflow of similar size to their web advertising services remains to be seen.

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Who will be the future Betamaxes?

A modern version of the video tape standard wars is being fought on our phones

This morning Paypal announced its PayPal Here service, a gizmo that turns a smartphone into a credit card reader.

On reading PayPal’s media release in the pre-dawn, pre-coffee light I found myself grumpily muttering “which platforms?” as the announcement kept mentioning “smartphones” without saying whether it was for iPhone, Android or other devices.

It turns out to be both Google Android and Apple iOS. It adds an interesting twist to the Point Of Sale market we’ve looked at recently.

The omission of platforms like Windows Phone raises the question of which platforms are going to go the way of Betamax?

Sony’s Betamax and JVC’s VHS systems were the dominant competitors in the video tape market in the early 1980s. They were totally incompatible with each other and users had to make a choice if they wanted to join one camp or the other when they went to buy a video recorder.

On many measures Betamax was the better product but ultimately failed because VHS offered longer program times and Panasonic’s licensing out of their technology meant there were more cheaper models on the market.

A few days ago Bloomberg Businessweek listed the Betamax device as one of the “technology’s failed promises”

With a superficial comparison, Apple would seem to the Betamax while Google and possibly Microsoft are the VHS’s given their diverse range of manufacturers their systems run on and Apple’s refusal to license out iOS, which was one of the reasons for Sony’s failure.

But it isn’t that simple.

In the smartphone wars, it’s difficult to compare them to VCRs as the video tape companies never controlled content and advertising the way smartphone systems do – although Sony did buy Columbia Studios at the peak of the Japanese economic miracle in 1987.

This control of content is what makes the stakes so high in the smartphone and tablet operating systems war. A developer or business that dedicates their resources to one platform could find themselves stranded if that platform fails or changes their terms of services to the developer’s detriment.

Another assumption is there is only room for one or two smartphone systems; it could turn out the market is quite happy with two, three or a dozen different systems and incompatibilities can be overcome with standards like HTML5.

In a funny way, it could turn out to be Android becomes the Smartphone Betamax due to having too diverse a range of manufacturers.

One of the first questions that jumps out when someone announces a new Android app is “which version?” The range of Android versions on the market is confusing customers and not every app will run on each version.

More importantly for financial apps like PayPal Here and Google Wallet, smartphone updates include critical security patches so many of the older phones that miss out on updates pose a risk to the users.

In the financial world confidence is everything and if customers aren’t confident their money is safe or will be promptly refunded in the event of fraud they won’t use the service.

Whether this uncertainty will eventually deal Google out of the game or present an opportunity for Microsoft and other companies is going to be one of the big questions of the mobile payments market.

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The high stakes of Lumia

Microsoft and Nokia have a lot riding on their new mobile phone product

Yesterday Nokia and Microsoft gave a preview of their upcoming Lumia 710 and 800 phones for the Australian market. It’s make or break time for both companies in the mobile space.

The phone itself is quite nice – Windows Phone 7.5 runs quite fast with some nice features such as integrated messaging and coupled with good hardware it’s a nice experience. Those I know who use Windows Phones are quite happy with them (I’m an iPhone user myself).

Whether its enough to displace the iPhone and the dozens of Android based handsets on a market where both Nokia and Microsoft have missed opportunities remains to be seen.

The battle is going to be on a number of fronts – at the telco level, in the retail stores and, most importantly, with the perceptions of customers.

Probably the biggest barrier with consumers is the perceived lack of apps, to overcome this Nokia have bundled in their Maps and Drive applications while Microsoft include their Mixed Radio streaming features along with Microsoft Office and XBox integration.

As well the built in services, both parties are playing up their application partners with services like Pizza Hut, Fox Sports and cab service GoCatch. Although all of these are available on the other platforms.

While application matter, the real battle for Nokia and Microsoft is going to be in the retail stores where the challenge shouldn’t be underestimated.

Apple dominate the upper end of the smart phone market and Android is swamping the mid to low end. How Windows Phone devices fit remains to be seen.

In Australia, if they going to find salvation it will be at the tender hands of the telco companies.

The iPhone is constant source of irritation for the telcos as not only do Apple grab most of the profit, but they also “own” the customer.

On the other hand, Android devices are irritating customers who are bewildered by the range of choices and frustrated by inconsistent updates that can leave them stranded with an outdated system.

So the Windows Phone does have an opportunity in the marketplace although one suspects commissions and rebates will be the big driver in getting sales people at the retail coal face to recommend the Microsoft and Nokia alternatives.

Overall though, it’s good to see a viable alternative on the market. For both Microsoft and Nokia the stakes are high with the Lumia range – it could be Nokia’s last shot – so they have plenty of incentives to get the product right.

Microsoft has consistently missed the boat on mobile computing since Windows CE was launched in 1996 while Nokia were blind-sided by the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and have never really recovered.

To make things worse for Nokia, the market for basic mobile phones where they still dominate is under threat from cheap Android based devices. So even the low margin, high volume market isn’t safe.

For both, the Lumia range is critical. 2012 is going to be an interesting year in mobile.

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