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Showing posts from June, 2006

ThaiPTV...it's here and growing

The last week has presented a raft of operators in Thailand jumping on the IPTV bandwagon. Recent announcements by True TT&T And discoveries of a Shingapore Telecom service shows that there is a Thai foray into the delivery of TV over broadband. The numbers of subscribers are limited by the lack of infrastructure in the Kingdom but True seem to understand what is required and TT&T have a license (under TTT Broadband) that allows them to roll out services in Bangkok as well as their traditional stomping ground of upcountry (rural) areas. I wonder if the intention had been to try and open up the service in readiness for the world cup, I hope they succeed in getting at least some subscribers to the final as it will be a good test of the service and scalability. I wish them every success in their endeavours, I already use many services from True; and would be willing to look at some of the TT&T offerings as both of these companies are really trying to make an effort to shift f

Upside Downism

Like many people out there I started my blog by commenting on things that I had found on the News feeds, I try not to recycle other peoples blog entries but this is a common practice as well. For me the blogosphere was an echo of the traditional press, akin to the thunder clap after the lightning bolt. Over the past few months I have noticed that the storm is getting nearer; I now hear the thunder very quickly after seeing the lightning. In some sectors the blogosphere is now very much the lightning generator and there is often a delay before the old guard (BBC et al) feel the pulse. More interestingly there seems to be a higher form of intelligence in the bloggers. On many occasions people are authoring in isolation on the same (at least very similar) ideas and concepts. The pace of idea forming is increasing exponentially as the seed of the idea is shared across the blogosphere and extrapolated in follow up postings. To quote the BBC yesterday If you believe the hype, blogs are as

Pump my Pipe...It's Convenient

Once more I find convergence, and I don't mean FMC or any of those other Telco terms, I have found Idea Convergence. Some time ago Paul Jardine talked about "the Other network" an idea he had many years ago, now we have NZ Telecom doing just that. On this blog I have extended the ideas of the Wifi Lightpost and fixed wireless access and Paul raised the idea of TescoMax . Right now WiFi access in Bangkok is far from prolific but with the license given to TTT Broadband they could use some of these ideas to broaden the access to their network. Throughout this sprawling city you can rely on finding one of two things: A petrol station - PTT, Caltex, Shell, Green Leaf etc 7-Eleven - the ubiquitous convenience store And in many locations you can find both i.e. a 7-Eleven at a petrol station. Tie in to these two infrastructure nodes and you have a pretty good grid for your network nodes. Both places by default are in built up urban areas with homes greedy for internet acces

Meeting Room in a box....Conference 2.0

I've reached that point in my life/career where I feel the need to attend the occasional conference. There are a couple that interested me here in Bangkok, Thailand Telco Forum , and the other is the Revenue Assurance Summit 2006 . However the costs of both are too high for me to justify at this point. Although I have to say that I did receive a phone call from IQPC to see if there was anything that could be done to help with the price which as nice follow up on the CS front. Still what are the benefits of conferences: Networking - shaking hands and exchanging details Workshops - facilitated discussion with presentations Coffee or Watercooler chats - sidebar discussion with peers Presentations and case studies - slideware and demos Now given the advances in technology and delivery options do we need to spend many thousands of US$ to get these today? Paul and myself conceptualized the idea of a meeting room in a box when we worked in the same company. In essence it was all of th

Hi Kettle... I'm Pot.... You're Black

In an interesting twist I thought I would do some background reading on Wireless Facilities Inc, commonly (you could say Jargon) known as WIFI after yet another shameless act to grab a phrase in common practice, stick a trademark on it and see the $$'s roll in. I wonder if they've ever thought of their abbreviated name, and how similar it seems to WiFi which is trademarked by the WiFi Alliance back in 2003...... This shameless practice should be stopped or before long every word in the Oxford English Dictionary will carry the ™ sign. I wonder who holds the trademark on ™ sign???

Isn't it Ironic.....

There's been a lot of talk on Net Neutrality and it's all gone quiet. I don't see why everyone is so surprised Net Neutrality is the Techno equivalent of "selective listening" something that we all learn from a very early age and continue to practice through life. Working in a tricky project right now where I am employed to advise the client on how they should be implementing their chosen product to give them the best of functional match and easy maintenance and upgrade paths. However the client employs a lot of selective listening and it got me thinking of "Advice Neutrality" ©™® and why baby Bell react the way they do. Many decision have already been made before I joined the project and no amount of discussion and persuasion is going to change their minds as it might be more work upfront (short term pain, long term gain) or it might mean that they lose their position of power (they are the SI) as the real client won't have to go for them for chan

Skyzmo?

Earlier I wrote about integrating the Gizmo VoIP client with Asterisk (open source PBX) . Well I mostly use Skype and not Gizmo, for not other reason than familiarity and first come first serve adoption patterns on my part. Skype is not a SIP based client. They wrote a proprietary protocol as they felt that SIP did not allow the navigation through the firewall that Skype clearly has. Warning: an aside.... This is one of the advantages for Skype for me. I am frequently on site and very rarely can I get to any other of the Intranet or Extranet parts of the corporate network. Yahoo messenger sometimes works but mostly MSN is blocked. However with Skypes snakelike ability to transit the firewall I always have the options of Skype chat and encrypted file transfer. People have been trying to get a SIP connection to Skype.... and succeeded for more information go and check TMC and the vendor RSDevs So good news all round and it runs in Asterisk. So could this be the first interconnect

SIPly GizmAsterisktic

When I first starting reading up on the E series I thought I saw some mention of the ability to use the E60 within the company PBX with support for 4 digit (extension) dialling. It seemed to disappear from the blurb on the Nokia site but as Mobile Burn have confirmed it is there. This is good news as now it opens up a realm of possibilities. If you are using a PBX with wireless support; something like Asterisk , then you can configure the SIP settings so that when you are within range of the WAP your shiny new E60 can be used as your normal deskphone. Impressive but so what? Asterisk 2.0 also supports Gizmo a SIP Softphone VoIP client similar to Vonage and Skype. This now allows me to route calls from Gizmo to me mobile handset. That's pretty useful if you're on Gizmo which is very US centric but does support Call In in the UK and Spain. It comes with the usual Call Out and Gizmo->Gizmo free calls. All very nice and relatively easy to do. Asterisk runs on Linux and so

Bluetooth needs an overbite

Bluetooth was once a bit of a gimmick and was hard to come by. It was toyed with by some of the gadget freaks but never really found a proper niche as they were very few devices that you could connect with. The last couple of generations of handsets has seen Bluetooth have a pretty healthy comeback and now you can find the technology embedded into phones, thru headsets, stereo headphones and on to cameras. However until very recently you were still limited to one channel, this gave you very little flxibility and the profiles are a bit clunky. Again this is in a state of evolution and my future phone; the Nokia E60, comes with six bluetooth channels. There is the usual banter about how WiFi enabled handsets will start to undo the handcuffs that the Mobile Operator has put on your wrists, although in reality the MNO will still own the pipe, but many people forget about Bluetooth. It is a complementary connectivity option as it to can be a route into the UMA and out on to the mobile net

Thai Telcos could create a use for that SMS pipe

One of the weirdnesses of Thailand mobile patterns is the skewed use of SMS. I don't know for sure but based on the calls I receive and how I watch people using their handset SMS is not as widely used as in the UK or Europe. Why? two basic reasons The language itself; 44 consonants and 32 vowels Hello: สวัสดี SMS on a normal handset: 9 -> 8 (5 times) -> *(select a vowel) -> 9 -> 1(4 times) -> *(select a vowel) this is then 14 key presses to write hello 2. The people; Thais are very person centric and as such they would much rather speak to someone than conduct a conversation through remote control. IVR and CTI is used in Thailand but most people tend to go to "speak to a CSR" option as they want to have that one-to-one with a person and not a machine. So the operators (DTAC, TrueMove fka Orange, AIS) have a lot of spare SMS capactity that they're not gettting revenue for. DTAC have starting using a combination of PushMail a

Viral Marketing and the Long Tail

Geoff Long wrote in the the Bankok Posts, Database (every Wednesday) in the emergence of "the Long Tail" into a wider audience. He is predicting that the term will become more widely used that today. The term was defined last year and the first cited example is that of a surge in the popularity of a book on climbing several years after it was written and referenced in a much more recently published book. The long tail is ideally suited to many forms of content today. Examples are MPS downloads and Books (electronic and some printed) where you can easily develop the concept of a back catalogue that generates interest. I know that I have 'discovered' a new author several books into their series and wanted to purchase and read everything else. This is certainly the case with Lee Child, David Baldacci and Stephen Leather . This behavior leads me to the conclusion that the Long Tail is the ideal viral marketing technique. For me Skype was pretty viral. I have been u