tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1 2008-05-15T10:52:54Z Empowering the new public network Movable Type 3.35 tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.601 2008-05-15T10:50:35Z 2008-05-15T10:52:54Z

VoIP momentum is shifting within Europe with Eastern Europe coming in strong now. The new set of initiatives is driven by the Wimax service providers. There are over 40 Wimax service providers in Eastern Europe if you count the Baltic...

JR VoIP momentum is shifting within Europe with Eastern Europe coming in strong now. The new set of initiatives is driven by the Wimax service providers. There are over 40 Wimax service providers in Eastern Europe if you count the Baltic states as well. Nearly half of them have either launched a VoIP offering or are involved in such trials. (There is a partial list at the end of this post). The present VoIP traction in Eastern Europe is different than what we saw two years back. Two years back it was all about the network upgradation of the incumbent telcos there. This time it is a bit different. The alternative carriers are going for the broadband telephony type option. Wimax operators seem to be the driving force right now. Regulators in Eastern Europe are promoting Wimax in order to force incumbent operators to speed up their wholesale DSL offerings which in turn would drive broadband and the associated over-the-top services. Wimax licenses have typically been auctioned to new entrants as well as the established cell operators. Larger operators are being included to ensure better investment in Wimax projects. In Western Europe the regulators tend to reserve regional licenses for regional players, with national licenses going to established cell operators. Wimax is also a vehicle for the established competitors to achieve a multi-service offering. In Romania, for example, Orange a cell operator looking to have a convergence play has so far been unable to make much progress due to the lack of required agreements with the incumbent operator Romtelecom. Orange in Romania now has its eyes set on Wimax license (Wimax licenses in Romania are expected this year). However it is the new Wimax entrants in Eastern Europe that are aggressively exploring VoIP and are likely to drive it forward over the next few years. The fundamental reason why VoIP-over-Wimax is a key trend in Eastern Europe is because the fixed infrastructure is not great. Wireless penetration has historically been higher. Wireless technologies such as Wimax in this context could also have advantages in terms of broadband delivery. Some of the Wimax operators that have launched or are trialling VoIP-over-Wimax in Eastern Europe: Max Telecom (Bulgaria), TransTelecom (Russia, Bulgaria), Netia (Poland), MNI Telecom (Poland), Nexcom (Bulgaria), Norby Telecom (Estonia), PAN Telecom (Ukraine), Telecentrs (Latvia), WiMax Telecom (Croatia), APEK (Slovenia) etc. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.600 2008-05-15T10:46:19Z 2008-05-15T10:47:20Z

554k IPTV subscribers as of end 1Q08. Added 43k subscribers during 1Q08 IPTV penetration rate is 11.46% of the broadband subscribers Telefonica also has over 1.2 million pay TV subscribers in Latin America. Majority are non-IPTV subscribers. In Czech Repulic...

Sabiya Naaz 554k IPTV subscribers as of end 1Q08. Added 43k subscribers during 1Q08 IPTV penetration rate is 11.46% of the broadband subscribers Telefonica also has over 1.2 million pay TV subscribers in Latin America. Majority are non-IPTV subscribers. In Czech Repulic I think all the 87k pay TV subs are on IPTV tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.599 2008-05-15T05:22:29Z 2008-05-15T05:24:47Z

If Nimbuzz is planning to play with social networking and all the buzz words, it might be a bit late in the day. The market is looking for a monetization story, not a mobile VoIP app that hooks into every...

JR Nimbuzz is planning to play with social networking and all the buzz words, it might be a bit late in the day. The market is looking for a monetization story, not a mobile VoIP app that hooks into every IM-client / social network / handset on earth. What is the value in that? There are plenty in the mobile VoIP market already signing up customers without much revenue to show. The only time they generate revenue is when a call is terminated outside the community cloud i.e. into landlines and mobile phones that are not Nimbuzzed. An IM or a voice chat between Nimbuzz-to-Nimbuzz is not going to generate money. It will remain a challenge to monetize that aspect – I mean for ever! So something is wrong here: You create a community but make money only when you communicate outside that community!!! What incentive is there is expand that community then?!!! For off-Nimbuzz calls, the company will make money on international calls mainly. Like EQO and iSkoot, Nimbuzz will also re-direct the calls to its local VoIP PoP from where it transports the call over public Internet backbone. So for the amount of time you are on an international call, you are effectively making and paying for a local call in addition. That is like the early PC-to-Phone days when you had dial-up connections. Outside the US, where local calls were metered, you paid for a local call (to your telco) plus the international call rate charged by Net2phone and others. That was not the main factor responsible for slow uptake of PC-to-Phone, but it was a turn off nonetheless. ]]> Dial-up market threw another challenge in the US, if you may recall: Switch Congestion. If bridged or hybrid mobile VoIP services like the one offered by Nimbuzz gains significant traction, you are going to face some unhappy cell operators because you will keep their GSM switches engaged for nothing. This could particularly be the case for operators offering unlimited local/national calling plans. So now you are compelled to work with the cell operators. And if you have any luck signing them up, your razor thin margins tend to almost zero. The paying user base of Skype is under 3% of its registered base. If that is an indicator, companies like Nimbuzz would need to sign up tens of millions of users. And once they do that, there will still be a lot of worrying about the margins that only keep evaporating. Nimbuzz and EQO and iSkoot etc will at some point turn to advertising of course. It might be a better idea to explore that now rather than treat that as your last resort. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.598 2008-05-14T12:13:13Z 2008-05-14T12:14:02Z

• 1.09 million VoIP subscribers at the end of 1Q08 • Added 125,700 new subs during 1Q08, the most active VoIP quarter so far. • VoIP revenues nearly doubled to $121 million compared to pro forma revenue of $63 million...

Sabiya Naaz • 1.09 million VoIP subscribers at the end of 1Q08 • Added 125,700 new subs during 1Q08, the most active VoIP quarter so far. • VoIP revenues nearly doubled to $121 million compared to pro forma revenue of $63 million in the year-ago quarter. • VoIP represents 11.4% penetration into the overall customer base. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.597 2008-05-14T12:11:37Z 2008-05-14T12:12:09Z

• VoIP subscribers in Norway 133K. Added 2k new subs during 1Q08 • VoIP subscribers in Sweden 209K. Added 7k new subs during 1Q08 • VoIP subscribers in Denmark 107K. Added 8k new subs during 1Q08...

Sabiya Naaz • VoIP subscribers in Norway 133K. Added 2k new subs during 1Q08 • VoIP subscribers in Sweden 209K. Added 7k new subs during 1Q08 • VoIP subscribers in Denmark 107K. Added 8k new subs during 1Q08 tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.596 2008-05-14T12:09:42Z 2008-05-14T12:10:30Z

• Telecom Italia ended 1Q08 with 136k IPTV subscribers, an increase of 56 thousand in the quarter. • 1.5 million VoIP subscribers as of end 1Q08, which represents 23% penetration into retail broadband access lines....

Sabiya Naaz • Telecom Italia ended 1Q08 with 136k IPTV subscribers, an increase of 56 thousand in the quarter. • 1.5 million VoIP subscribers as of end 1Q08, which represents 23% penetration into retail broadband access lines. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.593 2008-05-13T12:37:56Z 2008-05-13T12:38:31Z

• Added over 639k VoIP subscribers during the 1Q08. • Comcast ended 1Q08 with a total of 5.1 million VoIP subscribers. • 5.1 million VoIP customer base represents 12% penetration of the total Comcast addressable market • Revenue from VoIP...

Sabiya Naaz • Added over 639k VoIP subscribers during the 1Q08. • Comcast ended 1Q08 with a total of 5.1 million VoIP subscribers. • 5.1 million VoIP customer base represents 12% penetration of the total Comcast addressable market • Revenue from VoIP service more than doubled to $573 million in the 1Q08 compared to the same period of the prior year. Circuit-switched phone revenue declined $69 million to $14 million in the 1Q08. • As of 1Q08, Comcast had 66,000 circuit-switched customers, and expects to wind down that business by mid-year 2008. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.592 2008-05-13T12:34:35Z 2008-05-13T12:36:38Z

• Telio had 148.9k subscribers at end 1Q08. Total increase of 4,210 during 1Q08. • Majority of customers (104,854) in Norway. • Revenues: NOK 94.3 million, same as in 4Q07. • Average monthly revenue per subscriber NOK 261 • Serving...

Sabiya Naaz Telio had 148.9k subscribers at end 1Q08. Total increase of 4,210 during 1Q08. • Majority of customers (104,854) in Norway. • Revenues: NOK 94.3 million, same as in 4Q07. • Average monthly revenue per subscriber NOK 261 • Serving 1,900 VoIP lines to the SMB market. • Mobile VoIP, new company focus ]]> tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.591 2008-05-12T18:25:42Z 2008-05-12T18:28:25Z

Here is the annual list of honors from our recent chip report: BEST MARGINS: Qualcomm enjoys the maximum margins among communications chip companies. It spends around 67.5 cents to earn $1 of revenues. BEST COST CONTROL: Cavium Networks was able...

Faisal Kawoosa http://www.ilocus.com our recent chip report: BEST MARGINS: Qualcomm enjoys the maximum margins among communications chip companies. It spends around 67.5 cents to earn $1 of revenues. BEST COST CONTROL: Cavium Networks was able to decrease its total operating expenses by 22.34 cents per dollar last calendar year, which was 18.3% less compared to the previous year. BIGGEST R&D SPEND: Ikanos spends around 47.5% of its revenues on Research and Development. That is an increase of 7.62% compared to previous year. ]]> MOST PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENTS: Texas Instruments announced the most products in the most recent calendar year, around 78 (new, upgrades, modifications, reference designs, etc) MOST NEW CUSTOMERS: Texas Instruments signed the maximum of 33 customers for various communications solutions. SAFEST INVESTMENT: Qualcomm share price deviated the least in 2007. It fluctuated within a range of 15.14% from the average share price of $41.45. HIGHEST REVENUE: Texas Instruments. Its revenues for the year 2007 were $6.6 billion. HIGHEST SHIPMENT: Texas Instruments. In the year 2007 its shipments were at 631.6 million units. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.590 2008-05-12T17:41:02Z 2008-05-12T17:42:30Z

Jangl investors should try to sell the company assets to a telecom vendor. Some of telecom vendors are developing features that enable ad supported communications apps. Still early days but a Jangl platform would place them ahead of most competitors....

JR Jangl investors should try to sell the company assets to a telecom vendor. Some of telecom vendors are developing features that enable ad supported communications apps. Still early days but a Jangl platform would place them ahead of most competitors. We are going to see two relevant trends going forward. One is the re-positioning of telecom service providers as some sort of media companies enabling various forms of entertainment, content, and social networking through PCs, TVs and mobiles. The other is the re-thinking among Voice 2.0 companies to productize their platforms. Jangl is one such company that instead of licensing its ad supported communications solution to telecom and media companies, decided to emphasize its direct-to-consumer service. It should have pushed the licensing model a bit more. It might have meant delayed deployments but the burn rate would have been tamed somewhat. I believe a telecom vendor would be interested in an asset such as Jangl, licensing it out to telecom providers that offer ad supported communications aware apps across PCs, mobiles and TV. Cisco has been working on its Entertainment Operating System for online communities. The OS should have a Jangl type component if it does not already have one. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.589 2008-05-12T17:31:36Z 2008-05-12T17:32:54Z

• 1.7 million VoIP subscribers as of end 1Q08 • Added 93k or 5.8% during 1Q08 • VoIP represents 36% penetration in homes passed • VoIP represented $160 million revenue during 1Q08 which is approximately 8% of company’s consolidated revenues...

Sabiya Naaz • 1.7 million VoIP subscribers as of end 1Q08 • Added 93k or 5.8% during 1Q08 • VoIP represents 36% penetration in homes passed • VoIP represented $160 million revenue during 1Q08 which is approximately 8% of company’s consolidated revenues for the three months ended March 31, 2008 tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.588 2008-05-12T17:27:46Z 2008-05-12T17:29:05Z

154k IPTV subscribers as of end 1Q08 Added 38,000 IPTV subscribers in 1Q08 Deutsche Telekom had dropped the price of its starter package by 17 percent in March 2008 Telco to invest in improved customer support for IPTV VSDL roll...

Sabiya Naaz 154k IPTV subscribers as of end 1Q08 Added 38,000 IPTV subscribers in 1Q08 Deutsche Telekom had dropped the price of its starter package by 17 percent in March 2008 Telco to invest in improved customer support for IPTV VSDL roll out in 50 cities continues tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.587 2008-05-12T12:54:43Z 2008-05-12T13:04:34Z

Tata Communications will be deploying the high density gateways from Sonus. This is for the international footrpint, not for the domestic Indian network. The domestic network deployment would be a much bigger opportunity if it materializes for Sonus. Sonus has...

JR Tata Communications will be deploying the high density gateways from Sonus. This is for the international footrpint, not for the domestic Indian network. The domestic network deployment would be a much bigger opportunity if it materializes for Sonus. Sonus has been involved in trails with Tata as well as Reliance in India. The international footprint where Sonus gets its foot inside was inherited through the VSNL acquisition. Here comes the history: - ITXC, one of the largest VoIP ILD wholesalers, deployed multiple platforms including Excel Switching (now part of Dialogic), Huawei, Vocaltec, Cisco, Clarent (now part of Verso gone bankrupt) - ITXC standardizes around Cisco platform, the famous AS5300 - ITXC gets acquired by Teleglobe. VoIP traffic growth remains flat for a while. - Teleglobe gets acquired by VSNL. By this time VSNL had already been acquired by Tata I think - VSNL also used Cisco VoIP gear in its international footprint - Teleglobe/VSNL Intl did not migrate to high density MGX platform of Cisco - TODAY: They announced move to Sonus platform tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.586 2008-05-09T12:41:20Z 2008-05-09T12:44:26Z

United Telecom, a Bangalore based telecom company contracted by the Indian authorities to build out an advanced broadband network in the tourist hub state of Goa, will be offering triple play services in the state including IPTV. UTStarcom won the...

JR United Telecom, a Bangalore based telecom company contracted by the Indian authorities to build out an advanced broadband network in the tourist hub state of Goa, will be offering triple play services in the state including IPTV. UTStarcom won the equipment contract that includes VoIP, IPTV, and GEPON gear - the whole lot. United Telecom is itself a vendor supplying optical networking components to service providers like BSNL. And although Reliance and BSNL have already laid out broadband networks in Goa, United Telecom’s footprint is all fiber. In fact it has already laid out majority of the FTTH network in the state. ]]> IPTV in India has not picked up pace. United Telcom reckons it is the poor last mile infrastructure. And since they have fiber in place, the company expects their IPTV service to be a major success. The service will not be restricted to the residential segment only. United Telecom also expects tourist places and hotels to sign up for interactive IPTV services. The triple play package is priced at Rs.522/month ($13) and includes VoIP, IPTV, and a 2-10 Mbps connection. Goa has a population of 1.4 million. Broadband penetration is around 28 per 1000 citizens. PC penetration stands at 60% of the population. United Telecom is investing $100 million in the overall project. It will initially target 100,000 customers for its IPTV services. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.585 2008-05-09T09:55:03Z 2008-05-09T11:07:08Z

Total revenue $27.9 million, a 20% decline from 4Q07 VoIP product revenue $20.7 million, compared to 4Q07 revenue of $20.9 million 1 customer accounted for 10% of 1Q08 revenues: MTN. Top 10 customers accounted for 52% of Q1 revenues. 6...

Riaz Gojri Total revenue $27.9 million, a 20% decline from 4Q07 VoIP product revenue $20.7 million, compared to 4Q07 revenue of $20.9 million 1 customer accounted for 10% of 1Q08 revenues: MTN. Top 10 customers accounted for 52% of Q1 revenues. 6 customers each accounted for $1million or more in Q1 revenue. 4 new switching customers in 1Q08. Revenue split: 16% North America, 84% International. Compared to 4Q07 split of 23% North America, International 77%. Service revenue: $5.6 million. Gross margin: 53.6%. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.584 2008-05-09T09:47:45Z 2008-05-09T09:48:28Z

• Added 30,000 net subscriber lines in the 1Q08 and finished the quarter with more than 2.6 million lines in service • Average monthly customer churn increased to 3.3% in the first quarter 2008 from 3.0% in the fourth quarter...

Sabiya Naaz • Added 30,000 net subscriber lines in the 1Q08 and finished the quarter with more than 2.6 million lines in service • Average monthly customer churn increased to 3.3% in the first quarter 2008 from 3.0% in the fourth quarter 2007. • Marketing cost of customer acquisition: $216 per customer. Total marketing costs during the quarter: $61 million. • 1Q08 revenues $225 million, up 15% from $196 million in the 1Q07 and up 4% sequentially. Net loss $9 million • ARPU: $28.85 up from $28.19 in 4Q07. • Current cash and marketable securities and restricted cash at quarter end was $190 million. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.583 2008-05-09T09:44:44Z 2008-05-09T09:46:29Z

• VoIP subscribers: 3.2 million, representing 12.6% penetration of service-ready homes passed • Added 280,000 VoIP subscribers during the quarter • Continued roll out VoIP services to SMEs. As of March 31, 2008, TWC had 10,000 commercial VoIP subscribers....

Sabiya Naaz • VoIP subscribers: 3.2 million, representing 12.6% penetration of service-ready homes passed • Added 280,000 VoIP subscribers during the quarter • Continued roll out VoIP services to SMEs. As of March 31, 2008, TWC had 10,000 commercial VoIP subscribers. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.582 2008-05-09T09:42:49Z 2008-05-09T09:43:39Z

AT&T: 379k IPTV subscribers, up 148k from previous quarter. Addressable market 9 million homes Verizon: 1.2 million IPTV subscribers, up 263k from previous quarter. Addressable market 82% of 7.9 million homes passed...

Sabiya Naaz AT&T: 379k IPTV subscribers, up 148k from previous quarter. Addressable market 9 million homes Verizon: 1.2 million IPTV subscribers, up 263k from previous quarter. Addressable market 82% of 7.9 million homes passed tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.581 2008-05-08T17:40:37Z 2008-05-08T17:42:04Z

It remains a mystery why Sonus is not keen on acquiring a feature server company such as Broadsoft or Sylantro. They should have made an acquisition of a Class 5 feature server three years ago when consumer VoIP got going....

JR It remains a mystery why Sonus is not keen on acquiring a feature server company such as Broadsoft or Sylantro. They should have made an acquisition of a Class 5 feature server three years ago when consumer VoIP got going. Netcentrex was another option available at the time. Sonus has a residential feature set in their access server product but it has not done so well. Sonus has enabled consumer VoIP offerings of AT&T (Callvantage), Qwest, AOL, Carphone Warehouse and others. Only Carphone has scaled up somewhat. The absence of an alternative vendor in consumer VoIP has meant that most business is ironically going to the legacy vendors. Sylantro and Broadsoft are small players in consumer VoIP. I reckon Sonus with one of these products would have done very well. Sonus placed its bets on over-the-top VoIP rather than other VoIP-to-the-edge options. It turned out to be right but did not translate into any fortune for Sonus. Acquiring a Broadsoft or a Sylantro would kill two birds with one stone. Not only is Sonus weak in residential VoIP, it does not have business Centrex feature set in its product portfolio. It partners for most of such deployments. However Broadsofts and Sylantros are now able to offer some Class 4 features as well. They are in particular doing well in business IP trunking for which they do not require a softswitch partner such as Sonus anymore. In fact those service providers that deploy Broadsoft/Sylantro for business IP trunking sometimes extend their offer to include a hosted PBX offering utilizing Class 5 feature server from the same vendor. It makes sense to use the same vendor for hosted PBX as well as business IP trunking. And although softswitch vendors such as Sonus are also able to let their service provider customers offer business IP trunking, but the trend in the US is to use Broadsofts and Sylantros for business IP trunking. I expect Sonus to have made an offer in the past but the price must have been low. Broadsoft has had offers from the likes of Lucent and Ericsson in the past but its expectations were rather too high. At the time when Lucent starting sniffing around, I am told that Broadsoft was asking for $350 million and Lucent did not have that kind of money to spend. They had just had a bashing from the Wall Street following the price they paid for Telica acquisition. Today both Broadsoft and Sylantro have mellowed down. It might be worth trying again. Conclusion: Sonus should within 2008 do something about filling this major hole in its portfolio. It cannot live off its media gateway for ever. And they should hire me to look for options. The other choice is to hire JP Morgan, have them set up a meeting between the 2 CEOs, and then charge $2 million for it. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.580 2008-05-08T07:48:13Z 2008-05-08T07:50:22Z

A few open questions on the recent Jajah/Yahoo deal, perhaps our readers can answer: Whatever happened to the Dialpad acquisition by Yahoo? Was that investment a waste then? Yahoo had acquired the company because apparently they needed an insight into...

JR Jajah/Yahoo deal, perhaps our readers can answer: Whatever happened to the Dialpad acquisition by Yahoo? Was that investment a waste then? Yahoo had acquired the company because apparently they needed an insight into the call routing science. Jajah does not do PC-to-Phone application. Is Jajah going to develop that capability for Yahoo Messenger, or is it going to be a similar application to Jajah i.e. web initiated telephony that does not necessarily use the public Internet? Jajah voice quality is great right now because the company does not use public Internet. ]]> Why have the PC-to-Phone partnerships not worked for Yahoo in the past? They had relationships with companies like Net2phone prior to Dialpad acquisition. Should we expect Yahoo to offer mobile VoIP and what will be Jajah’s role there? Jajah developed a private labelled mobile VoIP application for an MVNO sometime back. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.579 2008-05-08T07:13:55Z 2008-05-08T08:42:07Z

• 4.65 million VoBB subscribers in France as of end 1Q08. Added 547k subscribers during 1Q08 • 722k VoBB customers outside France. Poland: 164k VoIP subscribers, other European countries 558k •VoIP represented 61% of the number of ADSL subscribers and...

Sabiya Naaz • 4.65 million VoBB subscribers in France as of end 1Q08. Added 547k subscribers during 1Q08 • 722k VoBB customers outside France. Poland: 164k VoIP subscribers, other European countries 558k •VoIP represented 61% of the number of ADSL subscribers and IPTV represented 17% • IPTV Subscribers: France 1.3m, Poland 49k, other European countries 75k. • Orange Unik FMC subscribers: 573k users as of October 2007. Our estimates: around 1 million right now tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.578 2008-05-07T16:05:42Z 2008-05-07T16:08:08Z

It has been a while since I heard any major development on the consumer FMC side. I am assuming that mobile VoIP and Femtocell have pushed this thing back a few years. But there must surely be something in store...

JR It has been a while since I heard any major development on the consumer FMC side. I am assuming that mobile VoIP and Femtocell have pushed this thing back a few years. But there must surely be something in store for enterprise FMC during 2008. There is much more activity around enterprise managed FMC solutions. All major PBX makers have announced their products now. The early adopters here have been healthcare, education, and warehouse operations. But there is interest coming from new segments such as the banks, we are told. With early implementations in particular there was need to have on-campus mobility as well as remote mobility so segments such as warehouse operations - where WiFi access can be very important - picked up some of the FMC first. Hospitality and healthcare also have that campus aspect where you can put dual mode device on campus on WiFi and same number can work on cellular. So there must be interest from verticals that are driven by pure mobility in general. There are sales based operations at banks and financial institutions such as stock brokerages, insurance, and real estate, which are sales and customer focussed and are highly mobile. A lot of stock brokerages use the cold calling model. An FMC solution has to do three things for them: (1) It needs to bring all customer calls to the company’s number which is important from continuity perspective. (2) It has to force all CDRs and all voicemails on enterprise network and not on cell network which now gives these businesses an audit trail that the enterprise controls and not the cell carrier. (3) It needs to bring all the employee cell minutes into view across multiple wireless carriers. With those three things they can then go to wireless carriers and negotiate better deals because they now have visibility into all their mobile minutes rather than compile records from multiple carriers. That will drive a lot of interest from that vertical. The OEMs call it FIRE: Finance, Insurance, and Real-Estate. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.577 2008-05-07T15:31:11Z 2008-05-07T15:32:26Z

Revenues for the 1st quarter of 2008 were $177.1 million, down by 14% q-o-q. Net loss stood at $17.1 million for the period up from $13.4 million in the previous quarter. Communications contributed about 39% of the total revenues (the...

Faisal Kawoosa http://www.ilocus.com Revenues for the 1st quarter of 2008 were $177.1 million, down by 14% q-o-q. Net loss stood at $17.1 million for the period up from $13.4 million in the previous quarter. Communications contributed about 39% of the total revenues (the second biggest contribution), an increase of 7% from the last quarter. Computing was the largest contributor of revenues which brought in 41% of the total quarterly revenues. The company introduced PCIe family of switching solutions for data and control plane interconnect requirements for various higher end communications applications. It also introduced software GUI intended to simplify audio use and management of PC systems including IDT audio codecs. This will help in easy audio management of various applications including VoIP. In the same quarter, IDT also introduced a new family of CPRI based functional interconnect chip (FIC) solutions which will be used for advanced wireless services like mobile video. Besides, it also announced the availability of Route Accelerator which is capable of processing packet header for complex forwarding and routing in enterprise, metro and carrier class switch and router applications. IDTs network search solution was selected by H3C for current and future networking, wireless and storage products. IDT saw Dr Ted Tewksbury as the new President and CEO during the quarter who was lately President and COO of AMI Semiconductors. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.576 2008-05-07T08:33:52Z 2008-05-08T17:45:26Z

ThinkPanmure thinks telcos worldwide will set up an old style cartel with shades of 19th century settlement rate system. It is supposed be a joint initiative to offer Skype type services. I am not sure if such an alliance is...

JR ThinkPanmure thinks telcos worldwide will set up an old style cartel with shades of 19th century settlement rate system. It is supposed be a joint initiative to offer Skype type services. I am not sure if such an alliance is cooking, but if that is the case, the stuff being cooked is likely to remain half baked. Here is why: • It will be an intergalactic challenge to bring two dozen telcos under one roof. Previous attempts to set up alliances - Concert, Global One etc – have failed. • The proportion of IP-IP calls is miniscule. It is in the region of 6% of the overall voice traffic in France, the country with world’s highest VoIP penetration. On a global scale IP-IP calls proportion is less than 1%. What that means is even with a Skype type service you are still paying for terminations, the same old story as in the landline business. ]]> my earlier suggestion of a global telecom player being better suited to acquire Skype. Alliances always have issues and the remains are always picked up by a bigger player in the alliance. ]]> tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.575 2008-05-06T13:54:35Z 2008-05-06T14:29:27Z

To my knowledge, there is no such thing out there yet. But there will be. A couple of companies are doing it at the client level (for Web TV) but the only source I came across that is doing it...

JR Toroid. There are not many details on the site. There are several Internet TV companies coming up all over the world. I am sure they would want to get their hands on something like this. An Open Source IPTV middleware will help evolve and scale online video/TV to new heights. There are a few drivers for Open Source IPTV middleware already. Several service providers are unhappy about the integration problems they face in putting together various IPTV components. Open Source will only compound those problems initially but those IPTV vendors looking to sell to Internet TV (as opposed to telco centric IPTV) companies will put interfaces into such a system. IPTV service providers are usually stuck with a small number of ecosystems that come pre-integrated with other IPTV network elements such as VoD servers and Encoders etc. ]]> On the other hand IPTV set up is still a legacy set up even though there is the IP element in it. You are dealing with some legacy interfaces. In comparison Internet TV does not have much to worry about, which is why I think an Open Source IPTV middleware would perhaps suit them more. Right now there are not many TV application developers out there because the interfaces into the middleware solutions available are not friendly enough. TV 2.0 will only take off if there are easier APIs. An Open Source IPTV middleware has to facilitate that in order to be successful. There are lesser number of TV 2.0 developers for another reason. They cannot afford to spend time writing an application and then find their middleware partner sitting on it. An Open Source m’ware will let such developers go direct to the end user and offer TV 2.0. So in short Open Source m’ware will result in a better online video/TV experience providing lots of choices. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.574 2008-05-06T13:24:29Z 2008-05-06T13:25:34Z

Atheros earned revenues of $114.5 million which was up by 0.2 million q-o-q. Net income for the period was $7.6 million. Taiwan amounted for the maximum sales with 52% of the total revenues coming from Taiwan while China contributed another...

Faisal Kawoosa http://www.ilocus.com Atheros earned revenues of $114.5 million which was up by 0.2 million q-o-q. Net income for the period was $7.6 million. Taiwan amounted for the maximum sales with 52% of the total revenues coming from Taiwan while China contributed another 26%. US sales stood at just 1%. Asia continued to be the largest business region for Atheros with 94% of the total revenues from there. However comparing with Q1 of 2007, the sales from Asia have declined by 4%. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd accounted for 17% of net revenues and was the only major customer for the period. WLAN product adoption by retail and carrier customers of Atheros was the primary source for the quarterly revenues. Other areas that did well for Atheros include PAS, Ethernet and GPS chipsets. In terms of shipments GPS and WLAN chipsets grew in units shipped while PAS sales declined. Overall, comparing the shipments with those of Q1 2007, there was an increase of 58% in the number of chipsets shipped. Revenues did not grow proportionately due to decrease in average selling price of the chip. ]]> During the period, together with Infineon, it announced lowest cost mobile phone platform for Internet Based Telephony. It announced a new GPS solution targeted at mobile phones, Personal Navigation Devices and PMPs thereby adding a new chip to the ROCm family of GPS solutions. It also announced a solution enabling rich entertainment applications and content on smartphones over WiFi. During the quarter, Z-Com selected Atheros AR6161G single chip VoIP solution to be used in its WP520 Honey Pair single-mode IP phone. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.573 2008-05-06T13:20:41Z 2008-05-06T13:21:56Z

SMIC earned revenues of $362.37 million in 1Q 2008. Compared to 4Q 2007, there was a decrease of 8.3% in revenues. Net Loss was substantially high at $119.7 million which was just around $0.9 million in the previous quarter. The...

Faisal Kawoosa http://www.ilocus.com SMIC earned revenues of $362.37 million in 1Q 2008. Compared to 4Q 2007, there was a decrease of 8.3% in revenues. Net Loss was substantially high at $119.7 million which was just around $0.9 million in the previous quarter. The fab shipped 454.3 million wafers (8”) which is 43.2 million less than the shipments of last quarter. The capacity utilization of the fab was at 92.1% in the quarter down by 2.3% q-o-q. Communications continued to form the maximum share in sales at 54.3%. Last quarter it was 47.4%. Computer and Consumer segments contributed 12.8% and 25.9% respectively. Other segments contributed the remaining 7%. ]]> Fabless semicons formed 54.4% of the customer mix for the quarter while integrated device manufacturers added another 31.6%. Rest 14% comprised of System companies and others. Regionally North America contributed the most, 53.6% of revenues for the period. Asia Pacific contributed 33.8% to the sales of which Japan brought in 3.9%. Revenue from Europe was at 12.6%. Among the products announced, the major one was the release of enhanced 90nm hierarchical, multi voltage RTL to GDSII reference design which will help in reducing the cost of implementing and testing SoCs. The company also announced appointment of Chris Chi as SrVP Operations. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.572 2008-05-05T11:56:06Z 2008-05-05T17:25:46Z

As has been the underlying characteristic of VoIP industry over the last 7 years, the growth pattern refuses to change direction. Our 9th annual industry update published today reveals a yearly increase of 67% in VoIP access server licenses shipped...

JR Our 9th annual industry update published today reveals a yearly increase of 67% in VoIP access server licenses shipped worldwide, and a 35% increase in VoIP traffic. There is no evidence yet of a long term slowdown in carrier spending. It seems that despite the risk of recession (especially in the US) carriers have no choice. They have to build out the IP infrastructure if they are to remain relevant. The new investment cycle that started in 2004 to do with access part of carrier networks continues into 2008 and is likely to remain so through to 2009. That can be said with confidence in case of European countries at least. On a global level, even if the investment slows down due to financial issues, the carriers have to spend nonetheless. They have little choice, it seems. Due to the losses in landlines, wireline operators are expanding into mobile and mobile operators on the other hand are looking to leverage fixed broadband networks for voice offload or over-the-top services. The underlying technology that lets them both achieve those objectives tends to be VoIP. The report covers various aspects of VoIP industry and is quite comprehensive as the previous annual reports. A lengthy post would not be possible. I have however listed a few bits from the Executive Summary below. A big thank you to those who ordered the report in advance. We appreciate your vote of confidence. There are also two other reports we announced today (Voice 2.0 and Mobile VoIP). ]]> • SIP trunking has gained significant traction over the last 18 months. SIP trunking brings a few interesting opportunities. One is the possibility of services from the cloud. The enterprise segment has so far been a slow adopter of Voice 2.0 services that are hosted in the core. That will change with SIP trunking. SIP trunking is also driving Peer-to-Peer VoIP in enterprises as the trunking goes beyond IP PBX on to the end points as well. • For the second consecutive year, Europe outpaced rest of the world in VoIP penetration. All major European operators – whether wireline or wireless – have a VoIP offering in place and have announced that they will be deploying IMS platforms. • In the US, Cable companies are leading the deployments. That however is likely to change with the Voice-over-Fiber offerings from AT&T (and possibly from Verizon in the near future). We expect AT&T to become the market leader in the segment overtime. Verizon could have scalability issues due to its use of Open Source telephony platform for VoIP service. • Two of the biggest trends in VoIP are Voice 2.0 (Communications aware mashups) and Mobile VoIP trends. See the previous two posts from today’s lot. • Year 2007 saw emergence of SOHO and micro-enterprise focussed VoIP service providers. Some of the vendors have enabled mobile Centrex platforms for mobile operators that will be targeting this segment as well. These mobile operators are looking to offer PBX type features and features such a parallel ringing etc. • Bilaterlal peering is driving a lot of switch migration. Multi-lateral or federation peering is not picking up speed yet although two of the biggest peering RFPs – GSMA and CableLabs - have been contracted out (both to Neustar). Cable companies in the US may have some incentive to not peer just because they have a regulated tariff that they can charge for traffic coming into their networks. In the US the companies that have the most incentive to do peering are wireless service providers because they do not have any kind of tariff protection that allows them to charge for access to their networks. So they are free to peer and do bilateral deals. But the challenge is that most of the dollar value opportunity in North American termination is to wireline numbers, not wireless just because of regulatory tariff structure. So while there is a big opportunity in doing peering for wireless in North America, the value is actually in wireline. • Among larger/legacy vendors NSN and Huawei are doing well in the NGN voice. European and North American vendors are now able to compete on price and therefore able to compete with Huawei. That has also re-opened the Chinese market for North American and European VoIP vendors. Sonus continues to sign up tier 1s and is now considered as the VoIP incumbent. On the enterprise side, shipments are still dominated by Cisco and Avaya. • There are over two dozen IMS projects worldwide that have reached an advanced stage of trial. Using applications servers as multiplay platforms across both wireline and wireless networks is already a reality. Swisscom and Korea Telecom are examples where this is happening. • It is interesting to note that the traditional telecom vendors are starting to develop capability for ad supported telephony offerings. Some vendors are ready to support service providers that decide to adopt this type of model. Their application servers are able to mix existing and new services with advertising. Ad supported telephony is yet to be proven but there are various media oriented telephony companies in the field. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.571 2008-05-05T11:52:25Z 2008-05-05T11:55:18Z

72% of Voice 2.0 developers prefer to work with Open Source telephony platforms like Asterisk, OpenSER, and FreeSWITCH and offer services direct to the consumer - according to our survey. Open Source platforms mentioned here are now considered carrier grade....

JR according to our survey. Open Source platforms mentioned here are now considered carrier grade. For a standalone Voice 2.0 applications open source telephony platforms meet the developer criteria. Although working directly with telcos like BT (rather than going via vendors like Microsoft or Sylantro) is the second most favoured choice, it seems that Voice 2.0 developers overall prefer to take control of their development by utilizing open source platforms and then going direct to the end user. ]]> Going direct to the end user may sound hip, but there are marketing costs involved. On the other hand there are clearly benefits in offering applications via platform vendor channels. To start with, the platform vendors have an established telco customer base, who in turn have paying customers which forms a natural first target population for a developer’s Voice 2.0 application. With the carrier grade telecom platform the vendors are also able support a scalable deployment. The survey also reveals that the Voice 2.0 developers are not so keen on consumer driven applications. While they might consider developing an application that can be utilized across both business and consumer segments, their preference is to develop applications that are used in the business world. This might be for monetization considerations. In the consumer segment it is hard to monetize the mashups. CRM is on the minds of three-quarters of the developers. Conferencing and mobile VoIP are the joint second most popular target Surprisingly SIP is the most popular API even with all the noise about web services APIs. Certainly some of the most popular Voice 2.0 applications are those developed by the ones with telecom background. How that will change over the next couple of years remains to be seen. But all the efforts around web services APIs then seem to make little sense if telcos/vendors are not able to attract web developers. tag:www.ilocus.com,2008://1.570 2008-05-05T11:48:31Z 2008-05-05T11:51:22Z

Our survey of MVNOs reveals that nearly one-fourth of MVNOs are already offering/trialling mobile VoIP. By 2010 over two-thirds expect to have a mobile VoIP offering in place. The survey is part of our report ‘Mobile VoIP: 2008 Status Report’...

JR Our survey of MVNOs reveals that nearly one-fourth of MVNOs are already offering/trialling mobile VoIP. By 2010 over two-thirds expect to have a mobile VoIP offering in place. The survey is part of our report ‘Mobile VoIP: 2008 Status Report’ published today. According to the report, MVNOs could drive the first phase of mobile VoIP apart from the independent startups. The eligible providers are MVNOs, MNOs, ISPs, and Wimax operators. As far as Wimax operators are concerned they have to offer VoIP to differentiate themselves from other broadband providers. Mobile Wimax however is not expected till 2009. Wimax operators at present are looking to offer VoIP over laptops and fixed phones through ATAs. MNOs can potentially use mobile VoIP feature to dump voice traffic transparently on IP. But they have cannibalization issues. ISPs on the other hand would see this as a completely new service since they have not dealt with mobile services before. So for now, MVNOs are expected to show more interest in mobile VoIP. And since MVNOs are likely to drive the first phase along with the independent startups, the take up is unlikely to be huge as per the report. ]]> Among the issues touched upon by the survey, the network architecture supporting mobile VoIP is of prime importance to MVNOs. The choice is clearly bridged mobile VoIP option that does not necessarily require a data plan. 48% of the MVNOs prefer this option. Mobile VoIP over data connections can imply free calls if the communication is client-to-client. Most MVNOs seem to resist the idea. The report forecasts the number of PAYING mobile VoIP subscribers served by MVNOs to reach around 1.6 million by the end of 2008. At present there are estimated 450,000 PAYING mobile VoIP subscribers worldwide. The market in terms of paying subscriber numbers is led by Truphone followed by H3G. The estimated 450,000 paying mobile VoIP subscribers as of April 2008 is forecast to grow to 2.4 million by the end of 2008. By 2012 there could be 26.6 million paying mobile VoIP subscribers worldwide according to the report.