Ouch August 27, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , add a commentOuch, Realtime Community.
Must be a slow blogging day, too.
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A New Battle Front? August 22, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , 2 commentsReading this BusinessWeek article today on dispute clauses in wireless contracts, it occurred to me that this kind of fight is increasingly the kind of fight we’re seeing in the legal world surrounding communications technology.
BusinessWeek’s Olga Kharif points out that:
While seemingly important matters like billing get only one paragraph, Verizon Wireless devotes six paragraphs to dispute resolution. At AT&T (T), the dispute section takes up 10 fat paragraphs and states: “You agree that, by entering into this Agreement, you and AT&T are each waiving the right to a trial by jury or to participate in a class action.”
Clearly, wireless carriers are concerned, if not worried, that the standing pre-contractual assumption is that consumers have the right to take their business elsewhere as they see fit, and that beyond that, can challenge any particular “loyalty” obligation within the contract in court — I don’t want to go so far as to say they’re acknowledging the outcome of such a challenge by trying to avoid them, but there’s at least a concern. Can wireless carriers claim to “own” their subscribers’ right to sue? One the one hand that sounds preposterous, and according to BusinessWeek the courts have agreed — but on the other hand, didn’t those subscribers sign away that right with their own hands?
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Gearing Up? August 20, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : Trends, What's New?, Policy , add a commentWell, that summer recess didn’t seem to take long. From the tongue-in-cheek to the strategic, you can hear the opening notes of various blogs’ Hill coverage (or advocacy).
All this comes after an absolute cornucopia of net neutrality blogs last week, after it seemed the issue would die a peaceful death. But what I find most intriguing of all is the confluence of stories on the presidential candidates’ tech standing.
In today’s Communications Daily (subscription only), which ran Friday night, the lede story was all about Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s mastery of the social networking craze, not to mention his support from several former FCC chairmen.
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More China
Posted by ianmartinez in : General, Policy , add a commentThe news that Google will increase its investment in China comes as no surprise to anyone here at TIA, what with that nation’s immense market upside. Google’s play in particular is interesting because it represents an upgrade from a partnership strategy to a potential ownership strategy that either belies a newfound comfort with the Chinese market or the confidence that its vagaries won’t cripple the search giant.
I’ve posted before about questions surrounding China’s willingness to open up to international standards and trading policies, especially as a WTO member. Do moves like Google’s reported increase in investment push China to open up, to move rightward on the stability J-Curve of Ian Bremmer’s coinage, or does this simply encourage the Chinese regulatory regime to stay closed, knowing the money will come crashing into its behemoth market no matter what its policies?
Only time, and by my guess, a whole lot of arguing, will tell.
UPDATE: From the intrepid reporters at TechCrunch, Google has reportedly moved to acquire Chinese social portal Tianya.cn. The flood is coming…
UPDATE II: Nokia jumping into the game (press release).
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NXT Up August 15, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General, What's New?, Networking , 1 comment so farBack in June, when the NXTcomm trade show was still in full swing, there was some grumbling in the blogosphere about attendance for the first year show.
While we were excited about the conference’s potential, and folks like Corporate Events Thoughts were very enthusiastic about show floor, there were some detractors about the event.
Scott Wharton over at ipBusiness said morale was “down everywhere,” something I certainly didn’t observe — in fact, no one who saw this work of art could have thought such a thing. It didn’t stop there. “IMS, IPTV, VoIP, WiMAX, all topics with their significant announcements and promises of greatness in prior years, were relegated to minor and spotty success stories but not much new to add to the telecom conversation,” he wrote.
The official audit numbers for the show tell a different story, one that matched the “mood” I and many of my colleagues perceived. According to the results, courtesy of Exhibit Surveys, Inc:
NXTcomm attracted 15,273 attendees to its debut at Chicago’s McCormick Place on June 18-21, with some 500 exhibitors occupying over 200,000 square feet of exhibit space… Nearly 450 journalists and independent analysts attended, and industry members generated over 480 announcements and press releases from the show… 81 percent of the 2007 exhibit floor was rebooked for NXTcomm 2008 in Las Vegas
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Engineer Hijinx August 9, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , add a commentApparently the standards committees here at TIA are a lot more fun than I thought.
Doing one of my random mid-August Internet sweeps (yes, it’s mid-August) I discovered TIAoffline — an almost garishly simple homage to the travels of the TR-41 engineering committee. I knew these meetings were far-flung, and I knew the committees often formed friendships through all their hard work. But I had no idea they were art connoisseurs (Tampa), nature buffs (St. Petersburg), adventure photographers (Portland) and gourmands (Dallas), among so many other things.
When did standards committees become the hip crowd? It’s amazing they get any engineering done.
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