If you are like me, then you’re one of the many millions who have cut the cord with their landline and gone all wireless. However, that doesn’t mean people don’t want phones for their homes. Of course for them, there are many options — some that use traditional telephony like AT&T and others like Vonage, which provide broadband-based voice service. It’s hard for folks to pick the one that is the best and most reliable. Audio Quality Rankings Comcast Digital Voice Verizon VoiceWing AT&T Landline Service Reliability Rankings AT&T landline Time Warner Digital Phone Verizon VoiceWing Keynote Systems recently conducted a study (link to PDF) of some of the more popular services — AT&T VoIP, AT&T Landline, Comcast Digital, Time Warner Digital, Verizon VoiceWing (VoIP), Packet8, Vonage, Lingo and Truevoice. According to their study, AT&T’s landline service was the most reliable service, while in terms of voice quality, Comcast’s Digital Voice comes out on top. I wish Keynote had not been stingy and shared complete rankings instead of this teaser results. Nevertheless, even the very limited data they made available shows that pure-play VoIP services ranked pretty low, hinting at poor quality and less reliability. More importantly, not a single service measures up to being both reliable and exhibiting good quality; and though Verizon VoiceWing is a good enough compromise, it’s not clear if you can actually sign up for the service. I tried on their web site and failed — only existing customers can seemingly log into the site. These results align closely to my own findings — while AT&T used to work, the quality of the calls was just horrible. I could not make a single call to India without redialing. So I gave up that service and then opted for Comcast. I very quickly realized that spending $40 a month for a voice service when I could easily get nearly unlimited minutes from my mobile phone just didn’t make much sense. Good-bye, Comcast.  I would love to know which service you use and what your real-world experience is. The Conference for Video Entrepreneurs and Influencers (at special $450 rate) Meet the creators of Heroes and CSI, the CEOs of Hulu and Netflix, and the digital VPs of ABC and FOX. Less

If you are like me, then you’re one of the many millions who have cut the cord with their landline and gone all wireless. However, that doesn’t mean people don’t want phones for their homes. Of course, for them, there are many options — some that use traditional telephony like AT&T and others like Vonage, which provide broadband-based voice service. It’s hard for folks to pick the one that is the best and most reliable. Audio Quality Rankings Comcast Digital Voice Verizon VoiceWing AT&T Landline Service Reliability Rankings AT&T landline Time Warner Digital Phone Verizon VoiceWing Keynote Systems recently conducted a study (link to PDF) of some of the more popular services — AT&T VoIP, AT&T Landline, Comcast Digital, Time Warner Digital, Verizon VoiceWing (VoIP), Packet8, Vonage, Lingo and Truevoice. According to their study, AT&T’s landline service was the most reliable service, while in terms of voice quality, Comcast’s Digital Voice came out on top. I wish Keynote had not been stingy and shared complete rankings instead of these teaser results. Nevertheless, even the very limited data they made available show that pure-play VoIP services ranked pretty low, hinting at poor quality and less reliability. More importantly, not a single service measures up to being both reliable and exhibiting good quality; and though Verizon VoiceWing is a good enough compromise, it’s not clear if you can actually sign up for the service. I tried on their web site and failed — only existing customers can seemingly log into the site. These results align closely to my own findings — while AT&T used to work, the quality of the calls was just horrible. I could not make a single call to India without redialing. So I gave up that service and then opted for Comcast. I very quickly realized that spending $40 a month for a voice service when I could easily get nearly unlimited minutes from my mobile phone just didn’t make much sense. Good-bye, Comcast. I would love to know which service you use and what your real-world experience is. The Conference for Video Entrepreneurs and Influencers (at special $450 rate) Meet the creators of Heroes and CSI, the CEOs of Hulu and Netflix, and the digital VPs of ABC and FOX. Less

Spur-of-the-moment lo-fi live cover of the Radiohead song off Hail to the Thief, to which I added a couple of equally rough overdubs and some reverb. The guitar is out of tune and poorly played, but the vocal melody tweaks are kind of fun. The audio quality and production here is not up to my usual standard, but I just wanted to do something quick and dirty in an hour or two. I like how the "oooh" part towards the end came out, I think I might work with something similar for texture in a future song. Less

Over the years we have seen the gradual separation of phone numbers from geographical location. To date, Skype’s SkypeIn service has been the best demonstration of this trend; even though I live and work just outside Toronto, Canada, I have a Palo Alto, Calif., SkypeIn number for historical family reasons, and I recently acquired a San Francisco number for Truphone. The same separation can apply to most VoIP-based voice services. Over the past couple of years Belgian-based Voxbone has also developed an international numbering service which offers its clients a “local” phone numbers in any of 5,000 cities in 45 countries. OnState has used Voxbone’s “local” numbers as access points to its virtual call center service; its clients’ businesses can offer customer service and support centers with worldwide “local” access. However, it would be even more convenient for businesses selling into multiple countries if they could simply offer one universal number worldwide. Now, they can. Yesterday, three months after the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) made available the +883 “global” country code, Voxbone announced the launch of its country-agnostic iNum service. I first learned of Voxbone at last spring’s eComm 2008 where Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens first mentioned the iNum concept. This announcement starts to realize his vision of enabling low cost conversations with worldwide access by taking advantage of the technology around IP-based communications: “iNum is a new kind of phone number for a new kind of world — a world with a new geography that’s about local presence and global relationships, not about distance or national borders,” said Rodrigue Ullens, CEO and co-founder of Voxbone. “We believe the new geography is defined by the markets, customers and vendors that businesses need to connect with most. We need ‘local’ communication with these people — whether calls originate on public-switched or VoIP networks, whether they are truly local or ‘virtually’ local.” In practice, that means a Voxbone iNum Service Provider Partner will supply a customer, whether an individual or a business, with a number that has an 883 country code. Once the service is fully rolled out to Voxbone’s 5,000 local points of presence worldwide, that iNum number will be accessible for, at most, the cost of a “local” phone call from any PSTN or VoIP service. “At most,” because fundamental to Voxbone’s services is that they are IP-based and therefore calls amongst iNum Partners’ services are free. Currently Voxbone has 10 iNum Service Provider Partners, including Truphone, Mobivox and Voxeo, who either have made iNum numbers available today or will do so in the next few weeks. (For those callers who don’t use an iNum partner’s service, iNum numbers can be called through 55 “local” access points in 45 countries for the cost of a call to these access points.) Ullens, in a SquawkBox conference call yesterday, said that Voxbone will be negotiating with carriers and service providers worldwide to build out their service to become universally available. Voxeo has set up a demonstration iNum service example; call +883 510 001 800 024, give their virtual operator a U.S. postal code and you will get local weather reports. This call can be made via the iNum Partners’ services today; it will become available via the local access points as they are set up over the next week. Another example: iotum’s Callflower Conference Call service will be using iNum numbers in a few days. Jim Courtney is an Associate Editor of Skype Journal. Television is being revolutionized. What are the business opportunities for you in net video? Attend NewTeeVee Live (at special $450 rate) to find out. Less

Over the years we have seen the gradual separation of phone numbers from geographical location. To date, Skype’s SkypeIn service has been the best demonstration of this trend; even though I live and work just outside Toronto, Canada, I have a Palo Alto, Calif., SkypeIn number for historical family reasons, and I recently acquired a San Francisco number for Truphone. The same separation can apply to most VoIP-based voice services. Over the past couple of years Belgian-based Voxbone has also developed an international numbering service which offers its clients a “local” phone numbers in any of 5,000 cities in 45 countries. OnState has used Voxbone’s “local” numbers as access points to its virtual call center service; its clients’ businesses can offer customer service and support centers with worldwide “local” access. However, it would be even more convenient for businesses selling into multiple countries if they could simply offer one universal number worldwide. Now, they can. Yesterday, three months after the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) made available the +883 “global” country code, Voxbone announced the launch of its country-agnostic iNum service. I first learned of Voxbone at last spring’s eComm 2008 where Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens first mentioned the iNum concept. This announcement starts to realize his vision of enabling low cost conversations with worldwide access by taking advantage of the technology around IP-based communications: “iNum is a new kind of phone number for a new kind of world — a world with a new geography that’s about local presence and global relationships, not about distance or national borders,” said Rodrigue Ullens, CEO and co-founder of Voxbone. “We believe the new geography is defined by the markets, customers and vendors that businesses need to connect with most. We need ‘local’ communication with these people — whether calls originate on public-switched or VoIP networks, whether they are truly local or ‘virtually’ local.” In practice, that means a Voxbone iNum Service Provider Partner will supply a customer, whether an individual or a business, with a number that has an 883 country code. Once the service is fully rolled out to Voxbone’s 5,000 local points of presence worldwide, that iNum number will be accessible for, at most, the cost of a “local” phone call from any PSTN or VoIP service. “At most,” because fundamental to Voxbone’s services is that they are IP-based and therefore calls amongst iNum Partners’ services are free. Currently Voxbone has 10 iNum Service Provider Partners, including Truphone, Mobivox and Voxeo, who either have made iNum numbers available today or will do so in the next few weeks. (For those callers who don’t use an iNum partner’s service, iNum numbers can be called through 55 “local” access points in 45 countries for the cost of a call to these access points.) Ullens, in a SquawkBox conference call yesterday, said that Voxbone will be negotiating with carriers and service providers worldwide to build out their service to become universally available. Voxeo has set up a demonstration iNum service example; call +883 510 001 800 028 024, give their virtual operator a U.S. postal code and you will get local weather reports. This call can be made via the iNum Partners’ services today; it will become available via the local access points as they are set up over the next week. Another example: iotum’s Callflower Conference Call service will be using iNum numbers in a few days. Jim Courtney is an Associate Editor of Skype Journal. Television is being revolutionized. What are the business opportunities for you in net video? Attend NewTeeVee Live (at special $450 rate) to find out. Less

IntelePeer is one of those startups that has little buzz but a lot of traction. Formerly known as VoEx, the San Mateo, Calif.-based company lacks the hype around, say, Ribbit, but it has been delivering on the Voice 2.0 promise of integrating voice with web and enterprise applications for a long time. And doing well — IntelePeer turned EBITDA positive in June and is on its way to revenues that will exceed $50 million in 2009. That is one of the reasons the company was able to snag $18 million in Series C funding from Vantage Point Partners and previous investors including Kennet Venture Partners, NorthCap Partners and EDF Ventures. The new round is incredible because of its timing — though I am betting that the new investors are looking at the $105 million Ribbit exit and letting their imagination run wild. But then there aren’t many suckers like BT around anymore! The company has raised (including this round) a total of $35.5 million since its inception in 2003. Thanks to its own voice peering fabric, IntelePeer is on its way to doing close to 7 billion minutes of voice traffic this year, Chairman and CEO Frank Fawzi told me yesterday. “We are a lot larger than Ribbit and Jajah by multiple times,” Fawzi quipped. Jajah is heading down the same path at IntelePeer and the two companies are poised to become fierce competitors — that is if Jajah makes it out on the other end of this downturn. So why does IntelePeer need the money? “We only just turned EBDITA positive and we need to support our expansion,” Fawzi claimed. Of course, I never expected him to say that he was buying insurance — his investors wouldn’t like that. Plus, it’s prudent to take this money right now. As we all know, downturns are as unpredictable as the tornadoes in the Midwest — and leave just as much destruction in their wake. The Conference for Video Entrepreneurs and Influencers (at special $450 rate) Meet the creators of Heroes and CSI, the CEOs of Hulu and Netflix, and the digital VPs of ABC and FOX. Less

Earlier this month, Cisco Systems came out with an unusually downbeat forecast. The company, whose sales have traditionally seemed to defy gravity, admitted its numbers were going to fall for the first time in five years. Meanwhile its book-to-bill ratio — a key metric of future sales strength — has already dipped below 1.0. “We are seeing customers, not just in the financial, automotive or retail sectors, but across most of our enterprise industries, facing what they view as a very challenging business environment,” Frank Calderoni, Cisco’s chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts on a conference call. The problems, he said, have spread worldwide. Cisco is widely considered to be a bellwether of the telecom and infrastructure sector. Its gloomy outlook, therefore, proves just how negatively affected the industry at large will be by the vise-like grip of the economic downturn. AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega, CEO of that company’s mobility and consumer markets division, told me that anything related to the housing market was going to be in trouble. What that means is that the demand for broadband connections, voice lines and video services is going to slow drastically. Why? Because the growing number of new homes translated into strong demand for new communications services such as cable and broadband. Now that the housing market has ground to a halt, sales of such services are going to decline, which in turn means that the service providers — from AT&T to Time Warner Cable — are going to have a tough time spending more dollars on their infrastructure. And that is going to impact sales at equipment makers. After all, if there are fewer broadband connections, the number of modems needed will decline, and so will the demand for back-end gear to support those modems in broadband providers’ central offices. Similarly, if the demand for pay-per-view movies remains flat or declines, then the service providers won’t need to spend money on buying, say, video servers. This is not a hypothetical situation. During a conference call to discuss its most recent quarterly results, Time Warner Cable said it was seeing lower gross additions and an increased churn in the number of customers. More importantly, those customers were buying fewer pay-per-view movies, premium channels and other add-ons, such as digital video recorders. This means its average revenue per user is going to decline. Since cable companies depend on their ability to generate gobs of cash from their customers to finance the buildout of their networks, cash constraints will mean fewer dollars to spend on gear. U.S. phone companies, especially the ones with exposure to formerly hot housing markets in Arizona, California, Texas and Florida, are getting hit the hardest. AT&T and Qwest are both seeing steep declines in their wireline connections and a slowdown in demand for Internet connections. This isn’t going to get better anytime soon. As a result, analysts expect carriers will spend a lot less money next year. UBS estimates that carrier spending will decline 4 percent in 2009 after growing 1 percent in 2008. Similarly, a slowdown in the economy means that corporations will have fewer dollars to spend on their infrastructure, which is bad news for switch and router makers. Cisco’s gloomy outlook confirms that. So buckle up, guys. Trouble has returned to telecom land. Television is being revolutionized. What are the business opportunities for you in net video? Attend NewTeeVee Live (at special $450 rate) to find out. Less

telephony, Startup, voice Bruce V. Bigelow wrote: Updated Nov. 5, 4 pm PST: See below for details on funding  TelCentris, a new San Diego company, says it has released a beta version of its free consumer service called VoxOx, which combines Voice-over-Internet telephony and other types of communications into a single screen on a computer desktop. The company says its universal communicator service is the first in a coming generation of consumer software products that combine voice, video, instant messaging, text, e-mail, fax, and social networks into a single screen on a desktop. While competitors such as Skype offer VoIP and rival Digsby aggregates messaging, social networking and e-mail onto a single screen, the company says that VoxOx combines all these features into a single product—with an iPhone-like graphical user interface. The name VoxOx is a play on “voice over X,” meaning the system can send voice over any type of network. TelCentris says it has targeted communications-overloaded GenXers and “Millenials,” those born between 1980 and 2000. That’s a different tack than rivals that have been trying to get corporate customers to commit to their hardware and software for Voice-over-Internet telephony. It might be an easier sell, but Voice-over-Internet telephony is rapidly becoming a commodity, meaning the competition is getting fiercer and players are looking for ways to break out of the pack. TelCentris was founded by CEO Bryan Hertz, his brother, Kevin, who is chief technical officer, and father Bob, chief information officer. The CFO is Michael Fraught, who has 25 years experience in finance, management, and technology commercialization, according to the company’s Web site. A spokeswoman for TelCentris says the founders bankrolled the company themselves, with some additional angel investment. She added that TelCentris has been generating revenue by powering small telephone companies with its Unified Communications Service Delivery Platform, as well as providing Hosted PBX service to dozens of small-to-medium businesses.  Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail Less

Tonight’s show is brought to you by: Ambrosia Software This show is a member of Friends In Tech Show Notes: MacSpeech Dictate Less

Formats Available: iPod (.mp4) Election day is tomorrow… November 04, 2008. Make sure you get out and vote for the candidate of your choice. If you don’t choose the next President of the United States of America, somebody else will choose him FOR you. Make sure you feel good about yourself for the next four years by letting your voice be HEARD tomorrow in the voting booth. Be a DECIDER! VOTE! Tags: DatingGenius, Production & Post, RockStar, Social Media, Video Less

“VoIP is dead,” Skype General Manager of Voice and Video Jonathan Christensen declared at an industry conference a few weeks ago. He spoke figuratively, of course, but he may well have been right. While Voice-Over-Internet Protocol proponents had long promised a decade of creative destruction, they themselves appear to have become the victims. The full potential of a technology is not always realized once it converges with market forces. In this case, the gravitational pull of the incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) has always proven difficult to resist. Most of the VoIP industry, while loudly proclaiming the SIP era as the beginning of the end for monopoly communications, secretly courted the incumbents in hopes of profiting from replacing their long-amortized investments in the fixed-line business. By tying their fortunes to the whimsy of the ILECs, many of the upstarts suffered, destroying billions of dollars in shareholder value in the process. Recently PulverMedia, which spurred the VoIP crowd and rode its financial crest, shut its doors amid a swirl of controversy. As of this writing, Sonus Networks, once a high flier at $95 per share in 2000, trades at about $2.29. Even Cisco has thrown in the towel, discontinuing its BTS series of softswitches (which provide the routing logic for VoIP networks). These dismal stories perfectly mirror the ride of the VoIP industry in general. The outlook was once a lot better.  In 1999, with the ratification of the SIP protocol specification by the IETF, advocates who wanted to tear apart the monopolies that dominated telecom started to beat their war drums.  Following conventional wisdom that the Internet democratizes and deleverages any market into which it enters, it was easy to convince investors to pour billions into VoIP products and companies.  Regulators seemed to support that theory, too, sealing the deal with the FCC’s so-called “Pulver Order,” which defended the VoIP industry from over-reaching regulation and tarifing. The anticipated period of “creative destruction” came, all right. It began in 2001 with the smiting of the competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) and long-distance competitors, who had not yet even had time to embrace VoIP, by predatory pricing from the incumbents.  It continued with the shift from fixed voice lines to wireless phones, as evidenced by the drop in landlines . More recently, the guns have been turned toward the VoIP equipment vendors that begat the revolution in the first place. So what happened? What clipped the wings of so many VoIP hopefuls can be boiled down to five things: Death by Deliberation: The incumbents and cablecos were identified as early targets for the equipment vendors, however their engineers quibbled about curbside protocols and QOS and fiddled with VoIP in the labs, delaying launches by years — far outside of the fundraising cycle of most of the VoIP startups. Competition Attrition: The implosion and autopsy of WorldCom signaled to most of the industry that being a competitor in telecom is not a healthy business. Those high prices were largely arbitrary, and as soon as the market pressured incumbents to reduce them, they did. Evolution vs. Revolution: Companies like Nortel, Siemens and Ericsson rank among the top VoIP equipment vendors today, not startups. Technologists completely underestimated the sway and leverage that the traditional vendors held over their customers. SIP in a Box: SIP might be an open protocol, but networks were built proprietarily and have not been bridged together. Most telecom services still communicate with each other via public switching, meaning that the wonderful possibilities that SIP might enable are limited by the capabilities of the plain old telephone system. Landline Decline: Even as networks were evolving, the number of landlines around the globe was shrinking. People found more convenient ways to communicate via wireless, SMS, instant messaging or pervasive email. VoIP technology has clearly been successful in making inroads into traditional telecom networks, but in doing so, the revolution that SIP in particular, and VoIP in general, enables has been largely cast aside and the entire industry has coalesced in a race to the bottom. With this revolution went the volume of equipment and software sales that could have revitalized the supplier business and stimulated more innovation. Of course, while the telecom industry was eating itself alive, a plucky little company from Luxembourg called Skype delivered on VoIP’s promise by almost completely ignoring the Public Switched Telephone Network, not to mention the pundits and experts that cling desperately to SIP’s potential. The point of Christensen’s superpoke at what’s left of the telecom business is that Skype has been successful because it threw away the playbook, ignoring the obsessions of so-called telecom experts and focusing instead on solving the practical needs of everyday users. Tens of millions of people use Skype’s network today for text messaging, file-sharing, videoconferencing — and, yes, voice calling. All of these services are made decidedly more convenient because of presence — you can see who’s there before you contact them and use that information to choose what the most appropriate means of communication should be. And with less than a $40 million investment (prior to eBay’s rather more substantial buy-in), Skype’s user growth has outpaced the entire rest of the consumer VoIP business combined. The bottleneck for innovation appears to have been Alexander Graham Bell’s (no relation) PTSN — the plain old telephone system. By going after low-hanging fruit and forcing their innovations to be defined within the walls of the PSTN, the vast majority of VoIP companies voluntarily muzzled their own revolution and ultimately cost their investors billions. Ian Andrew Bell is a reformed telecom executive, and creator of the team management service rosterbot.com Television is being revolutionized. What are the business opportunities for you in net video? Attend NewTeeVee Live (at special $450 rate) to find out. Less

Kevin Kennedy, who yesterday resigned his position as CEO and president of telecom equipment maker JDSU (formerly JDS Uniphase), was named CEO and president of Avaya Inc. this morning. Kennedy will replace Avaya Interim CEO Charles Giancarlo, who will become chairman of the telephone equipment maker. Kennedy helped revive JDSU, though with telcos tightening their capital spending, the firm will still have some choppy waters to navigate. At privately held Avaya, Kennedy will trade the harsh scrutiny of Wall Street for the pressure of running a leveraged private equity-backed company during a downturn. He will take on the role in January 2009. Less

Over the past few years, I have been saying that for telecom companies, losing access lines while trying to grow the number of subscribers to their triple-play services was like walking a tightrope wearing skates. Of course, none of the telecom executives would admit that losing millions of access lines every quarter was a problem. Until this week, when Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg towards the end of his conference call with Wall Street analysts acknowledged the problems caused by customers giving up their landlines. The unspoken thing on this call is this whole issue of access line loss, and just very quickly what I’d like to say on that is that we’re not surprised at the access line loss…The issue for us is, that this issue of wireline margins and access line losses, trying to balance this issue on the head of a pin has been difficult. If that is indeed the case, then why was it so hard to find the total line losses for the quarter in the company’s news release and accompanying documents? Check out the third-quarter line losses for all three Bell companies: Qwest’s access lines totaled 11.9 million – a decline of 8.9 percent from the third quarter of 2007. Verizon lost 1.012 million lines vs. 933,000 in the same quarter a year earlier. AT&T lost almost 1 million primary lines. Telcos are once again underestimating the speed with which folks are jettisoning their landlines — and will continue to do so, especially as the current downturn deepens. According to a new study from comScore, folks are foregoing broadband connections in favor of the iPhone, yet another bad omen for the wireline business. The study claims that households that make between $25,000 and $49,999 a year were the fastest-growing segment of iPhone purchasers for the June through August time period. “These data indicate that lower-income mobile subscribers are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to access the Internet, e-mail and their music collections,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst at comScore in a statement. If folks drop their broadband and landline connections for an iPhone or other smartphone, then AT&T and Verizon can at least tap their wireless data revenue, but carriers without a wireless business are going to feel the squeeze. Television is being revolutionized. What are the business opportunities for you in net video? Attend NewTeeVee Live (at special $450 rate) to find out. Less

speech recognition, Mobile, wireless Wade Roush wrote: Cambridge, MA, startup Vlingo today launched a drastically improved version of its voice command and speech-to-text interface for RIM Blackberry smartphones, first released in June. The free vlingo 2.0 software, which works on Blackberry Pearl, Curve, and 8800 series phones, not only allows users to compose text messages and e-mails by speaking into their phones, but also lets them create status updates for Facebook and Twitter and launch built-in Blackberry applications such as the address book, the camera, the memo pad, or the calendar and third-party applications such as Google Maps, the Opera browser, or Viigo. Comments | Permalink | Share |  E-mail UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS Less

Comcast, the largest cable provider in the U.S. reported earnings today as did Qwest, the No. 3 telco provider. Comcast watched its earnings rise by 33 percent.  Qwest saw sales drop and announced it will layoff 1,200 people. Between these two earnings releases, there are large differences that show how bundles help boost communications services and how landline voice access is waning. Comcast saw its sales rise 10 percent to $8.55 billion for the third quarter of the year, which led to adjusted earnings of $691 million. It also had an average revenue per user (ARPU) of $110.71, up 9 percent from the same quarter last year, driven by bundling and the fact that video service is generally more expensive than voice and broadband. Comcast has more video subscribers than voice and data combined, but 22 percent of its customers take a voice, data and video bundle. Its broadband subscribers grew by 11 percent and its voice subscribers by 9 percent. But voice is slowing, and Comcast only added 483,000 subscribers, who are paying a lower monthly rate than during previous quarters. Qwest, on the other hand, reported revenue of $3.4 billion, down 2 percent from the third quarter the year prior, and earnings of $151 million, compared with $2.1 billion the year prior. However, in 2007 it reported a loss before taxes of $84 million, but saw a $2.15 billion benefit that pushed its earnings so high. Consumer ARPU grew 6 percent to $56, up from $53 for the same period last year, but that figure obviously lags behind the cable giant. Qwest saw its video subscribers increase by 25 percent, but from a small base number. Broadband growth was 11 percent to 2.8 million customers and landlines dropped 10 percent to 8 million from 8.9 million. What we are seeing between these two communications companies is the power of bundles and the slow decline of landlines. Television is being revolutionized. What are the business opportunities for you in net video? Attend NewTeeVee Live (at special $450 rate) to find out. Less

Having followed activity in the BlackBerry ecosystem over the past few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that BlackBerry Storm should be called BlackBerry Stealth. Why? With little media coverage, its forthcoming launch is the sleeper play in the smartphone market; it is poised to make major market penetration on its launch later this fall. Let’s look at the reasons: The carriers: BlackBerry Storm was designed for two major carriers, with proven 3G network performance, who aren’t able to carry the iPhone: Verizon and Vodafone (also coming to Canada on Telus and Bell). This opens up access to several large existing customer bases (70 million at Verizon) with strong presence in both consumer and enterprise markets. For roaming outside North America, the Storm for Verizon/Bell/Telus includes the appropriate European/Asian-supported GSM bands. A smarter touch screen: It employs new “haptic” touch keyboard technology with three keyboard options: QWERTY in landscape mode, SureType and Traditional 12-key in Portrait mode. Kevin Michaluk’s “First Impressions” review talks about his user experience with the keyboard and its unique features. One example: Hover on a letter and you’ll get other language options for the letter such as “é”. This YouTube video demonstrates the dynamic nature of the Storm’s keyboard. Enterprise ready: IT managers already supporting BlackBerry within their IT infrastructure will readily accept the Storm as simply one more BlackBerry device. There is a legion of stories building about IT managers’ refusal of employee requests for iPhone support. With its multimedia features, including syncing to iTunes, Storm presents an opportunity to have a touchscreen smartphone that easily meets both business and personal needs. A BlackBerry App Store is coming: Last week, RIM held its first BlackBerry Developer Conference, at which the 700 attendees learned about the BlackBerry App Store opening March 2009. Unlike Android Market, struggling to get to 100 applications, there currently exist more than 4,000 applications available via various web-based stores. The BlackBerry App Store makes it much easier to purchase applications directly off the device, both existing apps, as well as new ones that will appear as a result of developer support announced during the conference. Some developers will be backed by the $150 million BlackBerry Partners Fund. Major general-purpose applications appearing for BlackBerry: Several applications I have been using on a Nokia N95 are now becoming available for the BlackBerry. Last week, I saw a demonstration of SlingPlayer for BlackBerry (still in pre-alpha, not yet released) on a Bold. Yesterday, there were two announcements: an alpha release of the popular “live-to-Internet” video recording application Qik became available and Truphone Anywhere for BlackBerry became available. Background processing: While the Storm brings a different user interface, its underlying operating system is still the traditional BlackBerry O/S. I have been using a Bold for the past eight weeks and an iPhone for about three months. One key differentiator is BlackBerry’s ability to handle true background processing of data-based applications. For instance, you can run IM applications, such as Skype IM, via iSkoot, in the background, keeping you up-to-date on IM messages in real time while performing other data applications such as web browsing or checking your email concurrently. On the iPhone, you can make voice calls and play iTunes while looking at an application; otherwise, applications stop running until you return to it. Full background processing on the Storm, as on all recent Blackberry models, not only brings a significant productivity benefit to users but also allows notification and delivery of time sensitive information in real time. What does it lack? Wi-Fi support. Probably because Verizon does not support UMA/GAN. Yet Wi-Fi is becoming important for creating additional access points in places such as warehouses or high rise buildings, where cell phone signals can become too weak. Bottom line: Combining the Storm’s feature set and its carrier customer base, along with AT&T’s forthcoming Nov. 4 launch of Bold, BlackBerry Storm is lining up to be the “stealth” contributor to sustaining BlackBerry in its smartphone market leadership position, with a low-key, performance-based approach to the market. Disclosure: The author has held a minuscule number of RIM shares since 1998. The Conference for Video Entrepreneurs and Influencers (at special $450 rate) Meet the creators of Heroes and CSI, the CEOs of Hulu and Netflix, and the digital VPs of ABC and FOX. Less