Telecom Executives Business Network

Here is a chance for all of us to help out a student at the Birkbeck University of London with some research related to the Wireless Sector. We have received a request from Tryfon Gkarnetas to take part in a survey he is conducting. He is conducting research on change management in the wireless sector as part of his Master's degree.

The research attempts to verify the theory of change management, how it affects organisations, how the senior and middle management responds to difficulties and what initiatives have been taken to make it successful. He believes that this is the first time such research is specialising in the sector and would be very useful as the feedback will provide guidelines & solutions to all executives & employees out there struggling to cope with change.

Please follow this link to participate http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=1021097.

High-Tech Philanthropy leads the way. The tech sector has raised the bar on giving. It is nice to be in this segment, having so much to give and giving so much to those who don't have. Let me hear comments from donors in our sector you've heard about, besides Bill Gates. Bill, maligned for so many years because he did so little, has certainly turned that stigma around.

Let me hear from you... bv
http://blog.bobbyvassallo.org

The mobile handset market has been changing very rapidly as of late with the Apple iPhone being launched, the Google Android platform, LiMo and now the opening up of the Symbian OS (and related technologies).

Nokia plans to buy out the remaining Symbian consortium members in order to facilitate the creation of the Symbian Foundation. From the Symbian Foundation website:

With the need for more and more bandwidth to support consumer demand. Providers are finding it harder and harder to keep up and make a profit. Is Comcast traffic management system http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2008/06/02/daily46.html the wave of the future? Or should content providers pay bandwidth providers for the use of the network? The right answer would seem be to charge the heavy uses an additional fee, Howerver, if you read "Long Tail" by Chris Anderson we should give the bandwidth away and charge for the ads and add ons. The current model is broken so what should be done?

Several news outlets are reporting that the joint venture between Sprint and several cable operators (Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Advance/Newhouse) to sell and market wireless services to cable customers is coming to an end.

Operational complexities were cited as a major contributing factor to the decision to end the service.

Now that this joint venture has ended, it will be interesting to see what lies ahead in the wireless area for these cable operators. Especially since these same operators are partners in Spectrum Co. which won spectrum in the AWS auctions. And then there is Cox who won spectrum in the 700Mhz auction that was recently held.

Here is one of the better articles on the topic that I found.

Speaking at WiMax World Asia 2008, Mr. Garth Freeman, Chief Executive Officer of Buzz Broadband, indicated that they had abandoned WiMax in favor of other technologies. Several issues were highlighted that led to this decision including:

• indoor coverage issues
• high latency
• poor jitter

Not all of the operators using WiMax were as unhappy as Mr. Freeman which brings up the question of why was it such a failure for Buzz.

You can check out more coverage of this story here.

This is an exciting and interesting time in the telecommunications industry with many changes happening or on the horizon. There have been numerous operator and vendor consolidation, new technologies to consider (LTE, WiMax), new entrants into the device arena (iPhone, Android) and even an agreement to create a "common IMS" within 3GPP. And this only scratches the surface of what is going on.

I established the Telecom Executives Business Network (TEBN) to provide a forum for those of us within the industry to share ideas, discuss topics of interest and to network with peers.

Welcome,
Sean Kendall Schneyer

In order to give our members additional opportunities to network, we have created a LinkedIn Group. Interested parties can join here.

Happy Networking!