Moving back on topic

OK, enough ranting about what is happening in this little bananaless republic. I will stick to telecoms related topics and direct everyone who is interested in the ongoing free speech controversy in Latvia to this new blog of mine, Free Speech Emergency in Latvia. So please go there. Free speech is the reason we are able to write about anything we want to (but not anymore in Latvia). I will continue to write what I think about IT and telecoms here, and what I think of the f**kwits running the Security Police on that new blog.

Latvia threatens to prosecute Security Police critics

The Latvian Security Police, according to a newspaper report, have threatened to prosecute anyone publicly commenting that the Security Police, who arrested a university lecturer for remarks about the financial crisis, are moving the country toward totalitarianism and repressing freedom of speech.

According to the newspaper Diena's portal, the Security Police "do not exclude starting criminal proceedings" against anyone commenting on the internet and expressing agreement with the views of the detained (since released and put under a travel ban) lecturer Dmitrijs Smirnovs or asserting that the Latvian Security Police were returning the country to totalitarianism by repressing freedom of speech. 

Sorry about yet another off-topic, but I think we are heading for a free speech emergency in Latvia. 

Latvia detains, restricts travel of academic for economy comments

Another offtopic about the outrageous behavior of this little authoritarian no-banana republic:

The Latvian Security Police (Drošibas policija) detained for two days and then banned a college lecturer from leaving the country for remarks about the economy in a panel discussion that were later published in a newspaper.
Dmitrijs Smirnovs, a lecturer in accounting and finance at Ventspils University College has been ordered not to leave the country after his release from two days of interrogation by the Security Police about his remarks that Latvians should not keep their money in banks and in Latvian lats.
Smirnovs argued that excessive credit, mainly by Swedish-owned banks, had created a precarious situation and also blamed the Bank of Latvia, the nation's central bank, for failing to regulate and restrict excessive and imprudent lending.
Also questioned by the Security Police was Valters Fridenbergs, a young musician, who joked about withdrawing money from two Latvian banks during a break in a concert.

After these events, it is fair to say that the functions of the former Soviet and Soviet Latvian KGB -- the persecution and intimidation of dissent and free speech -- are being revived by the Latvian Security Police. Latvia has taken a significant step toward becoming an authoritarian state.

Migrating to GMail, screw Yahoo!

Yahoo! mail for me is in some kind of systemic failure, inaccessible due to errors 999 or 5 or 14 or whatever now for nearly a week. This is regardless of where I have been accessing it from: a Verizon DSL connection in Newton, MA or a Comcast cable internet connection in Wayland, MA in the US, a Lattelecom DSL connection in Riga, and now, an ultrafast corporate Lattelecom (?) connection at my workplace. Yahoo (which reminded me, recently, to pay USD 19.95 for its premium service) sucks totally and I have started a rather cumbersome, but necessary migration to Gmail. Perhaps I should also open a back-up Hotmail account. Those with a need-to-know will be informed of my new (old, actually, just haven't used Gmail that much) address. It is juriskaza(thingy)gmail(Dot)com (so f**k you e-mail scanning spam bots).

Yahoo! degrades to garbage level service

If I had not been in the US, then back in Latvia experiencing the same problems, I wouldn't write this so harshly. My primary e-mail for general purpose communications, Yahoo!, has been regularly down for a variety of error codes, 5, 15, and of late, 999.
In the US, I attempted to access my e-mail through Verizon DSL (at my mother's house), then through Comcast at my brother's house and now through Lattelecom DSL in Riga. Yet again, I see code 999. Complaining repeatedly to Yahoo doesn't help. I use a brand new aluminum Macbook, and Macs have little or no malware or viruses. Also, to register a complain requires one to decipher extremely twisted and obscure combinations of letters and numerals, designed not so much as to deter automated use of the site as to simply prevent ordinary users from bothering them.
I am just curious whether anyone else is experiencing this, what appears to, global deterioration of Yahoo service. I have been paying some USD 19.95 annual fee for a higher level of service. I also wonder if anyone has a migration strategy for moving all of one's Yahoo contacts and automatically forwarding Yahoo mail to a site that isn't f**ked half the time, like Gmail.

Some sad personal news

I have been busy at my day job and hoped to put in some more video from IBM Information on Demand, but I have sadly received word that my father, 91, passed away after a longer illness November 6 in a nursing home near Boston. I got to see him shortly before IOD, stopping for a few days in the Boston area. So I am heading over again for the funeral and will be back on station after November 17.

Steve Mills (IBM) on cloud computing, recession

Steve Mills, Senior VP of the IBM Software Group, talked about cloud computing for SMEs and the effects of the recession on the IT industry and its customers during a roundtable discussion at Information on Demand 2008. Here are my video excerpts.

The IOD 2008 opening show

IBM put on a rather impressive opening show at Information on Demand 2008 in Las Vegas (Vegas, after all). I shot some video of it -- the psychedelic performance and a nice sexy singer with a very libertarian song (my politics, sort of :) ).

I'm heading back to Riga today via Chicago and Frankfurt, a day on planes. There will be more to post -- video mainly-- from the conference when I get back.

IBM honchos speak at IOD 2008

I have put together some video highlights of  the first day of IBM's Information on Demand 2008 conference. where the emphasis is on information processing and analysis as a tool for improving business outcomes.

At IBM Information on Demand

I am at IBM Information on Demand in Las Vegas. Not much time to blog, but it looks like we will here something about industry specific solutions (not just middleware to keep the data accurate and deliver it, generically, where it is wanted. They should also touch on cloud computing and delivery platforms

I have shot some video and will post it in the next couple of days (I head back to Latvia on October 29). Great stuff with Jeff Jonas, a genius on stitching unrelated data,  also some Steve Mills (head honcho of IBM's Software Division). Hope to edit it and get it out on my Latvian blog and here.

Alcatel Lucent offers green telecoms in the Baltics

Alcatel Lucent's business development manager for Nordic & Baltics, Johan Ragmo, was in Riga recently and talked about the company's energy-saving or so-called greener telecommunications solutions. These are based on, among other technologies, smart systems that draw down their electricity consumption when idle, and devices that combine several functions previously handled by different boxes into a one-box solution.
All of this sounds fine, since if thousands of companies in a country like Latvia were to cut their energy demand (and save on costs in the bargain), it would proportionately reduce the generation of ungreen energy (Latvia has lots of hydropower supplemented by some combined cycle coal and gas fueled power stations). However, the issue of the environmental impact of manufacturing processes and materials used in telco equipment remains. Why reduce energy consumption 50 % for the user if making the gadget leaves a Godzilla-sized carbon footprint. To this Johan said, off camera, that Alcatel Lucent manufactures in accordance with good industry practices. His main message was about the energy savings for business and organizational users.

Epson opens Baltic regional office, honcho speaks

Epson, the Japanese maker of imaging and printing equipment (as well as projectors) has opened a regional office in the Baltic States, citing rapid market growth and potential in the region. I talked to Eiji Ide, CEO of Epson Europe about the reasons for setting up a regional office and the printer market in general. Toward the end of the interview, Ide reveals a secret about his necktie :).
The video has titles both in Latvian and English, as it is edited for dual use here and on my Latvian language blog.

Is there a future for fixed telecoms in Latvia?

Janiene Bayliss, an independent consultant specializing in telecommunications branding, was one of the speakers at Lattelecom's annual customer conference. I asked her to comment on the assertion that fixed networks may be a sunset industry, since most of the population of any Western European country (and Latvia) seems to primarily use mobile phones for voice and, increasingly, for data communications.
Also at the conference, Lattelecom CEO Juris Gulbis said that the company planned to start replacing its DSL internet service (max. 10 Mbps) with high speed (up to 100 Mbps) fiber to the home connections over the next three years. One reason for the upgrade was to make it possible to provide HD television broadcasts as part of Lattelecom's internet television offering. Gulbis said that at present, Latvia had the fourth fastest consumer internet services in the world, behind Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Alcatel-Lucent's Baltic focus is on fixed networks

Before going to the US on September 19, I had an opportunity to interview Lars Boilesen, the head of Alcatel-Lucent Nordic & Baltics. Boilesen believes that the company's focus in the region will continue to be fixed network operators, even as Alcatel-Lucent has strong positions in the mobile market elsewhere. In Latvia, the focus on fixed networks goes back to a long-term relationship with Lattelecom.

Off to the States, and screw KLM!!

I am off to the US for 10 days again, so will be blogging here even more sporadically, although I do have a video interview with an Alcatel-Lucent honcho that I will try to get up.

I am writing this when I should actually already be well on my way to the US, with the ever-so convenient (though a bit extreme) 0555 AM Riga to Amsterdam to Boston connection with f**king KLM. The reason I am not is that KLM simply cancelled the flight and rebooked me and my wife on what appeared to be separate flights to Copenhagen and Stockholm respectively (OK, we don't have the same last name and used different credit cards for her business purposes). Since we booked via Expedia (who brings no small amount of business to KLM) and we saw  no visible onward connections to the US  from Scandinavia on the new information (we found them, via Newark, by investigating ourselves) KLM said it was our and Expedia's problem, not theirs. The flight cancellation was at KLM's initiative, it caused us serious concern and problems, yet KLM stubbornly and repeated (except for one person on the US reservations line, which I called via Skype and who got us reservations on Lufthansa, but not tickets) refused to resolve our problem and said it was up to Expedia, who were also pretty hopeless and helpless at it. So finally a lady at Lufthansa in Riga solved it, and we are flying over with them. I will repeat what I wrote in my Latvian language blog -- KLM are swine. Swine! Passanger hostile swine!

Swedish online video editing company looks East

Jaycut, a Swedish online video editing company, thinks Eastern Europe is an interesting potential market for its services. So far, the Stockholm-based company, founded in 2007, has a major customer in IKEA, the Swedish/global do-it-yourself furniture and home furnishings company. It has set up a website for customers to show off their home decoration solutions using IKEA's stuff, upload any raw video and edit it down to a presentable video spot.
While in Stockholm recently, I talked to Jonas Hombert, co-founder of Jaycut:

Swedish Momail spreads mobile e-mail to Latvia

I was in Stockholm briefly and met with Lars Aase, marketing director for Momail, a Swedish mobile e-mail aggregation service. Recently, they have started a beta version in Latvia (in English, Latvian to come upon official launch). Momail is a free service, but the business model apparently is to sell the plaform to mobile operators who will then offer it as "their"service.

Latvia's IZZI promises 100 Mbps internet in 2009

IZZI, the Latvian cable television, internet and voice services provider, will be able to offer 100 Mbps internet speeds to its cable customers during 2009, according to Helmut Kohl, a representative of Contaq Latvian Cable, the company's new owner (a consortium of four investment funds).
Kohl said the planned upgrade of IZZI's cable network means it will decisively beat Lattelecom's DSL offering, which presently tops at 10 Mbps. Short of a major and expensive replacement of the entire copper-based infrastructure, coaxial cable linked to IZZI's fiber optic network in certain urban areas will be the fastest internet service in Latvia, he said. Such speeds can only be exceeded by upgrading to fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), which is being implemented on a very small scale in Latvia by Latvenergo and Lattelecom.
Kohl also said that IZZI was planning to participate in a forthcoming tender to provide digital terrestrial TV broadcast services to reach some 400 000 viewers in areas outside Latvia's larger cities where broadcast TV is the only service presently available.
Kohl said that if IZZI were awarded the deal, it had the money, know-how and other resources to start digital broadcasting within one year of the award. The digital TV tender is expected in November. The Contaq executive said that around 80 % of the necessary hardware and software resources needed for digital terrestrial broadcasting already existed to serve IZZI's digital cable TV network.
Kohl also said that IZZI hoped to expand its high-definition offerings on digital cable (currently limited to VOOM, an English language HD channel and an HD channel in Russian) next year and offer HD terrestrial broadcasts if given the chance. He cautioned, however, that there were no local HD offerings and those available in Europe in major languages were in English or German.
Commenting on possible competition between cable and IPTV, Kohl noted that some of the investors in the consortium behind the recent buy-out of IZZI (from Latvian stakeholders) were invested in IPTV.
Kohl sees IPTV as an outlet for specialized content and narrow audiences, citing a golf channel as an example, while more mainstream programming would be supplied on cable. The Contaq spokesman said he was not concerned that Lattelecom was offering timeshifted programming, since this was mainly locally produced, whereas timeshifting content such as feature films using the operator's platform was "a gray legal area" that could not be compared to recording shows on hard disk or tape while absent from home.

More on the iPhone tizzy in Latvia

Finally Fred Hrenchuk, CEO of Bite Latvija, has written, apparently from vacation in Canada, that Bite is testing iPhones with selected customers and will start selling the gadgets once these tests are done.
So it now looks like sometime in the next few weeks, there will be two operators offering iPhone 3G packages on the Latvian market. LMT, which has remained largely silent and missed the August 22 launch date (only the Estonians have started selling iPhones).
If there are any Lithuanians reading this, what is the take on Bite selling iPhones in your country? Will Vodafone (through its "fatting calf") get the jump on TeliaSonera in the two other Baltic countries?
As for me, my employer has me chained to Tele2, which currently has no iPhone plans. Anything from big momma Tele2 in Sweden (not that I know of)? However, one of the senior people at LETA has been seen fingering* an earlier model iPhone and speaking very well of it. As for me, I might be interested in an unbundled iPhone if the price is not outrageous...

Bite to sell iPhone in Latvia = TRUE!

Bite will sell the iPhone (presumably 3G) to business customers in Latvia, a Bite representative told a journalist at the Latvian news agency LETA (my workplace, different department). This confirms the rumor that I reported on August 29. No prices or tariff plans have been published, but one commentator to my Latvian-language blog claims a price of LVL 399 for a subsidized phone. Pretty pricey, but within the 400 -700 LVL range that the rumor included.
Meanwhile Bite Latvia CEO Fred Hrenchuk, who is slightly out of the loop visiting his native Canada, e-mailed me:

Hey Juris, sorry for the late reply but I am in Canada visiting my mom. We are not selling iPhones at this time.

Have a good week.

Fred
Sent via Bite’s Blackberry Service

Which is not really a denial given that Fred is a little out of the loop and that nobody is running out of Bite boutiques waving around their iPhones yet.
LMT continues to say it will say something about the iPhone "soon". Meanwhile, it seems that the Latvian daily Diena reported on May 28, quoting Fred, that Bite could sell the iPhone in Latvia through its connection with Vodafone.
This again confirms my suspicions that Bite is parked with its present owners to be fattened for acquisition by Vodafone when the time is right.