It looks like the only way Bite Mobile, the mobile newcomer to the Latvian market, is going to get national roaming is to buy it, straight out, with no sheriff regulator at its back. The issue underlying national roaming is the network access market, not the mobile market per se. Latvia's Public Utilities Regulatory Commission won't get around to dealing with that market until the second half of 2006, plus it may have to change the Electronic Communications Law to get the big teeth it needs to make the incumbents open their networks (at a decent cost plus price). That is an optimistic estimate.
With observers expecting Bite to launch services in the fall, or just ahead of when number portability starts on December 1, it looks like Jesper Thiell Eriksen, Bite GSM 's CEO and board chairman of the Latvian unit, Bite Mobile, will have a lot of persuading to do to get Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and Tele2 (the latter may be the easier of the two iron maidens to get to "fall backwards" in the Shakespearean sense) to sell them some minutes on the network. This may mean that Jesper will have to pay top lat for the pleasure, but write this off as an indirect marketing expense. Bite's early tariffs/prepaid rates will have to look very good and the company will simply swallow any losses on the extensive national roaming in the first months or half-year of operations.
Again, I remind him that if he wants to burn through the 40 000 numbers he has available, selling them through a link to the Latvian Friendster, www.draugiem.lv could be one way to do it. There are 330 000 potential buyers of a better pre-paid card out there.
As far as the business offering, I wonder how much of the "one price for the whole neighborhood" scheme of Vodafone Passport we will see Bite taking over. It would be great to be able to use them to call for the same price in Latvia, the other Baltics, Sweden and maybe Britain and Germany.
And now for LIGO, pronounced Leegou, the merry refrain of Latvian Midssummer Song.
Little Bite's flying north
Ligo, Ligo!
Juris* better watch your hive
Ligo, Ligo!
Bite's got the sweets for it..
Ligo, Ligo,
Gonna lure your queens away!
Ligo, Ligo
*Juris Binde, president of LMT.
So I'm going to do some Ligo myself and be back after the long weekend. Local readers, please celebrate sensibly.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Friday, June 17, 2005
Who you gonna call? CDMA!
...450, that is.
According to Sweden's Dagens industri (my ex-whatever you call those you string for), the major mobile operators, who got their 3G licences in beauty contests instead of auctions are backing off from meeting all the requirements (think, Vodafone instead could have spent USD 30 billion/or whatever it was/ and built its own nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to sail the seas selling 3G phones). Companies like Tele2 are asking to be allowed to dodge strict requirements to put up UMTS masts everywhere in the vast country of Sweden where the reindeer roam, that is, on the edge of nowhere, so you can call 118 and ask for instructions on how to get to the middle.
Instead, the operators are politely asking to be allowed to use alternative technologies that sorta do the same. One approach is to have EDGE declared to be 3G. Well, that's sort of like having the fastest World War II propeller-driven plane (the P-50, wasn't it?) declared a jet. EDGE could then be added to existing GSM services on networks offering both UMTS and GSM to kind of keep up the speed when the reindeer herder leaves town. *
The other alternative is cdma 450, with its far lower base station density. Triatel in Latvia has been doing this all along (all along being since last year). The fact that a cdma 450 operator (Nordisk Mobiltelefon) may get licenced in the halfmotherland of all mobile technologies (thanks to Ericsson, the other half mother is Nokia) is music to the Latvian operator's ears. It means that its technology, which even yours truly described as "non-standard" in a certain newspaper when it showed up, is starting to go mainstream.
And why not? What we have here with Triatel, assuming -as one never should - that all works, a plug and play (from the customer's viewpoint) total wireless communications and services provider. In less than a day, by unpacking the Triatel "box" (there is none, there are probably several boxes) you can get 3G mobile phones, data cards for the laptops, desk phones (with a softswitch PBX and SMS to deskphone) and DSL-like high speed internet. The best speed for EV-DO (?) on cdma-450 is more than 2.4 Mbps, but Triatel will probably package it in 128, 256 and 512 kbps (well, maybe a meg) low cost, home, business and premium business packages.
Interestingly, this sort of matches Lattelekom's wireline internet offering. One area where Triatel will seek customers is "out in the green grazing fields" where developers are selling lots but there is no infrastructure. Unless Lattelekom or electric utility Latvenergo (with its possibility to run fiber down the same cable channel as electricity) beats Triatel to the punch, it is an excellent idea for getting new homeowners. Just open the box and start surfing even before the roof on your new house is finished.
Latvenergo can't provide its service without wires, but Lattelekom, rather than running optics for kilometers across glen and glade, could opt for WiMax (once someone finds where to buy it)
Both wireline and wireless operators also have to get the jump on the companies hawking satellite parabola packages for LVL 1 to get customers for television services(just sign up to subscribe for more moons than your grandmother has seen, but that's another story). Using the 3G handset as a digital TV decoder is not a crazed future vision. In fact, why not recharge the gadget by plugging it into the TV and feed IPTV broadcasts to the 40 inch plasma screen?
A challenge for Triatel--can wireless triple play be done on cdma450?
According to Sweden's Dagens industri (my ex-whatever you call those you string for), the major mobile operators, who got their 3G licences in beauty contests instead of auctions are backing off from meeting all the requirements (think, Vodafone instead could have spent USD 30 billion/or whatever it was/ and built its own nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to sail the seas selling 3G phones). Companies like Tele2 are asking to be allowed to dodge strict requirements to put up UMTS masts everywhere in the vast country of Sweden where the reindeer roam, that is, on the edge of nowhere, so you can call 118 and ask for instructions on how to get to the middle.
Instead, the operators are politely asking to be allowed to use alternative technologies that sorta do the same. One approach is to have EDGE declared to be 3G. Well, that's sort of like having the fastest World War II propeller-driven plane (the P-50, wasn't it?) declared a jet. EDGE could then be added to existing GSM services on networks offering both UMTS and GSM to kind of keep up the speed when the reindeer herder leaves town. *
The other alternative is cdma 450, with its far lower base station density. Triatel in Latvia has been doing this all along (all along being since last year). The fact that a cdma 450 operator (Nordisk Mobiltelefon) may get licenced in the halfmotherland of all mobile technologies (thanks to Ericsson, the other half mother is Nokia) is music to the Latvian operator's ears. It means that its technology, which even yours truly described as "non-standard" in a certain newspaper when it showed up, is starting to go mainstream.
And why not? What we have here with Triatel, assuming -as one never should - that all works, a plug and play (from the customer's viewpoint) total wireless communications and services provider. In less than a day, by unpacking the Triatel "box" (there is none, there are probably several boxes) you can get 3G mobile phones, data cards for the laptops, desk phones (with a softswitch PBX and SMS to deskphone) and DSL-like high speed internet. The best speed for EV-DO (?) on cdma-450 is more than 2.4 Mbps, but Triatel will probably package it in 128, 256 and 512 kbps (well, maybe a meg) low cost, home, business and premium business packages.
Interestingly, this sort of matches Lattelekom's wireline internet offering. One area where Triatel will seek customers is "out in the green grazing fields" where developers are selling lots but there is no infrastructure. Unless Lattelekom or electric utility Latvenergo (with its possibility to run fiber down the same cable channel as electricity) beats Triatel to the punch, it is an excellent idea for getting new homeowners. Just open the box and start surfing even before the roof on your new house is finished.
Latvenergo can't provide its service without wires, but Lattelekom, rather than running optics for kilometers across glen and glade, could opt for WiMax (once someone finds where to buy it)
Both wireline and wireless operators also have to get the jump on the companies hawking satellite parabola packages for LVL 1 to get customers for television services(just sign up to subscribe for more moons than your grandmother has seen, but that's another story). Using the 3G handset as a digital TV decoder is not a crazed future vision. In fact, why not recharge the gadget by plugging it into the TV and feed IPTV broadcasts to the 40 inch plasma screen?
A challenge for Triatel--can wireless triple play be done on cdma450?
Thursday, June 16, 2005
More thoughts for Mikke on TeliaSonera
Mikke is Michael Törnwall, a Swedish business journalist who has written an analysis of TeliaSonera, the half-mother of Latvia's Lattelekom and the full parent of Lietuvos Telekomas, Omnitel and Elion of Estonia. It was retold, more or less, in English here earlier.
I have some thoughts to add to his earlier analysis.
It seems that the "children" or subsidiaries may be more nimble and speedy than the parent. Lattelekom, at least, is moving ahead into business process outsourcing, making alliances with Germany's T-Systeme (for public sector, EU related work) and with Exigen in the private sector, something which has stagnated so far because of unresolved issues between the Latvian and American (in name, all of Exigen's development work is done in Latvia) companies.
The view may well be that compared to the kids, momma in Sweden is a bit slow on making major decisions. Which brings us back to the issue of what will happen to TeliaSonera in the medium term. As it continues to meet resistance to its planned acquisitions in Turkey and Russia (but with sufficient cash to do so, were the other parties ready to sell), TeliaSonera looks more and more like it could be snatched by someone bigger and faster. This thought has entered the minds of some of the TeliaSonera affiliated companies' management, that it is perhaps inevitable that TeliaSonera will be bought by someone. The hope is that the someone will be more like the "kids" than the present mother – that is, lean and fast and likely to put its acquisition into order. In fact, if this happens, the Baltic subsidiaries may be called upon to help make their now "married" mother work more efficiently.
I have some thoughts to add to his earlier analysis.
It seems that the "children" or subsidiaries may be more nimble and speedy than the parent. Lattelekom, at least, is moving ahead into business process outsourcing, making alliances with Germany's T-Systeme (for public sector, EU related work) and with Exigen in the private sector, something which has stagnated so far because of unresolved issues between the Latvian and American (in name, all of Exigen's development work is done in Latvia) companies.
The view may well be that compared to the kids, momma in Sweden is a bit slow on making major decisions. Which brings us back to the issue of what will happen to TeliaSonera in the medium term. As it continues to meet resistance to its planned acquisitions in Turkey and Russia (but with sufficient cash to do so, were the other parties ready to sell), TeliaSonera looks more and more like it could be snatched by someone bigger and faster. This thought has entered the minds of some of the TeliaSonera affiliated companies' management, that it is perhaps inevitable that TeliaSonera will be bought by someone. The hope is that the someone will be more like the "kids" than the present mother – that is, lean and fast and likely to put its acquisition into order. In fact, if this happens, the Baltic subsidiaries may be called upon to help make their now "married" mother work more efficiently.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
A little more on Bite
The paranoid intro
This is a resume of what may appear --well, you know where. In fact, I think it will, so I am blogging it just for the benefit of the non-Latvian readers. But I have this strange feeling that indirectly dissing NN may bring down more shit. Time to lie low until it is safe to jump to the next lilypad...ribbet..
Apropos nothing, my summer house is around 200 meters, if not more, from this stagnant body of water that was once part of the river Gauja or whatever. Well, it seems they are having a frog Woodstock (like 100 000 creatures in one place, with loud frog music). For me it was like this distant murmuring, but if I lived any closer to the gigantic frog chorus, which apparently goes on all night, I would serious start looking for a box of hand grenades. A couple of loud bangs, lots of seagull food, but then those flying fuckers would start screeching and gathering in the hundreds for the feast. Next step, rifle, next after that, police, lunatic asylum... You saw it coming first.
Hunter Thompson is dead, long live his spirit.
...and now about Bite and other stuff
It looks pretty much like Bite, once it gets sufficient coverage, is going to come in with a fixed-price business data/mobile internet package, plus a number of voice deals for getting the lowest cost to certain numbers, countries and the like. You can see it on the www.bite.lt website, this is no inside word from me. Basically it is a set of building blocks or starting points for putting together an individual, tailor-made package of services for your average SME. As Johan Fagerberg of Berg Insight in Sweden told me, nobody in the business community who buys telecoms services buys them by the official list price. Comparing list prices is not very useful except as a starting point for applying your own policies and best practices to getting a good individual company deal.
One of the best deals around may be Tele2's free GPRS service (missed that it was "still free after all this, ( just one) year). You buy a Zelta zivtiņa card and GPRS all you want, though check the small print that your meter isn't running, though it shouldn't be. Tele2 has had free GPRS since last July and it is still using it as a tool to see what folks do and want from it. The company will probably jump directly to 3G for fast business class mobile internet. But for a small business who wants to really limit costs (i.e. LVL 10 and the fish --zivtiņa in Latvian -- dies) plus all the GPRS you can eat.
While we are on the subject of freebies, or so-called freebies, Triatel is giving away Huawei and other cool but obscure brand-name cdma450 handsets along with 24 month subscriptions. Make that 18 month real subscriptions, because all calls in the network are free until year end. Competitors will call this dumping, but it is basically writing off all your operating costs (running the network on zero revenues) as a one big (medium-sized?) m--f--ker of a marketing expense. It may work. It looks very much like what 3 did in Sweden. If I were to say that a 3 salesperson who started chasing me with a free (or SEK 1 or whatever it was) phone last summer in Stockholm's Gallerian shopping center and didn't stop until I was checking in for my flight back to Riga, it wouldn't be too far off the mark.
I hope to be able to test the Triatel 2.4 Mbps wireless internet modem at my summer house and if I was really heading for some kind of sanity boundary, I'd get a Huawei phone, attach a webcam and broadcast the frog festival as a webcast. Why not -- all kinds of sex on the internet, why not thousands of amphibians doing it and being cheered on by the rest.
Oh yes, Triatel may finally admit that, yes, Huawei is building out its network.
This is a resume of what may appear --well, you know where. In fact, I think it will, so I am blogging it just for the benefit of the non-Latvian readers. But I have this strange feeling that indirectly dissing NN may bring down more shit. Time to lie low until it is safe to jump to the next lilypad...ribbet..
Apropos nothing, my summer house is around 200 meters, if not more, from this stagnant body of water that was once part of the river Gauja or whatever. Well, it seems they are having a frog Woodstock (like 100 000 creatures in one place, with loud frog music). For me it was like this distant murmuring, but if I lived any closer to the gigantic frog chorus, which apparently goes on all night, I would serious start looking for a box of hand grenades. A couple of loud bangs, lots of seagull food, but then those flying fuckers would start screeching and gathering in the hundreds for the feast. Next step, rifle, next after that, police, lunatic asylum... You saw it coming first.
Hunter Thompson is dead, long live his spirit.
...and now about Bite and other stuff
It looks pretty much like Bite, once it gets sufficient coverage, is going to come in with a fixed-price business data/mobile internet package, plus a number of voice deals for getting the lowest cost to certain numbers, countries and the like. You can see it on the www.bite.lt website, this is no inside word from me. Basically it is a set of building blocks or starting points for putting together an individual, tailor-made package of services for your average SME. As Johan Fagerberg of Berg Insight in Sweden told me, nobody in the business community who buys telecoms services buys them by the official list price. Comparing list prices is not very useful except as a starting point for applying your own policies and best practices to getting a good individual company deal.
One of the best deals around may be Tele2's free GPRS service (missed that it was "still free after all this, ( just one) year). You buy a Zelta zivtiņa card and GPRS all you want, though check the small print that your meter isn't running, though it shouldn't be. Tele2 has had free GPRS since last July and it is still using it as a tool to see what folks do and want from it. The company will probably jump directly to 3G for fast business class mobile internet. But for a small business who wants to really limit costs (i.e. LVL 10 and the fish --zivtiņa in Latvian -- dies) plus all the GPRS you can eat.
While we are on the subject of freebies, or so-called freebies, Triatel is giving away Huawei and other cool but obscure brand-name cdma450 handsets along with 24 month subscriptions. Make that 18 month real subscriptions, because all calls in the network are free until year end. Competitors will call this dumping, but it is basically writing off all your operating costs (running the network on zero revenues) as a one big (medium-sized?) m--f--ker of a marketing expense. It may work. It looks very much like what 3 did in Sweden. If I were to say that a 3 salesperson who started chasing me with a free (or SEK 1 or whatever it was) phone last summer in Stockholm's Gallerian shopping center and didn't stop until I was checking in for my flight back to Riga, it wouldn't be too far off the mark.
I hope to be able to test the Triatel 2.4 Mbps wireless internet modem at my summer house and if I was really heading for some kind of sanity boundary, I'd get a Huawei phone, attach a webcam and broadcast the frog festival as a webcast. Why not -- all kinds of sex on the internet, why not thousands of amphibians doing it and being cheered on by the rest.
Oh yes, Triatel may finally admit that, yes, Huawei is building out its network.
Monday, June 13, 2005
The straight dope on the Great Satan
Just to make sure everyone understands: Lattelekom is not the Great Satan. I have called it the Great Satan to illustrate some fundamentally irrational perceptions of Lattelekom at a certain newspaper and elsewhere. I also think the whole Great Satan thing is cool, retro-early 80s Iranian jargon (when the US was, and still is, the Great Satan). It brings up images of exotic mobs chanting for the downfall of the Great Satan (there were actually some demonstrations against Lattelekom in the late 90s :)). The last time the Great Satan raised its head was during the parliamentary debate on the settlement agreement with TeliaSonera, which I suppose was the Greater Satan, or the Satanic Half-Mother (rings a bell with the Latvian expression velna mate, meaning the devil's mother or your mother-in-law) or whatever.
I will try to refrain from mixing the malevolent weirdness at my real workplace with this blog, though, if anybody knows of any opportunities, you know where to write. Telecoms newsletters, newspapers, hello...?
I will try to refrain from mixing the malevolent weirdness at my real workplace with this blog, though, if anybody knows of any opportunities, you know where to write. Telecoms newsletters, newspapers, hello...?
Friday, June 10, 2005
Here comes "balaganas"
In Lithuanian, balaganas (pronounced balaGAHnas, I think) means a kind of honky-tonk carnival show and its equivalent in Latvian is balagāns (balagaahns). I remember many years ago, when hearing that a ballerina had performed at the Lutheran confirmation party of a young man with wealthy parents in a Latvian community in the US, my mother described doing that sort of thing as a "balagāns"
It is now clear that various kinds of balaganas or entertainment are going to be part of Bite Mobile's consumer market package in the form of a mobile portal called Bite Plius (meaning Bite Plus, will probably be the same in Latvian), which packages lots of balaganas and private services, including SMS weather bulletins and the like. I am not putting down balaganas, it is where all the value-added paid services revenues will come from - ring tones, games, screen pictures, video clips, Mp3, all that stuff. In the wider world, this is a billion dollar market and the money comes painlessly. I mean, there is some balagāns you can buy for LVL 0.35 or something, which is less than a PET bottle of Coke at LVL 0.42. Tens of millions of users around the world spend that kind of money without thinking and it adds up to huge revenue in micro doses. Unlike Coke, you can (legally, for sale) get all the copies of a ringtone you want without exhausting the supply, but you can only drink the can once before you have to produce all kinds of physical stuff (water, sugar, secret brown syrup) to get the second, third etc. can.
So, dear graduate (nobody, believe me, nobody will understand the movie reference), the word is not plastics (nor soft drinks) but balaganas.
Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) has gotten the word and they just launched mobile TV services by putting together an informal alliance of some of Latvia's major commercial balaganschiki (producers of balaganas), Latvian Independent Television (LNT), TV5 and the portal www.tvnet.lv. That comes on the same day as they launched EDGE, the high speed data service (the balagāns looks best on this) so people have something to do with the nearly 60 000 EDGE phones already on the LMT network. EDGE will be charged at the same rates as GPRS, the current slower system, a hint that EDGE will be the data plaform of choice (until EDGE+ or something new comes along, or we all switch to UMTS) on LMT.
So far, not bad. It is also clearly an effort to pre-empt Bite, and here the act is not quite put together yet. Bite Plius can be accessed with a single key on customized subsidized phones. The LMT portal looks distinctly uncool at the moment and has merely added a mobile TV link. Some of the other links (and please note I have not made an extensive study of the LMT mobile internet pages) that used to lead to newspapers and a mobile version of the BNS news service now lead into the arms of the paid Lursoft media archive with few ways of turning around and going back (I haven't figured them out). This is not good. I'm sorry, but in my superficial opinion, these aspects of the LMT portal SUCK.
So basically, while LMT appears to be marshaling the troops to fight Bite with mobile TV and EDGE, it had better get a cool, easy portal together or all this effort will be a waste. The content providers are certainly thinking in the right direction of repackaging their digital content for the mobile plaform. During the demo of streaming broadcast TV, LNT was showing (at just under 5 santims per minute) the paid commercial broadcast TV Shop where an American actress (dubbed in Latvian) was showing some kind of vegetable grinding machine. It was not possible to read the phone number to call (on the small screen) so that anyone watching this and paying for it would be buying a) a program paid for by its producer and sponsor to be watched for free (OK, you sort of pay for free to air commercial TV over cable and satellite) and b) unable to buy the vegetable grinder since the number was illegible. Interestingly, the Russian subtitles on a later "real" TV show could be discerned.
Anyway, mobile content editing and making it user-selectable cannot come too soon to this new service and I think it will.
Why would anyone want to puree (make into a kind of liquid) radishes? This is what I think I saw the veggie grinder woman doing. Any ideas?
It is now clear that various kinds of balaganas or entertainment are going to be part of Bite Mobile's consumer market package in the form of a mobile portal called Bite Plius (meaning Bite Plus, will probably be the same in Latvian), which packages lots of balaganas and private services, including SMS weather bulletins and the like. I am not putting down balaganas, it is where all the value-added paid services revenues will come from - ring tones, games, screen pictures, video clips, Mp3, all that stuff. In the wider world, this is a billion dollar market and the money comes painlessly. I mean, there is some balagāns you can buy for LVL 0.35 or something, which is less than a PET bottle of Coke at LVL 0.42. Tens of millions of users around the world spend that kind of money without thinking and it adds up to huge revenue in micro doses. Unlike Coke, you can (legally, for sale) get all the copies of a ringtone you want without exhausting the supply, but you can only drink the can once before you have to produce all kinds of physical stuff (water, sugar, secret brown syrup) to get the second, third etc. can.
So, dear graduate (nobody, believe me, nobody will understand the movie reference), the word is not plastics (nor soft drinks) but balaganas.
Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) has gotten the word and they just launched mobile TV services by putting together an informal alliance of some of Latvia's major commercial balaganschiki (producers of balaganas), Latvian Independent Television (LNT), TV5 and the portal www.tvnet.lv. That comes on the same day as they launched EDGE, the high speed data service (the balagāns looks best on this) so people have something to do with the nearly 60 000 EDGE phones already on the LMT network. EDGE will be charged at the same rates as GPRS, the current slower system, a hint that EDGE will be the data plaform of choice (until EDGE+ or something new comes along, or we all switch to UMTS) on LMT.
So far, not bad. It is also clearly an effort to pre-empt Bite, and here the act is not quite put together yet. Bite Plius can be accessed with a single key on customized subsidized phones. The LMT portal looks distinctly uncool at the moment and has merely added a mobile TV link. Some of the other links (and please note I have not made an extensive study of the LMT mobile internet pages) that used to lead to newspapers and a mobile version of the BNS news service now lead into the arms of the paid Lursoft media archive with few ways of turning around and going back (I haven't figured them out). This is not good. I'm sorry, but in my superficial opinion, these aspects of the LMT portal SUCK.
So basically, while LMT appears to be marshaling the troops to fight Bite with mobile TV and EDGE, it had better get a cool, easy portal together or all this effort will be a waste. The content providers are certainly thinking in the right direction of repackaging their digital content for the mobile plaform. During the demo of streaming broadcast TV, LNT was showing (at just under 5 santims per minute) the paid commercial broadcast TV Shop where an American actress (dubbed in Latvian) was showing some kind of vegetable grinding machine. It was not possible to read the phone number to call (on the small screen) so that anyone watching this and paying for it would be buying a) a program paid for by its producer and sponsor to be watched for free (OK, you sort of pay for free to air commercial TV over cable and satellite) and b) unable to buy the vegetable grinder since the number was illegible. Interestingly, the Russian subtitles on a later "real" TV show could be discerned.
Anyway, mobile content editing and making it user-selectable cannot come too soon to this new service and I think it will.
Why would anyone want to puree (make into a kind of liquid) radishes? This is what I think I saw the veggie grinder woman doing. Any ideas?
The knives come out for fuckwit reasons
I write this blog because not everything I consider worth saying can be published in a certain newspaper. One reason is, we print news and not rumor, musings and personal speculation. The other reason is there are some things that pass over the flight path of those putting the paper together. That's fine with me -- the eagles don't bother the geese and the geese don't hit the eagles.
Until today. I get a stern talk about doing allegedly bad work and being too friendly to Lattelekom, hereafter THE GREAT SATAN. All of this applies to the merry month of May. I was on vacation one week and did a total of 25 newspaper pieces, 28 % of which were exclusive, though not by any means in the OH MY GOD run screaming through the street stampeding pets and cattle category. But they were pieces that nobody else had, including the first vague but interesting disclosures of what Bite GSM intended to do, also reflected here. Plus, if anybody noticed, after the auction, just about fuck all was happening in the sector. Only 8 % of these news items concerned THE GREAT SATAN. The one about THE GREAT SATAN cooperating with Germany's T-Systeme included some third party commentary plus reference to the fact that THE GREAT SATAN was not moving ahead in its cooperation with Exigen along sort of similar lines. Not, to my mind, slanted or abominable journalism, but something I probably did get because in my own mind, I think I have been fair toward THE GREAT SATAN so they were willing to exclusively tell me the story.
I did, in fact, offer to do a hatchet job on THE GREAT SATAN to one of the editors who scolded me for not calling THE GREAT SATAN a evil motherfucker of a slime drooling GREAT SATAN. It had to do with a wacko survey of alleged marketing experts who said 60 % of the business customers of THE GREAT SATAN would bolt as soon as number portability was introduced. And the day after that, sugar-coated doves will fly out from under the robes of the new Pope...
These claims were told by a respectable source, so hey, he said it, we write it. It would not be the first and hardly the last fuckwit opinion to be passed along in a certain paper and other media. I mean, they say it, we print it.
At the end of the day, however, the wacko piece was killed after discussing it with another editor. So it wasn't me glossing over the terrible fate that awaits THE GREAT SATAN.
But this shit has gone too far(there is an economic side to it) , and if anyone knows of, shall we put it discreetly, other opportunities for a hack of my twisted talents, any tips are appreciated. No money to be made from these fuckin' ravings, but certainly it keeps life fun.
Until today. I get a stern talk about doing allegedly bad work and being too friendly to Lattelekom, hereafter THE GREAT SATAN. All of this applies to the merry month of May. I was on vacation one week and did a total of 25 newspaper pieces, 28 % of which were exclusive, though not by any means in the OH MY GOD run screaming through the street stampeding pets and cattle category. But they were pieces that nobody else had, including the first vague but interesting disclosures of what Bite GSM intended to do, also reflected here. Plus, if anybody noticed, after the auction, just about fuck all was happening in the sector. Only 8 % of these news items concerned THE GREAT SATAN. The one about THE GREAT SATAN cooperating with Germany's T-Systeme included some third party commentary plus reference to the fact that THE GREAT SATAN was not moving ahead in its cooperation with Exigen along sort of similar lines. Not, to my mind, slanted or abominable journalism, but something I probably did get because in my own mind, I think I have been fair toward THE GREAT SATAN so they were willing to exclusively tell me the story.
I did, in fact, offer to do a hatchet job on THE GREAT SATAN to one of the editors who scolded me for not calling THE GREAT SATAN a evil motherfucker of a slime drooling GREAT SATAN. It had to do with a wacko survey of alleged marketing experts who said 60 % of the business customers of THE GREAT SATAN would bolt as soon as number portability was introduced. And the day after that, sugar-coated doves will fly out from under the robes of the new Pope...
These claims were told by a respectable source, so hey, he said it, we write it. It would not be the first and hardly the last fuckwit opinion to be passed along in a certain paper and other media. I mean, they say it, we print it.
At the end of the day, however, the wacko piece was killed after discussing it with another editor. So it wasn't me glossing over the terrible fate that awaits THE GREAT SATAN.
But this shit has gone too far(there is an economic side to it) , and if anyone knows of, shall we put it discreetly, other opportunities for a hack of my twisted talents, any tips are appreciated. No money to be made from these fuckin' ravings, but certainly it keeps life fun.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Bite hopes to win over business users
Bite will come into Latvia as a true Lithuanian-Latvian company, running core functions (billing, accounting, content management) with its existing organization in Lithuania and adding Latvian staff to handle marketing and the build-out in Latvia.
Bite intends to capture a part of the business market by moving quickly to offer high speed EDGE data services and a package of flat-rate services known as Bite Bizpak (?) in Lithuania. For consumers, Bite will adapt its Bite Plius mobile portal which offers ringtones, Mp3 downloads, games, weather and a range of other services. Many subsidized phones sold in Lithuania are customized with a special Bite Plius button - look for the same in Latvia.
The company will start operations this year and build out a network in three stages, the first covering the major cities such as Riga, Ventspils, Liepaja and Daugavpils and at least three heavily traveled highway routes (from Riga to the Lithuanian border via Jelgava and Bauska, and to Daugavpils).
Bite officials scoffed at claims by Latvian Mobile Telephone and Tele2 that it would be difficult o expand network capacity to allow Bite to have national roaming in some parts of Latvia until the network buildout is completed. They said that increasing the capacity of any base station was a matter of installing an additional "box" that would be paid for by the fees charged to Bite for network use.
In other countries, according to Bite GSM CEO Jesper Thiell Eriksen, operators compete to sell national roaming to newcomers.
More later, have to check out of the lovely -- because it has free wireless internet - Reval Hotel Lietuva.
Bite intends to capture a part of the business market by moving quickly to offer high speed EDGE data services and a package of flat-rate services known as Bite Bizpak (?) in Lithuania. For consumers, Bite will adapt its Bite Plius mobile portal which offers ringtones, Mp3 downloads, games, weather and a range of other services. Many subsidized phones sold in Lithuania are customized with a special Bite Plius button - look for the same in Latvia.
The company will start operations this year and build out a network in three stages, the first covering the major cities such as Riga, Ventspils, Liepaja and Daugavpils and at least three heavily traveled highway routes (from Riga to the Lithuanian border via Jelgava and Bauska, and to Daugavpils).
Bite officials scoffed at claims by Latvian Mobile Telephone and Tele2 that it would be difficult o expand network capacity to allow Bite to have national roaming in some parts of Latvia until the network buildout is completed. They said that increasing the capacity of any base station was a matter of installing an additional "box" that would be paid for by the fees charged to Bite for network use.
In other countries, according to Bite GSM CEO Jesper Thiell Eriksen, operators compete to sell national roaming to newcomers.
More later, have to check out of the lovely -- because it has free wireless internet - Reval Hotel Lietuva.
Monday, June 06, 2005
Flak ahead as Bite flies to Latvia
I've been in Sweden at the high school graduation of my second oldest son (18) and also seeing my oldest (20) who was down from Umeå for the event Saturday. As a result I have been slacking off from the blog.
Some upcoming news – Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) is announcing mobile TV over GPRS, EDGE and UMTS later this week. It has signed up Latvian Independent Television (LNT), TV5 (the weird reality and interview shows) www.tvnet.lv and some others.
The double announcement is a jump on "third"operator Bite Mobile, which has had EDGE in Lithuania for some time and also a jump ahead of "big half sister" Lattelekom, which is still cooking its internet television (IPTV) plans. LMT's service, like the planned Lattelekom IPTV (which half-mother TeliaSonera already offers in Sweden), is going to include some direct broadcast (not clips on demand, but apparently what is actually on LNT). Who knows. perhaps it's a test of a common platform? It would be a good sign that, hello!, LMT and Lattelekom are actually cooperating.
One reason for this launch that a number of mobile-TV capable handsets are already on the market or about to be launched. Look for them as the next campaign of subsidized phones in the stores in Latvia.
Turbulence for the bee?
It's probably not going to be such a smooth flight for Bite (means bee in Latvian and presumably, Lithuanian) coming into Latvia. Erik Hallberg, a senior executive at TeliaSonera and a member of the board of LMT made it clear in an interview with Neatkariga Rita Avize that LMT didn't have the spare capacity to be able to offer national roaming to Bite Mobile, the "third" Latvian operator.
Bite Mobile has said that two pillars of its entry into Latvia would be pre-paid cards (cash in hand, sell like hotcakes) and national roaming during a buildout. Hallberg's statement only confirms what I have been hearing from my LMT sources (and I hope I had it on the blog). Tele2, however, seems to be leaving the door ajar - after all, they and arch-rival Telia got together to pool resources for a UMTS buildout in Sweden, if I am not mistaken.
One thing is for certain, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission isn't going to have a hard market analysis to base any orders on until early next year at the earliest. They published a 40 page document that simply describes how they think they are going to analyze the umpteen various markets. They will be lucky to meet their own hopes and finish the whole business by late 2006. I mean, Ofcom they ain't, staff wise, and as I said to an official at the Latvian regulator, about halfway through that 40-pager, I would have decided (were I working for them) either to hang myself or apply to herd sheep in Ireland for better pay. That's Latvian black humor...
The serious point is that Bite Mobile is unlikely to have anything with big teeth behind it when it begs for national roaming. Jesper Eriksen is a little optimistic in thinking he will get this without a fight.
BTW, I am off to see Bite tommorrow (today in six minutes) and may try to blog something from Vilnius. I don't know how much more they will disclose than I have already lured out of them, but we shall see.
Some upcoming news – Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) is announcing mobile TV over GPRS, EDGE and UMTS later this week. It has signed up Latvian Independent Television (LNT), TV5 (the weird reality and interview shows) www.tvnet.lv and some others.
The double announcement is a jump on "third"operator Bite Mobile, which has had EDGE in Lithuania for some time and also a jump ahead of "big half sister" Lattelekom, which is still cooking its internet television (IPTV) plans. LMT's service, like the planned Lattelekom IPTV (which half-mother TeliaSonera already offers in Sweden), is going to include some direct broadcast (not clips on demand, but apparently what is actually on LNT). Who knows. perhaps it's a test of a common platform? It would be a good sign that, hello!, LMT and Lattelekom are actually cooperating.
One reason for this launch that a number of mobile-TV capable handsets are already on the market or about to be launched. Look for them as the next campaign of subsidized phones in the stores in Latvia.
Turbulence for the bee?
It's probably not going to be such a smooth flight for Bite (means bee in Latvian and presumably, Lithuanian) coming into Latvia. Erik Hallberg, a senior executive at TeliaSonera and a member of the board of LMT made it clear in an interview with Neatkariga Rita Avize that LMT didn't have the spare capacity to be able to offer national roaming to Bite Mobile, the "third" Latvian operator.
Bite Mobile has said that two pillars of its entry into Latvia would be pre-paid cards (cash in hand, sell like hotcakes) and national roaming during a buildout. Hallberg's statement only confirms what I have been hearing from my LMT sources (and I hope I had it on the blog). Tele2, however, seems to be leaving the door ajar - after all, they and arch-rival Telia got together to pool resources for a UMTS buildout in Sweden, if I am not mistaken.
One thing is for certain, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission isn't going to have a hard market analysis to base any orders on until early next year at the earliest. They published a 40 page document that simply describes how they think they are going to analyze the umpteen various markets. They will be lucky to meet their own hopes and finish the whole business by late 2006. I mean, Ofcom they ain't, staff wise, and as I said to an official at the Latvian regulator, about halfway through that 40-pager, I would have decided (were I working for them) either to hang myself or apply to herd sheep in Ireland for better pay. That's Latvian black humor...
The serious point is that Bite Mobile is unlikely to have anything with big teeth behind it when it begs for national roaming. Jesper Eriksen is a little optimistic in thinking he will get this without a fight.
BTW, I am off to see Bite tommorrow (today in six minutes) and may try to blog something from Vilnius. I don't know how much more they will disclose than I have already lured out of them, but we shall see.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Shootin' the shit on some recent stuff
One of the big telecom honchos (a very nice guy and a firstnamesake) in Latvia had a "round figure" birthday and an open house at the posh offices in Riga. So I was delegated to take a present from newspaper XX and express our warmest greetings (we have around 100+ of this company's ARPU machines, thank you :)) and all that.
That being done, after several minutes of wandering around (tieless, the half-Swedish legacy, half Latvian "lubraks"* journalist style of dress) I sidled up to some other lesser and different honchos from the IT&T sector for to shoot the shit while sipping some wine and munching various rather tasty canapes.
Some interesting matters came up. Regarding TeliaSonera, the idea was tossed around that the Swedish group has a considerable cash war chest. As I mentioned earlier on the blog, Dagens industri's commentator Michael Törnwall mentioned a few cases of how TeliaSonera has failed to spend this – notably in its abortive efforts to buy Turkcell and Megafon, but also in earlier attempts to get a stake in Denmark's TDC and the fiasco with Telenor. Nor did the Swedish "middleweight" telecom "spend it all" buying the Danish unit of Orange.
My discussion partner and I thought of a new angle– keeping all that cash for too long could make TeliaSonera an attractive acquisition object just for that reason.
I am not a financial engineer, but it is possible to do a deal (swapping shares, etc. ) where TeliaSonera shareholders, Swedish investors, Finnish widows and orphans, whatever, get a share of Humungous Telecom AG (don't take that suffix as a wild guess :)) which trades for something more like Swedish lunch today (say SEK 50 instead of the mid-30s where the TeliaSonera share is hovering). HT AG then gets TeliaSonera (now HT Nordicum -- from Norden and Balticum) with a pretty big stash of cash. In effect, as Dire Straits (?) sang - you get your money for nothing and your (not to be sexist) your gigabits for free. The cash can then be tossed into a still larger war chest or spent on various investment programs, for instance, building a regional extension of some terabit speed optical network so fast the bits in gigbit ethernet kill themselves by stepping off the fiber since they think they are standing still and wonder why the datastream has stopped.
Of course, by the time this happens, we will be several steps along toward the weirdly simply but experience-rich world where there is just "the net", "the grid" "the infosphere" that we and our devices of choice are on, always, anywhere, anytime. Talking to someone, even in Zanzibar is a trivial feature of "it". Ask Niklas Zennstrom, the Skype man. Having a little fun, say, putting on a VR helmet to hunt ultrareal dinosaurs with a bazooka-- EUR 5 an hour?
Which brings us around to the questions of what telecoms operators will do when that happens. Their purpose will be just to keep "Electricity 2.0" on 99.99 % of the time for us ordinary folks and say, 99.9999 for business customers who can afford a four figure monthly QoS fee.
Unless we are running a basement, family steel mill (or making aluminum in five kilo lots), most of us don't really freak out at the monthly electricity bill. That's not where the money is made because electricity exists. Think TV, DVD, appliances, etc – but you seldom see the local electrical utility selling you a $ 100 electric drill. The same problem faces Electricity 2.0.
In that sense, the recent purchase of IT services company MicroLink was a largely smart move by Lattelekom and its half-sisters in Estonia and Lithuania.
The problem is -- what next? The nature of IT services changes month to month, and one of the honchos I spoke to (with more than trivial connections to the whole deal) said that the best hope is if Lattelekom and its partners leave MicroLink to run itself. A big worry is that MicroLink, if Lattelekom's past experience is a guide, will be broken while being fixed because it is not broken. There were references made to Verdi, a stillborn Lattelekom IT services project. Also, Lattelekom, who has TeliaSonera as only a half-mother, is still regarded as a politicized company where the loonies (you MUST digitize by dragging fiber to the shack in the woods) can show up at any time.
I think this fears are a bit exaggerated. Nils Melngailis seems to know what he is talking about when he speaks of business process outsourcing and some things have already gotten off the ground. Maybe this time around, the Lattelekom and regional IT effort will fly. However, in terms of size, whatever does fly will be a pigeon among condors, and that may be the main problem...
So much for the buzz of the day.
* Oh yes, a lubraks is well, casually carelessly dressed to the point of slovenly. Loses a bit in the translation, but sounded nice when a friend with teenage sons admonished them not to go somewhere like lubraki.
That being done, after several minutes of wandering around (tieless, the half-Swedish legacy, half Latvian "lubraks"* journalist style of dress) I sidled up to some other lesser and different honchos from the IT&T sector for to shoot the shit while sipping some wine and munching various rather tasty canapes.
Some interesting matters came up. Regarding TeliaSonera, the idea was tossed around that the Swedish group has a considerable cash war chest. As I mentioned earlier on the blog, Dagens industri's commentator Michael Törnwall mentioned a few cases of how TeliaSonera has failed to spend this – notably in its abortive efforts to buy Turkcell and Megafon, but also in earlier attempts to get a stake in Denmark's TDC and the fiasco with Telenor. Nor did the Swedish "middleweight" telecom "spend it all" buying the Danish unit of Orange.
My discussion partner and I thought of a new angle– keeping all that cash for too long could make TeliaSonera an attractive acquisition object just for that reason.
I am not a financial engineer, but it is possible to do a deal (swapping shares, etc. ) where TeliaSonera shareholders, Swedish investors, Finnish widows and orphans, whatever, get a share of Humungous Telecom AG (don't take that suffix as a wild guess :)) which trades for something more like Swedish lunch today (say SEK 50 instead of the mid-30s where the TeliaSonera share is hovering). HT AG then gets TeliaSonera (now HT Nordicum -- from Norden and Balticum) with a pretty big stash of cash. In effect, as Dire Straits (?) sang - you get your money for nothing and your (not to be sexist) your gigabits for free. The cash can then be tossed into a still larger war chest or spent on various investment programs, for instance, building a regional extension of some terabit speed optical network so fast the bits in gigbit ethernet kill themselves by stepping off the fiber since they think they are standing still and wonder why the datastream has stopped.
Of course, by the time this happens, we will be several steps along toward the weirdly simply but experience-rich world where there is just "the net", "the grid" "the infosphere" that we and our devices of choice are on, always, anywhere, anytime. Talking to someone, even in Zanzibar is a trivial feature of "it". Ask Niklas Zennstrom, the Skype man. Having a little fun, say, putting on a VR helmet to hunt ultrareal dinosaurs with a bazooka-- EUR 5 an hour?
Which brings us around to the questions of what telecoms operators will do when that happens. Their purpose will be just to keep "Electricity 2.0" on 99.99 % of the time for us ordinary folks and say, 99.9999 for business customers who can afford a four figure monthly QoS fee.
Unless we are running a basement, family steel mill (or making aluminum in five kilo lots), most of us don't really freak out at the monthly electricity bill. That's not where the money is made because electricity exists. Think TV, DVD, appliances, etc – but you seldom see the local electrical utility selling you a $ 100 electric drill. The same problem faces Electricity 2.0.
In that sense, the recent purchase of IT services company MicroLink was a largely smart move by Lattelekom and its half-sisters in Estonia and Lithuania.
The problem is -- what next? The nature of IT services changes month to month, and one of the honchos I spoke to (with more than trivial connections to the whole deal) said that the best hope is if Lattelekom and its partners leave MicroLink to run itself. A big worry is that MicroLink, if Lattelekom's past experience is a guide, will be broken while being fixed because it is not broken. There were references made to Verdi, a stillborn Lattelekom IT services project. Also, Lattelekom, who has TeliaSonera as only a half-mother, is still regarded as a politicized company where the loonies (you MUST digitize by dragging fiber to the shack in the woods) can show up at any time.
I think this fears are a bit exaggerated. Nils Melngailis seems to know what he is talking about when he speaks of business process outsourcing and some things have already gotten off the ground. Maybe this time around, the Lattelekom and regional IT effort will fly. However, in terms of size, whatever does fly will be a pigeon among condors, and that may be the main problem...
So much for the buzz of the day.
* Oh yes, a lubraks is well, casually carelessly dressed to the point of slovenly. Loses a bit in the translation, but sounded nice when a friend with teenage sons admonished them not to go somewhere like lubraki.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Mikke on the sickly halfmother of Lattelekom
One of the blog's (possible) readers, Mikael Törnwall (Swedish nickname Mikke), a journalist with the business daily Dagens industri has written an interesting analysis of what's happening at TeliaSonera, the parent (or as Swedes and Germans would say, mother) of Lattelekom and the other Baltic telecoms and mobile companies (for Lattelekom, Telia Sonera is actually a half-mother, a bizarre term I used before on this blog).
Since not many of the readers of this blog read Swedish, here's the gist of what Mikke said:
TeliaSonera's efforts to grow outside its Nordic/Baltic "home market" have been less than a success and this has tarnished the company's image, not the least as expressed by its share price. Two hoped-for deals to take over Megafon, the Russian mobile operator, and Turkcell, the Turkish mobile, have, as Latvians would say, "gone to the Devil's mother. On the domestic market, TeliaSonera's daily bread and butter (telephony and broadband) is being eaten by competitors. In a great turn of phrase, Mikke says "Customers stubbornly want to call and surf more cheaply, and competitors stubbornly meet this demand." TeliaSonera's efforts to expand in the Nordic region by courting Norway's Telenor and Danish TDC have also failed (the merger attempt between Telia and Telenor was a black comedy, this blogger recalls, with Norwegian executives throwing punches at Norwegian radio journalists. Sonera was picked after that fiasco).
The most interesting thing Mikke says, sort of between the lines, is that the only hope left for TeliaSonera is some kind of pan-European affair. Now I may have mentioned this on the blog before (I think there was a rumor of France Telecom looking at TeliaSonera), but my standard answer to all the moaning and groaning in Latvia about the "Nordic supermonopoly" is that "you ain't seen Jack Shit yet" because TeliaSonera is a small fish compared to Deutsche Telecom, the French, Vodafone and others who could, if they wanted to, have TeliaSonera for lunch.
Speaking of lunch, the share price Mikke mentions in his May 25 is SEK 37.20. This a very nostalgic price for me, because it is what the standard lunch cost when I started working in Sweden in the 1980s. Today -- God knows... But lunch at that price, I'll take it. So let us see what happens to Lattelekom's half mother. Will she be married off as the poor Nordic orphan girl whose income from the domestic farmstead (Sweden) dried up? Or will she make money humming "I feel best in open landscapes..." millions and millions of times? (Mikke notes that entertainment is a possible new source of revenue, and that phrase is a bad translation of a very popular Swedish tune by Ulf Lundell, the sort of thing you want for a ring tone if you are a true Swede :)).
Since not many of the readers of this blog read Swedish, here's the gist of what Mikke said:
TeliaSonera's efforts to grow outside its Nordic/Baltic "home market" have been less than a success and this has tarnished the company's image, not the least as expressed by its share price. Two hoped-for deals to take over Megafon, the Russian mobile operator, and Turkcell, the Turkish mobile, have, as Latvians would say, "gone to the Devil's mother. On the domestic market, TeliaSonera's daily bread and butter (telephony and broadband) is being eaten by competitors. In a great turn of phrase, Mikke says "Customers stubbornly want to call and surf more cheaply, and competitors stubbornly meet this demand." TeliaSonera's efforts to expand in the Nordic region by courting Norway's Telenor and Danish TDC have also failed (the merger attempt between Telia and Telenor was a black comedy, this blogger recalls, with Norwegian executives throwing punches at Norwegian radio journalists. Sonera was picked after that fiasco).
The most interesting thing Mikke says, sort of between the lines, is that the only hope left for TeliaSonera is some kind of pan-European affair. Now I may have mentioned this on the blog before (I think there was a rumor of France Telecom looking at TeliaSonera), but my standard answer to all the moaning and groaning in Latvia about the "Nordic supermonopoly" is that "you ain't seen Jack Shit yet" because TeliaSonera is a small fish compared to Deutsche Telecom, the French, Vodafone and others who could, if they wanted to, have TeliaSonera for lunch.
Speaking of lunch, the share price Mikke mentions in his May 25 is SEK 37.20. This a very nostalgic price for me, because it is what the standard lunch cost when I started working in Sweden in the 1980s. Today -- God knows... But lunch at that price, I'll take it. So let us see what happens to Lattelekom's half mother. Will she be married off as the poor Nordic orphan girl whose income from the domestic farmstead (Sweden) dried up? Or will she make money humming "I feel best in open landscapes..." millions and millions of times? (Mikke notes that entertainment is a possible new source of revenue, and that phrase is a bad translation of a very popular Swedish tune by Ulf Lundell, the sort of thing you want for a ring tone if you are a true Swede :)).
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Bite's and Triatel's plans
Back from Cannes, time to blog again:
Bite bids to bite a bit of the Latvian market
Bite Mobile, the recently founded new (third, if you buy that) mobile operator will kick off on the Latvian market by selling prepaid cards and by pushing hard to get national roaming while its network coverage is built out.
The cards will probably be modeled on the Lithuanian Labas (meaning Hi or Hello) card sold by parent company Bite GSM. These come with a started kit loaded with 3 litas of calling time, and can be recharged in amounts ranging from 20 to 99 litas. Calls with Labas start at 0.24 litas per minute within the Bite GSM network.
For business travelers, Bite Mobile hopes to offer more or less the same deal with Vodafone and its partners as Bite GSM in Lithuania. Lithuanian customers can automatically roam with the Vodafone International or Vodafone Eurocall tariff plans, which offer unified tariffs by calling regions.
This may be a relief for travelers from the appearance of an unknown operator when switching on their phones at a foreign airport, then making a few calls only to get a SMS from the home operating showing that the particular roaming operator is the most expensive for calling home. Lithuanian customers also enjoy all their domestic services – mobile internet, calls with short numbers, etc., while roaming abroad.
Bite Mobile sees national roaming – using the networks of Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and Tele2 until its own network is built out – as essential to a quick start. However, the Public Utilities Regulation Commission has not yet received a request for a ruling in this regard.
If a cursory look at some matters that Britain's OFCOM is handling regarding national roaming for 3 is any indication, then the Latvian regulator could be walking into a minefield, even if the decision to promote competition by this means is correct. There appear to be constant disputes over whether 3 is building out its network or continuing to get a partly free ride on investments (in GSM networks) made by others.
As far as competition on international roaming, Tele2 seems better poised to offer a "one Europe" package than LMT, since the Swedish owned group has mobile operations in several European countries, though perhaps not as extensive a network as Vodafone.
LMT has a whole zoo of roaming partners around the world, but some kind of unified scheme only with its Baltic partners (Omnitel and EMT) and, perhaps, with TeliaSonera's mobile units in Scandinavia. It is, however, rightly pointed out that roaming is of concern mainly to business customers.
(Most of this will be published in a certain business newspaper on May 26 :) )
Now as for what didn't make the paper, namely, that Bite Mobile will roll out, at some point, all of the services it has at its Lithuanian parent (with Danish "grandparent" TDC), including GPRS and EDGE. UMTS and 3G services are somewhat on the back burned - the company wants to get a solid customer base in GSM and to see some more takeup of UMTS handsets and services before moving ahead with this technology, although, ultimately, it is supposed to be the most cost efficient for carrying voice.
Triatel your watchman and PBX?
Triatel's video experiment, described earlier here, is actually a clever hack by some of the company's own customers. They found that by attaching a web-cam to a Triatel (probably fixed wireless) phone on the wireless internet, you could have a video-surveillance system. The idea is to put this up in bars and restaurants, where drinking (i.e.pilferage in kind) by the staff seems to be widespread. There are still problems with resolution (is that vodka or water the bartender is sipping?), but the experiments show the possibility for a "plug and play" videosurveillance system using off-the shelf webcams and out of the box Triatel phones.
Another product being developed by the company itself is a software based virtual PBX for small businesses. This will allow the function keys of the desktop phones to be used to reroute calls internally. The system will also allow free "intraoffice" calls (even across town, but not between domestic calling regions).
Look for this to be launched in July. Also, there will probably be a formal announcement that some kind of deal has been reached with China's HuaWei for the further buildout of Triatel's network.
Also look for the company getting more stylish video/photo camera equipped handsets that are more suitable for entertainment and information services. One of the first could be news agency LETA's webcast style Latvian-language news service (also carried on cable TV, it rolls news headlines and sometimes the talking head of a newsreader)
Maybe more on Triatel later.
Bite bids to bite a bit of the Latvian market
Bite Mobile, the recently founded new (third, if you buy that) mobile operator will kick off on the Latvian market by selling prepaid cards and by pushing hard to get national roaming while its network coverage is built out.
The cards will probably be modeled on the Lithuanian Labas (meaning Hi or Hello) card sold by parent company Bite GSM. These come with a started kit loaded with 3 litas of calling time, and can be recharged in amounts ranging from 20 to 99 litas. Calls with Labas start at 0.24 litas per minute within the Bite GSM network.
For business travelers, Bite Mobile hopes to offer more or less the same deal with Vodafone and its partners as Bite GSM in Lithuania. Lithuanian customers can automatically roam with the Vodafone International or Vodafone Eurocall tariff plans, which offer unified tariffs by calling regions.
This may be a relief for travelers from the appearance of an unknown operator when switching on their phones at a foreign airport, then making a few calls only to get a SMS from the home operating showing that the particular roaming operator is the most expensive for calling home. Lithuanian customers also enjoy all their domestic services – mobile internet, calls with short numbers, etc., while roaming abroad.
Bite Mobile sees national roaming – using the networks of Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and Tele2 until its own network is built out – as essential to a quick start. However, the Public Utilities Regulation Commission has not yet received a request for a ruling in this regard.
If a cursory look at some matters that Britain's OFCOM is handling regarding national roaming for 3 is any indication, then the Latvian regulator could be walking into a minefield, even if the decision to promote competition by this means is correct. There appear to be constant disputes over whether 3 is building out its network or continuing to get a partly free ride on investments (in GSM networks) made by others.
As far as competition on international roaming, Tele2 seems better poised to offer a "one Europe" package than LMT, since the Swedish owned group has mobile operations in several European countries, though perhaps not as extensive a network as Vodafone.
LMT has a whole zoo of roaming partners around the world, but some kind of unified scheme only with its Baltic partners (Omnitel and EMT) and, perhaps, with TeliaSonera's mobile units in Scandinavia. It is, however, rightly pointed out that roaming is of concern mainly to business customers.
(Most of this will be published in a certain business newspaper on May 26 :) )
Now as for what didn't make the paper, namely, that Bite Mobile will roll out, at some point, all of the services it has at its Lithuanian parent (with Danish "grandparent" TDC), including GPRS and EDGE. UMTS and 3G services are somewhat on the back burned - the company wants to get a solid customer base in GSM and to see some more takeup of UMTS handsets and services before moving ahead with this technology, although, ultimately, it is supposed to be the most cost efficient for carrying voice.
Triatel your watchman and PBX?
Triatel's video experiment, described earlier here, is actually a clever hack by some of the company's own customers. They found that by attaching a web-cam to a Triatel (probably fixed wireless) phone on the wireless internet, you could have a video-surveillance system. The idea is to put this up in bars and restaurants, where drinking (i.e.pilferage in kind) by the staff seems to be widespread. There are still problems with resolution (is that vodka or water the bartender is sipping?), but the experiments show the possibility for a "plug and play" videosurveillance system using off-the shelf webcams and out of the box Triatel phones.
Another product being developed by the company itself is a software based virtual PBX for small businesses. This will allow the function keys of the desktop phones to be used to reroute calls internally. The system will also allow free "intraoffice" calls (even across town, but not between domestic calling regions).
Look for this to be launched in July. Also, there will probably be a formal announcement that some kind of deal has been reached with China's HuaWei for the further buildout of Triatel's network.
Also look for the company getting more stylish video/photo camera equipped handsets that are more suitable for entertainment and information services. One of the first could be news agency LETA's webcast style Latvian-language news service (also carried on cable TV, it rolls news headlines and sometimes the talking head of a newsreader)
Maybe more on Triatel later.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
The Prophet Speaks!!!!
This was posted on November 10, 2004:
"Then there are the loonie rumors (although not entirely). The one I heard today from some top folks in the Latvian IT business is that Lattelekom is buying MicroLink. Sorta fits with the Estos mid-range vision of their baby growing up to marry a mid-sized IT & T company. It also fits with the idea that Lattelekom may split into a) a network operator (getting some pan-Baltic assets in the data networks area from MicroLink), b) a service provider (consumer, broadband, cable TV, all that sh**t) and c) a business service provider (heavy into outsourcing your entire IT&T needs, putting in all from the network to the PCs to the rent-an-applications services, just sign here on the SLA...). The latter is going to take a lot of IT competance and weigh. MicroLink has some of it. Rumor also has it that Verdi, the unborn fetus of an IT subsidiary that Lattelekom has been carrying for years is losing folks to international biggies like Accenture. Buying MicroLink might make Lattelekom a more exciting place to work (well, with other excitements like "who's getting reorganized this month?")"
"Then there are the loonie rumors (although not entirely). The one I heard today from some top folks in the Latvian IT business is that Lattelekom is buying MicroLink. Sorta fits with the Estos mid-range vision of their baby growing up to marry a mid-sized IT & T company. It also fits with the idea that Lattelekom may split into a) a network operator (getting some pan-Baltic assets in the data networks area from MicroLink), b) a service provider (consumer, broadband, cable TV, all that sh**t) and c) a business service provider (heavy into outsourcing your entire IT&T needs, putting in all from the network to the PCs to the rent-an-applications services, just sign here on the SLA...). The latter is going to take a lot of IT competance and weigh. MicroLink has some of it. Rumor also has it that Verdi, the unborn fetus of an IT subsidiary that Lattelekom has been carrying for years is losing folks to international biggies like Accenture. Buying MicroLink might make Lattelekom a more exciting place to work (well, with other excitements like "who's getting reorganized this month?")"
A quickie on MicroLink and the Telekom sisters
What a time to be in f**king Cannes instead of Riga. My quick take on the Telekom Sisters (Lietuvos Telekomas, Lattelekom and Elion) buying MicroLink is this:
Most telekoms is going to look and feel like an IT application (VOIP, video on demand, etc), so why not?
The Hansabanka data network account comes with the territory (I think).
Telekoms is merging with IT services, so that the three sisters (and daughters of TeliaSonera, more or less), have got a major regional IT services company.
Outgoing MicroLink founder and chairman Alan Martinsson was saying years ago this would happen (I quoted him in some article somewhere, I think both in that pink newspaper and a defunct publication called Northern Enterprise).
I think this blog may even have touched on the idea of Lattelekom getting MicroLink but then dismissed it as far fetched...he, he...
My only question is are we too far ahead of the game here on telecoms and IT convergence.
My final thought -- are we possibly seeing the seeds of Balttelekom -- a pan Baltic IT/Telekoms organization that will be a subsidiary of TeliaSonera. I think we will see this by 2007, on the eve of the euro. There is no problem registering pan-European corporations now.
Cannes, to my Latvian readers, is one huge balagāns. Watch the pink paper for more.
Most telekoms is going to look and feel like an IT application (VOIP, video on demand, etc), so why not?
The Hansabanka data network account comes with the territory (I think).
Telekoms is merging with IT services, so that the three sisters (and daughters of TeliaSonera, more or less), have got a major regional IT services company.
Outgoing MicroLink founder and chairman Alan Martinsson was saying years ago this would happen (I quoted him in some article somewhere, I think both in that pink newspaper and a defunct publication called Northern Enterprise).
I think this blog may even have touched on the idea of Lattelekom getting MicroLink but then dismissed it as far fetched...he, he...
My only question is are we too far ahead of the game here on telecoms and IT convergence.
My final thought -- are we possibly seeing the seeds of Balttelekom -- a pan Baltic IT/Telekoms organization that will be a subsidiary of TeliaSonera. I think we will see this by 2007, on the eve of the euro. There is no problem registering pan-European corporations now.
Cannes, to my Latvian readers, is one huge balagāns. Watch the pink paper for more.
Monday, May 16, 2005
F**k You! Amigo
One of the most intrusive and offensive popups on the Latvian web is the thing that the mobile phone card company Amigo has put up on www.one.lv. It blocks you from signing into you e-mail account with some flashing picture of Amigo's evil little mutant dwarf. The little m**therf**ker has shown up every time I try to access a one.lv account here in Cannes (where I am on "vacation" with my filmmaker wife, hence almost no posts until after May 20). I have a regular LMT subscription, but this piece of shit has totally put me off from buying an Amigo card should one of my grown sons come to Latvia and need a local phone card. I'll get them a Golden Fish (Tele 2) or an Okarte instead.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Seeing Bill, flogging Ericsson, decisions, decisions..
Aigars to meet Bill
It can now be said that a visit to the US West Coast by Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis, specifically to Microsoft and Bill Gates, is being planned for August. This may be the long awaited, often postponed visit of high Latvian government officials and probably an IT business delegation to Silicon Valley and Silcon Grundge, Raincloud, Fogbank or whatever they call the Seattle area :).
Ericsson comes to town
Ericsson is meeting customers and presenting its 3G platform to Latvian operators and the government (who own a good slice of Latvian Mobile Telephone). There is a bit of nervousness in the air, since China's HuaWei has been here, too, and is looking hungrily for both 3G wireless (Triatel, Ericsson customer Bite GSM on WCDMA) and wireless local loop (cdma 450 for Lattelekom) action in the region.
Lattelekom's decision matrix
These are the times when Lattelekom's top management earn their keep on behalf of the company and their vision of how it should develop. CEO Nils Melngailis is forging ahead with his vision of how the company should look in the future and he has to make it look credible to the stakeholders.
The issues are how independently can Lattelekom pursue revenue and profit in the Nordic region without stepping on one of it's half-mother's toes. A sub-issue is whether the other, slightly bigger half-mother is still on the same wavelength, same planet. Considering it's the government of Latvia, such a reality check is always in order. Under former Prime Minister Indulis Emsis, things were looking a bit extraterrestrial (though the pre-former Martian had fixed the big row with the smaller half-mother) again.
Now, the bigger half mother has a Minister of Economics indirectly responsible for Lattelekom's future who passes the Mad Magazine Alfred E. Neumann test (the funny little character whose picture was always captioned Not Insane). Krisjanis definitely passes the Alfred test and is better looking. So with at least part of the Government being on Alfred's side of the fence, there is hope..
Another issue is the relationship with Exigen, where the American-based Latvian company (in terms of who does 90 % of the brainwork, the Russian Americans in San Francisco run and sell the brand) has some differences about how the partnership signed late last year should go ahead. Lattelekom has to draw some lines here (it probably has) to fend off an "indecent" proposal by Exigen to take custody of many young ladies (and some men) in the manner in which it is accustomed. Hint: these people give the most chaste and decent phone.
Even bringing up the subject will make that part of the big half mother who isn't sure whether they can handle the Alfred test go totally batshit. This is not good for anyone. The Alfred-test borderliners are also probably not too keen on the restructuring of Lattelekom, making it a sort of holding company with small and nimble affiliates doing network operations, giving phone and BPO, delivering TV and broadband and maybe installing a phone or two.
This also threatens the smaller half-mother because this kind of Lattelekom could run off with some of her suitors. Tough times, tough decisions for the Black Rooster.
Lots of things happening!!
After a spell in which I was reduced to making bizarro guesses about why Siemens is wildly rumored to be after MicroLink or barely disguised stories of visits planned to some rich nerd with glasses in Redmond, things have started happening. In fact, a shitload of stuff. That's American slang for "a lot" (for my Latvian readers, well, sūdukrava has a different flavor of meaning, but it may apply to what has been made of the Electronic Communications Law).
So let's start with the exclusive, deep-background stuff I picked up while in London at a seminar partly sponsored by TeliaSonera. Mostly it was academic leaning stuff, like whether entrepreneurship was happening according to the whatshisname model or the Schumpeterian model (the latter is dead, is he?). Anyway fucktozin as I would say in my amalgam of English and Latvian at this late hour (background earphone music, Quicksilver Messanger Service «Who Do You Love» live 1960-something concert cut).
The Baltic IP TV master plan
So this is the deal -- IP TV is coming to the Baltics on some kind of an extension of TeliaSonera's platform being used in Sweden. It makes sense, why invent the wheel again? As I understand, the core network runs on its own Unix-based whatever, the delivery to households will be with ADSL2+, something that is one fast m***f***ker (24 Mbps if done right and you live on the same block as the switch) except that 2 Mbps was the fast m-f of yesteryear, wasn't it?
This might be a hint that the IBM-Ericsson-Cisco package being fronted by IBM here some weeks ago isn't the front runner, although Ericsson is already putting in the fast m-f DSLAMs and other stuff, at least for Lattelekom in Latvia. Since Swedish momma already controls the Estonian operations and Lietuvos Telekomas, it should be no problem to do the deal. Then there would be one core network, one core set of content alternatives – and here is what would be a very good thing – the need to subtitle the non-local content in whatever language the viewer chose. No more mutterers attempting to mumble the dialog over the English or Swedish or German soundtrack (although the Latvian dubbed softpornos one accidently channelcruises across on TV5 should get the bizarro shows of the year award, the perfect combo of the strange and inadvertently funny).
Having said that, content and getting the audience to come watch is going to be the really hard part. There has be some way to get the folks who watch Russian language free to satellite channels (well, free to the distributor, you pay Mr. Sharashkin LVL 1.25 a month for the wire from his dish on the roof), as well as to get a good value for money package of news, entertainment, movies, video on demand, etc. Plus all of that has to be packaged as triple play, because there aren't many other ways of doing it. That means the price is going to be significantly higher than your cheapo cable connection and it will have to compete with and draw customers away from both Baltcom TV and TeliaMulticom. Between them, these companies have close to 200 000 subscribers, probably most of the audience that is willing to pay LVL 5 and upwards for a cable TV selection that is, to be honest, mediocre. So there's the challenge...
Lattelekom links up with T-Systeme
Lattelekom signed a memorandum of understanding (some kind of German Verständnis -thing) with T-Systeme, the IT and systems integrator of Deutsche Telekom, one of the mothers-of-all telecoms giants with turnover of EUR 50 billion in 2003, or around six times the GDP of Latvia.
The idea is that Lattelekom will be T-Systeme's partner for their customers seeking business process outsourcing, telecoms and other related services here in the Baltic/Nordic region. Initially it will be a lot of public sector stuff, EU funded e-government, e-health, e-brainsurgery and e-dogcatching, you get the picture.
While I can't be serious at this time of the night while listening to Iron Butterfly, believe me, this is a serious connection for Lattelekom. Just hope that a certain paper doesn't shitcan this story simply because it is about Lattelekom. Well, one can always find some f**kwit to comment that this is somehow bad or that they don't see whatever...
Sūdukrava?
That means a load of shit. Various sources are saying this is what has been made of the Electronic Communications Law, where some 70 revisions were slipped in under the guise of amending it to ensure that all electronic communication service providers can be subject to eavesdropping by the security services. Now apparently this can be done with GSM operators, since there is a kind of rotten Easter egg in most switches (Easter eggs being cute features or animations that programmers hide in applications just for fun) that can be turned on when the spooks ask for it. What it then does is tap whatever conversations are of interest. With internet service providers, it gets harder. Basically, you have to tap and analyze the whole datastream and pluck out the suspect packets. This, I am told, requires gigantic storage and fantastic datamining resources, especially if one is doing some kind of near-realtime analysis. That's what it is all about unless you want to end up as a nasty footnote in some future 9/11 report, indicating that Security Agency X actually detected the how-to-make nukes e-mail two days after the bomb went off (because of a backlog).
Not too many neighborhood ISPs, nor even the spooks in Latvia can afford a cluster of Crays or Deep Blues to do what is needed. Plus there are seven flavors of encryption, proxies, etc. Only a moron would send criminal messages in the clear.
However, this extra cost is not what is upsetting the local organizations. It is also the fact that the amendments (so I am told) give a lot of clout to VITA, the State Information Network Agency, which will given a tighter grip on state and municipal data services, apparently in contravention of EU directives, etc. The Saeima passed the revisions with a two-thirds majority, so apparently not even the president can stop them from coming into force.
I have to look at this revised law more closely. I actually printed the whole f**ker off the Saeima homepage. I'll try to get back to this, but I am going to Cannes all of next week, where my wife is showing her film at the Film Market.
***
Other music behind the rant -- Lou Reed, Peter Tosh, Jefferson Airplane.
"Standin' on the corner, suitcase in my hand..." headin' for Cannes...
P.S. This post was slightly edited for spelling and obscene (though hopefully appropriately funny) expressions at 0830 Friday -- the 13th!
So let's start with the exclusive, deep-background stuff I picked up while in London at a seminar partly sponsored by TeliaSonera. Mostly it was academic leaning stuff, like whether entrepreneurship was happening according to the whatshisname model or the Schumpeterian model (the latter is dead, is he?). Anyway fucktozin as I would say in my amalgam of English and Latvian at this late hour (background earphone music, Quicksilver Messanger Service «Who Do You Love» live 1960-something concert cut).
The Baltic IP TV master plan
So this is the deal -- IP TV is coming to the Baltics on some kind of an extension of TeliaSonera's platform being used in Sweden. It makes sense, why invent the wheel again? As I understand, the core network runs on its own Unix-based whatever, the delivery to households will be with ADSL2+, something that is one fast m***f***ker (24 Mbps if done right and you live on the same block as the switch) except that 2 Mbps was the fast m-f of yesteryear, wasn't it?
This might be a hint that the IBM-Ericsson-Cisco package being fronted by IBM here some weeks ago isn't the front runner, although Ericsson is already putting in the fast m-f DSLAMs and other stuff, at least for Lattelekom in Latvia. Since Swedish momma already controls the Estonian operations and Lietuvos Telekomas, it should be no problem to do the deal. Then there would be one core network, one core set of content alternatives – and here is what would be a very good thing – the need to subtitle the non-local content in whatever language the viewer chose. No more mutterers attempting to mumble the dialog over the English or Swedish or German soundtrack (although the Latvian dubbed softpornos one accidently channelcruises across on TV5 should get the bizarro shows of the year award, the perfect combo of the strange and inadvertently funny).
Having said that, content and getting the audience to come watch is going to be the really hard part. There has be some way to get the folks who watch Russian language free to satellite channels (well, free to the distributor, you pay Mr. Sharashkin LVL 1.25 a month for the wire from his dish on the roof), as well as to get a good value for money package of news, entertainment, movies, video on demand, etc. Plus all of that has to be packaged as triple play, because there aren't many other ways of doing it. That means the price is going to be significantly higher than your cheapo cable connection and it will have to compete with and draw customers away from both Baltcom TV and TeliaMulticom. Between them, these companies have close to 200 000 subscribers, probably most of the audience that is willing to pay LVL 5 and upwards for a cable TV selection that is, to be honest, mediocre. So there's the challenge...
Lattelekom links up with T-Systeme
Lattelekom signed a memorandum of understanding (some kind of German Verständnis -thing) with T-Systeme, the IT and systems integrator of Deutsche Telekom, one of the mothers-of-all telecoms giants with turnover of EUR 50 billion in 2003, or around six times the GDP of Latvia.
The idea is that Lattelekom will be T-Systeme's partner for their customers seeking business process outsourcing, telecoms and other related services here in the Baltic/Nordic region. Initially it will be a lot of public sector stuff, EU funded e-government, e-health, e-brainsurgery and e-dogcatching, you get the picture.
While I can't be serious at this time of the night while listening to Iron Butterfly, believe me, this is a serious connection for Lattelekom. Just hope that a certain paper doesn't shitcan this story simply because it is about Lattelekom. Well, one can always find some f**kwit to comment that this is somehow bad or that they don't see whatever...
Sūdukrava?
That means a load of shit. Various sources are saying this is what has been made of the Electronic Communications Law, where some 70 revisions were slipped in under the guise of amending it to ensure that all electronic communication service providers can be subject to eavesdropping by the security services. Now apparently this can be done with GSM operators, since there is a kind of rotten Easter egg in most switches (Easter eggs being cute features or animations that programmers hide in applications just for fun) that can be turned on when the spooks ask for it. What it then does is tap whatever conversations are of interest. With internet service providers, it gets harder. Basically, you have to tap and analyze the whole datastream and pluck out the suspect packets. This, I am told, requires gigantic storage and fantastic datamining resources, especially if one is doing some kind of near-realtime analysis. That's what it is all about unless you want to end up as a nasty footnote in some future 9/11 report, indicating that Security Agency X actually detected the how-to-make nukes e-mail two days after the bomb went off (because of a backlog).
Not too many neighborhood ISPs, nor even the spooks in Latvia can afford a cluster of Crays or Deep Blues to do what is needed. Plus there are seven flavors of encryption, proxies, etc. Only a moron would send criminal messages in the clear.
However, this extra cost is not what is upsetting the local organizations. It is also the fact that the amendments (so I am told) give a lot of clout to VITA, the State Information Network Agency, which will given a tighter grip on state and municipal data services, apparently in contravention of EU directives, etc. The Saeima passed the revisions with a two-thirds majority, so apparently not even the president can stop them from coming into force.
I have to look at this revised law more closely. I actually printed the whole f**ker off the Saeima homepage. I'll try to get back to this, but I am going to Cannes all of next week, where my wife is showing her film at the Film Market.
***
Other music behind the rant -- Lou Reed, Peter Tosh, Jefferson Airplane.
"Standin' on the corner, suitcase in my hand..." headin' for Cannes...
P.S. This post was slightly edited for spelling and obscene (though hopefully appropriately funny) expressions at 0830 Friday -- the 13th!
Monday, May 09, 2005
Heading for the West Coast?
Plans are afoot for a high level official Latvian delegation to meet with the top executives of a major US software company on the US West Coast, probably in August. The visitors will probably land somewhere north of San Francisco. This blogger may get details later this week. It's anybody's easy guess what we are talking about :).
This, hopefully, will be, at least in part, the long heralded visit to the US IT industry that the higher circles in Latvia have been planning for a long time (since the Skele administrations of the late 1990s). The government jaunts to Silicon Valley didn't come off because the falling apart horizon of these various governments was closer than the planning horizon for the visits :). Now, there may have been some event I missed, commentators correct me if I am wrong...
This, hopefully, will be, at least in part, the long heralded visit to the US IT industry that the higher circles in Latvia have been planning for a long time (since the Skele administrations of the late 1990s). The government jaunts to Silicon Valley didn't come off because the falling apart horizon of these various governments was closer than the planning horizon for the visits :). Now, there may have been some event I missed, commentators correct me if I am wrong...
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Siemens: Fattening the bride?
In some cultures, Rubenesque ladies are more appreciated than those who are thin. I can't say whether this is true in Latvia, but after reading a recent Business Week, I wonder whether rumors of Siemens Business Systems in Latvia wanting to acquire pan-Baltic MicroLink might not have to do with putting some attractive curves on at least one unit of the German-based megacorporation.
Business Week names Siemens Business Systems as one of the IT services companies that could be up for merger or aquisition as the business consolidates globally. The idea behind buying MicroLink would be to get at its SAP competence with the hope of building it into a European-wide, moderate-cost SAP center for Siemens. Getting at least part of that strategy in place might make Siemens Business Systems a slightly more attactive partner in any coming merger with some other giant of the IT services industry.
This is just an interesting thought that occured to me and a reminder to look into that Siemens-MicroLink thing again.
Business Week names Siemens Business Systems as one of the IT services companies that could be up for merger or aquisition as the business consolidates globally. The idea behind buying MicroLink would be to get at its SAP competence with the hope of building it into a European-wide, moderate-cost SAP center for Siemens. Getting at least part of that strategy in place might make Siemens Business Systems a slightly more attactive partner in any coming merger with some other giant of the IT services industry.
This is just an interesting thought that occured to me and a reminder to look into that Siemens-MicroLink thing again.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Unsecure WiFi widespread in Riga
The Latvian-language weblog www.hackers.lv reports on a wardrive through the center of Riga that revealed around 200 WiFi networks, many of them open and unsecure. The drive was conducted on the afternoon of Sunday, May 1. The bloggers note that there are probably many more office WLANs that are shut down after office hours. Some appear to be in private residences. The blog links to a uploaded file generated by the wardrivers' software that gives the names and various technical parameters of the WLANs they encountered (those who don't read Latvian can click on the amusingly named green/on my browser/ links that say shiten – meaning "here", nothing else). Several seem to be named Lattelekom, others after companies or people (perhaps systemadmins' nicknames). The "hacker" blog also links to a map showing the route of the wardrive. I suspect that this blogger's wireless link, with the name default, (there are several on the list with this imaginative name) may have appeared, since the Sunday afternoon drive passed my place on Caka Street. Now I wonder how they managed to detect the signal on the street when I sometimes have trouble connecting from my G4 Powerbook in the living room to the wireless router in a cubby-hole behind the kitchen.
"The peasants will suffer"
Laucinieki cietīs or "The peasants will suffer" (as one bizarre but valid translation) is the headline my paper put on a story about the numbering reform proposed by the Communications Department of the Latvian Ministry of Transport. It was one of the few cute things the old pink sheet has done for me recently after a pile of minor headaches.
Anyway, the gist of the story is a proposal to reduce the number of area codes in Latvia from 26 to 9 (a variation on Lattelekom's proposal of a few weeks ago, thereby preserving the seven digit system for a few more years and freeing up around 2.7 million numbers, which should do for the de-facto fourth mobile operator and any other comers.
The changes would exclusively affect areas outside of Riga, the Riga rajon and Jurmala, where around half of Lattelekom's more than 600 000 customers live and where most businesses are concentrated. In the rest of the country, the holders of some familiar numbers will have to settle for having them changed. So the peasants will suffer.
Anyway, the gist of the story is a proposal to reduce the number of area codes in Latvia from 26 to 9 (a variation on Lattelekom's proposal of a few weeks ago, thereby preserving the seven digit system for a few more years and freeing up around 2.7 million numbers, which should do for the de-facto fourth mobile operator and any other comers.
The changes would exclusively affect areas outside of Riga, the Riga rajon and Jurmala, where around half of Lattelekom's more than 600 000 customers live and where most businesses are concentrated. In the rest of the country, the holders of some familiar numbers will have to settle for having them changed. So the peasants will suffer.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
The blog speaks to Ericsson CFO Karl-Henrik Sundström
Karl-Henrik Sundström is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Swedish telecoms systems company Ericsson.
From May 2002 to April 2003, Karl-Henrik Sundström held the position of Vice President and General Manager of Business Unit Global Services.
From 1999 to 2002, Mr. Sundström was Managing Director of Ericsson Australia.
He joined Ericsson in 1985 as a trainee in financial management.
(the above is excerpted and adapted from Ericsson's homepage www.ericsson.com)
NOTE THIS HAS BEEN EDITED MONDAY MORNING at 0800 TO ELIMINATE SOME GARBLED TEXT
This blogger talked to Sundström in Stockholm recently. The following is an excerpt of approximate transcript of the interview, as conducted and recorded in English. I have selected the parts where he talks specifically about the telecoms industry, changing technologies and some thoughts about Ericsson and the Baltics. A longer Latvian version of this interview may appear you-know-where, but knowing them it will be published when, or shortly before, as the Latvians say "the owl's tail blossoms" /kad pūcei aste ziedēs.)
You’ve been with Ericsson for 20 years. 20 years ago, you were selling advanced circuit switched networks, now it is all moving toward IP based systems. Companies such as IBM are facing the customer in the same manner as the traditional telecoms suppliers and saying to the operators that we and our partners can give you the same services as traditional telecoms…
Karl-Henrik Sundström: The thing is, they are coming from the enterprise area, where you can control the environment. The fact is, the for over 100 years, Ericsson (and its competitors) has been able to deliver, regardless of the technology, what we call real time communication. That is what we call telecom grade, you lift the phone, get a dial tone, and there is somebody on the other side. That is regardless of whether the technology was crossbar, mechanical, digital circuit-switched or voice over IP. The IBMs of the world are coming from another world, they are coming with internet technology and they are coming from the batch world. Which is no quality of service. They are coming from datacoms,where if there is a byte that is lost, you resend it. Telecom grade, telecom service, the five 9s is our core competence. Ericsson and our competitors have changed underlying bearer technology all the time, and we did not invent the silicon chip but are using for certain things in our switches and other things. So they (the IBMs) will be there, but they are not the ones controlling the real time service and the quality of service. That is our core competence.
That’s on the fixed side. On the mobile side, VOIP on the radio interface is coming, but the (packet) header is bigger than the voice carried, so it is uneconomical at present. But it is coming. We haven’t been able to compress it, even though we have advanced algorithms, The header remains bigger than the content (the packet) carries.
I may be out of my depth technologically here, but I recall circuit-switched establishes a point to point connection…
KHS: hat’s where IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) comes in. It came from the 3G world, but the first ones using it are wire line operators, because they have to guarantee the quality of service. So if you want to have guaranteed 8 megabits, not best effort, you go up here (the IMS level) and you simulate signaling. IMS allows you to dedicate. Then you can charge for it. You need that for applications, voice, and high quality video. You can do it within an enterprise, but when you go outside into the uncontrolled public network, you need to.
But isn’t it a software solution?
KHS: It is. It is the traditional signaling capability, which you use in the new IP world with IP version six, where you can have the header that allows you to dedicate.
But won’t the IBMs be able to hack or reproduce it. They’ll say just give us the standards, and we will write something that performs…
KHS: It is the same in the AXE, the circuit switch. The software opens the circuit. In an AXE, say for the Latvian network, its one million man-years to fix all those variances of a call set up. They would have to reinvent those million man-years and start from scratch. We have this knowledge; it is part of our spine. It is the same as if I wanted to be a baker. I can make cakes at home, but I don’t have the knowledge to run a bakery.
So you are saying you have a legacy, translated to state-of-the art, of setting up circuits, that the IBMs and HPs cannot match?
KHS: They are coming from the batch-oriented world, which is not real time. The equipment is from different vendors, I am not sure they have their own IMS, so the brain has to come from some telecoms vendor. So you cannot earn big margins.
They are competing with us on the services side but may be a partner. When it comes to the technology behind it, they are not in there.
Niklas Zennstrom, the inventor of Skype, will scoff at all this quality of service stuff and say that look, this works, almost all of the time… So you can call anybody in the world for free.
KHS: There are issues of regulation and fairness of competition. This is basically an arbitrage. When I lived in Australia, my family used to call me using IP telephony. The circuit was good enough. Bit it is a little unfair competition. On the fixed side, you have to have, often by regulation, the emergency numbers (911 in the US), if the electric current fails, the phone must work. We did a study that if you build all these features into VOIP, the price difference is not that big. But if the authorities allowed an arbitrage, a service that doesn’t run on mainstream rules and regulations, then it cheap. It was good enough. My parents couldn’t afford to call Australia once a week.
So if you want to be something like a full service telecommunications service provider, then maybe it is best to have your systems delivered by someone like Ericsson?
KHS: We were the first one actually delivering voice over IP for RSL, six years ago. But the thing is, that if everything was voice over IP, you can’t guarantee emergency services to people out in the forest in Sweden. In Australia, there was a case against Telstra because a child died when its parents were unable to get an ambulance over the mobile phone, which is subject to different regulation. So there are these national interest and security factors. In a marginal arbitration, Skype is cheap and good.
So Skype is a toy and you have to build a serious telecommunications network if you are worried about these safety and national security issues…
KHS: Another thing to remember is that tariffs are set in a reverse way from costs. The biggest investment is in the local network, second biggest in the transit layer and the international switch is cheapest. But the tariffs are set so that the international calls pay for the local. For around USD 5 million I could route all the international traffic in Sweden through one switch, but one is not allowed to without agreements, etc.
Another thing we see these big companies doing is outsourcing. How does Ericsson see this? You are running the network you just sold in Italy. Are operators happy to have you offer to run most or all of what is their core business? What are the risks and rewards for the operator?
KHS: First of all, investment in most GSM operations is around 40 % of cash outlay. Of which, we can sell about 20 %. Opex (operating expenses) are by far the largest outlay. That is running the network and guaranteeing the quality service. Operators are moving down the value chain closer to the customers. So we follow them behind. We are now managing 38 million subscribers around the world. We have economies of scale and coordinate on a regional scale. We run three networks from one place in Australia, several in Poland, now the Hi3G network in Italy with some 750 people. We can eliminate functional overlaps; you can reduce costs 15 to 25 %.
The other thing is competence in how to manage advanced systems, networks, how to tune 3G networks and manage hybrid networks with an advanced service layer. This competence is scarce.
So while the operator moves forward to manager the customer and the market, we move forward to manage an area where he doesn’t have competence. . Plus the staff has to be constantly retrained for new things
The challenge for many operators is that they are delivering a channel to customers with new services that will have to be billed several times per week.
In the US, for example, we have hosted services, such as MMS, that we run for a number of 3G players. They sign a subscription with Ericsson and we run it for them.
So for Latvian alternative operators, as certain issues are resolved, such as interconnect, and when the new third mobile operator settles in, there may be a time to build out and one option would be to let Ericsson both build and run the operation…
KHS: Yes, if it is in their strategy to move toward the customer. Earlier I was in charge of Services at Ericsson, and in the US, someone said to me “Son how can we be called a mobile operator if we don’t operate or own network?” But a few months later, they were buying hosted services from us. That means in all new areas, we are doing it for them. It is a matter of strategy, do you want to focus on the market and let someone else run your network for you.
In some markets, in the early days, coverage is important and is an early competitive tool, so you might want to control that.
Lattelekom is going into this, they hope to set up network operations centers for customers. So what happens when they start competing with Ericsson?
KHS: That would be a bit of a threat, but also an opportunity. We already run Telia International’s network out of an operations center in Holland, where it was cheaper to add on another customer rather than build a center just for them. If TeliaSonera wanted to do certain things, it could put certain things, like inside engineering and data transcripts (IADT) in Latvia, where the engineering costs are lower.
But Lattelekom is looking to Scandinavia as a business process outsourcing market, and the hell with whose turf we are on…
KHS:The only thing Lattelekom has to think about is what do they want to be. Do they want to focus on telecommunications or on network operations. I have been in big companies, mostly Ericsson, for my whole life, and I know that the only time we got into trouble was when we didn’t know what we wanted to do.
But Ericsson isn’t an operator?
KHS: Oh no. In the 1920s and 1930s, setting up a telephone company was the only way to get customers for our equipment. After World War II, we decided we wanted to be an equipment maker and we got out of our last operator (in Argentina) in 1992. Now we have a strict rule not to compete with our customers.
Getting back to some global questions, aren’t we seeing the defacto disintegration of the company? I mean, you see a telecoms operator and Ericsson runs their network, the billing is done in Bangalore, someone else helps with sales. Where’s the company?
KHS: I think that is natural progress. Ericsson used to do all its plastic itself, We had the biggest plastics factory in the Nordic area. We did our own nuts and bolts. That is how it is when you start early and there is no supplier, but as we moved up the value chain, we manufacture 70 % of our products outside Ericsson. We control the software, the final assembly and guarantee that the system works. We design but don’t manufacture.
We do the blueprint, we do the software to make it work, design the printed circuit board, have it manufactured.
We started this a long time ago, this virtualization of the company, 10 years ago with AXE. You work with a limited number of specialized partners and put it all together.
What opportunity does this open for us in the Baltics?
KHS: We do much work with Elkoteq in Estonia, but nothing in Latvia. If I were to hypothetically look at what other things one could in the Baltic, it would be in software engineering. You have good education and knowledge and are close to our R &D centers. Also we would look at installation work, bringing temporary installers to work with customers.
From May 2002 to April 2003, Karl-Henrik Sundström held the position of Vice President and General Manager of Business Unit Global Services.
From 1999 to 2002, Mr. Sundström was Managing Director of Ericsson Australia.
He joined Ericsson in 1985 as a trainee in financial management.
(the above is excerpted and adapted from Ericsson's homepage www.ericsson.com)
NOTE THIS HAS BEEN EDITED MONDAY MORNING at 0800 TO ELIMINATE SOME GARBLED TEXT
This blogger talked to Sundström in Stockholm recently. The following is an excerpt of approximate transcript of the interview, as conducted and recorded in English. I have selected the parts where he talks specifically about the telecoms industry, changing technologies and some thoughts about Ericsson and the Baltics. A longer Latvian version of this interview may appear you-know-where, but knowing them it will be published when, or shortly before, as the Latvians say "the owl's tail blossoms" /kad pūcei aste ziedēs.)
You’ve been with Ericsson for 20 years. 20 years ago, you were selling advanced circuit switched networks, now it is all moving toward IP based systems. Companies such as IBM are facing the customer in the same manner as the traditional telecoms suppliers and saying to the operators that we and our partners can give you the same services as traditional telecoms…
Karl-Henrik Sundström: The thing is, they are coming from the enterprise area, where you can control the environment. The fact is, the for over 100 years, Ericsson (and its competitors) has been able to deliver, regardless of the technology, what we call real time communication. That is what we call telecom grade, you lift the phone, get a dial tone, and there is somebody on the other side. That is regardless of whether the technology was crossbar, mechanical, digital circuit-switched or voice over IP. The IBMs of the world are coming from another world, they are coming with internet technology and they are coming from the batch world. Which is no quality of service. They are coming from datacoms,where if there is a byte that is lost, you resend it. Telecom grade, telecom service, the five 9s is our core competence. Ericsson and our competitors have changed underlying bearer technology all the time, and we did not invent the silicon chip but are using for certain things in our switches and other things. So they (the IBMs) will be there, but they are not the ones controlling the real time service and the quality of service. That is our core competence.
That’s on the fixed side. On the mobile side, VOIP on the radio interface is coming, but the (packet) header is bigger than the voice carried, so it is uneconomical at present. But it is coming. We haven’t been able to compress it, even though we have advanced algorithms, The header remains bigger than the content (the packet) carries.
I may be out of my depth technologically here, but I recall circuit-switched establishes a point to point connection…
KHS: hat’s where IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) comes in. It came from the 3G world, but the first ones using it are wire line operators, because they have to guarantee the quality of service. So if you want to have guaranteed 8 megabits, not best effort, you go up here (the IMS level) and you simulate signaling. IMS allows you to dedicate. Then you can charge for it. You need that for applications, voice, and high quality video. You can do it within an enterprise, but when you go outside into the uncontrolled public network, you need to.
But isn’t it a software solution?
KHS: It is. It is the traditional signaling capability, which you use in the new IP world with IP version six, where you can have the header that allows you to dedicate.
But won’t the IBMs be able to hack or reproduce it. They’ll say just give us the standards, and we will write something that performs…
KHS: It is the same in the AXE, the circuit switch. The software opens the circuit. In an AXE, say for the Latvian network, its one million man-years to fix all those variances of a call set up. They would have to reinvent those million man-years and start from scratch. We have this knowledge; it is part of our spine. It is the same as if I wanted to be a baker. I can make cakes at home, but I don’t have the knowledge to run a bakery.
So you are saying you have a legacy, translated to state-of-the art, of setting up circuits, that the IBMs and HPs cannot match?
KHS: They are coming from the batch-oriented world, which is not real time. The equipment is from different vendors, I am not sure they have their own IMS, so the brain has to come from some telecoms vendor. So you cannot earn big margins.
They are competing with us on the services side but may be a partner. When it comes to the technology behind it, they are not in there.
Niklas Zennstrom, the inventor of Skype, will scoff at all this quality of service stuff and say that look, this works, almost all of the time… So you can call anybody in the world for free.
KHS: There are issues of regulation and fairness of competition. This is basically an arbitrage. When I lived in Australia, my family used to call me using IP telephony. The circuit was good enough. Bit it is a little unfair competition. On the fixed side, you have to have, often by regulation, the emergency numbers (911 in the US), if the electric current fails, the phone must work. We did a study that if you build all these features into VOIP, the price difference is not that big. But if the authorities allowed an arbitrage, a service that doesn’t run on mainstream rules and regulations, then it cheap. It was good enough. My parents couldn’t afford to call Australia once a week.
So if you want to be something like a full service telecommunications service provider, then maybe it is best to have your systems delivered by someone like Ericsson?
KHS: We were the first one actually delivering voice over IP for RSL, six years ago. But the thing is, that if everything was voice over IP, you can’t guarantee emergency services to people out in the forest in Sweden. In Australia, there was a case against Telstra because a child died when its parents were unable to get an ambulance over the mobile phone, which is subject to different regulation. So there are these national interest and security factors. In a marginal arbitration, Skype is cheap and good.
So Skype is a toy and you have to build a serious telecommunications network if you are worried about these safety and national security issues…
KHS: Another thing to remember is that tariffs are set in a reverse way from costs. The biggest investment is in the local network, second biggest in the transit layer and the international switch is cheapest. But the tariffs are set so that the international calls pay for the local. For around USD 5 million I could route all the international traffic in Sweden through one switch, but one is not allowed to without agreements, etc.
Another thing we see these big companies doing is outsourcing. How does Ericsson see this? You are running the network you just sold in Italy. Are operators happy to have you offer to run most or all of what is their core business? What are the risks and rewards for the operator?
KHS: First of all, investment in most GSM operations is around 40 % of cash outlay. Of which, we can sell about 20 %. Opex (operating expenses) are by far the largest outlay. That is running the network and guaranteeing the quality service. Operators are moving down the value chain closer to the customers. So we follow them behind. We are now managing 38 million subscribers around the world. We have economies of scale and coordinate on a regional scale. We run three networks from one place in Australia, several in Poland, now the Hi3G network in Italy with some 750 people. We can eliminate functional overlaps; you can reduce costs 15 to 25 %.
The other thing is competence in how to manage advanced systems, networks, how to tune 3G networks and manage hybrid networks with an advanced service layer. This competence is scarce.
So while the operator moves forward to manager the customer and the market, we move forward to manage an area where he doesn’t have competence. . Plus the staff has to be constantly retrained for new things
The challenge for many operators is that they are delivering a channel to customers with new services that will have to be billed several times per week.
In the US, for example, we have hosted services, such as MMS, that we run for a number of 3G players. They sign a subscription with Ericsson and we run it for them.
So for Latvian alternative operators, as certain issues are resolved, such as interconnect, and when the new third mobile operator settles in, there may be a time to build out and one option would be to let Ericsson both build and run the operation…
KHS: Yes, if it is in their strategy to move toward the customer. Earlier I was in charge of Services at Ericsson, and in the US, someone said to me “Son how can we be called a mobile operator if we don’t operate or own network?” But a few months later, they were buying hosted services from us. That means in all new areas, we are doing it for them. It is a matter of strategy, do you want to focus on the market and let someone else run your network for you.
In some markets, in the early days, coverage is important and is an early competitive tool, so you might want to control that.
Lattelekom is going into this, they hope to set up network operations centers for customers. So what happens when they start competing with Ericsson?
KHS: That would be a bit of a threat, but also an opportunity. We already run Telia International’s network out of an operations center in Holland, where it was cheaper to add on another customer rather than build a center just for them. If TeliaSonera wanted to do certain things, it could put certain things, like inside engineering and data transcripts (IADT) in Latvia, where the engineering costs are lower.
But Lattelekom is looking to Scandinavia as a business process outsourcing market, and the hell with whose turf we are on…
KHS:The only thing Lattelekom has to think about is what do they want to be. Do they want to focus on telecommunications or on network operations. I have been in big companies, mostly Ericsson, for my whole life, and I know that the only time we got into trouble was when we didn’t know what we wanted to do.
But Ericsson isn’t an operator?
KHS: Oh no. In the 1920s and 1930s, setting up a telephone company was the only way to get customers for our equipment. After World War II, we decided we wanted to be an equipment maker and we got out of our last operator (in Argentina) in 1992. Now we have a strict rule not to compete with our customers.
Getting back to some global questions, aren’t we seeing the defacto disintegration of the company? I mean, you see a telecoms operator and Ericsson runs their network, the billing is done in Bangalore, someone else helps with sales. Where’s the company?
KHS: I think that is natural progress. Ericsson used to do all its plastic itself, We had the biggest plastics factory in the Nordic area. We did our own nuts and bolts. That is how it is when you start early and there is no supplier, but as we moved up the value chain, we manufacture 70 % of our products outside Ericsson. We control the software, the final assembly and guarantee that the system works. We design but don’t manufacture.
We do the blueprint, we do the software to make it work, design the printed circuit board, have it manufactured.
We started this a long time ago, this virtualization of the company, 10 years ago with AXE. You work with a limited number of specialized partners and put it all together.
What opportunity does this open for us in the Baltics?
KHS: We do much work with Elkoteq in Estonia, but nothing in Latvia. If I were to hypothetically look at what other things one could in the Baltic, it would be in software engineering. You have good education and knowledge and are close to our R &D centers. Also we would look at installation work, bringing temporary installers to work with customers.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Triatel moves toward video services?
Triatel, the cdma-450 operator, may be moving toward offering video services. That would represent an expansion of the brand's strategy from a rather narrow focus on the corporate and government sector.
This blogger has been told by the company that some sort of videophone broadcast will be demonstrated the week of May 2. While it is hard to imagine a corporate video conference with executives balancing their Triatel phones on the their knees, there are plenty of recreational and entertainments services that can use video in a 3G environment. Indeed, most premium services on both GSM and 3G networks around the world are entertainment related.
My middle son (18) who lives in Sweden told me of the increasing number of 3 phones at his high school. Many of them were being used for such seemingly bizarre purposes as beaming live video of lunch from the school cafeteria to a friend in the classroom. Then it occured to me that for some people this is fun.
What Triatel will probably do is try to launch some mass market services ahead of the similar 3G services of incumbents Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and Tele2, as well as beat Bite GSM to the punch. Having been the first to introduce de-facto 3G data services on a limited scale, it might as well be the first to launch commercial, mass-market services. The way things look now, Triatel either does this or risks being cornered in a relatively low-revenue niche (compared to say, a customer-base of 100 000 sending MMS and downloading video clips for fun) by the other two and (later three) operators.
The wacko story spiked?
Looks like the paper won't be putting out the somewhat crackpot story about a forecast that Lattelekom could loose 60 % of its SME customers once number portability (not necessary in order to take revenue away from the incumbent, carrier pre-selection will do fine..) is introduced. Somebody came to their senses, just a shame that I had to work with a number of people at Lattelekom, analysts in London and a PR company doing a corporate reputation survey to get refutations of this rather far-out-on-a-limb theory.
Maybe it is time to start blogging Latvian journalism in addition to telecoms and bizarre near-traffic accidents. But who has time...?
This blogger has been told by the company that some sort of videophone broadcast will be demonstrated the week of May 2. While it is hard to imagine a corporate video conference with executives balancing their Triatel phones on the their knees, there are plenty of recreational and entertainments services that can use video in a 3G environment. Indeed, most premium services on both GSM and 3G networks around the world are entertainment related.
My middle son (18) who lives in Sweden told me of the increasing number of 3 phones at his high school. Many of them were being used for such seemingly bizarre purposes as beaming live video of lunch from the school cafeteria to a friend in the classroom. Then it occured to me that for some people this is fun.
What Triatel will probably do is try to launch some mass market services ahead of the similar 3G services of incumbents Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and Tele2, as well as beat Bite GSM to the punch. Having been the first to introduce de-facto 3G data services on a limited scale, it might as well be the first to launch commercial, mass-market services. The way things look now, Triatel either does this or risks being cornered in a relatively low-revenue niche (compared to say, a customer-base of 100 000 sending MMS and downloading video clips for fun) by the other two and (later three) operators.
The wacko story spiked?
Looks like the paper won't be putting out the somewhat crackpot story about a forecast that Lattelekom could loose 60 % of its SME customers once number portability (not necessary in order to take revenue away from the incumbent, carrier pre-selection will do fine..) is introduced. Somebody came to their senses, just a shame that I had to work with a number of people at Lattelekom, analysts in London and a PR company doing a corporate reputation survey to get refutations of this rather far-out-on-a-limb theory.
Maybe it is time to start blogging Latvian journalism in addition to telecoms and bizarre near-traffic accidents. But who has time...?
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
More wacko coming?
The main rant...
A certain publication wants me to make a big deal of the fact that Latvia's Ministry of Health, in moving to new premises, installed 125 phone lines from Triatel rather than Lattelekom. 125 lines is around 0.00019 % of all Lattelekom lines and about LVL 45000 in total revenues. according to a guesstimate by the Ministry. The Ministry was previously located in two different premises and used Lattelekom.
As news, it is worth a small item, nothing more. However, under some pressure "to prove that I am not taking Lattelekom's side" (as if there were sides in this matter), I've decided to build another story around a piece of information from an otherwise very respectable source, Janis Lelis of the Latvian Telecommunications Association (LTA).
Lelis told me that the LTA had spoken to several "marketing experts" who expressed the belief that, given the chance, 60 % of Lattelekom's small and medium business customers would leave the company for another operator. This is not what Lattelekom's own customer surveys, conducted by a professional market survey organization, have indicated.
I also have to emphasize that Lelis didn't say he believed or agreed with the assessment by the so-called marketing experts, it was one piece of opinion among many that he hears in his position. So to retell this is not to assail the credibility of the LTA, only of the source it is quoting.
Anyway, staying "barely" clear of a borderline hatchet job (in my own mind) I will file an item claiming "the collapse of Lattelekom is forecast" and pointing to the forecast cited (but not endorsed by the LTA).
For those who don't know American expressions:
hatchet job
n. Slang
Anyway, most of the text will be quotes and statistics showing the complete idiocy of a claim that 60 % of Lattelekom's SME customers will flee because, as the unnamed marketing experts claim, the company has a reputation SME's don't want to be associated with. The reason for this is apparently lingering conspiracy theories about the undoubtedly debatable Umbrella Agreement of 1994. Under these theories, Lattelekom is an instrument for foreign monopolization, colonization and failure to run Gigabit Ethernet landlines to every kerosene-lit shack in the Latvian woods.
While the majority wackos of the Latvian parliament or Saeima voted to condemn the settlement agreement with Lattelekom just over a year ago based on this kind of bizzaro thinking, I don't really believe it exists among the ordinary SME customers, even those who have had problems with Lattelekom. After all, the company has been reforged over the past 11 years from what was essentially a Soviet state monopoly to what is a modern corporation making a more than decent profit even under great change-induced stress. So for a best effort, Lattelekom isn't doing so badly. I summed up attitudes toward the (then) monopoly in an article I wrote some years ago for the apparently defunct magazine Northern Enterprise with a headline Surfing with the Great Satan, which summed up how, while providing new services such as DSL, the company was still vilified in some circles.
I'm sorry that this blog has to diverge into what is more of a criticism of how journalism is done in Latvia and the sometimes bizarre compromises that one has to enter into to get certain editors off one's case.
Anyway, my hope is that this story will simply be spiked and never see the (pink) light of day. If it does, those readers of the blog who will hear of it second hand will know why it happened and that it is, if I succeed in writing it to the edge as I intend to, that it will be self-referentially absurd :). Sort of like, Flat Earth Society Convention Comes to Town (with lots of references to the obvious fact that this is all a crock of shit).
Other stuff
While we are on the subject of what does and does not get published, I have an interesting piece based on an interview with the head of the State Information Network Agency (VITA in Latvian), Juris Kanels. Since it has been shitcanned for no apparent reason, I will translate the essentials later on. Basically, it is about how VITA plans to expand into the private sector market and how it needs a clear mandate and definition of mission to avoid problems with being accused of state-subsidized unfair competition.
God, I wish people who are totally HUTA (as in head up the ass) on telecoms matters would at least realize from where they are looking at things....
And while enjoying the freedom of blogging, might as well say fuck once too, as in fuck this shit!
Back to normal again soon..
I'm gonna put on some music now and then go to sleep...
A certain publication wants me to make a big deal of the fact that Latvia's Ministry of Health, in moving to new premises, installed 125 phone lines from Triatel rather than Lattelekom. 125 lines is around 0.00019 % of all Lattelekom lines and about LVL 45000 in total revenues. according to a guesstimate by the Ministry. The Ministry was previously located in two different premises and used Lattelekom.
As news, it is worth a small item, nothing more. However, under some pressure "to prove that I am not taking Lattelekom's side" (as if there were sides in this matter), I've decided to build another story around a piece of information from an otherwise very respectable source, Janis Lelis of the Latvian Telecommunications Association (LTA).
Lelis told me that the LTA had spoken to several "marketing experts" who expressed the belief that, given the chance, 60 % of Lattelekom's small and medium business customers would leave the company for another operator. This is not what Lattelekom's own customer surveys, conducted by a professional market survey organization, have indicated.
I also have to emphasize that Lelis didn't say he believed or agreed with the assessment by the so-called marketing experts, it was one piece of opinion among many that he hears in his position. So to retell this is not to assail the credibility of the LTA, only of the source it is quoting.
Anyway, staying "barely" clear of a borderline hatchet job (in my own mind) I will file an item claiming "the collapse of Lattelekom is forecast" and pointing to the forecast cited (but not endorsed by the LTA).
For those who don't know American expressions:
hatchet job
n. Slang
- A crude or ruthless effort usually ending in destruction: did a hatchet job on the mayor's reputation.
Anyway, most of the text will be quotes and statistics showing the complete idiocy of a claim that 60 % of Lattelekom's SME customers will flee because, as the unnamed marketing experts claim, the company has a reputation SME's don't want to be associated with. The reason for this is apparently lingering conspiracy theories about the undoubtedly debatable Umbrella Agreement of 1994. Under these theories, Lattelekom is an instrument for foreign monopolization, colonization and failure to run Gigabit Ethernet landlines to every kerosene-lit shack in the Latvian woods.
While the majority wackos of the Latvian parliament or Saeima voted to condemn the settlement agreement with Lattelekom just over a year ago based on this kind of bizzaro thinking, I don't really believe it exists among the ordinary SME customers, even those who have had problems with Lattelekom. After all, the company has been reforged over the past 11 years from what was essentially a Soviet state monopoly to what is a modern corporation making a more than decent profit even under great change-induced stress. So for a best effort, Lattelekom isn't doing so badly. I summed up attitudes toward the (then) monopoly in an article I wrote some years ago for the apparently defunct magazine Northern Enterprise with a headline Surfing with the Great Satan, which summed up how, while providing new services such as DSL, the company was still vilified in some circles.
I'm sorry that this blog has to diverge into what is more of a criticism of how journalism is done in Latvia and the sometimes bizarre compromises that one has to enter into to get certain editors off one's case.
Anyway, my hope is that this story will simply be spiked and never see the (pink) light of day. If it does, those readers of the blog who will hear of it second hand will know why it happened and that it is, if I succeed in writing it to the edge as I intend to, that it will be self-referentially absurd :). Sort of like, Flat Earth Society Convention Comes to Town (with lots of references to the obvious fact that this is all a crock of shit).
Other stuff
While we are on the subject of what does and does not get published, I have an interesting piece based on an interview with the head of the State Information Network Agency (VITA in Latvian), Juris Kanels. Since it has been shitcanned for no apparent reason, I will translate the essentials later on. Basically, it is about how VITA plans to expand into the private sector market and how it needs a clear mandate and definition of mission to avoid problems with being accused of state-subsidized unfair competition.
God, I wish people who are totally HUTA (as in head up the ass) on telecoms matters would at least realize from where they are looking at things....
And while enjoying the freedom of blogging, might as well say fuck once too, as in fuck this shit!
Back to normal again soon..
I'm gonna put on some music now and then go to sleep...
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Huawei bags Triatel, IP TV bid confirmed
Since fame and USD 0.17 (so far on google adsense) are all I can hope for from this blog, I want to point out that you are hearing this here first.
Huawei bags the Triatel deal
Triatel has apparently been happy with the trial of Huawei's cdma 450 equipment and is sealing a deal for the Chinese company to build out the rest of the "non-standard" 3G mobile network in Latvia (which will also deliver fixed wireless access and DSL class, 2 Mbps + wireless internet). Triatel's press flack says they will announce very soon. The deal is "multimillion" something – dollars, euro (USD 1.30) or lats (USD 1.85).
While it ain't exactly Portugal, the Netherlands or Algeria (where we have seen Huawei doing things in this hemisphere -- or quadrisphere, since Asia is in the Eastern hemisphere, too), it is yet more evidence that at least the company's same technological bang for a smaller buck approach is working. Not all showcases have to be big. We shall see how they do.
Lattelekom confirms consortium's proposal
Lattelekom's director of market development Gints Kirsteins confirms they are talking to the three partner consortium of Ericsson, Cisco and IBM the blog reported a few days ago. There are also others making their proposals.
That's not the point, though. As Kirsteins notes, the big problem is going to be getting a workeable business model that will attract a substantial migration from existing conventional (Telia MultiCom) and digital (some of Baltcom TV) cable operators. Moreover, Baltcom is already selling a version of the triple-play (internet, TV and voice) package that IBM dog and ponied last week. It has probably more than 1 000 triple-play users (my guess), but there has been no stampede. Baltcom has around 125 000 cable subscribers and Telia MultiCom (soon to rebrand as something else) around 75 000.
With no stampede, Lattelekom is going to be sitting alone at its Cisco boxes, waiting for someone yearning for 100 + channels to come to them (right, always wanted to pay LVL 10 or 15 a month for the Mushroom Channel -watch 'em grow- or whatever). There better be some damn attractive content there. This is the biggest problem - stuff like first run movies is going to cost, unless Lattelekom cuts a deal with its half-mother Telia Sonera, which is selling IP TV for (as I figure it, please someone correct me) about SEK 449 per month for the radically fast ADSL2+ and another minimum of SEK 129 or as much as SEK 339 or something like that for the TV subscription. That brings us close to equivalent USD 100 per month just to be entertained. That will buy one a sh**tload of booze or joints or other entertainment...:) at Latvian prices.
Getting Kolja to switch?
The other problem is - and no ethnic stereotyping is meant in any malicious way here – that basically Lattelekom has to get Kolja the middle-class Riga Russian to buy its offer. Kolja is a little shy of 40, married, one or two teenage kids, and lives in a privatized or newly bought apartment in the Riga suburbs.
During the day, the cable TV serves to entertain the inevitable babushka (granny) who sits at home watching Russian dubbed Mexican soap operas. Kolja comes home in the evening and moves babushka to another TV set, where she watches the 60s Russian oldies movies of her youth on another Russian channel. Meanwhile Kolja turns on the hockey game (Latvian TV or TV 3) and one is as likely to get him away from that as to get the Pope to step back from the altar during mass to take a call on the Papal mobile.
Kolja's kids then show up, and being more or less tri-lingual, they watch some Latvian reality show guaranteed to crank down their otherwise bright IQ by 10 points if they keep it up. Or maybe they watch MTV. Mrs. Kolja, who works for a smart downtown bank, thinks she has to polish her business English, so she catches one of the evening BBC Business News shows. Babushka watches some film about armored division soldiers and a dog for the third time in a week.
Kolja Jr. (15) leaves his 13 year old sister Katja to swoon over a pink-haired character nicknamed Chibriks on the reality show Fabrika Returns from The Grave and boots up a LVL 7.50 a month fast internet connection supplied by their neighbor Sharshkin, who has parcelled out a 4 Mbps Lattelekom DSL line to a couple of other apartments on the fourth floor. Kolja downloads a 200 Mb pirated Doom: Slash Burn & Butcher game, then types his homework. In the bedroom, on her work laptop, Mrs. Kolja Skypes her cousin in St. Petersburg and they talk for a half hour.
This, basically, is the idyllic evening that Lattelekom's IP TV offering will have to totally, awesomely disrupt. Technology alone won't do it.
Huawei bags the Triatel deal
Triatel has apparently been happy with the trial of Huawei's cdma 450 equipment and is sealing a deal for the Chinese company to build out the rest of the "non-standard" 3G mobile network in Latvia (which will also deliver fixed wireless access and DSL class, 2 Mbps + wireless internet). Triatel's press flack says they will announce very soon. The deal is "multimillion" something – dollars, euro (USD 1.30) or lats (USD 1.85).
While it ain't exactly Portugal, the Netherlands or Algeria (where we have seen Huawei doing things in this hemisphere -- or quadrisphere, since Asia is in the Eastern hemisphere, too), it is yet more evidence that at least the company's same technological bang for a smaller buck approach is working. Not all showcases have to be big. We shall see how they do.
Lattelekom confirms consortium's proposal
Lattelekom's director of market development Gints Kirsteins confirms they are talking to the three partner consortium of Ericsson, Cisco and IBM the blog reported a few days ago. There are also others making their proposals.
That's not the point, though. As Kirsteins notes, the big problem is going to be getting a workeable business model that will attract a substantial migration from existing conventional (Telia MultiCom) and digital (some of Baltcom TV) cable operators. Moreover, Baltcom is already selling a version of the triple-play (internet, TV and voice) package that IBM dog and ponied last week. It has probably more than 1 000 triple-play users (my guess), but there has been no stampede. Baltcom has around 125 000 cable subscribers and Telia MultiCom (soon to rebrand as something else) around 75 000.
With no stampede, Lattelekom is going to be sitting alone at its Cisco boxes, waiting for someone yearning for 100 + channels to come to them (right, always wanted to pay LVL 10 or 15 a month for the Mushroom Channel -watch 'em grow- or whatever). There better be some damn attractive content there. This is the biggest problem - stuff like first run movies is going to cost, unless Lattelekom cuts a deal with its half-mother Telia Sonera, which is selling IP TV for (as I figure it, please someone correct me) about SEK 449 per month for the radically fast ADSL2+ and another minimum of SEK 129 or as much as SEK 339 or something like that for the TV subscription. That brings us close to equivalent USD 100 per month just to be entertained. That will buy one a sh**tload of booze or joints or other entertainment...:) at Latvian prices.
Getting Kolja to switch?
The other problem is - and no ethnic stereotyping is meant in any malicious way here – that basically Lattelekom has to get Kolja the middle-class Riga Russian to buy its offer. Kolja is a little shy of 40, married, one or two teenage kids, and lives in a privatized or newly bought apartment in the Riga suburbs.
During the day, the cable TV serves to entertain the inevitable babushka (granny) who sits at home watching Russian dubbed Mexican soap operas. Kolja comes home in the evening and moves babushka to another TV set, where she watches the 60s Russian oldies movies of her youth on another Russian channel. Meanwhile Kolja turns on the hockey game (Latvian TV or TV 3) and one is as likely to get him away from that as to get the Pope to step back from the altar during mass to take a call on the Papal mobile.
Kolja's kids then show up, and being more or less tri-lingual, they watch some Latvian reality show guaranteed to crank down their otherwise bright IQ by 10 points if they keep it up. Or maybe they watch MTV. Mrs. Kolja, who works for a smart downtown bank, thinks she has to polish her business English, so she catches one of the evening BBC Business News shows. Babushka watches some film about armored division soldiers and a dog for the third time in a week.
Kolja Jr. (15) leaves his 13 year old sister Katja to swoon over a pink-haired character nicknamed Chibriks on the reality show Fabrika Returns from The Grave and boots up a LVL 7.50 a month fast internet connection supplied by their neighbor Sharshkin, who has parcelled out a 4 Mbps Lattelekom DSL line to a couple of other apartments on the fourth floor. Kolja downloads a 200 Mb pirated Doom: Slash Burn & Butcher game, then types his homework. In the bedroom, on her work laptop, Mrs. Kolja Skypes her cousin in St. Petersburg and they talk for a half hour.
This, basically, is the idyllic evening that Lattelekom's IP TV offering will have to totally, awesomely disrupt. Technology alone won't do it.
Triatel tests Huawei, big IT deal coming?
Huawei, the Chinese telecoms equipment maker, is letting Latvian alternative operator Triatel test its cdma-450 solution as a prelude to a possible multi-million dollar deal. If the tests are satisfactory, Huawei has a good chance of getting a contract to build out Triatel's network, which is understood to be limited and based on a Nortel solution.
Sun Gang, a Huawei executive at the company's office in Poland confirmed these facts to this blogger. Gang said the company was in the process of setting up a subsidiary in Latvia, as reported on this blog earlier.
Huawei has at least one earlier cdma-450 project in Europe in Portugal. The company is considered an aggressive newcomer to world and European markets. Competitors such as Ericsson say privately that Huawei has yet to prove it can provide the same level of support and service as established Western suppliers. Competitors are unsurprised that Huawei appeals to operators who look at the list price tag of "the boxes" first. This may or may not be the case with Triatel.
Huawei has also been seeing Lattelekom regarding its plans to use cdma-450 for rural fixed line modernization (using fixed wireless phones).
The big deal?
A major Latvian IT company is close to a big deal IT deal with a large bank from a German-speaking country. This is in addition to a possible deal with a Scandinavian bank that this blog reported earlier. My sources indicate this could be a mega-deal. The financial institution has "an IT budget that is half of Latvia's state budget". It is likely the deal will involve, as one of its elements, the maintenance and modernization of a legacy mainframe-based system.
Watch this blog or my day-job newspaper (for those of you that read Latvian) for news. It could be decided in about a month.
Sun Gang, a Huawei executive at the company's office in Poland confirmed these facts to this blogger. Gang said the company was in the process of setting up a subsidiary in Latvia, as reported on this blog earlier.
Huawei has at least one earlier cdma-450 project in Europe in Portugal. The company is considered an aggressive newcomer to world and European markets. Competitors such as Ericsson say privately that Huawei has yet to prove it can provide the same level of support and service as established Western suppliers. Competitors are unsurprised that Huawei appeals to operators who look at the list price tag of "the boxes" first. This may or may not be the case with Triatel.
Huawei has also been seeing Lattelekom regarding its plans to use cdma-450 for rural fixed line modernization (using fixed wireless phones).
The big deal?
A major Latvian IT company is close to a big deal IT deal with a large bank from a German-speaking country. This is in addition to a possible deal with a Scandinavian bank that this blog reported earlier. My sources indicate this could be a mega-deal. The financial institution has "an IT budget that is half of Latvia's state budget". It is likely the deal will involve, as one of its elements, the maintenance and modernization of a legacy mainframe-based system.
Watch this blog or my day-job newspaper (for those of you that read Latvian) for news. It could be decided in about a month.
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