On Friday, August 19, Minister of Transport Ainars Slesers (Ok, no longer the Ayatollah) has called a press conference where Bite Group CEO Jesper Thiell Eriksen will participate. It appears Slesers will announce some kind of action plan to speed up and facilitate Bite Latvija's entry into the Latvian mobile market. Before that (the press event is scheduled for 1400 local) there will be meetings with the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, Lattelekom, Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and Tele2 to try to increase the number of allocated numbers for Bite Latvija and to speed up the signing of interconnect agreements with the other two mobile operators.
All of this is sort of sounds fine, except that as far as I know, Slesers doesn't have the power to pressure, much less order the private sector around (even if Lattelekom is 51 % state-owned). Least of all can he influence the independent regulator.
My sympathies lie with shaking up the market and getting Bite Latvija going so that LMT, for instance, no longer has it so easy making what amounts to fuck-you profits. This is based on the scale of big money, huge money, enormous money and what is called "fuck you" money, where you can afford to buy half the universe, disregard everything and have enough left over to say "fuck you" to anyone who tries to criticize.
The good thing about fuck you profits is that, well, you can stuff your shareholders to bursting with dividend cash and if they don't like your style, you just whisper, look at this money, and well, fuck you! And they smile shit-eating grins while they count money like Scrooge McDuck (the super-rich relative of Donald Duck).
The bad thing about fuck you profits is that, like the very pleasurable habit of self-abuse (or perhaps smoking dope), is that it makes you go blind. One fails to see the abyss beyond the blizzard of cash swirling around one's head. That means in just one or two steps, you can be at the other end of the scale, at fuckedcompany.com.
So far none of this is happening to LMT (except the fuck you profits), but there is a certain incipient arrogance about the company. Letting Bite Latvija loose sooner, rather than later, and with a bigger stinger, rather than a pinprick, may not be so bad for everyone. It would certainly shake the incumbents into at least trying to get a jump on Bite's very likely far lower tariffs, its flat rate business services, EDGE data from day one, etc. Tele2, for Christ's sake, has been leaderless for months in Latvia since Mats Tilly leaped off to Croatia. Johnny Svedberg, a major honcho from the big Tele2 in Sweden will be swinging through Latvia next week and this may be a chance to get a feel for what is going on.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Mobile operators spared spectrum auction
The Latvian Public Utilities Regulatory Commission has adopted rules for extending frequency use rights that finally put to rest worries that at least two mobile operators – Triatel and Tele2 – could have their expired spectrum use rights auctioned to the highest bidder.
The rules essentially say "good behavior gets an extension", which is more or less what the operators wanted and which also makes sense. Earlier this spring, the Ministry of Transport confirmed that under the Electronic Communications Law and existing or proposed rules, there was nothing to prevent an auction of expired spectrum rights held by an existing operators with (in the case of Tele2) hundreds of thousands of customers. This caused an uproar at the time.
The new rules adopted by the regulator ar a bit broader than their draft version, which said that an extension would be granted if there had been no violations of the spectrum use regulations and that the spectrum was, indeed, being used for commercial activity and not "squatted". Under the rules as adopted, operators must show that they have not had any violations of rules and laws pertaining to commercial activity in the electronic communications field.
To my mind, this would raise some modest concerns about what happens if an operator is in some kind of serious dispute with the state authorities at the time of renewal (not the case with either Triatel or Tele2 at the moment). Will a tax case or a competition complaint (see Tele2 vs. Lattelekom on the issue of riding cattle, mentioned on this blog earlier :) :) :) ) raise spectrum renewal issues? This is not clear. Should some kind of gross misbehavior – billing fraud, willful disobedience of reasonable orders by the regulator, etc.– be grounds for not extending spectrum use and, essentially, taking down an operator in one fell swoop? Maybe... Ten years from now, when spectrum rights extended in the next few months are up for renewal again, there might be enough trust in the system to assume that this weapon will be used in a fair and reasonable manner.
Excuse the writing with no boldface, etc., as my favorite laptop is at home and I am using my piece-a-shit late 90s workplace iMac.
The rules essentially say "good behavior gets an extension", which is more or less what the operators wanted and which also makes sense. Earlier this spring, the Ministry of Transport confirmed that under the Electronic Communications Law and existing or proposed rules, there was nothing to prevent an auction of expired spectrum rights held by an existing operators with (in the case of Tele2) hundreds of thousands of customers. This caused an uproar at the time.
The new rules adopted by the regulator ar a bit broader than their draft version, which said that an extension would be granted if there had been no violations of the spectrum use regulations and that the spectrum was, indeed, being used for commercial activity and not "squatted". Under the rules as adopted, operators must show that they have not had any violations of rules and laws pertaining to commercial activity in the electronic communications field.
To my mind, this would raise some modest concerns about what happens if an operator is in some kind of serious dispute with the state authorities at the time of renewal (not the case with either Triatel or Tele2 at the moment). Will a tax case or a competition complaint (see Tele2 vs. Lattelekom on the issue of riding cattle, mentioned on this blog earlier :) :) :) ) raise spectrum renewal issues? This is not clear. Should some kind of gross misbehavior – billing fraud, willful disobedience of reasonable orders by the regulator, etc.– be grounds for not extending spectrum use and, essentially, taking down an operator in one fell swoop? Maybe... Ten years from now, when spectrum rights extended in the next few months are up for renewal again, there might be enough trust in the system to assume that this weapon will be used in a fair and reasonable manner.
Excuse the writing with no boldface, etc., as my favorite laptop is at home and I am using my piece-a-shit late 90s workplace iMac.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Tom Sawyer Software looks to Latvia
Tom Sawyer Software of the US, which produces graph visualization, layout, and analysis component software, is starting a subsidiary in Latvia to use, among other things, the GRADE business process analysis technologies developed at the University of Latvia's Mathematics and Informatics Institute (MII).
Krists Boitmanis, a software engineer at MII said that the GRADE methodology had served as a kind of mark of quality (GRADE is used by US/Latvian Exigen as one of its main tools for doing business process fixes on banks, insurance companies and the like in deals where Exigen is betting on sharing in millions of USD in savings). Tom Sawyer will likely have some of GRADE's graphic process display and analysis functions adapted for the toolsets it offers, but may also have Latvian software engineers design new stuff.
Tom Sawyer is a small outfit (around 30 people) in Oakland, California. One the Latvian subsidiary is up and running (well, running it already is, with MII people), the US based company will have a significant part of its staff and development work done here in Latvia.
Krists Boitmanis, a software engineer at MII said that the GRADE methodology had served as a kind of mark of quality (GRADE is used by US/Latvian Exigen as one of its main tools for doing business process fixes on banks, insurance companies and the like in deals where Exigen is betting on sharing in millions of USD in savings). Tom Sawyer will likely have some of GRADE's graphic process display and analysis functions adapted for the toolsets it offers, but may also have Latvian software engineers design new stuff.
Tom Sawyer is a small outfit (around 30 people) in Oakland, California. One the Latvian subsidiary is up and running (well, running it already is, with MII people), the US based company will have a significant part of its staff and development work done here in Latvia.
Friday, August 12, 2005
Draugiem forges international friendship
The 365 000 + member Latvian internet social community www.draugiem.lv will be offering a form of international access in several languages in the fall. Founder and co-owner Lauris Liberts told this blogger that the site will offer access in several languages so that current draugiem members can invite their non-Latvian speaking friends.
At the same time, Liberts admitted that the plans to have independent affiliates of draugiem in places like Italy and Sweden were being partially shelved. Instead, people accessing these sites (the Italian one has a few thousand users and is growing slowly) will be added to the big Latvian data base and see part of the draugiem.lv content in their own language. Liberts admitted that his cherished address for a planned Swedish site www.minavanner.se had essentially been cybersquatted, so that the new name for the access interface is being kept a secret.
One thing that has struck me about draugiem is that its 365 000 18 to 40 year old internet-savvy folks with purchasing power include a noticable number of bi-lingual ethnic Russians. By opening draugiem to the more reticent Russians, (I would call some of them the "Sept 1 protest kidz" :) ) who have some kind of a problem with Latvian (either they know it poorly or don't like to use it), membership should rise by a few tens of thousands at least. Comment from my Russian-Latvian readers is welcome.
Still unresolved but tilting in the direction of more commercialization is the extent to which draugiem.lv will allow advertising (there are some ads) and how its promising user generated content will do. I'm talking about their "Let's talk" section. "Real" blogging may be added in the fall (the Parunāsimies section is edited, only certain content is published).
One thing is for certain -- the community is the biggest single attention platform in Latvia with excellent demographics (TV, with a bigger audience, is watched by the old, infirm, four-year olds, etc). Advertisers will try to get at this audience by all means possible, including guerrilla marketing, probably the best way to succeed. For example, why not have a bank analyst make him/herself a "star" in the self-publishing section when it comes to personal finance or someone from an IT company when it comes to office software?
I still stand by my earlier post that another way for draugiem.lv to commercialize without overcommercializing is to sell affinity products, such as the suggested alliance with Bite Latvija, maybe selling a draugiem phone card. Trouble is, if 300 000 sign up, Bite is out of numbers :).
OK, lets not go too far... I'll settle for a draugiem T-shirt...
At the same time, Liberts admitted that the plans to have independent affiliates of draugiem in places like Italy and Sweden were being partially shelved. Instead, people accessing these sites (the Italian one has a few thousand users and is growing slowly) will be added to the big Latvian data base and see part of the draugiem.lv content in their own language. Liberts admitted that his cherished address for a planned Swedish site www.minavanner.se had essentially been cybersquatted, so that the new name for the access interface is being kept a secret.
One thing that has struck me about draugiem is that its 365 000 18 to 40 year old internet-savvy folks with purchasing power include a noticable number of bi-lingual ethnic Russians. By opening draugiem to the more reticent Russians, (I would call some of them the "Sept 1 protest kidz" :) ) who have some kind of a problem with Latvian (either they know it poorly or don't like to use it), membership should rise by a few tens of thousands at least. Comment from my Russian-Latvian readers is welcome.
Still unresolved but tilting in the direction of more commercialization is the extent to which draugiem.lv will allow advertising (there are some ads) and how its promising user generated content will do. I'm talking about their "Let's talk" section. "Real" blogging may be added in the fall (the Parunāsimies section is edited, only certain content is published).
One thing is for certain -- the community is the biggest single attention platform in Latvia with excellent demographics (TV, with a bigger audience, is watched by the old, infirm, four-year olds, etc). Advertisers will try to get at this audience by all means possible, including guerrilla marketing, probably the best way to succeed. For example, why not have a bank analyst make him/herself a "star" in the self-publishing section when it comes to personal finance or someone from an IT company when it comes to office software?
I still stand by my earlier post that another way for draugiem.lv to commercialize without overcommercializing is to sell affinity products, such as the suggested alliance with Bite Latvija, maybe selling a draugiem phone card. Trouble is, if 300 000 sign up, Bite is out of numbers :).
OK, lets not go too far... I'll settle for a draugiem T-shirt...
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Lattelekom goes Boingo
No, Lattelekom definitely has not joined the Boingo WiFi hotspot subscription network. It has offered a subscription to its own 130 location network in Latvia, including Double Coffee ( a kind of Latvian Starbucks), various restaurants and hotels and Statoil gas stations around the country. For LVL 2.95 per month you get to log on anywhere for LVL 0.005 (that's half a santim) a minute. For LVL 10.95 a month you get unlimited access, sometimes at 2 Mpbs or even 4 Mbps, depending on what the hotspot has to offer.
Right now, at home, I pay around LVL 15 per month for 512 Kbps, which barely ranks as broadband in Scandinavia. So I am expecting a rise in speed or a cut in price for DSL, otherwise I move to Double Coffee down the street :).
Meanwhile, there are places like centrally-located Hotel Reval Latvia and the nearby Ridzene that offer WiFi as an amenity, for the price of a cup of coffee or a drink at the bar. For guests, it is free. This draws the WiFi battlelines in Riga. Then again, why not wardrive and see where else one can freeload? :)
Right now, at home, I pay around LVL 15 per month for 512 Kbps, which barely ranks as broadband in Scandinavia. So I am expecting a rise in speed or a cut in price for DSL, otherwise I move to Double Coffee down the street :).
Meanwhile, there are places like centrally-located Hotel Reval Latvia and the nearby Ridzene that offer WiFi as an amenity, for the price of a cup of coffee or a drink at the bar. For guests, it is free. This draws the WiFi battlelines in Riga. Then again, why not wardrive and see where else one can freeload? :)
Exigen seeks Australia deal
Exigen, the IT business process solutions company with its headquarters in San Francisco but most of the work done in Latvia, is looking to rationalize processes at the Sydney Water Company in Australia.
A team of four Exigen consultants, including the "Godfather" of the Latvian IT industry, Janis Gobins, are doing a pre-feasibilty study (or some such thing) for the Australian utility, which is owned by the state of New South Wales.
The anticipated deal could be signed in 2006 (state-owned bureaucracies take their time) and will be worth several million AUD for Exigen. Most of the work of redesigning the utility's business processes will be done in Latvia.
Besides Gobins, there are two Exigen people from the US and one from Australia working on getting the deal. Gobins, the Latvian-American founder of German-based Infologistik in the late 1980s, was one of the first West European companies to employ Latvian systems analysis and programming talent starting around 1989.
From these beginnings sprang SWH Technologies, the Latvian IT company that was merged into Exigen Latvia.
A team of four Exigen consultants, including the "Godfather" of the Latvian IT industry, Janis Gobins, are doing a pre-feasibilty study (or some such thing) for the Australian utility, which is owned by the state of New South Wales.
The anticipated deal could be signed in 2006 (state-owned bureaucracies take their time) and will be worth several million AUD for Exigen. Most of the work of redesigning the utility's business processes will be done in Latvia.
Besides Gobins, there are two Exigen people from the US and one from Australia working on getting the deal. Gobins, the Latvian-American founder of German-based Infologistik in the late 1980s, was one of the first West European companies to employ Latvian systems analysis and programming talent starting around 1989.
From these beginnings sprang SWH Technologies, the Latvian IT company that was merged into Exigen Latvia.
Monday, August 08, 2005
Baltkom TV to offer HD channel in the fall
Baltkom TV, Latvia's largest cable TV operator, says it will experimentally offer a high-definition television channel on its digital cable network, as well as double the number of channels to more than 100.
The HDTV programming will be taken from Euro1080. The company will also offer an interactive TV guide (interactive, probably, in the sense that the de-coder will open program schedules for each digital channel on demand).
On the telecoms side, Baltkom's director-general Peteris Smidre says that the optical cable to Sweden he bought last year (bailing out the ill-fated Foco 16 project run by a former head of Stockholm's Stokab and some Russian entrepreneurs who turned out to be, well, worth the Powerpoint slides their plans were printed on :) ) now carries around 10 to 15 % of the data traffic "in that direction". It would seem that the cable is at least partly or wholly paying for itself. Prices, however, are going down.
Smidre isn't disturbed by Lattelekom's plans to implement IPTV. He sees these as potentially very expensive, since a basic 512 kbps DSL internet connection costs more per month (around LVl 15) than Baltkom's planned premium digital service at LVL 13.50 per month. It will take a lot more than 512 kbps to the home to carry IPTV, Smidre says, so Lattelekom will essentially have to dump prices on its DSL service.
Rival cable operators note that Smidre's 100 channels aren't a competitive threat, since they believe they will be mostly free to air stuff that nobody wants to watch. However, my sources close to Baltkom say there will be some MTV digital and Baltkom's own movie channels.
Baltkom is also thinking of offering some kind of "pay by the day" deal, like in hotels, where a set program of very new movies (and, at hotels, erotica) can be had for a flat daily fee. The trouble is, this costs around GBP 10 upwards, say, in Britain, where a DVD with just one film (not the five or six movies plus hours of sexual acrobatics you could see if you sat and watched all day) costs about the same - say GBP 12. In Latvia, a DVD from "the guy around the corner" -- the one whom you ask very few questions – costs around LVL 3 to LVL 5 at most.
Which reminds me, every since my day job office moved from the Press Building in Riga, we are no longer visited by a young man I started calling the baraholschik. This is a phonetic rendering of a Slavic-sounding word taken from a dictionary of 1930s Latvian criminal slang (reprinted in a history of the Latvian police). A baraholschik is one who sells things that do not belong to him, usually of trashy quality. Our baraholschik was not so bad, just I had one DVD from him that "ended" when a tall black man got up in front of the image and put on his hat (apparently, this lap-camera work was done in the US or Britain, where you see moviegoers of various races).
The HDTV programming will be taken from Euro1080. The company will also offer an interactive TV guide (interactive, probably, in the sense that the de-coder will open program schedules for each digital channel on demand).
On the telecoms side, Baltkom's director-general Peteris Smidre says that the optical cable to Sweden he bought last year (bailing out the ill-fated Foco 16 project run by a former head of Stockholm's Stokab and some Russian entrepreneurs who turned out to be, well, worth the Powerpoint slides their plans were printed on :) ) now carries around 10 to 15 % of the data traffic "in that direction". It would seem that the cable is at least partly or wholly paying for itself. Prices, however, are going down.
Smidre isn't disturbed by Lattelekom's plans to implement IPTV. He sees these as potentially very expensive, since a basic 512 kbps DSL internet connection costs more per month (around LVl 15) than Baltkom's planned premium digital service at LVL 13.50 per month. It will take a lot more than 512 kbps to the home to carry IPTV, Smidre says, so Lattelekom will essentially have to dump prices on its DSL service.
Rival cable operators note that Smidre's 100 channels aren't a competitive threat, since they believe they will be mostly free to air stuff that nobody wants to watch. However, my sources close to Baltkom say there will be some MTV digital and Baltkom's own movie channels.
Baltkom is also thinking of offering some kind of "pay by the day" deal, like in hotels, where a set program of very new movies (and, at hotels, erotica) can be had for a flat daily fee. The trouble is, this costs around GBP 10 upwards, say, in Britain, where a DVD with just one film (not the five or six movies plus hours of sexual acrobatics you could see if you sat and watched all day) costs about the same - say GBP 12. In Latvia, a DVD from "the guy around the corner" -- the one whom you ask very few questions – costs around LVL 3 to LVL 5 at most.
Which reminds me, every since my day job office moved from the Press Building in Riga, we are no longer visited by a young man I started calling the baraholschik. This is a phonetic rendering of a Slavic-sounding word taken from a dictionary of 1930s Latvian criminal slang (reprinted in a history of the Latvian police). A baraholschik is one who sells things that do not belong to him, usually of trashy quality. Our baraholschik was not so bad, just I had one DVD from him that "ended" when a tall black man got up in front of the image and put on his hat (apparently, this lap-camera work was done in the US or Britain, where you see moviegoers of various races).
Playing the numbers*
Well, it looks like the Ministry of Transport will be looking at three schemes to free up more numbers for the "ravenous" mobile sector. A working group on numbering resources has come ip with a draft conceptual document (Latvians love "concepts" as the start of a long and twisted path to actually solving a problem :)) that offers three alternatives.
In short, alternative 1 will provide 400 000 numbers by the end of the year, it involves jiggering two domestic area code districts and changing 300 000 allocated mobile numbers (that have not yet been sold to customers). However, the 400 000 is all that will be available until a transition to eight digits starts in 2007. This is sorta good news for Bite Latvija, though not necessarily...
The other two alternatives will free up 500 000 numbers in early 2006, using different schemes for reassigning and freeing up national area codes (more or less the scheme proposed by Lattelekom).One scheme forsees a transition to eight digits in 2008, the other -- a decision whether to go to eight digits to be made in 2008.
*for non-native, non-American readers, the "numbers" is a kind of illegal lottery involving a lucky number played in ethnic (often black) neighborhoods in the US (though not by Latvian-Americans).
If the blogging has been a little thin and rushed lately, it is because I have had lots to do-- an extra translation project for my day job -- doing an English news service--plus I am still looking for other "arrangements" regarding this day job (see earlier posts on various problems). So if anyone needs a multilingual business writer (anywhere in the world, Latvia or Sweden preferred), just let me know. BTW, I am good at pretending to know something about telecoms.
In short, alternative 1 will provide 400 000 numbers by the end of the year, it involves jiggering two domestic area code districts and changing 300 000 allocated mobile numbers (that have not yet been sold to customers). However, the 400 000 is all that will be available until a transition to eight digits starts in 2007. This is sorta good news for Bite Latvija, though not necessarily...
The other two alternatives will free up 500 000 numbers in early 2006, using different schemes for reassigning and freeing up national area codes (more or less the scheme proposed by Lattelekom).One scheme forsees a transition to eight digits in 2008, the other -- a decision whether to go to eight digits to be made in 2008.
*for non-native, non-American readers, the "numbers" is a kind of illegal lottery involving a lucky number played in ethnic (often black) neighborhoods in the US (though not by Latvian-Americans).
If the blogging has been a little thin and rushed lately, it is because I have had lots to do-- an extra translation project for my day job -- doing an English news service--plus I am still looking for other "arrangements" regarding this day job (see earlier posts on various problems). So if anyone needs a multilingual business writer (anywhere in the world, Latvia or Sweden preferred), just let me know. BTW, I am good at pretending to know something about telecoms.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Slesers honey for the "Bee" (Bite)
Minister of Transport Ainars Slesers, after meeting with top management of Bite Latvija and its parent company, Denmark's TDC Group, says he will urge Lattelekom and appropriate government agencies to free up 200 000 additional numbers by the end of the year.
This is an apparent response to Bite Latvija's main complaint, that it cannot start with just 100 000 allocated numbers. Presently, there are no extra numbers left.
This would be fine and good, except Lattelekom, which has presented a medium-term scheme to free up 2.5 million numbers by reducing the number of local area codes in Latvia (many have been allocated 100 000 numbers for only a few thousand actual rural users), says there is no way it can free the additional numbers by year end. The process itself takes at least six months and cannot be done without a government-approved scheme. After all, the numbers are given in trust to operators and aren't really their property to dispose of as will. In other words, it would be easier for Lattelekom to give away used desks for Bite's Latvian offices than to supply it with the numbers it needs.
Another semi-wacko looking document has appeared on the distribution of numbering resources. It makes the Electronic Communications Directorate (ESD) the custodian of the numbers, handing them out as instructed by the Public Utilities Regulary Commission. So far. the rules are just a set of operating instructions for warehousemen and the shipping room. The shipping room just ships what it is told to and makes no decisions as to where, how much and why.
However, there is an interesting reference to reserving number resources in case of tenders or auctions. This sounds at first glance like the regulator will be asked to auction off numbers in the future, a development that will not please operators. However, the man in charge of the Electronic Communications unit at the regulator (while Andris Virtmanis is vacationing) says there are no plans to auction number resources and the rules are aimed at some future tender or auction of yet another, say, mobile operator licence (number four or five, depending how you count :)).
So may it be, but in view of the hostile footsie*being played between the Ministry of Transport and the regulator, it is not unthinkable that someone has written the draft rules with some kind of auction of numbers in 10 000 or 100 000 lots in mind, and let the regulator do it. This will please operators to no end. They are already appalled by plans to charge an annual fee for use of numbering resources and for frequences, according to formulae that only a doctor of mathematics on mushrooms can understand.
*for the native Latvian reader, kicking or rubbing someone's foot under the table, often, though not always a sign of affection. Not in this case.
This is an apparent response to Bite Latvija's main complaint, that it cannot start with just 100 000 allocated numbers. Presently, there are no extra numbers left.
This would be fine and good, except Lattelekom, which has presented a medium-term scheme to free up 2.5 million numbers by reducing the number of local area codes in Latvia (many have been allocated 100 000 numbers for only a few thousand actual rural users), says there is no way it can free the additional numbers by year end. The process itself takes at least six months and cannot be done without a government-approved scheme. After all, the numbers are given in trust to operators and aren't really their property to dispose of as will. In other words, it would be easier for Lattelekom to give away used desks for Bite's Latvian offices than to supply it with the numbers it needs.
Another semi-wacko looking document has appeared on the distribution of numbering resources. It makes the Electronic Communications Directorate (ESD) the custodian of the numbers, handing them out as instructed by the Public Utilities Regulary Commission. So far. the rules are just a set of operating instructions for warehousemen and the shipping room. The shipping room just ships what it is told to and makes no decisions as to where, how much and why.
However, there is an interesting reference to reserving number resources in case of tenders or auctions. This sounds at first glance like the regulator will be asked to auction off numbers in the future, a development that will not please operators. However, the man in charge of the Electronic Communications unit at the regulator (while Andris Virtmanis is vacationing) says there are no plans to auction number resources and the rules are aimed at some future tender or auction of yet another, say, mobile operator licence (number four or five, depending how you count :)).
So may it be, but in view of the hostile footsie*being played between the Ministry of Transport and the regulator, it is not unthinkable that someone has written the draft rules with some kind of auction of numbers in 10 000 or 100 000 lots in mind, and let the regulator do it. This will please operators to no end. They are already appalled by plans to charge an annual fee for use of numbering resources and for frequences, according to formulae that only a doctor of mathematics on mushrooms can understand.
*for the native Latvian reader, kicking or rubbing someone's foot under the table, often, though not always a sign of affection. Not in this case.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Bite brings in the heavy artillery
Bite Latvija made its first official call in Riga when Henning Dyremose, the president and CEO of parent company TDC Group called a Lithuanian engineer responsible for setting up the company's first base stations in Daugavpils.
PR aside, Dyremose was in Latvia to push a few priorities, most notably, more number for Bite Latvija, which only has 100 000, as well as speedy interconnects with rivals Latvian Mobile Telephone and Tele 2. The TDC head honcho should, by now, have met with Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis and Ayatollah of Transport Ainars Slesers (OK, I call him that for the last time...:)) as well as Inna Steinbuka of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission.
Dyremose will be prodding Steinbuka to press Tele2 and LMT to open their networks to national roaming by Bite Latvija until it builds out its network, and to keep the arrangement in place in thinly-settled places where it makes no sense to build three or four base-station towers.
Bite Group head Jesper Thiell Eriksen also said that when Bite Latvija launches commercial services, it will immediately offer EDGE mobile internet. While the launch will start with a pre-paid card sale, this is a signal that a flat-rate, business mobile internet package is not far down the path. It looks like we will see Bite on the market in a couple of months at most, although both Eriksen and Dyremose were absolutely closed-mouthed on any possible launch dates. Competition, you know.
I am now off to do an interview with Henning Dyremose for my day job.
PR aside, Dyremose was in Latvia to push a few priorities, most notably, more number for Bite Latvija, which only has 100 000, as well as speedy interconnects with rivals Latvian Mobile Telephone and Tele 2. The TDC head honcho should, by now, have met with Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis and Ayatollah of Transport Ainars Slesers (OK, I call him that for the last time...:)) as well as Inna Steinbuka of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission.
Dyremose will be prodding Steinbuka to press Tele2 and LMT to open their networks to national roaming by Bite Latvija until it builds out its network, and to keep the arrangement in place in thinly-settled places where it makes no sense to build three or four base-station towers.
Bite Group head Jesper Thiell Eriksen also said that when Bite Latvija launches commercial services, it will immediately offer EDGE mobile internet. While the launch will start with a pre-paid card sale, this is a signal that a flat-rate, business mobile internet package is not far down the path. It looks like we will see Bite on the market in a couple of months at most, although both Eriksen and Dyremose were absolutely closed-mouthed on any possible launch dates. Competition, you know.
I am now off to do an interview with Henning Dyremose for my day job.
Monday, August 01, 2005
A bank-owned Latvian MVNO??
My sources tell me that Hansabanka, the Latvian commercial bank owned by Sweden's Swedbank (called Föreningssparbanken in Swedish to twist even the tongues of the natives), has brainstormed the idea of becoming an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator, had to look it up myself ;)). Hansabanka is trying to stay ahead of the curve on all kinds of customer operated, distance services (internet, mobile bank, etc.). Looking ahead to the day when mobiles will serve as payment cards (that is, the payment card will be a function of the SIM card), it has occured to some people at Hansabanka that one might as well provide the whole service and sell a bank-branded prepaid/payment card hybrid. Or maybe skip the prepaid, just set a limit on what can be spend calling on the phone, and authorize other mobile payments via the SIM card.
I think it fits in with a vision I had of when the mobile phone may partly replace the laptop once public or low-cost rental docks/screens/keyboards are available. Think of it, you check into a hotel and simply pop your superphone 2007 (or whenever) into a socket, and the monitor lights up. You have your 60 Gbs of data and applications on the phone, and you automatically get debited (or you get it as an amenity) for superfast internet, etc.
All this about Hansbanka is pure conjecture, any idea of tacking on an MVNO to the mobile payment services was just an idea floating about that makes certain logical sense.
Zetcom launches granny & kiddie card
Hello! Zetcom, the Latvian MVNO has launched a new low-cost prepaid called, yes, Hello! that will retail for LVL 1 and include a magnetic stripe card with the kit (which includes a SIM card). You use the card at authorised retailers, swipe it and pay in as much money as you want to increase the calling credit. Notification of the increae comes almost instantly by SMS. LVL 1 also buys exactlty LVL 1 in calls, at a rate of LVL 0.064 per minute to other Hello! customers and LVL 0.12 to other services. Calling outside of Latvia is at Amigo rates, and there is no roaming or GPRS. It is very much a no frills card and is expected not to cannibalize the Amigo card very much.
Zetcom board chairman Egils Trumpe agreed that the card was a product "aimed at grannies and their grandchildren" or kids of pre-teen age.
I think it fits in with a vision I had of when the mobile phone may partly replace the laptop once public or low-cost rental docks/screens/keyboards are available. Think of it, you check into a hotel and simply pop your superphone 2007 (or whenever) into a socket, and the monitor lights up. You have your 60 Gbs of data and applications on the phone, and you automatically get debited (or you get it as an amenity) for superfast internet, etc.
All this about Hansbanka is pure conjecture, any idea of tacking on an MVNO to the mobile payment services was just an idea floating about that makes certain logical sense.
Zetcom launches granny & kiddie card
Hello! Zetcom, the Latvian MVNO has launched a new low-cost prepaid called, yes, Hello! that will retail for LVL 1 and include a magnetic stripe card with the kit (which includes a SIM card). You use the card at authorised retailers, swipe it and pay in as much money as you want to increase the calling credit. Notification of the increae comes almost instantly by SMS. LVL 1 also buys exactlty LVL 1 in calls, at a rate of LVL 0.064 per minute to other Hello! customers and LVL 0.12 to other services. Calling outside of Latvia is at Amigo rates, and there is no roaming or GPRS. It is very much a no frills card and is expected not to cannibalize the Amigo card very much.
Zetcom board chairman Egils Trumpe agreed that the card was a product "aimed at grannies and their grandchildren" or kids of pre-teen age.
Router madness at Latnet explained?
Although things are running smoothly and ruffled customers have been soothed, some questions remain about the incident that took down a significant part of the Latvian ISP Latnet Serviss on July 11. My sources in the business say they don't really believe the story of the "mad router" that Latnet gave as an explanation.
Now I have found something on Wired News that people smarter than I reading this blog (I hope there are smarter people out there :) ) can evaluate for themselves and consider what may really have happened with Latnet's router of a well-known but unnamed brand :);
Here is the link: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,68365,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
Otherwise I'm waiting out the summer doldrums.
Now I have found something on Wired News that people smarter than I reading this blog (I hope there are smarter people out there :) ) can evaluate for themselves and consider what may really have happened with Latnet's router of a well-known but unnamed brand :);
Here is the link: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,68365,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
Otherwise I'm waiting out the summer doldrums.
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Ministry of Transport writes whatever about broadband
The Ministry of Transport has published a draft plan for bringing broadband services to "geographically remote" areas by 2008 using European Union Regional Development Funds in the amount of around LVL 4.3 million. The total cost of the project will be above LVL 6 million.
The whole document is both interesting and strange. It discusses the problem of defining broadband and settles for it being an "always on" connection to the internet, without defining the speed (elsewhere, the report notes, broadband starts at 2 Mbps). It also notes that the main reason for slow broadband take-up in Latvia is limited buying power and little cost/benefit from having a broadband line. Rural residents can't save travel costs and file documents with national and municipal authorities. The only possible savings is in using the internet for making voice calls abroad. The problem of poverty, to be sure, cannot be solved by the MoT alone and will probably not change by 2008.
Then the report goes on to take a cursory look at various broadband technologies and dwells at some length on power line communications (PCL), or running the internet on electrical power grids, It appears that this is the technology the MoT thinks will solve the problem of broadband access in the "geographically remote areas" (not defined in the document)/
However, Latvenergo, the only supplier of rural electricity has serious doubts that this will work. For one thing, there would have to be repeaters hung on long stretches of medium-voltage transmission lines and step-down transformers (from 20 kilovolts to 220 volts to power these.) Ovum analyst Mark Main also told this blogger (who was wearing his reporter hat at the time) that PCL was a difficult and dodging technology at best. It had been tried and abandoned by a power utility in Scotland.
The MoT mentions, in passing, that WiMAX technology with a radius for high-speed internet of around 10 kilometers, is also under development.
In short, there is no clear idea of how to bring fast, always on internet to the shack in the woods, and a better defined idea that whoever lives in the shack couldn't afford it or can't be persuaded of it's advantages, even if it was there.
If you ask me, I would look to Lattelekom's efforts to get some cdma450 spectrum (or cooperate with Triatel) to get wireless voice and internet to at least some rural residents who don't have it. Further down the road, there's WIMAX, maybe..
The whole document is both interesting and strange. It discusses the problem of defining broadband and settles for it being an "always on" connection to the internet, without defining the speed (elsewhere, the report notes, broadband starts at 2 Mbps). It also notes that the main reason for slow broadband take-up in Latvia is limited buying power and little cost/benefit from having a broadband line. Rural residents can't save travel costs and file documents with national and municipal authorities. The only possible savings is in using the internet for making voice calls abroad. The problem of poverty, to be sure, cannot be solved by the MoT alone and will probably not change by 2008.
Then the report goes on to take a cursory look at various broadband technologies and dwells at some length on power line communications (PCL), or running the internet on electrical power grids, It appears that this is the technology the MoT thinks will solve the problem of broadband access in the "geographically remote areas" (not defined in the document)/
However, Latvenergo, the only supplier of rural electricity has serious doubts that this will work. For one thing, there would have to be repeaters hung on long stretches of medium-voltage transmission lines and step-down transformers (from 20 kilovolts to 220 volts to power these.) Ovum analyst Mark Main also told this blogger (who was wearing his reporter hat at the time) that PCL was a difficult and dodging technology at best. It had been tried and abandoned by a power utility in Scotland.
The MoT mentions, in passing, that WiMAX technology with a radius for high-speed internet of around 10 kilometers, is also under development.
In short, there is no clear idea of how to bring fast, always on internet to the shack in the woods, and a better defined idea that whoever lives in the shack couldn't afford it or can't be persuaded of it's advantages, even if it was there.
If you ask me, I would look to Lattelekom's efforts to get some cdma450 spectrum (or cooperate with Triatel) to get wireless voice and internet to at least some rural residents who don't have it. Further down the road, there's WIMAX, maybe..
Monday, July 25, 2005
Happy dark secrets at Triatel
China's HuaWei, the maker of telecommunications systems, has officially registered a Latvian subsidiary and confirmed to this blogger that it is building out Triatel's cdma 450 network. More details were not provided, but it would appear that this could be a deal worth tens of millions of dollars.
The strange thing is that Triatel (actually, the deal was probably signed by one of the partners behind the brand, Telekom Baltija) is keeping this fact under wraps. It actually is good news - the company is getting, in all probability, a rather low-cost deal. As far as quality goes, this is a showcase project (though small), and HuaWei will probably do its best in this regard. It must also be remembered that this is a project in Ericsson and Nokia's back yard.
C'mon Mihail Zotov, maybe it is time to make it official that you like Chinese!
Yet another matter, that should perhaps be kept confidential, is that Lattelekom and Triatel are apparently playing some friendly footsie* with regard to cooperation in digitizing the remaining rural network. This means both companies would cooperate on fixed wireless services and wireless internet. They would, at the least, share infrastructure, making it easier for Triatel to afford its HuaWei equipment.
Long term readers of the blog will know that these issues have been discussed earlier here.
*footsie -- a secret expression of affection by rubbing another person's foot with one's own foot under the table.
The strange thing is that Triatel (actually, the deal was probably signed by one of the partners behind the brand, Telekom Baltija) is keeping this fact under wraps. It actually is good news - the company is getting, in all probability, a rather low-cost deal. As far as quality goes, this is a showcase project (though small), and HuaWei will probably do its best in this regard. It must also be remembered that this is a project in Ericsson and Nokia's back yard.
C'mon Mihail Zotov, maybe it is time to make it official that you like Chinese!
Yet another matter, that should perhaps be kept confidential, is that Lattelekom and Triatel are apparently playing some friendly footsie* with regard to cooperation in digitizing the remaining rural network. This means both companies would cooperate on fixed wireless services and wireless internet. They would, at the least, share infrastructure, making it easier for Triatel to afford its HuaWei equipment.
Long term readers of the blog will know that these issues have been discussed earlier here.
*footsie -- a secret expression of affection by rubbing another person's foot with one's own foot under the table.
Friday, July 22, 2005
The Ayotollah of Transport, a short note
Only in Latvia can the Minister of Transport, Ainars Slesers, whose mandate has little or nothing to do with public order in municipalities or government policy on sexual minorities, pull off such a fuckwitted move as endorsing the Riga city manager's ban on a previously permitted gay and lesbian parade in the Riga Old Town scheduled for Saturday, July 23. Slesers says he is pleased with the ban and links it to an effort to prevent Latvia from being a destination for "sex tourism" and "homosexual recreation" - whatever the latter means. I suspect it means no gays playing golf at Ozo's Golf Course? No gay anglers fishing in the Gauja? What, exactly?
Besides roads and telecommunications, the Ministry has some kind of mandate to improve tourism to Latvia, and Slesers has done his part by encourage low-cost airlines and the like. But now it seems, according to his statement, that Ryanair and Easyjet should only be flying heterosexual tourists who intend to make pilgrimages to Aglona and go birdwatching in Latvian marshes?
I do not doubt that Ainars Slesers in his private is a good and pious traditional family man and one should respect these virtues. It is quite another thing when he makes statements that shift Latvia's position closer to Iran than to Europe on the government attitude scale. From minister he has become the Ayotollah of Transport.
The 10 % of the population being gay rule-of-thumb applies to the telecommunications and IT field as well, and Slesers is essentially saying that gay specialists, whose sexual orientation has nothing to do with their technical, financial, marketing or other skills, should be warned that Latvia is a prejudiced and homophobic country (and racist, to boot, the attitudes go hand in hand).
This is not a social comment or political blog, but this time I make an exception.
Besides roads and telecommunications, the Ministry has some kind of mandate to improve tourism to Latvia, and Slesers has done his part by encourage low-cost airlines and the like. But now it seems, according to his statement, that Ryanair and Easyjet should only be flying heterosexual tourists who intend to make pilgrimages to Aglona and go birdwatching in Latvian marshes?
I do not doubt that Ainars Slesers in his private is a good and pious traditional family man and one should respect these virtues. It is quite another thing when he makes statements that shift Latvia's position closer to Iran than to Europe on the government attitude scale. From minister he has become the Ayotollah of Transport.
The 10 % of the population being gay rule-of-thumb applies to the telecommunications and IT field as well, and Slesers is essentially saying that gay specialists, whose sexual orientation has nothing to do with their technical, financial, marketing or other skills, should be warned that Latvia is a prejudiced and homophobic country (and racist, to boot, the attitudes go hand in hand).
This is not a social comment or political blog, but this time I make an exception.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
TeliaSonera : Looking to be a wholly mobile mother...
It now looks like the main thrust of TeliaSonera's offer to start talks with the Latvian government on privatizing the state shares in fixed line operator Lattelekom (51 %) and mobile operator Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) is to get ahold of at least (but necessarily)LMT. Indeed, this blogger has seen a letter from the Latvian Competition Council, giving, on April 15, a kind of advisory opinion suggesting that any deal giving both the fixed and mobile operators to the same owner would likely be forbidden. The letter, written to the Latvian Privatization Agency (LPA), urges the LPA to draw up political rules that would discourage such a sale to the same owner.
TeliaSonera keeps pretty good tabs on what is happening in Latvia, it paid several low key visits to see Minister of Economics Krisjanis Karins and others, so it must have known about the letter. Karins, in an amusing and entertaining debate with Minister of Transport Ainars Slesers at Tuesday's Cabinet meeting, mentioned in passing that there could be trouble with the Competition Council.
TeliaSonera Denmark, Norway and Baltic States president Kenneth Karlberg, said that it was difficult to concieve of the company's expanding "Nordic-Baltic" home market without a strong mobile services element. By implication, it is less difficult to concieve of the market without a fixed operator, at least in Latvia. Mobile is "a basic service" of the future (and the future is now in Sweden, where nobody - and I've seen it in Kenneth's headquarters building – has a fixed line desktop phone). So it looks like there will be no crying and gnashing of teeth if Lattelekom has to be tossed to...whomever.
To be sure, the deal would have to, at best, extract the 23 % share of LMT from the fixed operator's clutches. Those would not be very tight clutches, because I think Lattelekom has a mobile strategy of its own. Remembering now that I read a hint of movement on the privatization issue in TeliaSonera honcho Erik Hallberg's smile at a wine-drinking event in London a couple of months ago, but apparently didn't blog anything to that effect. Therefore I now venture this wild hallucination:
I don't exclude that Lattelekom, left to its own devices (perhaps) and maybe, just maybe lucky not to be in the 100 % clutches of a rich but timid fullmother, will move on wireless communications in several ways. First, it will make all of its extensive WiFi network WiFi phone-friendly to the max. Then it will saturate some urban areas (entire rural towns, too) with WiMax or something like it , where these phones also work. Finally, it may do something outrageous - especially if fully privatized, such as buy Triatel. It has whatever is currently unspent of LVL 30 million earmarked for "digitizing" the remaining 10 %, shacks-in-the-woods part of the network. Why not build on a good thing and at least partner with the cdma450 operator, build out the net with some of this coverage and get a mobile service to boot? As Swiss Army knife GSM/UMTS/WiFi/CDMA phones come on the market, Lattelekom can cover its GSM side by partnering, say, with Bite Latvija, which says it will gladly host virtual operators. Bite can then share some of the Triatel/Lattelekom base station towers and the like. UMTS possibilities also open up with Bite, plus wireless internet, a service the company offers in Lithuania.
To take the fantasy even further, why not have TDC of Denmark buy Lattelekom as a, say, Christmas 2006 present for the Bite Group? In one swoop, you get the Latvian fixed network, the mobile business (though only number 3/4), perhaps the Triatel business, internet television and all kinds of goodies. Plus you have Citrus Solutions and C1 and the somewhat forgotten Sakaru Sistemas, which does IT stuff.
I don't smoke. I would like to, but no time to go for a weekend in Amsterdam :). This all real and possible, if you ask me.
TeliaSonera keeps pretty good tabs on what is happening in Latvia, it paid several low key visits to see Minister of Economics Krisjanis Karins and others, so it must have known about the letter. Karins, in an amusing and entertaining debate with Minister of Transport Ainars Slesers at Tuesday's Cabinet meeting, mentioned in passing that there could be trouble with the Competition Council.
TeliaSonera Denmark, Norway and Baltic States president Kenneth Karlberg, said that it was difficult to concieve of the company's expanding "Nordic-Baltic" home market without a strong mobile services element. By implication, it is less difficult to concieve of the market without a fixed operator, at least in Latvia. Mobile is "a basic service" of the future (and the future is now in Sweden, where nobody - and I've seen it in Kenneth's headquarters building – has a fixed line desktop phone). So it looks like there will be no crying and gnashing of teeth if Lattelekom has to be tossed to...whomever.
To be sure, the deal would have to, at best, extract the 23 % share of LMT from the fixed operator's clutches. Those would not be very tight clutches, because I think Lattelekom has a mobile strategy of its own. Remembering now that I read a hint of movement on the privatization issue in TeliaSonera honcho Erik Hallberg's smile at a wine-drinking event in London a couple of months ago, but apparently didn't blog anything to that effect. Therefore I now venture this wild hallucination:
I don't exclude that Lattelekom, left to its own devices (perhaps) and maybe, just maybe lucky not to be in the 100 % clutches of a rich but timid fullmother, will move on wireless communications in several ways. First, it will make all of its extensive WiFi network WiFi phone-friendly to the max. Then it will saturate some urban areas (entire rural towns, too) with WiMax or something like it , where these phones also work. Finally, it may do something outrageous - especially if fully privatized, such as buy Triatel. It has whatever is currently unspent of LVL 30 million earmarked for "digitizing" the remaining 10 %, shacks-in-the-woods part of the network. Why not build on a good thing and at least partner with the cdma450 operator, build out the net with some of this coverage and get a mobile service to boot? As Swiss Army knife GSM/UMTS/WiFi/CDMA phones come on the market, Lattelekom can cover its GSM side by partnering, say, with Bite Latvija, which says it will gladly host virtual operators. Bite can then share some of the Triatel/Lattelekom base station towers and the like. UMTS possibilities also open up with Bite, plus wireless internet, a service the company offers in Lithuania.
To take the fantasy even further, why not have TDC of Denmark buy Lattelekom as a, say, Christmas 2006 present for the Bite Group? In one swoop, you get the Latvian fixed network, the mobile business (though only number 3/4), perhaps the Triatel business, internet television and all kinds of goodies. Plus you have Citrus Solutions and C1 and the somewhat forgotten Sakaru Sistemas, which does IT stuff.
I don't smoke. I would like to, but no time to go for a weekend in Amsterdam :). This all real and possible, if you ask me.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Government open to Lattelekom, LMT privatization
Latvian prime minister Aigars Kalvitis says he has received a proposal from TeliaSonera to privatize the remaining government shares in fixed network operator Lattelekom and Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and will present it to Tuesday's meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers, the news agency LETA reports.
The government current owns 51 % of Lattelekom and 28 % of LMT (23 % is owned by Lattelekom, 49 % by TeliaSonera).
Kalvitis says he will propose forming a working group to negotiate the possible terms of the sale. TeliaSonera, otherwise known as Lattelekom's half-mother, has been saying for a couple of years that it would like to take 100 % of both operators.
This is a turnaround from the policy of the previous government of Indulis Emsis, who put the issue of privatization on ice. Kalvitis' statement can be seen as a breakthrough. It is know that earlier, as Minister of Economics in a previous government, Kalvitis was open to doing some kind of deal with TeliaSonera to settle the then-ongoing arbitration dispute.
More on this later and tommorrow.
The government current owns 51 % of Lattelekom and 28 % of LMT (23 % is owned by Lattelekom, 49 % by TeliaSonera).
Kalvitis says he will propose forming a working group to negotiate the possible terms of the sale. TeliaSonera, otherwise known as Lattelekom's half-mother, has been saying for a couple of years that it would like to take 100 % of both operators.
This is a turnaround from the policy of the previous government of Indulis Emsis, who put the issue of privatization on ice. Kalvitis' statement can be seen as a breakthrough. It is know that earlier, as Minister of Economics in a previous government, Kalvitis was open to doing some kind of deal with TeliaSonera to settle the then-ongoing arbitration dispute.
More on this later and tommorrow.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Warhol fame coming for this blog :)
Andy Warhol said everyone should be famous for 15 minutes, and in Latvia, at least, I may get my quarter hour when the national daily Diena publishes a story about blogging (I, feeding the online news of an unnameable employer with whom I am in some black pit of bad relations, have already written about v-logging, but, what the heck...). It appears I will be featured as Latvia's only blogger and therefore join an esteemed group of "onlys" --Professor Juris Bojars, Latvia's only admitted KGB agent, and my fellow journalist, Karlis Streips, Latvia's only admitted gay person. So watch Diena on Monday for my brief moment of fame and glory :).
Bill to meet Latvian IT honchos
I learned today that Microsoft is organizing a seminar in Seattle August 11-12 for just about everyone who is anyone in the Latvian IT community. It may be opened by Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis, who will be in the US at the same time. Your blogger, despite being in some kind of ill-defined doghouse* with his unnamed employers(or rather, ultimate supervisor), hopes to hitch a ride to this get-together and perhaps get an interview with Bill Gates.
*for non-native English speakers, this means to be held in some kind of disrepute, to be consider a renegade, to be held in contempt.
*for non-native English speakers, this means to be held in some kind of disrepute, to be consider a renegade, to be held in contempt.
The fruit, the non-explosive, and what about Mom?
Lattelekom presented its, as one would say in several European languages, daughter companies Citrus Solutions and the business process outsourcing company C1 (formally know as Contact Center 118, the call center and other customer contact services outfit). I already commented on Citrus' name, but actually, it is quite appropriate, when explained in terms of citrus trees blooming, blossoms, fresh fruit and all that. C1 has some associations also, like Call One, or number one or whatever. My first thought, however, was of the military plastic explosive C4. That is why this blog is an outlet for my more perverse associations...:).
However, the most interesting things that could be heard around and about today's (July 14) debutante presentation of both daughters was what Mom (Lattelekom) was going to do now that these full grown girls were out of the house (alas, Verdi, the IT daughter, is still chained in the attic, what's left of her, and we don't talk about that...).
Mom, it would seem, is getting a bit dowdy, fixed voice and just a (growing) sprig of DSL in her hair to remind us that there is still life in the girl. Relations with cousin Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) are still a bit too distant to open shop together (selling fixed and mobile under one roof, as many other operators do around the world). So what to do now that the girls are grown up? Wait, for one thing...
Wait for WiFi/Mobile convergence and throw in, possibly, WiMax and people will suddenly find that Lattelekom is right there on their WiFi/WiMax equipped mobiles (I think Nokia has a few, the Communicators). Also, expect Mom to become a major TV and entertainment platform and push the conversion of more and more ordinary fixed lines to DSL, with higher speeds for lower prices (the only game in town, although once we all become accustomed to broadband being as ubiquitous as electricity, there won't be room for many Latnet-style SNAFUs/situation normal, all fucked up, for my Latvian readers/, never mind the breakdowns a few years ago that Lattelekom's Apollo endured with its international lines due to fuckwit fishermen off the Swedish coast, etc.). So that's my take on it...tired, end of a busy day.
However, the most interesting things that could be heard around and about today's (July 14) debutante presentation of both daughters was what Mom (Lattelekom) was going to do now that these full grown girls were out of the house (alas, Verdi, the IT daughter, is still chained in the attic, what's left of her, and we don't talk about that...).
Mom, it would seem, is getting a bit dowdy, fixed voice and just a (growing) sprig of DSL in her hair to remind us that there is still life in the girl. Relations with cousin Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) are still a bit too distant to open shop together (selling fixed and mobile under one roof, as many other operators do around the world). So what to do now that the girls are grown up? Wait, for one thing...
Wait for WiFi/Mobile convergence and throw in, possibly, WiMax and people will suddenly find that Lattelekom is right there on their WiFi/WiMax equipped mobiles (I think Nokia has a few, the Communicators). Also, expect Mom to become a major TV and entertainment platform and push the conversion of more and more ordinary fixed lines to DSL, with higher speeds for lower prices (the only game in town, although once we all become accustomed to broadband being as ubiquitous as electricity, there won't be room for many Latnet-style SNAFUs/situation normal, all fucked up, for my Latvian readers/, never mind the breakdowns a few years ago that Lattelekom's Apollo endured with its international lines due to fuckwit fishermen off the Swedish coast, etc.). So that's my take on it...tired, end of a busy day.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Mad router zaps Latnet
Latnet, a rather popular business internet service provider (ISP), went down because of what amounted to a mad router on Monday. The presumably Cisco device, which also sits on the ISP's alternative international internet connection, went batshit around 8 am Monday and started feeding huge amounts of irrelevant directory information to the other routers in the system. They choked and died. It was also not possible to immediately determine the cause of the failure, and specialists from Latnet, Lattelekom and elsewhere were called in to put a straitjacket on the offending machine and clean up the huge mess it left. Service was restored late in the afternoon.
Among those fubared (f**ked up beyond all repair) by the Latnet fiasco were Latvian TV and Radio, the Customs service (electronic declarations stopped) and several private companies, such as the publishing house Preses Nams.
Latnet apparently isn't insured against beserk routers so may have to pay heavily on a number of service level agreements that it was forced to violate because of the incident. Oddly, not too many affected businesses seem to have taken the natural step of improvising a mobile internet link with a phone and a laptop. Latvian Mobile Telephone (and Tele2's) mobile internet services were unaffected by the Latnet outage (except for the poor suckers who tried to reach a Latnet hosted entity). LMT, at least, did not report any extraordinary GPRS or EDGE useage.
Among those fubared (f**ked up beyond all repair) by the Latnet fiasco were Latvian TV and Radio, the Customs service (electronic declarations stopped) and several private companies, such as the publishing house Preses Nams.
Latnet apparently isn't insured against beserk routers so may have to pay heavily on a number of service level agreements that it was forced to violate because of the incident. Oddly, not too many affected businesses seem to have taken the natural step of improvising a mobile internet link with a phone and a laptop. Latvian Mobile Telephone (and Tele2's) mobile internet services were unaffected by the Latnet outage (except for the poor suckers who tried to reach a Latnet hosted entity). LMT, at least, did not report any extraordinary GPRS or EDGE useage.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Apple Center under way in Riga
My very good sources tell me that an Apple Center, the functional equivalent of an Apple Store (though franchised, not owned by Apple) will open in Riga sometime this fall. It will be operated by Capital, the computer retailer now selling Apple products, such as the Mini and iPod, at a few retail locations and on the internet.
Capital is not ready to make an official announcement because the Apple Center will be at a location presently housing a Capital computer store that will have to be renovated. The building has some historical value and special permits are needed to do the renovation work. Until all is in place and the work starts, the company is holding back on publicity.
Prices at the Apple Center will be around + or - 5 % of Apple product prices in Germany. This blogger noticed that a hefty 17 " iMac with a 250 Gb harddisk went for a bit over LVL 1000, perhaps slightly less than it would cost at the Apple online store in Sweden (www.apple.se).
By no means are Macs cheap, but then again, they are not lunch for the next hour's new attacks on Windows and Wintel systems. My little son's (9 years) Wintel laptop, which he uses recklessly on the internet (even with the Lattelekom Apollo firewall) is a festering zoo of unwanted malware and other critters. When my wife, who really uses it, tries to use it, she finds a mess where Office software doesn't open, etc.
Plus, Wintel is as uncool as you can get...:)
Capital is not ready to make an official announcement because the Apple Center will be at a location presently housing a Capital computer store that will have to be renovated. The building has some historical value and special permits are needed to do the renovation work. Until all is in place and the work starts, the company is holding back on publicity.
Prices at the Apple Center will be around + or - 5 % of Apple product prices in Germany. This blogger noticed that a hefty 17 " iMac with a 250 Gb harddisk went for a bit over LVL 1000, perhaps slightly less than it would cost at the Apple online store in Sweden (www.apple.se).
By no means are Macs cheap, but then again, they are not lunch for the next hour's new attacks on Windows and Wintel systems. My little son's (9 years) Wintel laptop, which he uses recklessly on the internet (even with the Lattelekom Apollo firewall) is a festering zoo of unwanted malware and other critters. When my wife, who really uses it, tries to use it, she finds a mess where Office software doesn't open, etc.
Plus, Wintel is as uncool as you can get...:)
Triatel, Tele2 kept hanging...
The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission didn't put the matter of Triatel (Telekom Baltija's) and Tele2's frequency use renewal on the agenda for this week. This means more nail-biting at Triatel. The regulator says it is waiting for guidelines from the Ministry of Transport (MoT) but my sources at the MoT say the regulator can decide for itself. So we are back to the issue, mentioned a few times earlier on this blog, of a kind of undeclared low-intensity conflict between the two state authorities.
As far as the MoT rules for extending "licences" held by existing operators goes, it appears these will be finished and ready for Cabinet of Minister's approval by the end of the month. But people at the MoT say the regulator doesn't need them. And the regulator can't decide without them, or at least won't decided until it has the rules to use to settle what may be internal differences inside the regulator.
Cheap numbers?
Some good news: the fees being discussed for reserving phone numbers are in the range of LVL 0.12 to LVL 0.28 per number per year, which is less than the LVL 0.50 mentioned earlier. Even the earlier amount was considered to small to have an impact on mobile services costs for consumers. It also appears that fees for frequency use will also be moderate, designed to cover costs (of administration) rather than generate revenues for the state.
Apple Store Riga??
Another bizarre but pleasant rumor is that an Apple Store to sell Macintosh computers and iPods and various peripherals may open in Riga by the end of the summer. That would be cool, but I have to check this one out. The computer retailer Capital is said to be the local partner.
Latvia is not a Mac-friendly place, although this is being typed on a Powerbook G4 by a Mac user since 1985.
As far as the MoT rules for extending "licences" held by existing operators goes, it appears these will be finished and ready for Cabinet of Minister's approval by the end of the month. But people at the MoT say the regulator doesn't need them. And the regulator can't decide without them, or at least won't decided until it has the rules to use to settle what may be internal differences inside the regulator.
Cheap numbers?
Some good news: the fees being discussed for reserving phone numbers are in the range of LVL 0.12 to LVL 0.28 per number per year, which is less than the LVL 0.50 mentioned earlier. Even the earlier amount was considered to small to have an impact on mobile services costs for consumers. It also appears that fees for frequency use will also be moderate, designed to cover costs (of administration) rather than generate revenues for the state.
Apple Store Riga??
Another bizarre but pleasant rumor is that an Apple Store to sell Macintosh computers and iPods and various peripherals may open in Riga by the end of the summer. That would be cool, but I have to check this one out. The computer retailer Capital is said to be the local partner.
Latvia is not a Mac-friendly place, although this is being typed on a Powerbook G4 by a Mac user since 1985.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Triatel, Tele2 on the agenda?
On Friday (July 8), the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission will decide whether to put on the agenda for its July 13 meeting the matters of extending frequency use rights for cdma 450 operator Triatel and GSM/UMTS operator Tele2. In March, it seemed that, lacking some new rules, the frequencies used by both operators would have to be auctioned to the highest bidder. Well, there are no new rules yet, as far as I know, but Triatel, at least, isn't worried.
Top officials say they cannot imagine how the regulator can reject a proposed deal whereby Triatel essentially swaps a 450-453 Mhz band for a 453-457 Mhz band because, it appears, the government's frequency plan simply gave away Triatel's current bandwidth to the government's planned TETRA emergency radio network. Triatel wasn't warned two years ahead as the law states, but, hey, shit happens. So a ruling allowing use of 453-457 Mhz by Telekom Baltija, one of the partners in Triatel (a brand that looks and acts like a company :) ) would be very logical, especially since Radiokoms, the other partner behind Triatel, also uses it.
On the other hand, other sources aren't sure that everyone on the regulator's decision-making council is behind such a simple settlement. Indeed, it appears that Triatel was concerned about the possible outcome even to the extent of considering alternatives, such as suing the Latvian state for ruining its business (something that could be more profitable than running a minority standard mobile operator, considering Latvia's track record in internationa arbitration :) ). Now it appears that this is not a concern, although no one is bending over backwards to say that Triatel didn't consider this at some point.
Latvenergo and cable TV
Voldermars Plavoks, the head of Latvenergo Telekom, confirmed in an e-mail that the state-owned electrical utility had done some research on cable TV, mostly along the lines of offering carrier services to other operators. This could mean that Latvenergo is considering offering its network to operators who don't have coverage in certain areas of Riga. For example, there is only 1/3 of the city territory where the two major operators Baltcom and TeliaMultiCom overlap, hence there is no competition among the biggest players in much of the city. Latvenergo could make it possible for the overlap and the potential competition to be broader. We shall see what happens.
Top officials say they cannot imagine how the regulator can reject a proposed deal whereby Triatel essentially swaps a 450-453 Mhz band for a 453-457 Mhz band because, it appears, the government's frequency plan simply gave away Triatel's current bandwidth to the government's planned TETRA emergency radio network. Triatel wasn't warned two years ahead as the law states, but, hey, shit happens. So a ruling allowing use of 453-457 Mhz by Telekom Baltija, one of the partners in Triatel (a brand that looks and acts like a company :) ) would be very logical, especially since Radiokoms, the other partner behind Triatel, also uses it.
On the other hand, other sources aren't sure that everyone on the regulator's decision-making council is behind such a simple settlement. Indeed, it appears that Triatel was concerned about the possible outcome even to the extent of considering alternatives, such as suing the Latvian state for ruining its business (something that could be more profitable than running a minority standard mobile operator, considering Latvia's track record in internationa arbitration :) ). Now it appears that this is not a concern, although no one is bending over backwards to say that Triatel didn't consider this at some point.
Latvenergo and cable TV
Voldermars Plavoks, the head of Latvenergo Telekom, confirmed in an e-mail that the state-owned electrical utility had done some research on cable TV, mostly along the lines of offering carrier services to other operators. This could mean that Latvenergo is considering offering its network to operators who don't have coverage in certain areas of Riga. For example, there is only 1/3 of the city territory where the two major operators Baltcom and TeliaMultiCom overlap, hence there is no competition among the biggest players in much of the city. Latvenergo could make it possible for the overlap and the potential competition to be broader. We shall see what happens.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Latvenergo checking the cable TV market?
Another weird summer rumor. Latvenergo, the Latvian electric utility, has been doing some market research about cable TV in a Riga neighborhood. This according to a source in Poland at the moment (where all kinds of PR, analyst, and even journalist types--not me-- have flocked to the U2 concert). The idea seems to be that Latvenergo would deliver cable to homes, just exactly how is unclear. For new buildings, Latvenergo has probably discreetly offered to run fiber to the building while installing the necessary electrical connections (this kind of bundling has been criticized by the telecoms and internet companies). For older buildings, it isn't clear what the electric utility could do. Internet over powerlines is a possibility, but can the wires carry enougfh bandwidth for TV?
Another possibility is that Latvenergo is offering some kind of carrier capacity deal to the existing cable operators to give them a larger footprint (connecting via Latvenergo's net to areas where they have no fiber or coax or MMDS wireless service). That would also make some kind of sense.
In the US, a cursory Google shows that there are a number of small and medium-sized towns where the local public utility combines electricity, telephone, internet and cable TV in a kind of quad-play (US baseball fans would call it a home run :) ). So this is quite doable. Will hopefully be talking to the head of Latvenergo Telecom tommorrow, so watch this space.
Another tidbid, this one IT related...
The newsfeed website www.newsisfree.com runs on a solution developed in Latvia by Lursoft, the business information and database company that maintains Latvia's commercial register. They've done some other stuff, too. Interesting. More, maybe. Not like a certain newspaper, whose self-defined target audience is the Latvian Jed Clampett (of the Beverly Hillbillies), Ķencis, is going to be jumping all over this story. So you may read it here first.
Another possibility is that Latvenergo is offering some kind of carrier capacity deal to the existing cable operators to give them a larger footprint (connecting via Latvenergo's net to areas where they have no fiber or coax or MMDS wireless service). That would also make some kind of sense.
In the US, a cursory Google shows that there are a number of small and medium-sized towns where the local public utility combines electricity, telephone, internet and cable TV in a kind of quad-play (US baseball fans would call it a home run :) ). So this is quite doable. Will hopefully be talking to the head of Latvenergo Telecom tommorrow, so watch this space.
Another tidbid, this one IT related...
The newsfeed website www.newsisfree.com runs on a solution developed in Latvia by Lursoft, the business information and database company that maintains Latvia's commercial register. They've done some other stuff, too. Interesting. More, maybe. Not like a certain newspaper, whose self-defined target audience is the Latvian Jed Clampett (of the Beverly Hillbillies), Ķencis, is going to be jumping all over this story. So you may read it here first.
Monday, July 04, 2005
No Berry for the Bee?
One purpose of blogging is to report interesting background chatter that would not normally make it into a real news publication (like the rumor of Lattelekom buying MicroLink that I blogged late last year :)).
This I just heard: someone offered to sell Blackberry e-mail/phone devices to what was then Bite GSM (now the Bite Group), but they apparently considered the idea too expensive and the market too small. The Blackberry is a PDA/e-mail platform that looks like a phone (more or less) and is a craze in some business user circles in the US and some European countries. In fact, there are help groups for Blackberry addicts and the like.
In any event, this was a strange piece of news, because GSM networks here in the Baltic do support e-mail plaforms such as the whatchamacallit from Palm, plus all the e-mail capable Nokia and Ericsson and other phones.
I haven't researched what it is about Blackberry that makes it more difficult to support, unless it is their Enterprise Server platform, which apparently is used to deliver applications over a VPN to the device.
Perhaps some reader could comment this. It would seem Bite (yes, it means bee in Latvian and Lithuanian) would want to support the Blackberry as part of its business services concept. Maybe the price wasn't right from this Blackeberry agent or whatever...
This I just heard: someone offered to sell Blackberry e-mail/phone devices to what was then Bite GSM (now the Bite Group), but they apparently considered the idea too expensive and the market too small. The Blackberry is a PDA/e-mail platform that looks like a phone (more or less) and is a craze in some business user circles in the US and some European countries. In fact, there are help groups for Blackberry addicts and the like.
In any event, this was a strange piece of news, because GSM networks here in the Baltic do support e-mail plaforms such as the whatchamacallit from Palm, plus all the e-mail capable Nokia and Ericsson and other phones.
I haven't researched what it is about Blackberry that makes it more difficult to support, unless it is their Enterprise Server platform, which apparently is used to deliver applications over a VPN to the device.
Perhaps some reader could comment this. It would seem Bite (yes, it means bee in Latvian and Lithuanian) would want to support the Blackberry as part of its business services concept. Maybe the price wasn't right from this Blackeberry agent or whatever...
Friday, July 01, 2005
Tele2 hit with LVL 10 000 fine
Tele2, the Swedish-owned Latvian mobile operator, has been fined LVL 10 000 by the Latvian Public Utilities Regulatory Commission for failing to eliminate discriminatory interconnection tariffs that favor incumbent Lattelekom.
Tele2 says it will appeal the fine ruling, handed down on July 1, to the Administrative Court. The company will argue that it was not given enough time by the regulator to work out a solution. In the three months ending in February of this year, Tele2 failed (hardly to anyone's surprise) to get Lattelekom to back out of a 1999 interconnect agreement that was drafted and signed when market liberalization was still a pipe dream. The other seven agreements with smaller operators were signed in 2004 and 2005.
Tele2 press secretary Evita Matisone said the company had asked for an extension to find a solution but was not granted one by the regulator "who seemed set on some kind of punishment."
Liga Rimsevica, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission press secretary said that Tele2 could have solved its problems by adjusting the interconnect rates downwards for all operators to the levels it agreed to charge Lattelekom.
Gundars Ruza, a telecoms analyst with Ernst & Young in Riga said that Tele2 has probably made an economic calculation that the revenue loss from cutting all tariffs to the Lattelekom contract level is the worst outcome, whereas an appeal to the courts opens up the possibility of delaying payment of the fine and freezing the status quo until the matter is resolved, possibily with a compromise (a slight cut for the "seven" and a raise for Lattelekom) that is more or less revenue-neutral for Tele2.
Tele2 says it will appeal the fine ruling, handed down on July 1, to the Administrative Court. The company will argue that it was not given enough time by the regulator to work out a solution. In the three months ending in February of this year, Tele2 failed (hardly to anyone's surprise) to get Lattelekom to back out of a 1999 interconnect agreement that was drafted and signed when market liberalization was still a pipe dream. The other seven agreements with smaller operators were signed in 2004 and 2005.
Tele2 press secretary Evita Matisone said the company had asked for an extension to find a solution but was not granted one by the regulator "who seemed set on some kind of punishment."
Liga Rimsevica, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission press secretary said that Tele2 could have solved its problems by adjusting the interconnect rates downwards for all operators to the levels it agreed to charge Lattelekom.
Gundars Ruza, a telecoms analyst with Ernst & Young in Riga said that Tele2 has probably made an economic calculation that the revenue loss from cutting all tariffs to the Lattelekom contract level is the worst outcome, whereas an appeal to the courts opens up the possibility of delaying payment of the fine and freezing the status quo until the matter is resolved, possibily with a compromise (a slight cut for the "seven" and a raise for Lattelekom) that is more or less revenue-neutral for Tele2.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Fresh squeezed networks?
Lattelekom has announced the name of its network installation and maintenance subsidiary. It will be Citrus Solutions. What's in a name? There is some IT company named Citrus something already, but the first thought that pops into mind is something to do with oranges and lemons. But why think when you can Google? One of the higher up hits(for a carpet cleaning company) says" We Use Two Patented Citrus Solutions. For Pet Urine Odor". Just goes to show that a good international company name is very hard to find and, inevitably, it means something strange in another language. Take the Finnish word for tasty - maukas- which means whores in Latvian, hence no Latvian with a sense of humor and a little time on their hands will fail to look for a big package of Maukas (flat bread, as a matter of fact) when visiting Helsinki.
However, the name may not be the biggest problem. What Citrus Solutions intends to sell is network building and maintenance services, most likely to the Swedish and other Scandinavian markets. If Citrus tries to compete on price, it is likely to face a Laval & Partners-style (a Latvian construction company that was run out of the market by the unions) boycott by Swedish unions or sign a 100 + page labor contract for each short term employee sent to string fiber or install routers, say, for Sydkraft (the power company has been mentioned as a potential client).
More likely, the easiest service to offer will be network monitoring and maintenance using Swedish partners when something breaks down. Monitoring employees can sit in Latvia and see how the network is humming by remote means. However, with a staff of 600, it is likely Citrus Solutions will be doing some work on the ground for its international clients, although initially, its main task will be maintaining Lattelekom's own network.
However, the name may not be the biggest problem. What Citrus Solutions intends to sell is network building and maintenance services, most likely to the Swedish and other Scandinavian markets. If Citrus tries to compete on price, it is likely to face a Laval & Partners-style (a Latvian construction company that was run out of the market by the unions) boycott by Swedish unions or sign a 100 + page labor contract for each short term employee sent to string fiber or install routers, say, for Sydkraft (the power company has been mentioned as a potential client).
More likely, the easiest service to offer will be network monitoring and maintenance using Swedish partners when something breaks down. Monitoring employees can sit in Latvia and see how the network is humming by remote means. However, with a staff of 600, it is likely Citrus Solutions will be doing some work on the ground for its international clients, although initially, its main task will be maintaining Lattelekom's own network.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
More miseries for Lattelekom's half-mother
As if the mess with Turkcell (the Turkish Cukrova family/?/ backed out of a seemingly done deal) and Russia's Megafon were not enough, TeliaSonera CEO Anders Igel and another executive have been called in for questioning in a bribery investigation. The alleged bribe - a musical performance followed by a buffet dinner to which some 200 Swedish executives (including a top police chief) were invited. The top cop, it it seems, considered the whole affair a bit over the top and filed a complaint with the prosecutor. The prosecutor isn't sure a crime was committed because precedents are unclear on where to draw the line between client entertainment and bribery (the planned event was apparently cancelled), so he is making a test case of TeliaSonera's planned balagāns ( for my Latvian speaking readers).
Perhaps another Post-It note for Nils Melngailis, Lattelekom CEO, to put in his file on what the parents (which he cannot chose or affect) are up to. I'm waiting, too, for Dagens industri's Mikke's take on this (the state shareholding in TeliaSonera was a factor in starting the bribery investigation -- taxpayer money for music shall be spent at the Stockholm Opera, thank you...).
Thanx to Dagens Nyheter, from whence this sad tale is lifted. Can poor Anders get a break? Maybe float the rest of Lattelekom on the Riga Stock Exchange while we are flogging the somewhat dubious Ventspils Nafta (a bit difficult to see where their money will come from).
Perhaps another Post-It note for Nils Melngailis, Lattelekom CEO, to put in his file on what the parents (which he cannot chose or affect) are up to. I'm waiting, too, for Dagens industri's Mikke's take on this (the state shareholding in TeliaSonera was a factor in starting the bribery investigation -- taxpayer money for music shall be spent at the Stockholm Opera, thank you...).
Thanx to Dagens Nyheter, from whence this sad tale is lifted. Can poor Anders get a break? Maybe float the rest of Lattelekom on the Riga Stock Exchange while we are flogging the somewhat dubious Ventspils Nafta (a bit difficult to see where their money will come from).
Monday, June 27, 2005
Bite restructures
Bite, the new mobile operator coming to Latvia, has restructured, renaming its two units Bite Latvija(formerly Bite Mobile) and Bite Lietuva (Lithuania, formerly Bite GSM). It appears something called the Bite Group will run both operations as a single, bi-national entity. At the same time, the paid-in capital of Bite Latvija was raised to LVL 1,602, 0000 from the LVL 2000 minimum needed to start a Latvian company. The whole Bite thing is owned by Denmark's TDC telecommunications group.
I've already written about the possible obstacles Bite faces with getting national roaming in Latvia, something it considers a necessity. I'm now going out on a limb and forecasting that Bite may get its way with Tele2. That is, Tele2, offered a sufficiently attractive deal for minutes or capacity, may give in first and let Bite roam. Such a move will spite Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and will get Tele2 some guaranteed revenues with no marketing costs involved. Tele2 has never been as categorical as LMT about saying they will not sell any capacity to Bite. Watch this space. Some wacko predictions have come true.
And to test the new blogger photo function, here is me, in the newsroom of an unnamed business daily. Shot with one of the Nokia 6680 (test model from LMT) cameras.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Bite will have to buy in and ... LIGO!!!
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.
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.
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.
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