Recently in Wireline Category

In a heavyweight fight, you often get an early glimpse of the fight to follow as the boxers test each other in round 1.  While it isn’t the complete fight ( …unless you are Mike Tyson of the late 1980s… ) or the exact way that the fight will finish, but it gives you a good sense of how things make track.  Consider it a leading indicator of rounds 10 to 12.

In the upcoming fight between IPTV implementations of U-verse and FiOS, Phil Harvey has a look at when FiOS steps into some of AT&T’s markets in North Texas.

Personally, I think that the consumer will be the victor in this battle when AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner start selling similar services in the same area(s).  The business models of all three may take a hit, but the core value-add that the customer wants and the price point that they will accept will probably be revealed in this “leading indicator” of the fight to come between the upstart IPTV providers and legacy cable providers. 

While traditional retail telecom services like landline and wireless voice services are heading toward a level of commoditization; there is that "quiet" cash cow that this working just fine thank you very much... interconnect or backbone traffic.

In fact, according to an article by Stephen McClelland, this backbone traffic is seeing increases quite unlike the rest of the telecom industry. While it not all rosy, this article shows the continued overall importance of the network ( ... no matter how much retail telecom that i blog about... ).

However, I do like how VoIP traffic is THE growth area. It shows that the importance of the network is in its ability to carry all traffic and not just a particular transport medium. Just as data services could make the handset and content king in wireless, VoIP is showing how much power a lower "TCO" transport model is powering the interconnect/backbone market. Remember it isn't the network per se. It is how you can make revenue off the network and remain competitive against other transport providers.

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, Stephen McClelland, VoIP, backbone traffic, telecom network

AT&T has announced that they are leaving the payphone market. Andrew Smith take a look at their announcement and the projections that there will be companies who want to take on that "burden" of that particular business model.

It should be noted that most of the established telecom providers have already left the payphone market and those phones have found independent operators. However, it is definitely a niche market for any organization. It is a decreasing market share and a widely spread infrastructure ( ...sounds a little like the qwest rboc map... ).

Note - I did like this quote from Willard Nichols:

"The Census Bureau says that something between 7 million and 8 million U.S. households have no phone of any kind, and the number is growing. People who live in those homes will continue giving pay phones the business they need to survive."

I'm not sure if Mr Nichols has heard of the cell phone, but I'm guessing that at least some of the people who claim "no phone" for their residence have a cell phone in their pocket....

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, Payphone, Andrew Smith, Willard Nichols, AT&T