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Table of Contents:
Service Providers Worry about Recent Pretexting Rules
Mobile TV Standards On the Horizon?
Microsoft Predicts VoIP Prices Will Drop 50%
2007: The Year of BPL?
Private Equity Bids for Telecom Companies: A New Trend?
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Service Providers Worry about Recent Pretexting Rules
By Susana Schwartz
Concern about competitive practices pervades among service providers after the release of the FCC’s rules around customer proprietary network information (CPNI) access procedures. The new regulations are meant to augment laws against pretexting (the technique used to fraudulently obtain personal data through social engineering) by further protecting subscriber call records and other person data from disclosure to unauthorized people. However, service providers are worried the FCC has failed to strike a balance between protection and competitive practices.
With Congress now looking to impose stricter regulations on phone companies to protect customer data, service providers are closely evaluating their ability to market new service bundles.While all major carriers were contacted for comment, most felt they needed more time to review the rules, or pointed to broader industry associations for comment.
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Mobile TV Standards On the Horizon?
Mobile handset firm Nokia recently agreed to work with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. on standards for mobile television. The standards work will most likely revolve around its DVB-H technology and are expected to ameliorate fragmentation of technologies—a hindrance thus far to mobile operators wanting to tap into the potentially lucrative market.
While European industry players favor the home-grown DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld) standard for their mobile phones, there are competing technologies, including DMB and MediaFlo. Nokia and Samsung plan to make their DVB-H mobiles work with the same standards as the Nokia network services system. They would work on using the OMA BCAST standard for mobile operators.
Microsoft Predicts VoIP Prices Will Drop 50%
During his Keynote address at Voice Con, Jeff Raikes, President of Microsoft’s Business Division predicted that in three years VoIP solutions would cost half of what they do today. He argued that proprietary, hardware-based systems would be replaced by open, software-based solutions. Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 is not slated to be available as a standalone solution for a number of years, but Microsoft is confident companies plan to replace their IP-PBXs with Microsoft OCS servers at some point in the future.
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2007: The Year of BPL?
Broadband Business Forecast believes 2007 will be the year of BPL (broadband over powerline), as access BPL enables the delivery of broadband to homes and businesses. The forecast also considered that the burgeoning POE (power over Ethernet) business might also take off.
Work is starting on a new version of the IEEE standard for PoE that will enable the delivery of as much as 53 watts of power over an Ethernet connection - enough to power a camera, wireless access point or myriad other equipment. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided to use BPL provider Telkonet as its broadband network in airports all over the United States.
Private Equity Bids for Telecom Companies: A New Trend?
The concept of private equity bids for telecom companies seems to be picking up momentum, with more buyouts happening in Europe. With 30-per-cent returns, PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted that even the largest national telecom companies would not be immune from the private equity firms. Even BT and Vodafone are considered targets.
In Canada, BCE (the parent of Bell Canada) is talking about going private with three Canadian pension funds and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), the private equity group. BCE has a market value of $27.54 billion, and a buyout would be the largest ever attempted in Canada, as it could cost about $45 billion.
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Comments and feedback welcome, please email Jill Morgan at jmorgan@billingworld.com.
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