PhoneCo
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Verizon is the first U.S. carrier to start selling LG’s hot new ‘Chocolate’ phone, which Verizon customers can buy online today and in stores starting August 7th. Verizon says the deal is exclusive, and that it will be the only carrier in the U.S. to sell the device. LG is trying really hard to position Chocolate as its RAZR — a genre-busting design that becomes a brand unto itself.
Maybe its working - the LG/Verizon press release says there have been one million Chocolate phones sold worldwide already. That’s pittance compared to the tens of millions of RAZRs that have helped Motorola complete its turnaround.
The new phone is part of Verizon’s plan to give its VCAST music service a boost. The Chocolate comes pre-loaded and has an iPod-style click wheel. In addition Verizon says it will drop its monthly music charge fee, for which Verizon used to charge $15 a month service fee. VCAST has been a pretty slow starter out of the gate. Verizon won’t say how many music tracks its sold, but estimates are around 3 million.
That should cause further headaches to new MVNOs, Amp’d and Helio that seem to be having trouble lately. Verizon’s design-conscious, and media-savvy moves are squarely targeting the younger demographic, the bread-and-butter for the new MVNOs. Some MVNO’s business models are based on the idea that carriers like Verizon can’t sell youth-targeted data services as well as these niche players, and don’t have cool phones. Well, Chocolate addresses that issue… for now.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 31st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and verizon and PhoneCo and MVNO and Helio.
The FCC just released a list of 168 qualified bidders for the AWS spectrum auction coming up on August 9th, and also announced that the process will not involve the controversial blind bidding. We’ve been following the companies interested in bidding pretty closely, and there were a few surprises in the FCC filings, including a group tied to Rupert Murdoch, DirecTV and Echostar, which put down almost a billion dollars that it can use to bid on spectrum.
Wireless DBS, the consortium tied to Echostar, DirecTV, News Corp, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Echostar’s Charles Ergen, qualified to bid and paid one of the largest upfront payments out of the list of interested bidders, of $972.55 million. The group’s auction plans might involve WiMAX, and prove to be crucial to these companies future as triple play becomes common place. (The upfront payment is refundable if the company doesn’t win the specturm it desires, but could be an indicator of how much the companies are willing to spend.)
The cable consortium SpectrumCo, tied to cable companies Comcast, Cox, and Time Warner Cable and Comcast CEO and Chairman Brian Roberts, among others, qualified to bid and put down another large upfront payment of $637.71 million. Other cable groups like the Washington Post’s Cable One qualified and paid an upfront payment of $3.5 million. The Dolan Family, tied to Charles Dolan, Cablevision’s Chairman, qualified and paid an upfront fee of $149.98 million.
Most of the largest U.S. phone companies qualified. T-Mobile paid an upfront fee of $583.52 million, Cingular put down $500 million, and a company tied to Verizon paid an upfront fee of $383.34 million.
The company tied to Paul Allen, Bend Cable Communications, that we previously profiled, qualified to bid, and paid an upfront fee of $176,000. At least four companies backed by spectrum speculator “Super Mario” Gabelli qualified to bid, paid a total of $3 million in upfront payments. Controversial wireless bidder Allen Salmasi and Nextwave Telecom, qualified to bid through a company called AWS Wireless, and that group put down $142.83 million.
The group called POP Wireless, backed by BPL company Current Communications, which is funded by Google and Earthlink, that we profiled earlier, was listed as “not qualified to bid.” We’ll follow up with more on the upcoming auction before the big day.
Written by Katie Fehrenbacher on July 29th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Unwired and Cablevision and Cable Cos and verizon and PhoneCo and spectrum and broadband over powerline.
The bandwidth speed battles between Cablevision and Verizon are getting bloodier. Cablevision has been pushing the envelope and is forcing Verizon to do things a Bell typically doesn’t like to do - offer real broadband level speeds.
Verizon has announced that it will sell a 50 megabits down and 10 5 megabits up connection for $90 a month. (Thanks Tom, for pointing out that the business offer was 50/10.) The service is available where Verizon FiOS network is live in the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
This is an interesting move -does this mean Verizon is now just a pipe provider (and there is nothing wrong with that.) I have argued this is the best recourse for the phone companies is to sell more bandwidth at premium prices - turn the Moore’s law to their advantage.
Written by Om Malik on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Cablevision and DSL and Cable Broadband and Cable Cos and verizon and PhoneCo.
If you are a San Francisco resident, then you are getting the Comcast phone service pitch, which is the latest in a series of assaults the cable companies have launched against the Bells. While Comcast has been late in joining the party, the two cable big boys, Time Warner and Cablevision have turned voice into a money maker.
TWC has zoomed past the million customer mark, and today Cablevision has announced that it too has joined the “million voiper club.” Cablevision claims that it has saved $500 million for those who use its service. I am not sure if I buy that, but hey its a press release.
This is not good news for Vonage, which now faces even tougher competition from the cable companies going forward. But it also means that the landline losses for phone companies will continue for sometime. As it so happens, Bells have been talking up IPTV and what not, but in reality have few customers to show for all that talk. CableCos, on the other hand are saying we got voice, and we selling it too… in millions!
Also, Cable VoIP, Hotter Than Ever.
Written by Om Malik on July 18th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Vonage and VoIP and Cable Cos and PhoneCo.
Verizon and AT&T might be the ones who are hogging the limelight when it comes to IPTV, but don’t take Qwest to be a slouch. The Denver-based micro-Bell is planning to launch video services in many new markets, according to The Denver Post.
The company at present offers either fiber based or copper based TV services in some parts of Colorado, Omaha and Phoenix. It is also upgrading a big chunk of its network, and is also reselling DirecTV to its customers. The report is sketchy on details about which markets it is going to rollout its services. (Tips anyone?)
Qwest’s moves should not come as a surprise: four of Qwest’s six major markets are also services by Comcast, which has been aggressively launching VoIP services. It turned on its VoIP offering in Utah recently. Comcast’s triple play (which could also be triple pay) could become a major migraine for the micro-Bell, which doesn’t have the deep pockets to out-duel the cable behemoth.
Written by Om Malik on July 6th, 2006 with no comments.
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Looks like the battle over net neutrality is going from being mere saber-rattling to a serious no-holds barred legal mess. Last week the US Congress approved a bill that gives phone companies permission to offer television. Most wanted that bill to mandate that network neutrality would remain in place, but that didn’t happen. This gives phone companies and other broadband providers the option to charge for access from content providers. The bill has now been kicked up to the US Senate, and while there is little likelihood that the bill is going to get passed this year, it still has many in Silicon Valley worried, most of all Google.
Vint Cerf, one of the key voices in the overall development of the Internet, and a Google VP (and Chief Internet Evangelist) is saying that if things do come to a pass, the company might have to resort to legal means. “If we are not successful in our arguments … then we will simply have to wait until something bad happens and then we will make known our case to the Department of Justice’s anti-trust division,” he said at a news conference in Bulgaria.
What it really means is that Google et.al can drag this thing for a long time, but they also have to remember that the phone companies are masters of legal posturing and regulation. The best way to fight them is to outspend them in terms of lobbying dollars. Yup, a big fund - say $500 million - put together by Google, eBay and others could be enough to swing even the staunchest supporters of phone companies to the other side. Sounds crude, but as they say Money Talks!
Written by Om Malik on July 5th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Google and PhoneCo and Net Neutrality Debate.