Thought Garage

Georgia Tech  : Mobile Applications and Services with IMS by Russel J. Clark. IMS Research and Competition ( http://forgedbyims-research-competition.com/index.html)Georgia Tech, Cingular Wireless, and Siemens Communications are kicking off a new research program in IMS applications. This initiative brings the students and faculty of Georgia Tech an opportunity to gain early, first-hand access to the latest telecommunications application architecture. The IMS program is a joint effort of the Georgia Tech Research Network Operations Center (GT-RNOC) of the Office of Information Technology and the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC). During the summer of 2006, Siemens is installing the IMS technology platform (valued at $5 million) in GEDC labs located in the Technology Square Research Building. The campus Wi-Fi infrastructure will be configured to enable access to the IMS platform for researchers. About the Course: This course provides an introduction to the IP Multimedia Su...

Read some statistics on SkypeJournal  about Skyp's growth and comparisions with Telco's traditional revenues. The author says that the dent made by Skype is so low that Telco's won't even notice Skype. Numbers may be low. But, Telcos are infact scared of Skype and its clones all around. Go to any conference. Open any report. View any presentation or listen to any conference. Nothing starts and ends without mentioning the threat from Skype and its clones.  Why, Skype is eating out 25% of VOIP growth. Read on. Interestingly, though, Skype's growth has not yet had a quantifiable impact on switched volumes. Skypelights: Skype traffic grew by 6.2 billion minutes in the last year. From 7.6 billion minutes in 2005 to 13.8 billion projected in 2006. 80% year over year. Just in case that's sounds like a lot... Other VoIP traffic grew by 16.8 billion minutes to 42 billion minutes . These are the Vonages, cable and telco voip offerings. Thei...

U.K.'s The Register  reports some surprising results of a survey of 1500 U.K. consumers, commissioned by hosting firm Hostway. Despite investment by operators in services such as i-mode and Vodafone Live, 73 per cent of respondents to a new survey said don't access the net from their mobile. Slow-loading pages (38 per cent) and navigation difficulties (27 per cent) were among the reasons cited why people would rather hook up to the net using a PC rather than a phone. A quarter (25 per cent of sites were unavailable to those with mobile phones. Key Reasons why 73% of people prefer not to access internet on their Mobile phones are: Too expensive to browse internet on mobile Too difficult to navigate through pages. Not comfortable to read the web content that is meant for desktop browsers on a tiny mobile browsers Download time is too high and tiresome Applications they want to access are not available Also, most people want to access maps than reading news and bl...

Its time to say Good Bye to the free INTERNET we know, where your packet is never discriminated based on what it contains, where it is coming from and where it is going. Senate Commerce Committee, rejected the compromise language on Net Neutrality by splitting11-11, which would  mean a defeat for Net Neutrality. The Senate Commerce Committee, splitting 11 to 11 and therefore rejecting compromise language , set the stage for a carrier-controlled Internet. If the bill passes the Senate and is signed by the President, you can kiss the Net you know "goodbye." Farewell, open networks and open standards. Soon every packet will be subject to inspection and surcharges based on what it carries and who sent it or where it is going. [ZDNet: Saying "goodbye" to the Net   ] So very soon carriers will be empowered to inspect the packet and charge a premium not only based on the content, but possibly where it is coming from and where it is going. or a Tiered internet based p...

Happy with the last nights rejection of Net Neutrality in the House of Representatives , Telecom companies will soon be giving a generous gift to its consumers, called 'Bit caps'. They have promised themselves to give this gift to their consumers now or little later but definitely. This time, they mean it. People, that rejected the Net Neutrality, do you know what is in the making and what can be expected from these greedy Telcos? Here you go.One tiny step. Bit caps. If you have a internet connection from one of these greate Telecom companies, they setup a bit cap, a limit on the amount of data you can download or upload. That is not bad at all. But here is the problem. If you download video from the Telecom company, then that data will not count to the cap. You can download almost unlimited video from your company. But if you download a video from Google or youtube for example, then that video would count to the cap. Once you reach the cap you must pay for each bit you downloa...

Reliance Blue Magic, a Reliance group company with Direct To Home (DTH) license will start offering Triple Play ( IPTV, High Speed internet and VOIP) Services most probably in 2006. Reliance bought a 51 percent stake in Adlabs, one of India's premier film production and distribution company. Reliance already laid out a 60,000 KM fiber network and in the trail run 20000 subscribers get a chance to preview what Reliance has to offer. Reliance will be using Microsoft IPTV platform and Motorola's set top boxes. Reportedly, there will be four different offerings from Reliance : Cinema Screen : Typical Movie Theatres, Multiplexes and Digital Movie business TV-Screen : Direct to Home and IPTV PC-Screen : Triple Play services Mobile : TV and content distribution on Mobile through R-World Portal News Articles : Reliance Steps Up IPTV Plans IPTV: Bollywood or Bust? Adlabs to pioneer IPTV efforts for Reliance Reliance is set to change the experience of Multimedia content, the way it did...

Telcos, analysts and Business management consultants are thinking they found a new mantra to survive in the free and innovation led internet dominated world. Bundled services. They must have realized they do not have anything NEW to offer. So they are repackaging what they have in bundles to live longer. The terms convergence, Triple play and Quadruple play along with IMS are the most hyped words in the recent months, that offer no or little NEW value to the Telco's networks. They are sure however to fill the pockets of analysts, consultants and vendors. Telcos gripped with fear from VOIP, internet applications and fear of ending up as fat pipes, are looking desperately for advice from people who have no stake in Telco business. The analysts and the Business Management Consultants. They are trying their best to do what they do best. Keep the confusion alive and make it proactively more dreadful than the reality. The result is chaotic strategies and action in hurry... may be just to...

Good news for the Net Neutrality camp. US House panel approves net neutrality bill "A U.S. House of Representatives committee has approved a bill that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or impairing their customers’ access to Web content offered by competitors. The House Judiciary Committee voted 20-13 to approve the bill, called the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act. Bill sponsor James Sensenbrenner, the Republican chairman of the committee, was joined by a handful of Republicans and most of the committee’s Democrats in supporting the bill. .. the Internet Freedom bill would require broadband providers to give independent content providers the same speed and quality of service as they have."

http://en.fon.com/  : FON is the largest WiFi community in the World Join FON, share excess bandwidth at home and roam the world for free FON is a community based WIFI network, where each individual joins FON network shares their WIFI with other FON members. In return, members can use WIFI whereever FON network(members) is/are available. It is now available in most cities all over the world. Ever afraid of Telcos/ISPs don't respect net neutrality and force to use the network the way they want, not how you like it, check it out. FON is the best alternative and answer to most important questions about internet access and net neutrality. Gives a comfort feeling that it will survive against huge telco lobbying and market forces with funding from likes of Google, Sequoia and Skype.

Indian postal service does not provide Internet service, so has nothing to do with net neutrality as such. But some of the strategies it implemented to discriminate content has some relevance and insights for the struggling telecom/ISPs and the ongoing net neutrality discussions. Indian Postal Service, one of the largest postal services networks in the world, runs under the brandname 'India Post' by Govt. Of India. It provide heavy subsidies in its services to reach common man in India. (Have a look at subsidies from 10th 5year plan by the Planning Commison of India ,  Page3)  Postcard has been the most common and most used mail service by Indian people. Today, one can buy a postcard at 50 paisa (0.50 Rupee, equivalent to about 1 cent in US currency). Indian postal service actually gives a subsidy of 555.39 paisa (around 10cents) to bring it down to such a low price. Indian Government funds this subsidy through budget allocations for the good of common man. During early 1990s...

Because, they can not afford to like Net Neutrality. They oversold their current connection capacity. Market pressure is too much and they are not making enough profit. Not just that, they are thinking internet companies are making lots of money by just using their networks. So they realized that If they honor net neutrality, they will soon will be out of their business. Sounds, untrue, let me explain what I understand. Let us remove the sugar coat and special keywords so that we can understand it better. I hope You can easily relate to what is happening in the real world. ISP X has 10Mbps connection to an apartment complex. And it has 5 customers who are paying 39.99 per month for a 1Mbps connection. ISP is just making a little profit thought its pipe is filled only 50%, because of the premium price. All customers always get their 1Mbps bandwidth. Always. They can not go beyond 1Mbps as it is restricted to 1Mbps. Now, there is a new ISP in the area offering a similar service for 14.9...

Net Neutrality and Tiered Internet are the most heard, read and talked about keywords these days. What do they really mean? How these affect a common consumer. Here is my attempt to make it simple to understand what do they really mean and affect consumers every where. Consider the following ficititious service offerings from your ISP which honors Net Neutrality. Package 1(NN-Entry Level): You get 1Mbps connection to your home. You will be charged $29.99/month. You are free to use the bandwidth the way you want , for example you can browse google, connect on myspace, signup for vonage VOIP service, download podcasts using itunes, etc. Your traffic is not discriminated . Package 2(NN-Premium): You get 5 Mbps connection to your home. You will be charged $59.99/month. You are free to use the bandwidth the way you want, as explained in package 1. But along with that, your ISP offers you a high quality VOIP service (better than Vonage for example), unlimited Video hosting service, an alte...

News story at ZDNet T-Mobile bans VoIP from super-3G service T-Mobile announced a flat rate 3G super service, in UK called web n walk professional service that can give users around 1Mbps to 1.8Mbps. Unlike its current web n walk service where the users are allowed to do whatever they want, VOIP and IM applications are banned on this service. As per Analysts, T-Mobile may start its own VOIP service and at that point it might allow users to use VOIP services. Some believe that we do not need net neutrality as Law, since telecom companies are anyway not going to ban any specific IP traffic for the users. But if there is no law, this is what happens. Network operators decide what applications to run and what applications to use.  This is exactly why we need net neutrality as a fundamental law, Â

The Internet router backbone map and discussion on what it means and how to read the map at: Who owns the Internet? We have a map that shows you. Clicking on the image take you to a PDF file where you can see all the labels/info for each router in the map. Clicking on the image take you to a PDF file where you can see all the labels/info for each router in the map.

Link to story at NewsFactor Magazine Vonage, the well known VOIP phone company and The Cloud of UK, leading provider of Broadband wireless will be unveiling a new service in May that enable making cheaper VOIP calls on mobile phones.  The service however only works with new handsets that support dual band (GSM + WiFi) and when the user is in the zone covered by a hotspot.   The Cloud is reported to have around 7000 WiFi hotspots across UK, providing an excellent footprint for greater use of this new service. The starts a new era of making cheaper and mostly unlimited Mobile calls for a fixed monthly subscription when you are around hotspots. Considering the fact that 70% of mobile calls are made inside buildings, airports, home etc, if there are enough wifi hotspots, user can make most of his/her calls when using wifi-hotspot and hence they are almost free.  There are interesting stories from other service providers across Europe that started similar VOIP on Mobile services for ...