One of the biggest wireless stories for the first part of this year was AT&T’s winning the Starbucks Wi-Fi Hot Spot business from T-Mobile. Starbucks is the one venue that people immediately associate with Wi-Fi Internet access, so grabbing it from T-Mobile (regardless of whether it’s profitable or not) was a big coup for AT&T. Of course, the big story was not that AT&T was taking over the Starbucks account, but rather that the service was now going to be free. Well free for 2 hours per day to anyone with a Starbucks card.
Posted by Michael Finneran, on April 16, 2008
Late last week I commented that things might finally be looking up for Sprint's beleaguered XohmWiMAX service. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post reported on rumors that cable operators Comcast and Time Warner were both considering significant investments in Xohm.
Posted by Michael. Finneran, on April 05, 2008
Siemens Communications, Inc. announced a significant step forward in its unified communications software platform, OpenScape® Unified Communications (UC) Server. The new suite of capabilities includes OpenScape Voice Application, OpenScape Video, and OpenScape UC Application V3.
Posted by Michael Finneran, on March 27, 2008
Faced with declining fortunes, Motorola has announced plans to split into two separate companies, essentially divesting their cellular handset division. The result should be good for enterprise users, as Motorola’s can now focus their full attention on enterprise rather than consumer product lines. A radical realignment has been anticipated given the problems besetting their handset division, and the well-publicized displeasure of investor Carl Icahn who holds 6% of Motorola’s stock. Icahn has been highly critical of the company’s management and has been lobbying for several seats on the company’s board.
Posted by Michael Finneran(2), on March 27, 2008
Apple, along with AT&T, ComCast, and eBay, is being sued again for its iPhone “Visual Voicemail” feature, following the original filing by Klausner Technologies in December. Although Apple’s means of haptic screen interface control is indeed innovative, the use of a screen interface to view and manage voice messages is not new, However, the use of display screens to manage and retrieve voice messages will strike a new commercial nerve in UC because it is critical to the next generation of mobile “smart phones,” in addition to familiar desktop “unified messaging” interfaces.
Posted by Art Rosenberg, on March 27, 2008
Avaya’s CEO, Lou D’Ambrosio’s VoiceCon keynote address helped to underscore the evolution of UC. He reinforced this point in his subsequent InformationWeek interview. Interestingly, a similar Microsoft announcement this week highlights the fact that UC marketing is also becoming “unified,” with non-exclusive partnerships with leading IP telephony/UC providers within the competitive marketplace.
Posted by Art Rosenberg, on March 20, 2008
VoiceCon produced many announcements this week, however, I didn’t know AT&T would follow in the footsteps of Google. I believe that the vision of business UC cannot be completed without “open” mobile access to both enterprise applications, and any user device. A crucial aspect in the quest for business UC is a multimodal “smart phone” device that can really exploit personalized mobile access
Posted by Art Rosenberg, on March 20, 2008
Aspect Software, a well established a call center business, telephoned about their UC plans from a call center perspective. In their press release today, one fact emerged
Posted by Art Rosenberg, on March 11, 2008
Recent business press has been packed with UC announcements giving lots of play to new developments concerning mobile smartphones devices and services. In a recent article, I commented on my disbelief in In-Stat’s market research claiming business end users are resistant to using multimodal mobile “smart phones.” Today,
Posted by Art Rosenberg, on March 10, 2008
When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone at the beginning of 2007, I, and other business communication analysts, quickly criticized its lack of capabilities for business use. Just think what Blackberry did for “push” email,
Posted by Art Rosenberg, on March 07, 2008