March 2010

Data traffic outstrips mobile voice calls

Data traffic has exceeded the volume of voice calls across the world's wireless networks for the first time, highlighting the challenge facing mobile phone operators as they struggle to adapt to surging demand for mobile Internet services.

The crossover occurred in December when 140,000 terabytes of data content, such as e-mails, music and video, was handled by mobile carriers, surpassing voice traffic, according to measurements by Ericsson, the world's largest network equipment vendor. "This is a significant milestone with some 400m mobile broadband subscriptions now generating more data traffic than the voice traffic from the total 4.6bn mobile subscriptions around the world," said Hans Vestberg, Ericsson chief executive. Ericsson said global data traffic nearly tripled in each of the past two years and forecast that it would double annually during the next five years as more people sought mobile Internet access via laptop computers and smartphones. Ericsson highlighted social networking websites, such as Facebook, as one of the biggest sources of mobile data. The rapid shift from voice to data is transforming the telecommunications landscape as operators scramble to maximize revenues from mobile Internet services, while trying to stem decline in the voice revenues that still represent the biggest part of their business. The surge in data traffic is also placing a strain on network capacity in some areas, causing deterioration in service quality as operators struggle to cope with the rising number of bandwidth-hungry mobile Internet users.

Mobs Are Born as Word Grows by Text Message

It started innocently enough seven years ago as an act of performance art where people linked through social-networking Web sites and text messaging suddenly gathered on the streets for impromptu pillow fights in New York, group disco routines in London, and even a huge snowball fight in Washington. But these so-called flash mobs have taken a more aggressive and raucous turn in Philadelphia as hundreds of teenagers have been converging downtown for a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize property.

iPhone App to Sidestep AT&T

For a little $1 iPhone app, Line2 sure has the potential to shake up an entire industry. It can save you money. It can make calls where AT&T's signal is weak, like indoors. It can turn an iPod Touch into a full-blown cellphone. And it can ruin the sleep of cellphone executives everywhere. Line2 gives your iPhone a second phone number — a second phone line, complete with its own contacts list, voice mail, and so on. The company behind it, Toktumi (get it?), imagines that you'll distribute the Line2 number to business contacts, and your regular iPhone number to friends and family. Your second line can be an 800 number, if you wish, or you can transfer an existing number. To that end, Toktumi offers, on its Web site, a raft of Google Voice-ish features that are intended to help a small businesses look bigger: call screening, Do Not Disturb hours and voice mail messages sent to you as e-mail. You can create an "automated attendant" —"Press 1 for sales," "Press 2 for accounting," and so on — that routes incoming calls to other phone numbers. Or, if you're pretending to be a bigger business than you are, route them all to yourself. The Line2 app is a carbon copy, a visual clone, of the iPhone's own phone software. The dialing pad, your iPhone Contacts list, your recent calls list and visual voice mail all look just like the iPhone's.

Catholic Charity and Sprint Tangle Over Texting

When the earthquake devastated Haiti, Catholic Relief Services tried to gather contributions for its efforts using the hottest trend in giving: donations via cellphone. But the charity wanted to try a twist on the technology: when people sent a text message to donate, they got a reply offering to connect them via phone to the charity's call center. The group hoped that the calls could build a stronger bond with donors, and garner larger contributions as well. But just three days into the effort after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the charity got word that Sprint Nextel was demanding that the "text-to-call" effort be shut down. The charity had 40 days to abandon the feature or lose access to millions of Sprint customers. Sprint's original motivations are murky; it said that an intermediary company had failed to properly fill out a form to verify that it was dealing with a legitimate charity. The conflict underscores a problem that public interest groups asked the Federal Communications Commission to address more than two years ago: the hazy legal status of text messages, which are controlled by telephone companies without any real government oversight. The laws that prohibit phone companies from interfering with voice calls do not apply to text messages, a fast-growing medium.

M. Chris Riley, who serves as policy counsel for Free Press, a media policy and advocacy group in Washington that participated in the 2007 filing, suggested that Sprint might be legitimately concerned about people using the text-to-call method to flood consumers with unwanted calls or messages. However, he said, problems emerge for legitimate organizations like Catholic Relief Services when the telephone company, with its control over the market, "is being insufficiently flexible or categorically eliminating a range of communications because sometimes they result in spam." Harold Feld, legal director for Public Knowledge, a public policy group in Washington that also joined the 2007 filing, said that even though customers of other carriers would not be directly affected by a Sprint shutdown, companies and nonprofits would be reluctant to lose access to so many potential recipients of their messages. The effect, he said, is that "you discourage anyone from innovating." Both groups are planning new filings based on this conflict.

Social Networks a Lifeline for the Chronically Ill

For many people, social networks are a place for idle chatter about what they made for dinner or sharing cute pictures of their pets. But for people living with chronic diseases or disabilities, they play a more vital role. People fighting chronic illnesses are less likely than others to have Internet access, but once online they are more likely to blog or participate in online discussions about health problems, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and the California HealthCare Foundation.

"If they can break free from the anchors holding them down, people living with chronic disease who go online are finding resources that are more useful than the rest of the population," said Susannah Fox, associate director of digital strategy at Pew and author of the report. They are gathering on big patient networking sites like PatientsLikeMe, HealthCentral, Inspire, CureTogether and Alliance Health Networks, and on small sites started by patients on networks like Ning and Wetpaint.

Advertisers Show Interest in iPad

Advertisers initially approached new media as if they were going duck hunting, tiptoeing cautiously into the waters of mobile phones and the Internet. With the iPad, it's big-game season.

Getting ready for the April 3 iPad introduction, FedEx has bought advertising space on the iPad applications from Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. Chase Sapphire, a credit card for the high-end market, has bought out The New York Times's iPad advertising units for 60 days after the introduction. Advertisers including Unilever, Toyota Motor, Korean Air and Fidelity have booked space on Time's iPad application. In a draft press release, The Journal said a subscription to its app would cost $17.99 a month, and the first advertisers included Capital One, Buick, Oracle, iShares and FedEx. At least initially, it should provide a nice boost for publishers. iPad advertisements on print publishers' applications cost $75,000 to $300,000 for a few months with some exclusivity, said Phuc Truong, managing director of Mobext U.S., a mobile-marketing unit at Havas Digital. But after the initial buzz around the iPad fades, so, too, might advertisers' enthusiasm, with questions still swirling around how to price ads and how they will look on the iPad. Some early advertisers hope to catch the tailwinds of the Apple marketing program.

Internet agency approves domains in native scripts

Four countries and two territories have won preliminary approval to have Internet addresses written entirely in their native scripts as early as this summer.

Since their creation in the 1980s, Internet domain names such as those that end in ".com" have been limited to 37 characters: the 10 numerals, the hyphen and the 26 letters in the Latin alphabet used in English. Technical tricks have been used to allow portions of the Internet addresses to use other scripts, but until now, the suffix had to use only those 37 characters. With the addition of non-Latin suffixes, Internet users with little or no knowledge of English would no longer have to type Latin characters to access Web pages targeting Chinese, Arabic and other speakers.

YouTube Used in UK Vote as Parties Follow Obama

Gordon Brown and David Cameron's campaigns are taking a leaf out of Barack Obama's book.

With the U.K. election, which must be held by June 6, likely to be the closest since 1974, strategists for Prime Minister Brown and Conservative leader Cameron are trying to use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Google Inc.'s YouTube as effectively as U.S. President Obama did in his 2008 presidential campaign. "For the first time in a while the campaign actually matters, therefore the media matters," said Charlie Beckett, the director of the London School of Economics' Polis research center. "Activists and media people look at Twitter." Although U.K. campaign rules make a large-scale import of the U.S. model difficult, the two parties are seeking to reach voters in new ways, including using online networking tools that were largely credited for Obama's organizational and fundraising success.

Microsoft Sees Billion Users for Phone, Web Programs

Microsoft vying with Cisco Systems for business-phone customers, predicts more than a billion people will use software that combines Internet-calling features with messaging and video within three years.

Microsoft has more than 100 million customers making calls using its Office software, Gurdeep Singh Pall, vice president of the company's Unified Communications group, said in an interview.

Microsoft will release a new version of software for Internet telephony and corporate instant messaging this year, said Pall, who speaks today at a conference in Orlando, Florida. That program, Microsoft's Office Communications Server, increased sales by more than 50 percent in the year ended June 30. The software competes with products from companies like Cisco and Avaya Inc. in a market that may grow more than fivefold to $14.5 billion in 2015, according to an estimate from Forrester Research Inc.

First-Ever National Study: Millions of People Rely on Library Computers for Employment, Health, and Education

Nearly one-third of Americans age 14 or older -- roughly 77 million people -- used a public library computer or wireless network to access the Internet in the past year, according to a national report.

In 2009, as the nation struggled through a recession, people relied on library technology to find work, apply for college, secure government benefits, learn about critical medical treatments, and connect with their communities. The report, Opportunity for All: How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access at U.S. Libraries, is based on the first, large-scale study of who uses public computers and Internet access in public libraries, the ways library patrons use this free technology service, why they use it, and how it affects their lives. It was conducted by the University of Washington Information School and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Low-income adults are more likely to rely on the public library as their sole access to computers and the Internet than any other income group. Overall, 44 percent of people living below the federal poverty line used computers and the Internet at their public libraries. Americans across all age groups reported they used library computers and Internet access. Teenagers are the most active users. Half of the nation's 14- to 18-year-olds reported that they used a library computer during the past year, typically to do school homework.