Viodi View - October 12th, 2005 Issue

The telecommunications industry lost long-time friend and scribe, Roger Brown, Publisher of CED magazine, last week to the ravages of melanoma cancer. For almost two decades, Roger was a rock of stability in the topsy-turvy telecom world, as he provided common sense wisdom in an industry often rife with techno-babble. I was always impressed with Roger’s ability to quickly grasp technically arcane subjects and translate them into readable prose. Roger always downplayed his own abilities and his humbleness was refreshing.

His lack of arrogance was probably one of the many reasons so many people called him friend. He was the definition of affable. He was always good for a laugh and would be the first to laugh at him self. Tradeshows and conference will never be the same without Roger. I always looked forward to meeting up with Roger, sharing a beer with him and swapping stories. My condolences go out to his family and to the industry, as we lost a quiet leader. A fund has been set up to raise money to ensure the secondary education of Roger’s four children. Information on that fund can be found by clicking here.

With the tempo of slot machines as background music, I sit here in the Las Vegas McCarran airport reflecting on the four very different tradeshows I have attended in the last two weeks. Despite all of the recent economic news related to the devastating natural disasters and rising oil prices, at these trade shows I saw an energy and optimism in the increasingly related entertainment, telecom and mobile industries. Instead of product substitution, we are beginning to see entirely new products, such as video and audio entertainment dedicated solely to mobile phones and targeted video advertising to FTTH networks.

After watching presentations from Mayors Richard and Jurel of Fort Wayne, Indiana and Lafayette, Louisiana, respectively, I came away rather a bit ashamed and disgusted regarding my berg, San Jose. Yes, and this is coming from the unofficial ambassador of the capital of Silicon Valley. In San Jose, cable modem service is fairly new and my DSL tops out at 300 kb/s downstream (yes, kilobits), while Fort Wayne has figured out how to bring fiber to the home to most of their residents by the end of this year and the city of Lafayette, barring any new political roadblocks, is on the path to doing the same in the near future. Click here to read the two different paths these mayors took to accomplish the same goal of ensuring that their citizens have a telecom infrastructure that will put them on par with any in the world.

As I perused the tradeshow floor, influences of Raynet were everywhere. Watching the presentation from Pete Pifer of ETI Software reminded me of Raynet’s early 1990s product RIDES, which was a $100 million plus investment to automate provisioning and provide for flow-through processes for RBOC deployments of Fiber In the Loop systems. Raynet was right to worry about operations early in the process, as Pifer pointed out in his presentation with John Smith of Chelan Public Utilities District. Click here to read more about some of the other Raynet people that I bumped into at this event that was all about Fiber to the Home.

A conference that was co-located with the FTTH Council was the CABA (Continental Automation Building Association) conference. This was CABA’s first stand-alone tradeshow. CABA is sort of an umbrella association for the various groups involved with home and building communications. As such, participants in their show included MOCA (Multimedia Over Coax Association) and the ZigBee Alliance. Notably absent from the CABA event was the HomePlug Association.

Plugged In at HomePlug

I had the chance to visit the HomePlug conference in South San Francisco and was impressed with the progress on improving the ability of electrical wires to carry high speed data both in the home as well as on Broadband Power Lines (BPL). Based on the demonstrations I saw, HomePlug AV looks like it could be a good option for telcos that are looking to distribute video and Internet around a home, as it has built-in Quality of Service. Based on the panel discussion which included Duke Energy and Current Technologies, BPL also seems like it will be a viable Internet delivery option. Click here to learn more about this electrifying conference.

Get inside advice on IPTV marketing, deployment and content when you
attend "Increasing ARPU Through IP Video" on November 3rd. This exclusive audio conference brings together a distinguished panel of experts from SureWest Communications, MTS TV Services, Viodi and the NRTC. Register online, and get more details, at www.ccmi.com/iptv.html

I have wanted to toss this thought out ever since I saw that the record studios are pressuring Apple to employ variable pricing on music downloads, instead of the fixed $0.99 per song (songs from more popular artists would cost something like $1.29 per title in the record studios’ scenario). What if Steve Jobs bypassed the studios and started signing up the big bands directly? There is already the U2 IPOD (sells for a $30 premium), so there is precedence for Apple dealing directly with a band. Conventional wisdom is that the Video iPOD will be introduced tomorrow, but I am hoping for something really revolutionary.

Don McCullough of Entrisphere (formerly with FTTC pioneer and Raynet rival BBT) relayed an interesting story of his experience with the Google video of UPN's television show, Everybody Hates Chris. As any loyal Viodi View reader would do, Don clicked on the Google link in the last issue. He was so impressed with what he saw that he decided to show his wife and kids of this amazing new offering. He connected his lap-top to his wide screen television and hit the start button. Everything seemed to be working until about five minutes into the program when everything froze. He could not get it working again and his family was unimpressed – technology wins again. I have some ideas as to how telcos might be able to exploit this sort of glitch, which I might share in the club viodi site sometime.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Legitimate Peer to Peer & More

Marty Lafferty, CEO of the DCIA has put together a stellar line-up for the panel, Peer to Peer, Where Do Telcos Fit? The speakers - Les Ottolenghi, President, INTENT MediaWorks, Frank Chindamo, President & CEO, Fun Little Movies (FLM), Chip Venters, CEO, Digital Containers, Steve Stebbins, EVP, RightsLine, Stan Moyer, Exec. Dir., Telcordia and Marc Freedman, CEO, RazorPop - are among the thought leaders as to how Peer to Peer technology can be used for legitimate purposes. The panel will cover business models, content, security, rights management, infrastructure and Intellectual Property issues. This is a panel that is critical for telcos, as I believe it will give telcos an idea of how P2P will continue to impact their network and how telcos might be able to exploit this alternative content distribution method.

Other speakers who have been added since the last issue of the Viodi View include Douglas Frazier President of Urban Communications, Will Helmly, President of Home Telephone, Dave Davies of Vice President Strategy and Product Management of Subscriber Networks for Scientific Atlanta, Ned Mountain, President of Wegener, and Steve Klein Director of Video Solutions Marketing for Zhone Technologies. UNLIKE PREVIOUS IP VIDEO CONFERENCES, THE IP VIDEO TRACK @ TELECOM05 IS INCLUDED IN THE BASIC TELECOM 05 REGISTRATION. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE.

A few month’s ago, I had a similarly titled Krazy Ken’s Korner. Jim Farmer teased me by telling me that when he saw this title he thought I was referring to him. Well, I do appreciate Jim and not just for making sure I wasn’t hoteless in Las Vegas earlier this year (a whole another story). I really do appreciate Jim and all of the other speakers who have helped me fill the many panels that I have organized over the past few years. They have all put a great deal of effort into creating original presentations that are great educational resources for our industry.

One thing I admire about Jim and many of the other speakers is that they are accomplished authors. Jim co-authored the premier book on cable television architecture, while Scott Keagy, formerly of Calix and now with WebEx, penned a book on architecting IP networks. But, one speaker wrote a novel, which leads to the first trivia question for the IP Video track at TELECOM 05.

Name the former IP Video speaker (from either TELECOM 03, 04, IP Video @ Supercomm 04 or 05 who was the author of an off-beat book about the Vietnam-war era.

What is the name of the only independent telco which has exchange boundaries that extend into the county that is the home to Silicon Valley?

Here is the catch - answers must be submitted in person at the TELECOM 05, IP Video panels as listed at www.viodi.tv. Winners will be determined on a first answer basis. Thanks to the generous support of the companies whose name appear to the right, we will be giving out hundreds of dollars in prizes.