By Phillip Britt
On the Floor at SUPERCOMM:
SUPERCOMM has had a history of showcasing technologies that sound great, but may not have a lot of the bugs worked out yet. The technologies have some value, but perhaps not enough traction to be viable in the marketplace yet, or pricing has yet to be determined, or other parts of the business-technology relationship have yet to be worked out.
Wireless was all the rage at the SUPERCOMMs of the late 1990s, but it was a few years before everyone was carrying a cell phone. Next was broadband wireless, discussed for a long time before 3G became a reality. Location-based services were discussed a couple of years later, but they’re still in their embryonic stages.
But the demand for some solutions makes for faster rollouts and adoption. That was the story in the sessions at SUPERCOMM. Mike Mulica, CEO of Fusion One, expects to see a strong market for synchronization services on the Internet. Synchronization in the cloud alleviates many of the issues with typical synchronization services.
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SUPERCOMM has a history of showcasing technologies that sound great, but may not have the bugs worked out yet. |
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for telecom providers, who can partner with different merchants and share in the sales to members of different social networks, Anderson said. Obtaining referrals from one social network member to another (e.g., one Facebook member to a “friend”) is a powerful marketing tool, he said.
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We’re all aware that it’s not uncommon, these days, for people to upgrade cell phones or simply switch to another carrier for better service or pricing. If upgrading with the same carrier, carrying contacts from one device to another may be relatively easy. But different carriers and different devices use different platforms, making updating of contacts and other critical information that much more difficult. Maintaining that address book information in the cloud makes these changes easier and helps recover that information if the device is lost or stolen.
Among the information that might be stored in the cloud is social networking information, said Matt Anderson, product marketing manager for Amdocs. That information provides a tremendous marketing opportunity
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Anderson encouraged telecom service providers to look into these marketing opportunities because it could augment the revenue from their primary businesses.
(Amdocs’ latest business move may also contribute to these opportunities. Less than a week after SUPERCOMM, Amdocs aquired jNetX, a privately-held SDP provider, for $50 million net of debt and cash, subject to post closing adjustments. Amdocs expects that the combination of the companies’ products to give service providers both telecom and IP components in the networks.)
Growth of the networks depends largely on revenue and expenses. To that end, a SUPERCOMM panel blasted the current fee
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