AT&T, which has been very successful at adding new video scrubbers, intends to keep them with ... a fancy new remote? Well, not exactly. AT&T has released an app for U-verse that turns a mobile device into a voice- and gesture-activated media controller, which makes U-verse service competitive with Xbox Live and Comcast’s X1 solution.

All of this means cable operators have a lot of work to do if they want to remain stars, and their “growth is dependent upon taking market share from entrenched players,” says Fran Caulfield, research director at Insight Research. This growth will occur outside of traditional revenue streams; a new report from Insight indicates that cable operators must gain ground in the business services market to stay competitive, which won’t be an easy task because “telecom providers such as Verizon and AT&T have had a 30-year head start over CATV operators in supplying business services.”

How to Guarantee Global Service

How do you deliver truly global connectivity for business customers? If you’re France-based operator SFR you make friends with major global carriers.

SFR announced in early September that its enterprise services arm has launched an alliance called Network Team. Don’t let the boring name fool you—this team is an all-star lineup, including Vodafone, Verizon, Tata Communications, Etisalat, and Maroc Telecom. The alliance will give SFR business customers global access and unique services courtesy of the company’s new partners; it will also enable SFR to offer guaranteed levels of service and network interoperability. Planned services include VPNs, fixed-line voice, Internet, mobile connectivity, and cloud services.

SFR says it has other agreements with additional CSPs currently in the works, which will soon be announced. SFR needs the global reach and worldwide service footprint afforded by this alliance in order to compete with BT France and Orange in the business telecommunication services market.

As the multiple partner carriers collaborate to deliver innovative global services, they may find a valuable partner in Tekelec: It launched three new products in September aimed at serving broad and complex service portfolios with advanced policy management. Tekelec’s Mobile Policy Gateway (devices), Application Manager (OTT apps) and Policy Analytics Platform (business intelligence) create a “policy everywhere” framework that enables CSPs to offer up just the kind of next-gen services that SFR’s Network Team is pitching. “Policy is the ‘everywhere’ technology that will transform service provider business models,” said Houck Reed, the company’s VP of product management, in an announcement.

 An Apple a Day ...

Apple was a constant presence in the news last month, primarily due to its launch of the long-awaited iPhone 5. The new must-have device from Apple sports a bigger, better screen, a slimmer profile and, finally, support for the fastest 4G LTE mobile networks. These are all necessary innovations if Apple wants to keep pace with market leader Samsung and other hungry Android smartphone manufacturers. But one technology is noticeably absent from the iPhone 5: near-field communication (NFC).

Smartphones with NFC make touchless transactions and e-banking a reality and enable users to share all kinds of media, messaging and data. This is hardly the first time Apple has decided to buck industry trends and create its own solution, claiming the users in its ecosystem don’t need NFC in order to share files, numbers and other data. That may be true, but without Apple’s support what does this mean for the future of NFC?

CSPs are too busy selling millions and millions of the newest iPhone to give much notice to the lack of NFC, and while everyone seems to enjoy the health benefits of consuming Apples, one carrier has consistently outperformed the others. AT&T continues to lead the field despite competitors Verizon and Sprint adding the iPhone to their device portfolios; according to comScore, it reported the lion’s share of domestic iPhone activations in the second quarter with 47 percent, compared to Verizon’s 34 percent and Sprint’s 19 percent. As for the spanking new iPhone 5? AT&T scored 68 percent of preorders, handily beating its rivals.