Telco TV goes live on mobile

It certainly took a while, but Telco TV is finally streaming live television programming to mobile devices. At the tail-end of September, Verizon updated its FiOS app to include live TV. In early October, AT&T followed suit; U-Verse customers can now access more than 100 channels of live content from mobile devices. 

M2M and the Internet of things

Are you prepared to profit from machine-to-machine (M2M) communications? New research from Ovum warns of lean times ahead for mobile operators. “Consolidation will help to alleviate some market pressures and is inevitable in many markets,” wrote report author Sara Kaufman. “But the need for revenue stabilization is becoming paramount for a sustainable future.”

Despite the sour news, other research points to promising new verticals. A fresh report from Infonetics predicts service providers’ revenues from M2M will double by 2017 to $31 billion. Not surprisingly, AT&T just moved to grab a slice of that pie by netting M2M business with GE.

Consolidation news

In line with Ovum’s commentary, consolidation continued to make waves in October. Telenor purchased Tele2's consumer cable and fiber business for about $57 million, a considerable premium. The deal will add about 370,000 new households to Telenor’s customer base.

Time Warner Cable acquired DukeNet Communications, a regional fiber optic network operator, for $600 million. When it comes to the new network, fiber is the future, so TWC is busy investing in its fiber footprint.

In vendor acquisitions news, InfoVista scooped up Aexio to add better customer awareness to its mobile optimization suite, and Marlin Equity Partners moved to acquire Tellabs for $891 million in cash.

After a brief tussle with T-Mobile over the color purple, AT&T decided to shut down its pre-paid wireless brand AIO Wireless, and plans to move customers to recently acquired Leap Wireless, better known as Cricket.

NFC: near field misses

Mobile payments made by near-field communication (NFC) are lagging behind predictions, says a new report from Strategy Analytics. While this may be surprising in parts of Asia-Pacific where NFC is commonplace, this isn't news in the U.S., where the technology is still looking for a unified payment platform. Perhaps it has something to do with security and privacy concerns; a recent study from Sprint indicates only 44 percent of smartphone users set a PIN or passcode for their device.

One attendee at Digital Disruption in San Jose (who will remain anonymous) joked that NFC stands for No one F’ing Cares. Still, the technology got a shot in the arm in early October when Sprint announced Pinsight Touch, a secure mobile credentials platform that opens NFC opportunities in transit, payment, and access verticals. 

Roaming the world for free

Q.  What’s better than free unlimited mobile data?  A. Free international data roaming. Following in line with its disruptive Un-Carrier strategy, T-Mobile announced free international roaming in early October.

Leaning on an odd us-versus-them argument, T-Mobile’s always-fiery CEO John Legere took the opportunity to differentiate his company from the rest of the industry. “You can't leave the country without coming home to bill shock. So we're making the world your network - at no extra cost. The truth is that the industry's been charging huge fees for data roaming. But what's most surprising is that no one's called them out - until now." Of course, T-Mobile has been guilty of levying the fees.

Deep cuts at Alca-Lu

Alcatel-Lucent is taking some drastic measures to save a billion Euro and turn around its performance. On October 8, the struggling infrastructure vendor informed the European works council (ECID) of the actions planned as part of The Shift Plan announced on June 19 by its new Chief Executive Officer, Michel Combes. The actions include a significant reduction in staff and a refined focus on next-generation technology.

According to an official release, Alca-Lu will cut legacy research and development by 60 percent, and reallocate R&D investment to next-generation technologies, which should represent 85% of R&D spend in 2015, as opposed to 65% today. Approximately 10,000 jobs will be cut as a result of the restructuring.