In the Orange announcement last week, the two telecommunications companies are establishing a “50/50” joint venture in the fourth quarter of 2011.  After three years, the two expect to save a [...]]]>

Deutsche Telekom (DT) and France Telecom (FT) have formed a joint venture for procurement.  Shouldn’t they just merge and get it over with?

In the Orange announcement last week, the two telecommunications companies are establishing a “50/50” joint venture in the fourth quarter of 2011.  After three years, the two expect to save a combine 1.3 billion Euros due to economies of scale and “technology harmonization.”

The joint procurement activities include customer equipment, network equipment, service platforms and – starting with four pilot projects – IT infrastructure.  Today, the two have a non-binding term sheet which will be the basis for final contracts in the future.

DT/FT are billing this as a “new era of smart industry cooperation” and expect to get “sustained” benefits and savings to their customers and ensuring their businesses will be more competitive.

After three years, the run rate in “potential” global savings to be more than 400 million Euros and below 900 million Euros respectively for the two firms (so DT saves 400M Euros, FT, a little less than 900M Euros).

The jointly owned and operated procurement entity will have two offices in Bonn and Paris, but DT and FT are currently in talks with unions and need board approval. There’s also the tricky matter of antitrust clearance.

DT and FD did some “exploratory talks” in February 2011 to identify cooperation in radio access network sharing in Europe, WiFi roaming, equipment “harmonization” (i.e., using the same gear), M2M services, and a set of new growth business development areas.

At this rate, I’m expected some sort of “still closer” ventures down the road and it wouldn’t surprise me if the two companies tried a merger in the future.  It may sound politically insane on the one hand, but on the other hand, Europe built EADS and Airbus, so it’s not inconceivable for the two to become one…

The webphone API uses the Adobe Flash platform to embed/integrate voice features into business (web) applications, so customers visiting a [...]]]>

It looks like France Telecom/Orange is leading the way again in the major carrier space. The company announced it now provides a webphone API cloud service for embedding phone service into a web site.

The webphone API uses the Adobe Flash platform to embed/integrate voice features into business (web) applications, so customers visiting a web site can simply click-to-call without having to download a client (Hmm, I bet Skype can’t be too happy with that).

In the future, Orange Business Services “will propose innovative services” leveraging Webphone API as a bigger part of its cloud strategy for real-time business solutions.

On October 21, a single rate went into effect for France telecom users, [...]]]>

About two weeks ago, France Telecom (www.francetelecom.com) moved out of a rate-zone pricing scheme and into flat-rate pricing, with landline calls made between any points within mainland France costing the same. As goes France, so will the rest of the world?

On October 21, a single rate went into effect for France telecom users, affecting seven million residential customers under the general pricing scheme.  Prices for those customers went down around 25 percent for connection charges, 58 percent on per minute rates at peak calling time and a whopping 69 percent for off-peak rates.

Call rates from an FT landline to Internet telephone number — defined as beginning with 09 7 – are now also charged as local calls.  

FT customers living in overseas areas – defined as French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St Martin-St Barthelemy –are also reaping savings, with reductions of about 20 percent on calls to mobiles in mainland France and proportional reductions in line with the FT reductions.

Will other phone companies follow FT’s lead into simplified pricing?  When the company introduced AMR-WB and mobile HD voice service last year, it didn’t take long for other European carriers to start talking about their plans for wideband voice.

With Elettra, France Telecom will get two cable ships along with 100 percent of the [...]]]>

France Telecom Orange (www.orange-ftgroup.com) is making a heavy play into the submarine cable business.  It has acquired Elettra, Telecom Italia’s submarine cable business and earlier this month announced an agreement for a new undersea cable in the Indian Ocean.

With Elettra, France Telecom will get two cable ships along with 100 percent of the Telecom Italia group.  France Telecom Marine currently operates a fleet of four (4) cable laying ships and there aren’t a whole lot of the specialized vessels around the world, so this is truly a Big Deal in the infrastructure world. Elettra is valued at 20 million euros, FYI.

France Telecom now has stronger assets to service telecommunications operators in Europe, the Mediterranean basin and around Africa – perhaps one of the more strategic parts of this deal.

FT-Orange now operates in close to 20 countries in Africa and announced a deal as a part of the LION2 consortium to build a new submarine cable in the Indian ocean, running a 3,000 kilometer long cable from Kenya to the island of Mayotte and then linking to Madagascar, ending up in diverse routing for calls and data across Europe, Africa, and Asia, if you look at illustration below from FT-Orange

LION2 uses WDM and has a maximum potential capacity of 1.28 Tbps.

This will be the first international submarine cable [...]]]>

France Telecom (www.orange-ftgroup.com) has committed to deploy a 17,000 kilometer long undersea fiber optic cable between France and West Africa.  Planned to be operational in the first half of 2010, it will connect 23 countries along its length as it runs between France and South Africa.

This will be the first international submarine cable to land in Mauritania, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sao Tome and Principe, and Equatorial Guinea. For Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, which are already connected to the another cable, the ACE (African Coast to Europe) cable will secure communications traffic while providing the additional capacity necessary for future growth.  ACE will also provide FT subsidiaries in eastern Africa and Réunion with an alternative for routing telecommunications traffic to Europe via western Africa. The northern segment of the cable will also diversify transmission arteries between France and Portugal.

The ACE cable is expected to have an “overall potential capacity” of 5.12 Tbps and be able to migrate to 40 Gbps technology.

Cost for the project is around $700 million dollars.

The comapny currently has the largest documented HD deployment in the world having sold over 400,000 HD handsets to a VoIP customer base of around [...]]]>

Going over my notes from the HD Communications Summit last month, it is instructive to look at the European carrier most bullish on HD voice — France Telecom (FT).

The comapny currently has the largest documented HD deployment in the world having sold over 400,000 HD handsets to a VoIP customer base of around 6 million users in France — that’s about a 7 percent penetration rate at last report, but the numbers will continue to grow moving forward for a number of reasons. For one thing, HD calls are charged/billed the same as regular phone calls.  Any FT VoIP customer who buys an HD handset automatically gets HD service, with no activation required.

And HD support is being “baked in” to handsets of all shapes and sizes.  Last month Cisco reportedly was adding G.722 support to the firmware on its flagship small business handset.  Ooma is putting G.722 in its handsets for the home (OK, so ooma isn’t in France yet, but give them time) and other manufacturers are joining the HD voice club.

FT turned up HD over VoIP in its home territory (i.e. France) in 2006, and has continued to expand its HD footprint across its territories.  Spain began getting HD handsets for VoIP in the first quarter of 2009 while the UK and Belgium are getting mobile HD service.  As the third largest mobile operator in Europe, FT serves 123 million customers — there are a lot of customers to upgrade to HD out there.

According to FT’s research, voice quality is a key criteria when choosing a VoIP or mobile service.  Half of VoIP users would change providers (Vonage: Take note here) to get better voice quality.  In addition, 30 percent of non-VoIP users would siwtch to VoIP if it had voice quality akin to face-to-face communication.  Finally, customers want “mobile with the quality of a fixed line.”

FT says HD voice has had a positive impact upon retention; in other words, they are keeping customers, rather than watching them leave to cheaper alternatives.

Back in 1994, Al was the point many for “Reinventing Government” As a part of his mission, he put a “date certain” marker down for all [...]]]>

What can the Obama Administration do for HD Communications?  A look back at what Vice President Al Gore did before he won his Nobel Prize provides some clues.

Back in 1994, Al was the point many for “Reinventing Government” As a part of his mission, he put a “date certain” marker down for all of the executive agencies of the government to establish an internet presence by the fall of 1994.  Needless to say, this action lit a fire under a lot of organizations who went out and put up websites, ranging to the Consumer Product Safety Commission to the Central Intelligence Agency.  Nobody wanted to make Al or his acolytes unhappy.

When October 1, 2004 rolled around, government agencies were bragging about their shiny new websites and Internet connectivity.  As a net result, the (U.S.) open standards-based Internet suddenly had a lot more intrinsic value for private industry, academia, and individual citizens. Subsequent administrations and Congresses, have continued to build upon that base, trying to out do the previous generation as to who has the coolest toys.

Back to the question of the day: What can the Obama Administration do for HD Communications?

With all due respect to the current Amtrak-loving Vice President, Joe Biden is no Al Gore when it comes to carrying the torch of technological advancement.  Fortunately, President Obama has nominated both a national CTO and a well-admired Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Both have roles to play.

Aneesh Chopra, the nation’s CTO, will be responsible for promoting technology innovation including “national strategies for using advanced technologies to transform our economy and our society, such as fostering private sector innovation, reducing administrative costs and medical errors using health IT, and using technology to change the way teachers teach and students learn.”

HD voice = advanced technology to transform the way we communicate. Perfect fit.

Chopra could state the obvious:Existing technology for voice phone calls is in need of an upgrade, so the federal government and the organizations that work with it should all adopt G.722 as the standard way it conducts broadband voice communications by some date certain, starting with conference calls and working all the way down to individual departments and offices.  Simply switching to VoIP provides a base for other apps, but HD Communications provides an uplift in quality that should improve communications between government agencies, and ultimately between other nations; after all, the French, British, Germans, and Italians are all implementing HD voice in the form of G.722.

The White House should be the first organization to go “All G,” providing a suitable example and incentive for other agencies to make the move up to HD Voice.  It’ll make a good complement to go with the secure BlackBerry.

The FCC is the point agency for a creating and implementing a national broadband policy, so Julius Genachowski and the FCC’s broadband’s main man, Blair Levin, can incorporate and trumpet the use of HD voice and G.722 in the creation of said policy.  The FCC may have to provide some suggestion/clue/encouragement by service providers to interoperate, but hopefully such mechanisms/suggestions will be relatively loose and not require a Big Club or a complex settlements formula.

The release touts using Optimum’s hosted VoIP service, shiny new Cisco IP phones, and the company’s fiber-optic network to deliver the best [...]]]>

Optimum Lightpath, Cablevision’s business arm, has announced what it terms the “first” high-definition voice service for mid-sized to large businesses, with service available in June 2009 in the New York metropolitan area.

The release touts using Optimum’s hosted VoIP service, shiny new Cisco IP phones, and the company’s fiber-optic network to deliver the best quality voice calls to and from anyone “within its business facilities.”  The service uses Cisco’s 7945 and 7965 IP phones and since those phones support the G.722 wideband codec, we have HD Communications.

Optimum is offering a turn-key end-to-end solution, probably the best way to roll out the service so it can assure QoS.  How many customers will bite on HD-quality for intra-facility calling will be interesting given Optimum’s footprint in the New York region.

From a historic perspective, Optimum/Cablevision has always been “pushing the envelope” when it has come to bringing in new technologies; the company was the first to roll out high speed 50 and 100 Mbps broadband service for businesses before DOCSIS 3.0 was formally locked down.

Interesting questions that come to mind are: 1) Will Optimum promote INTER-business HD calling among the customers who sign up for it? 2) Will this offering speed up the wheels at Verizon Business for a HD voice offering? (OK, probably not) 3) How will Optimum work on expanding/exchanging HD voice calling beyond its own footprint?

Given NYC’s business and international focus, if Optimum isn’t talking to France Telecom and BT about HD/G.722 interoperability now, it likely will be in the weeks to come. Optimum would be in the unique position to build the first HD “bridge” across the Atlantic between its HD island and those in operation/under construction in Europe.