The first week in February ends with another pure play closing shop, new product announcements, more cable cuts, and the FCC auction creeping up on the 20 billion mark.
Another Pure Play Bites the Dust
Florida based VoIP Inc. has closed down it’s network operations and laid off 25 engineers according to a report in FierceVoIP. The company has told the SEC that it plans to write off about $24 million dollars. The announcement comes a day after the company revealed deals with Google and Ebay to use their patented pay per call ad software.
With VoIP Inc. going the way of SunRocket, the field of pure play VoIP service providers narrows as cable giant Comcast takes the lead over Vonage in residential VoIP, another pure player whose future is dubious.
Cisco Teams with iSkoot for Mobile VoIP
iSkoot will demonstrate its mobile VoIP solution on Cisco’s AS5000 Gateway and the PGW 2200 Softswitch next week at the GSMA Mobile World Congress. The Cisco carrier class Softswitch performs call control and signaling functions between IP networks and the PSTN.
The iSkoot software will allow users to make and get VoIP calls on their cell phone, circumventing the cellular networks. While not real good news for the walled gardens, iSkoot believes the pent up demand for VoIP capable cell phones makes their technology the next killer app in the cellular market.
Fujitsu WiMax, picoChip LTE Design
On the wireless broadband front, Fujitsu launched its first WiMax outdoor base station. Weighing in at 44 lbs, the BroadOne WX300, first in the WX series, claims to be the world’s smallest outdoor micro-cell base station, and is expected to ship in the second quarter. Fujitsu’s WiMax base stations will be operating in the 2.5GHz and 2.3GHz range.
WiMax company picoChip and mimoOn are collaborating on an LTE base station reference design that is supported on the same platform as picoChips WiMax products. Vice president of marketing Rupert Baines says, “The reuse from WiMAX to LTE is about 70 percent. For our customers, they can reuse virtually everything. They’ve already designed the hardware and they just need to download a new code. There is a huge commonality.”
Five Cable Cuts in Two Weeks
Two more submarine cables were cut this week, one near Malaysia, the other off the coast of Iran. Internet theorist are crying conspiracy, while the powers that be say the more likely cause is dragging anchors over the ocean floor due to inclement weather. Rich Terani’s blog reports that the three cuts last week of the coasts of Egypt and the UAE should be repaired by the weekend.
FCC Auction Tops $19 Billion
Slow moving this week, the auction had to be put on hold at one point for technical difficulties. The E band met its reserve on Thursday. Commercial Block C looks like it won’t be gobbled up by one company, as the bidding for individual licenses raised more than the package deal. If they want the whole thing, its $5 billion in the next round. The FCC ups the ante, making the bidders use 95% instead of 85% of their bidding units per round, making it more difficult to sit out.
Public Safety Block D sits lazily just under $500 million, far from the $1.3 billion reserve.
2-1-08 The Week in Review
The last week of the first month of the New Year (can we still call it that?) ends with a rather important milestone, at least from a unified communications perspective.
FCC Auction in High Gear
The highly coveted commercial Block C of the 700MHz auction has met the minimum reserve, and in doing so, ensures open access for all. Who’s bidding on what remains to be seen, as that is not disclosed by the FCC in an effort to prevent collusion.
But what’s up with Block D? The public service swath of spectrum hasn’t been getting many bidders since Frontline pulled out. If no one meets the reserve, it will be offered in another auction, sans the open access rules. So much for Homeland Security.
At the end of the bidding on Friday, the FCC had raised over 18.5 billion for the U.S. Treasury.
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