Blogs

The Insider was today reminded of the tale of the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes.’ You surely remember it? A vain Emperor who cares for nothing but his appearance and attire hires two tailors who are really swindlers that promise him the finest, best suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or "just hopelessly stupid".

The Emperor cannot see the clothes himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position; his ministers...

Last week I was in Calgary, Alberta, Canada doing some teaching.  What a variety of food choices for a city that is not very large …and all of them were superb.  Indian one night, true Neapolitan pizza another, Irish pub food, and one over the top dish at an Italian restaurant situated in an old house in the downtown area.  The dish was linguine with baby clams and a fantastic red sauce.  I love clams this way and it was the best version of this dish I have ever had.  And a great Caesar...

The TM Forum is aware of the challenges being faced by network operators in the area of traffic management. Demands on network bandwidth are increasing due to the popularity of content streaming applications (e.g. video); in addition, network operators are interested in detecting traffic that is being generated by illegal activity, e.g. peer-to-peer file sharing. With the deployment of LTE, mobile devices are generating large amounts of data traffic which is also straining the capacity of...

Something strange is happening in countries leading the way with national broadband network (NBN) rollouts – very few customers seem interested in taking up the service.

Shocking statistics coming out of Singapore indicate that despite more than 83 per cent of buildings being fiber-enabled there is only an 8 per cent take-up rate. In parts of Australia where the NBN has been fired up it’s even less at 1 per cent. Even the most diehard skeptics would not have forecast such pathetic numbers...

Why is the mobile industry, particularly in developed markets, getting such a bad rap lately? What do we have to do to get customers to love us? Aren’t we doing everything to deliver them speed, voice clarity, reliability and connectedness? What more do they want, blood?

According to Sprint Nextel CEO, Dan Hesse, it’s not enough. Citing figures from the Reputation Institute Pulse Index annual survey during his keynote at the CTIA he stated that...

There have been numerous announcements concerning the TM Forum Action Week 39 sessions being conducted across 7 Revenue Management Online Community Groups in Madrid, but you should also consider some special sessions that are being held in addition to the team working sessions.  First, there will be several presentations and a roundtable on subject ranging from Revenue Assurance to Customer Experience on Monday during the Frameworx Spotlight.  Then, on Thursday afternoon, the leaders of all the groups working...

The Nokia rumor mill is running hot again. This time Reuters is asking the same question we were all asking over year ago – will Microsoft buy out (or bail out) Nokia if things continue along their current path. When he took over the reins, CEO Stephen Elop likened Nokia’s situation to standing on a burning platform, and it appears little has changed since then.

He hasn’t exactly stood still since that time but many of his decisions have...

“Apple will provide wireless service directly to its iPad and iPhone customers. First, Apple will sell data packages bundled with iPads. Then it will sell data and international roaming plans to iPhone customers through the iTunes Store. And in time — sooner than many think — Apple will strike wholesale deals with several mobile operators so that Apple can provide wireless service directly to its customers, as Apple Mobile.” So says Whitey Bluestein, a seasoned...

There's an old saying that goes something like: "Give a man a hammer and all he sees are nails."  While I try to avoid developing such a tunnel-vision blind spot in my own thinking, it seemed like everywhere I looked while on a recent business trip, all I saw was Enterprise Risk Management.

It started with a random conversation I struck up with a fellow seated next to me in the boarding area of a flight from Seattle to Atlanta.  It turned out that the gentleman is the Western Region head...

Could this be a sign that data is actually starting to pay for itself? Sprint Nextel, the third largest mobile operator in the USA, has reported that its customers are spending more on data plans than they did a year ago. In fact, the average monthly customer bill was up 6.6 per cent to $59.98. The rise, it seems, came from smartphone data plans.

Of course, it is probably too early to start shouting from the rooftops, but the trend is positive and it seems...