First we dove into the Net Neutrality debate. It looks as if three of five FCC commissioners will vote to sanction Comcast this Friday for throttling bit-torrent traffic. Dissenter Bob McDowell wrote an op-ed for yesterday’s Washington Post arguing that engineers should figure a way out of this mess, not politicians.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Comcast was throttling traffic. We talked about McDowell’s argument for a hands-off approach by the FCC, the issues around bandwidth shortages, and what’s happening outside North America.
We also talked about Vonage. It’s been a while since they’ve really been in the news, but they’ve been quietly cranking out announcements. They’ve announced a partial refinancing of their debt. Up to $215 million of their $253 million can be refinanced under an agreement they’ve just struck, and $125 million has been committed. They have to do this because the existing convertible notes expire Dec 12.
They’ve also announced their first patent — on virtual phone numbers.
Revenues are growing. Losses are narrowing — last quarter they lost just $8 million.
And, they’re set to announce a new CEO.
We talked about what it would take to make Vonage a success and whether or not they might really make it.
Squawk Box July 29 [39:33m]:
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Tags: Tech and Business, squawkbox, Comcast, FCC, Net Neutrality, Vonage
I spent a good chunk of my vacation zipping around Europe with the Nokia N78 and Nokia Maps 2.0, courtesy of the Nokia Blogger Relations program. Before leaving Canada, I made arrangements to get one of these phones and the mapping software, just so I could try it out and report back.
The N78 is a successor to the N73, launched two years ago. It’s a mid range phone with a 3.2 megapixel camera, 3G data, and a much upgraded GPS system. Much as the N73 was the baby brother to the N95, the N78 is a baby brother to the soon-to-be-released N96, in my opinion. With an upgraded processor and graphics capabilities, it can do some slick iPhone-like things visually and it’s a capable music and video playback device.
While in Europe, I used the N78 and Nokia Maps 2.0 for navigation in Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague, and the Danish countryside. I also brought my Garmin Streetpilot just in case I ran into trouble with the N78.
So what did I think?
- The location technology in the N78 is a big improvement over the the N95 and some earlier Nokia phones. For example, with its Assisted GPS technology, the N78 can acquire a satellite fix in seconds and hold onto your location information in some very unlikely locations – inside a building, or sitting in the floor mount cup-holder in my car, for example.
- The quality of the maps is very good. There were several occasions during our trip where the Garmin GPS lost our position, or was unable to find a location that N78 found without difficulty. In addition, the Garmin maps had only sparse European Points of Interest data, whereas the N78 had a fairly rich database.
- The maps are large. So large, in fact, that you won’t want to download them over the air. The best way to load them is to use the Nokia Map Loader to download them via a PC.
- The quality of the N78 display is also very good. It’s a passive reflective display of some kind which is clearly visible even in bright sunlight, and clearly illuminated for night time use.
- I found vehicle navigation with the N78 very easy. Directions are spoken early, with plenty of notice, and pronunciations are easily understood. It could be improved if it also called out street names as my Garmin unit does.
- I had high hopes for the pedestrian navigation mode and was somewhat disappointed. It was difficult to keep the N78 consistently in pedestrian navigation mode, and the spoken directions were difficult to hear outdoors in a crowded environment. Moreover, the 10M accuracy of GPS is perfectly accurate for in-vehicle navigation, but doesn’t provide tight enough resolution for navigation on-foot.
- Battery life when running the GPS can be a problem over long distances. If in vehicle, you will want to invest in a car charger.
- Because I didn’t have a suction cup dashboard mount with the N78 (and one may not even be available), I missed the display that the Garmin and dedicated units provide. If you were going to use N78 extensively, you’d want to invest in a dashboard mount cell phone holder. That’s not particular to this device, however. It’s simply good safety practice for all cell phones.
Net net? If I was thinking about investing in a dedicated navigation device today, I’d give the Nokia N78 a hard look. Available online for between $400 and $425, it’s a phone, maps, camera, GPS and more all in a neat and very portable package. There’s even a North American version now available.
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Tags: Tech and Business
I’ll give Rogers some credit for having responded positively to public outrage over iPhone data plan pricing earlier in July. I’m surprised at some of their latest moves, however. There’s a class of early adopter users that they’ve decided to screw over on iPhone pricing, because those users have existing and relatively new contracts.
Basically, if you’ve upgraded a phone in the last 12 months, you’re on a three year contract. As Scott Annan found out, the only way Rogers will let you buy an iPhone from them is to cancel your existing contract (cost $450), and sign up for a new three year contract. That’s a $700 bill.
You’d think the geniuses at Rogers would have jumped on the iPhone craze and ridden it hard for all it’s worth. It’s their single biggest weapon in the war to lock consumers into long term contracts. And, shortly Telus will have BlackBerry Thunder.
More to the point, this is a terrific illustration of why carriers should be prohibited from demanding abusive three year contracts, and should be required to unlock phones on demand for consumers. At minimum, the customer should be able to unlock an old phone, sell it on eBay, and use that to recoup the cost of buying the iPhone without having to extend the service contract.
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Tags: Canada, Tech and Business
The best new iPhone application I’ve seen yet is Facebook. Why? Because it fully exploits the connectivity of the iPhone. While you can’t install a Facebook F8 application in the iPhone client, you can:
- access all of the photos you’ve stored on Facebook, with an interface that’s richer and more functional than the iPhone interface. Unlimited storage, and a better experience. What could be better than that? And more importantly, why would I ever synch a photo to the iPhone again?
- access all of your Facebook email. Quickly, easily, and intuitively. The iPhone native Facebook email smokes Facebook’s own email on the web. Why would I ever visit Facebook’s site to manage Facebook mail again?
- chat. That’s right, the Facebook IM client is also available on iPhone.
Kudo’s to the Facebook iPhone dev team. This is a great little app.
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Tags: Tech and Business, Facebook, iPhone
