August 29th, 2007

Thoughts on the decline of EarthLink- and a way for them to come back

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 11:04 am

Categories: Earthlink

Tags: EarthLink Inc., Colleague Larry Dignan, Russell Shaw

Colleague Larry Dignan is the first on our block to run with the story that ISP EarthLink is laying off 900 people, closing several offices, and so forth.

After running excerpts of an EarthLink corporate statement citing reasons and intent for the downshift, Larry casts doubts on EarthLink’s long-term outlook:

But the overarching question for EarthLink revolves around the future. Dial-up access is a passing memory. EarthLink offers digital subscriber line service, but that looks increasingly passe relative to cable and services like Verizon FiOS. It also has bundles with satellite TV and home phone service, but it’s hard to imagine EarthLink competing with the big telecom companies. EarthLink dabbles in selling Helio service and has a business developing municipal Wi-Fi networks, but neither of those businesses can offset declining subscribers.

Larry nails it, but I’d like to focus in a bit from my perspective.

In transitioning its legacy dial-up Internet access business to the broadband and mobile world we are living in today, EarthLink never was able to obtain access to the powerful alliances that the cable and big telecom incumbents were able to execute.

That being the case, the service “bundles” EarthLink has been able to execute with equipment makers and other service providers have more often than not, been second or third-tier.

Take Helio for instance. A creature of SKTelecom and EarthLink, they are a niche player and a money-bleeder.

So what happens when most of your service alliances are second or third-tier? When linked-in competitors such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T come to potential vendors and  ultimately, to consumers with powerful triple and quadruple-play offerings, the second and third-tier players must either compete on existing reputation and price.

Sometimes, existing reputation and slightly lower prices are not enough. When this is revealed to be the case, ink runs red as customers and enterprises seek more alluring solutions.

And when the ink runs red, cost-cutting CEOs mandate the closure of offices and the pink-slipping of staff.

That’s what’s going on at EarthLink.

For EarthLink to survive, it must either sell out or find specialty niches.  Rather than just trueVoice, maybe, say, join up with a VoIP pure play: EarthLink becomes the access service for the VoIP service, creating an instant bundle and numerous new accounts.

I wonder if they had thought of buying SunRocket? Were they even approached?

How about an EarthLink-Vonage alliance?

April 30th, 2007

North American wireless broadband REALLY needs these two Japanese innovations

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 10:12 am

Categories: Earthlink, General, Predictions and Observations

Tags: Innovation, Broadband, Bar Code, Wi-Fi, Mobile Marketing, Cell, Wireless Broadband, Wireless, Russell Shaw

I've been browsing through a new Forrester Research report entitled, "How Japanese Companies Guide Their Customers To Mobile Internet Experiences." That link is to the Executive Sumary.

In the report, Forrester analysts Jonathan Browne, Ron Rogowski and Steven Geller start out by noting that in any language, mobile search is (often) inaccurate. Check.

But then the authors present two fascinating Japanese innovations that get around mobile search's limitations by making it easier for mobile broadband (cell and Wi-Fi) users to get at the information or transactional mobile Web page they want without having to perform a search or navigate several levels down subject trees.

The authors refer to these services as "Using bar codes to link users to contextual support," and "Using wireless tags to push content directly from the urban environment."

The "bar code" solution is best for cell.

"Most camera phones in Japan include software that scans two-dimensional bar codes, known as QR (quick response) codes, which can contain data such as a Web site URL," the authors write. "Tokyo's metropolitan transportation bureau posts unique codes at hundreds of bus stops around the city that link commuters to journey planning tools, timetables, bus locations, and estimated wait times for each specific location."

As shown in the image at the top of this post, your cellphone's built-in bar code reader would scan the bar code at a specific transit stop. The scan would direct your cellphone's wireless broadband Web browser to a landing page where further, and quite specific info about the route that stops where you are would be available.

The "wireless tags" feature is probably best for (but not limited to) Wi-Fi-enabled notebook users.

In an endnote to a description of how this will work, the authors of this report write:

For an experimental project in Tokyo's Ginza shopping district, researchers from The University of Tokyo placed more than 1,200 RFID chips, 270 infrared spotlights, and 16 Wi-Fi stations on lampposts and in flower beds, stores, and subway tunnels.

Participants in the experiment carried dedicated devices that played media files and displayed content that was pushed to the devices based on the location of the participant. Thus, when a participant stood in front of a historical landmark, he would receive background information on that landmark.

So my question is, which cell and Wi-Fi service providers will team up with North American businesses, municipalities, and transit agencies to offer either of these two services?

How about either T-Mobile or Earthlink? Both are players in cell and Wi-Fi access. This would be a natural. 

I'm excited. These could happen!

January 8th, 2007

Vonage to pair with EarthLink Muni Wi-Fi: but here's what ought to happen next.

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 7:28 am

Categories: Earthlink, General, Vonage, WiFi

Tags:

This morning, Vonage announced a partnership with EarthLink that would involve resellng of EarthLink's municipal wireless services in several markets.

As one who has frequently maintained that Vonage needs to start offering bundled services to compete with its major broadband competitors, I recognize that this is a needed first step.

A first step, but barely a toe in the water in terms of overall geographic and marketplace impact.

It seems to me that what Vonage needs to do now is pursue more muni WiFi alliances with other access providers.

Not only that, but Vonage should think about "triple play" by pairing up with a cell provider who is young and hungry as they are.

So how about Cricket Wireless? They are constantly expanding into new markets and territories,including San Diego and my hometown of Portland. What's more they are brashly flaunting the traditional cellphone carrier model by not insisting on those, well, "substantial penalty for early withdrawal" service contracts.

Vonage for VoIP, MuniWi-Fi partnerships for WiFI, Cricket for cell. Now that's a trifecta worth a bet. Or, at least worth chirping about.

January 4th, 2007

Earthlink CEO Gary Betty: 1957-2007

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 12:12 pm

Categories: Earthlink, General

Tags:

Earthlink's visionary CEO Gary Betty has died. He was only 49.

While I did not know Gary, I knew much of the fruits of his labors.

I've always admired Atlanta-based Earthlink as a resourceful, honest and successful company who managed to battle the cable and telco Internet Service Provider giants deftfully but never without forgetting the consumer.

How so?

Excellent Internet access services. Innovative third-party alliances. Stable and dependable Web hosting.  A small fleet of appropriate web services tools. And as far as I know, no manic marketing with excessive pop-ups and spam.

Earthlink is a good company, that has been run by a competitive, but a grounded and good man.

The telecommunications and Internet industries need more like him. 

May 3rd, 2006

Will Helio features become standard on all handsets?

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 4:47 am

Categories: Earthlink, General

Tags:

As Helio officially launches its cell-phone service today, it is useful to point out that some features and service characteristics have the potential to be useful for more than the younger mobile users the EarthLink-SK Telecom joint venture is targeting. 

About time that someone did all-in-one charging for both talk and data minutes, rather than forcing users to walk a tightrope by having to keep separate track of both. This is likely to be the defacto cell services model in the near future. 

I also predict that some Helio services, such as integrated Yahoo! IM and MySpace.com access, will eventually transcend the Helio demographics and become standard fare.

De rigeur not just on Helio, but on pretty much every cell phone and not long after that, on VoIP softphones and VoWiFi handsets.

I also like the "Gifting and Begging" features, which enable Helio users to buy content and then have it delivered to friends- or ask their friends to buy this content for them. I see some broader utility for other telecom brands and modes, but to me, the "Gifting" and "Begging" features sound a bit  too born of how-do-we-get-these-kids-excited, focus-group-driven planning.

So let us see how Helio does in terms of uptake and execution. The broader telecom universe will be watching. 

April 4th, 2006

Helio convergence chief on IMS: is essential but should be transparent

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 10:14 am

Categories: CTIA, Earthlink, General, WiFi, trends

Tags:

I go to a lot of VoIP conferences, and at every one I attend, you hear the gospel of IP Multimedia Systems, or IMS for short.

The CTIA show is no exception. In fact, there is a panel going on right at this very minute entitled "IMS: The Technology Roadmap to VoIP Mobility."

First, a brief refresher course on IMS, from an excellent Lucent White Paper called IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) Service Architecture

The IMS services architecture is a unified architecture that supports a wide range of services enabled by the flexibility of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The IMS architecture can support multiple application servers providing traditional telephony services and non-telephony services such as instant messaging, push-totalk,video streaming, multimedia messaging, etc.

The services architecture is a collection of logical functions, which can be
divided into three layers:
• Transport and Endpoint Layer
• Session Control Layer
• Application Server Layer

The consensus of panelists seems to be that IMS has great potential, but it better be transparent, by golly.

"In some ways we see some similar problems as the enterprise users do- poor in-building or in-home coverage for voice or data applications. But we are taking it a step further and we see that especially among the high-end tech savvy consumers of today, they want rich multimedia and rich communications services are not where they should be" said Greg Hayes, head of convergence for Helio, a partnership between Earthlink and SK Telecom. "The experience where rich content has a discontintuity between broadband and phone applications is a problem we are seeking to solve.

Then Hayes addressed the matter of transparency between cellular and Wi-Fi. "For the consumer, it should be invisible and behind the scenes," he said. "We can’t expect them to understand or make decisions to enable that connectivity to happen."

Hayes also implied that the greater the potential for IMS to boost the quality of the service offerings, the more attractive these applications will be for consumers.

"Were looking for end to end solutions with a little bit of intelligence on the client," Hayes noted. "As we prove out and find out where the money is going to be made, we are going to see some of those opportunities emerge."

March 31st, 2006

Here's the worst Verizon DSL service horror story you will EVER read

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 3:07 am

Categories: Earthlink, General, Providers, Verizon

Tags:

David Strom is one of those relatively rare, prominent tech journalists who has the scientific credentials to further inform his work. Not only does David hold an M.S. in Operations Research from Stanford, he’s written about networking and related technologies for 20 years. Among his many credits, he started Network Computing magazine, and until early this year, was the top editor at Tom’s Hardware Guide.

So when it comes to telecom service sand traps, you don’t find David there too often.

Knowing David and his CV made me give one of his newly posted Web Informant blog articles an extra read. The piece, entitled Which has worse customer service, Adelphia or Verizon?, reads like the customer service chamber of horrors that it sounds like.

After noting that he wanted to switch from Adelphia’s cable Internet service because it lacked a "decent Internet dial tone," David then describes the hassles he encountered getting set up with Verizon’s DSL service.

I’ll highlight the low points. David:

Places an order for Verizon voice and DSL service from the Verizon website. 

Noting the service would be for an older apartment building with funky wiring, he asks for a tech to come out and oversee the installation process. "I needed that tech to come visit with his tone set and get things connected from the wiring closet downstairs," David writes.

Gets an order-confirmation email from Verizon, noting they would come out the next day.

Reads through the order, but doesn’t see his new phone number.

Receives an order confirmation the next day via UPS, with his new phone number indicated in the documentation.

Attempts to sign on, gets "our records indicate the account you entered is no longer in service."

Calls the business office and asks for an on-site technician again. Two days pass, no techie comes.

Calls Verizon tech support, who dispatches a tech the same day.

Tech gets a dialtone for regular service, but the DSL part of the order is held up.

Goes online, and gets a notification that "due to a system malfunction," your order is not yet complete.

While the tech is installing the regular dialtone, David speaks to someone at Verizon tech support and is told that he (David) will have to go thru the whole DSL order service again. "Incredible! Do they want my business," David writes.

Goes back on line, but now the Verizon web site indicates his DSL is already a feature on his voice line and he can’t reorder it again. 

Tells his techie this, who then implies that the Verizon DSL folks are a bunch of losers.

Fed up, David orders DSL from Earthlink.

"And the funny thing is, when I go to Verizon’s Web site and key in this number, I still get the ‘account is no longer in service’ message," David writes.

"Maybe one of these days Verizon will finally figure out how to really use this new-fangled Web-thingie."

Classic case of Verizon’s Web-based customer service having a house full of ghosts in the machine, don’tcha think? 

Or more inelegantly put, Verizon, here’s a piece of advice for you that starts with the letters, "Fu."

FULFILLMENT. 

March 9th, 2006

Why convergence marketing is suffering from "domain poisoning"

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 8:16 pm

Categories: BlackBerry, CallVantage, Cisco, Earthlink, General, Google, News, Skype, Softphones, Vonage, microsoft, trends

Tags:

I have this theory about folks who are new to technology, don’t know much about a tech company, but maybe see an ad or get word-of-mouth recommendations.

More than a few such folks are liable to mis-spell the name of the vendor or service and give up out of a sense of confusion. 

If they use a search engine to find, say, the Vonage website and they type in "Vonnage," then Google will come back with a "did you mean Vonage."

But what if an inexperienced yet inquisitive person (the type that could well become your customer if they can find your site) mis-spells the name of your company? When they see a page that has nothing to do with your company, or maybe a bit to do with it but only indirectly, aren’t they likely to be confused?

We are talking about less experienced and less knowledgeable users here. Less experience and knowledge equals confusion and misinterpretation.

And maybe not just inexperienced users. The X-chromosomal unit works at a university, and she regularly receives correspondence from Ph.D’s who can’t distinguish between "it’s" and "its." If very educated folks get tripped up by that, then calling "Vonage" "Vonnage" is not just a sin of the cerebrally challenged. 

Typos can also be committed by folks in a hurry, or who are not fluent in English. 

So how well do tech marketers cover their assets by buying up close-typo domains and then use those presumed landing pages as instant referral pages to their actual site?

Not many, I am afraid. 

I know this because on Thursday evening, I put on my faux dunce cap and deliberately mis-typed 10 URLs of VoIP and or/convergence companies. In most cases, I got sent to a page of a spam or spyware-rendering, totally marketing-driven search engine. In other cases I arrived at cybersquatted domains, like the Mikrosoft one at the top of this post.

OK, here’s what I found:

Vonnage- "server not found." WHOIS says the name is owned by Vonage, so why isn’t there a refer?

Skipe- An exception- takes you right to Skype.com.

(ATT) CallAdvantage- It’s CallVantage of course. Takes you to something called "All Advantage," a one-page "site" with just the name.

Mikrosoft- As you see at the top of this post, the site owner says he is not a cyberquatter- and he just wants Microsoft to take the domain off his hands- for free!

Sisco- Page request refers to some obscure search engine called First Place.

Googal- Actually bounces to RFID.com, an interesting e-commerce site for RFID enclosures. But since the site does not use Googal in the address, it appears that the folks behind RFID.com bought Googal on the assumption that they would get traffic from the typos. Give ‘em their do- err, due.

Commcast- A nondescript page with just a collection of links.

Packet Eight- Of course you would want to type "Packet 8." But if you did what I did, you’ll wind up on a site called "Rush2Buy. Guess what: they will sell their domain for $500! I have to wonder if Packet8 owner 8×8 might be interested.

Come take a look: 

Earthlinks- Server not found. Domain registered to some guy in New Jersey.

Hewlett-Packerd- Page request bounces to some obscure Web directory called Clickabove.com.

So what’s my point? Tech marketers, don’t lose customers to "domain poisoning." Be like Skype and buy up those related URLs! 

March 2nd, 2006

Pricing out the Philly Wi-Fi deal

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 9:19 am

Categories: Earthlink, General, News, Providers, WiFi

Tags:

That’s the food court at Independence Mall in Philadelphia.

Soon, you’ll have free Wi-Fi there - and in lots of other locations in the city as well. 

Yesterday, Philadelphia Mayor John Street announced details of a deal that will bring citywide Wi-Fi to the nation’s fifth most populous city.

The deal involves EarthLink, as well as Wireless Philadelphia, the entity created by the city to manage the system.

Here are a few numbers you might find interesting:

EarthLink will build, own and maintain the network for 10 years at a total cost of $22 million.

The system will consist of about 4,000 transceivers to be placed atop city light posts. Atlanta-based EarthLink will pre-pay $2 billion for the transceivers, including $250,000 due upon presumed City Council approval of Mayor Street’s deal.

EarthLink will pay Philly $74 for each light post, per year, as well as $300,000 for surveying costs associated with planning this deployment.

Basic rate will be $20 a month for businesses. Low-income customers will pay $9.95 a month. Additional rate structure elements have not yet been disclosed. 

The city government gets 1,250 free Wi-Fi accounts. There will also be free access from 22 parks and public spaces, including Penn’s Landing, Independence Mall and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The first 15 square miles of this deployment are scheduled to be completed by this summer, with full completion due by fall, 2007.

Would you like to see a WiFi build like this in your city or town? Talk back to  us! 

October 4th, 2005

Meet Earthlink: brainy, brash and utterly fearless

Posted by Russell Shaw @ 10:14 pm

Categories: E911, Earthlink, General, Providers, trends

Tags:

One thing you can say about Earthlink. Although they are no small potatoes, they have no fear mixing it up with the big guys.

They pick their spots adroitly. If they succeed in building a municipal Wi-Fi network in Philadephia- where they won the contract on Monday - that will be a powerful inducement for other cities unafraid of larger cable and telco monopolies to invite Earthlink to bid.

Earthlink is one of the contestants to build a Wi-Fi network for San Francisco as well, but that city seems a bit more forthright about embracing a model that won’t be free and ad-supported, as Google’s would be.

But Earthlink’s real middle finger at the big boys- you know, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, etc.; is their forthcoming Earthlink True Voice package. For around $70, subscribers will get Covad-powered VoIP-like service without the need for in-home hardware. Hardware like routers and Analog Terminal Adapters that can intimidate non-techs that VoIP needs to really become mainstream.

VoIP-like, because it isn’t VoIP in the common sense of the word, but line-powered voice access. The technology uses some copper wiring rather than fiber only. Because of this the phone would continue to work during a power outage and support E-911 calls. That’s also a FUD reducer for the masses who I’m sure, are intimidated by the "E-911 doesn’t work over VoIP so what if" story lines of the mainstream media.

And for that $70, subscribers will also get 8Mbps ADSL+2 broadband Internet access. Faster than many, if not most, cable broadband.

Cheaper, too.