Some of you might recall the campaign I launched in 2001: “Broadbanding local communities”. In all I spoke to over 50 municipalities in an attempt to make them take control over the broadbanding of their local communities. Around the world more than 1,000 local communities now do have at least some form of local broadband. After eight years of experience (more realistically however, more like three to five years of actual implementations), we are now beginning to see some trends in this market.

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A new report shows that the teen market has been the ‘golden child’ for cellular providers in the US. In addition to growing subscribers, teen ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) has been growing higher than that of the overall market. However, pricing pressures and teen cellular saturation are bringing an end to the teen cellular gold rush.

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The Mediterranean and Levant countries in the Middle East include Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey. This area is fascinating in terms of contrasts and opportunities. Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Turkey have all benefited greatly from comparatively well developed regulatory systems and competitive markets resulting in strong investment in telecommunications. Syria remains steadfastly against liberalisation and competition and consequently has an undeveloped market. Lebanon is poised to choose which course it will take.

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With news of the cheaper iPhone being launched this summer, is it part of the mobile industry having to undergo profound changes? Or did O2, which sells the phone in the UK, and T-Mobile, the German distributor, significantly overestimate the number of first version iPhones that would sell in Europe just because of the ‘hype’?

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While news of falling sales of mobile phones in the U.S has been reported due to the deteriorating credit crisis, the Afghanistan telephone market is growing at around 70%.

A new report shows that as the political and social rebuilding of the country proceeds following years of war and civil unrest, Afghanistan has been busy putting new national telecommunications infrastructure in place.

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Mobile commerce is potentially important for a wide range of industries, including telecommunications, IT, finance, retail and the media, as well as for end-users. It will work best in those areas where it can emphasise the core virtue of mobile networks – convenience.

Japan and Korea were one of the first to offer low-cost models to content providers, and the mobile content market is flourishing in those markets. Most of the proceeds flow to the content providers yet, in the rest of the world, the mobile operators are adamant that they want to have a much larger share of the spoils. Strategy Analytics estimated that Japanese consumers made contactless payments worth $900 million using their mobiles in 2006, including prepaid travel tickets. This can be partly attributed to Sony’s FeliCa contactless payments standard that has been adopted by banks and mobile phones companies.

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After months of cost overruns, delays and plenty of bad press, EarthLink recently announced that it is putting its municipal wireless business up for sale, leaving one of its leading customers, the City of Philadelphia, at a crossroads regarding its municipal Wi-Fi deployment.

The initiative in Philadelphia has been one of the most discussed deployments of municipal wireless networks in the US, and EarthLink’s decision to sell is an example of the volatility of this market. In order to ensure continued viability of the network, the city must be very careful in taking its next steps.

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The ability to provide wide ranging contact centre services across verticals and geographies has long been the goal of players in this space. To do so with high levels of customer satisfaction is an even more ambitious goal. However, a new report, reveals the five players that have proven themselves capable of doing so.

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The next 12 months will see the broadcast sector addressing new business models for distribution and advertising in a bid to retain and attract new audiences. This is one of the key conclusions to be drawn in a new report which says that the transforming communications and entertainment sector is creating a challenging new environment for traditional broadcasters. In order to remain competitive, digital TV players will need to utilize effective technological solutions to aide in multi-platform distribution and value-add services.

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BT has a strong presence in the SMB market and has just expanded its portfolio with a new unified communications (UC) service aimed at these customers. It hopes to utilize its “Communications Complete” solution to build long-term partnerships. BT has chosen to work with Cisco and is using its UC500 platform for this new service. The UC500 system offers functionality for up to 50 users, so is an ideal platform for BT to use to target SMBs. BT is already a technology partner and reseller for Cisco and it is set to further leverage Cisco’s strength in UC by this move.

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