Inside the BlackBerry "Workaround"   Credit: By Heather Green

     Buck up, BlackBerry addicts. At least that's the message from Research In Motion (RIMM), which on Feb. 9 took pains to allay users' concerns that a legal squabble will result in a U.S. shutdown of the popular wireless e-mail service. RIM unveiled long-awaited details of a "workaround," or a plan for keeping BlackBerrys up and running in the event RIM ultimately loses the long and winding patent dispute with NTP (see RIM's Web site for information about the workaround.) Advertisement

To recap, in 2001, closely held NTP successfully filed suit against RIM for patent infringement. Now, after four bitter years of fighting, the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is set to decide soon whether to issue an injunction upholding that earlier ruling. At the same time, the U.S. Patent & Trademarks Office is reexamining the patents at the heart of the flap. In preliminary findings, the PTO overturned all the key patents, and a final review is due in the coming weeks.

Here's an overview of the workaround and some of the issues it raises:

What exactly is the workaround?
It's a software fix, called the BlackBerry Multi-Mode Edition, that's designed to not infringe on NTP's patents. If the court decides to impose an injunction, it would allow RIM to continue selling its popular mobile e-mail devices in the U.S. and provide uninterrupted service to its more than 3 million U.S. customers.

How does it work?
It would work by changing the part of the network where e-mails are stored. Right now, when someone is out of wireless coverage range and can't immediately get e-mail access, RIM's service stores incoming messages on computers at one of its two network operations centers, or NOCs. When you come back into coverage range, those e-mails are forwarded to you automatically.

Click here for the complete story.

TextPayMe: Eliminating the IOU   Credit: By Rachel Metz

     When a group of people dine out together, someone always lacks cash. They forgot to go to the ATM, but they'll pay you back ASAP. Right. Funny, though, how people rarely forget their cell phones. Philip Yuen put these two observations together and came up with TextPayMe to let people send money using text messaging. TextPayMe seems like a logical second act for PayPal, but Yuen sees the services as complimentary.

"We just want to take over the world in all face-to-face transactions," he said.

TextPayMe doesn't have much competition in the United States so far, but PayPal may be hot on its heels. Ironically, PayPal began as a service for beaming money between PDAs. While people can now use PayPal through web-enabled cell phones, the company doesn't have an SMS function. But a recent Craigslist job posting for a business manager for "PayPal Mobile," described as "a dynamic, young 'start-up' business unit within PayPal dedicated to bringing value-added mobile payment services to consumers and merchants," has launched rumors that such an offering may be forthcoming.

"We haven't made any announcements in the mobile payments world," the PayPal spokesperson said.

Yuen, a former Microsoft program manager, teamed up with his Lockheed systems analyst brother, Gerald, and another Microsoft employee, CJ Huang, to get TextPayMe rolling. The trio secured funding from startup seed company Y Combinator and launched the TextPayMe beta in mid-December. TextPayMe works much like PayPal -- users create an online account and link it to a credit card or bank account. They can use SMS to send up to $500 a month. The service is now free, but the company might eventually charge fees for certain transactions, Yuen said. Beta adopters might have permanent free use, he said.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996: Did it Really Matter? Credit: By Dr. A. Michael Noll

    President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 into law on February 8, 2006, making this year its tenth anniversary. Heralded at its time as having the potential for significant impact on telecommunication in the United States, we now wonder whether it accomplished much at all. The Act prohibited the Baby Bells from electronic publishing for four years, mostly to protect the lucrative classified advertising in newspapers.

But the Internet—which was still a glimmer on the horizon back then— has certainly had far more impact on electronic publishing and access to information than anyone could have imagined—and the Baby Bells play little if any role in such electronic publishing and information access. Any protection from the Baby Bells of electronic information simply was not needed – then or now.

The Act allowed the Baby Bells into manufacturing and long distance, but subject to conditions. Wisely, the Baby Bells shied away from manufacturing, but have now entered long distance big-time through acquisitions of AT&T (by SBC) and MCI (by Verizon). Local exchange carriers were ordered to unbundled and open up their local networks, which the Baby Bells did but then successfully closed. The Act was intended to stimulate local competition, but clearly failed to do so in the manner envisioned.
However, the decades old vision of coaxial cable as a broadband medium delivering not only video but also voice and data in competition with the telephone companies has finally arrived – but not because of the Act.

Pork barrels on a grand scale were created by the Act, such as the universal service fund and aid to schools and libraries. Telecommunication service continues to be a source of taxation by the government for all sorts of social welfare and cross subsidizations. The Act attempted to restrict obscenity in the media, but these provisions were blatantly unconstitutional and were struck down by the courts.

Cable TV rates were deregulated, to the joy of the cable industry and the disgust of consumers. Ownership caps on broadcasters were liberalized, to the joy of the broadcasters and the disgust of consumer advocates. What we forget is that back in 1996 there were still the original seven Baby Bells. The Act unleashed a series of mergers so that today the Bell System seems to be reforming in the disguise of AT&T/SBC and Verizon/MCI. So in the end, the Telecommunication Act of 1996 was much fury signifying little. Some would like to write yet another Telecommunication Act, perhaps with less micromanagement, perhaps eliminating pork barrels and cross subsidies, and perhaps emphasizing basic principles.
 

Enterprise VoIP Conversion Gathers Momentum Credit: By VNU Business Online / CIO Today

    "The conversion to VoIP will be the dominant factor in the enterprise voice market over the next several years," said Steve Raab, director of IP telephony research at Dell'Oro Group.

Industry experts predicted today that IP-enabled PBX sales will surge to $2 billion in 2010, nearly a threefold increase from 2005. Combined IP PBX and hybrid IP/TDM PBX sales are projected to gain share steadily over traditional PBX and key systems, according to Dell'Oro Group.

"The conversion to VoIP will be the dominant factor in the enterprise voice market over the next several years," said Steve Raab, director of IP telephony research at Dell'Oro Group.

"Modernizing the installed base of traditional PBX technology to IP telephony requires coordinated investment in data networking and enterprise voice equipment. During this transition, hybrid IP/TDM PBXs that embody newer IP and legacy TDM technology will represent the majority of sales."

The analyst predicted sales of IP telephones to exceed $4 billion in 2010, driven by businesses adopting IP Centrex services and upgrading PBX handsets to IP telephones.

Newsletter Created and Maintained by NunOther Designs.