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T-MOBILE AND MICROSOFT/DANGER STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption. We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips at the T-Mobile Sidekick Forums (http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick ). We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.

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We take our Internet connectivity for granted until it goes dark – then the shear panic sets in. Read more and comment...

Global Crossing launched a new Web presence today, incorporating Web 2.0 technologies, featuring our viewpoint on key industry challenges and reinforcing the Global Crossing value proposition. Our objective was to create a leading-edge B2B web presence for prospective customers and clients.

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Extraordinary networking advancements are creating a new information era. Enterprises are confronting a whole new set of challenges in the web 2.0 economy. 3pd9aevxiu The old boundaries of voice and data networks, distance and geography have been erased. Regardless of how you describe today’s global business environment – a “flat world” or a “shrinking planet” – globalization 2.0 is upon us and information communications technologies (ICT) have never been a more critical enabler of enterprise competitiveness.Read more and comment...

I do like being connected, but on my own terms. Therefore, I remain a steadfast laggard on adopting a Blackberry or other mobile email device. My favorite excuses are my arthritic thumbs and old eyes. When one leaves the office on holiday, associates are reluctant to call you, but they do feel compelled to copy you on every email regarding the projects you’re engaged with. They may not expect you to respond, but once you have become addicted to your “crackberry” it takes nerves of steel to resist replying.Read more and comment...

Keeping your clients and prospects connected to your high-value and high-volume video content is critical and increasingly warrants the need for a dedicated content delivery solution. Whether your organization is selling B2B or B2C, you need to efficiently distribute, manage and monetize your online content. The heavy and unpredictable traffic load on the public IP networks, driven in large part by the proliferation of video content, means that you can no longer rely on the best-effort delivery over the public internet for distribution of strategic content. This becomes even more obvious as you become more successful and the demand for your content grows and bandwidth demands increase. At the same time the current economic pressures have constrained many IT budgets to the point where the demand for serving the rich media appetite of their audience becomes a challenge for the scarce IT resources.Read more and comment...

According to Yankee Group, broadband penetration in Latin America is projected to increase from 24.1 million lines in 2008 to 35.5 million lines in 2013. Contrary to the global economic downturn the Latin American broadband market is expected to experience continued growth over the next five years, based on increasing broadband penetration, the popularity of 3G mobile services and the increasing usage of content-rich applications.Read more and comment...

Consider the current worldwide recession.The economies of today’s world are so tightly integrated, that a major recession can no longer be isolated to a single country or region.

The European press is impressed, however, by Apple’s iPhone marketing campaign. The market penetration of the iPod in the US will greatly boost sales potential for the iPhone. The press sketches a bleak future for other US centric products such as Blackberry and Palm. Equipment providers, such as Nokia, were quick to state that Apple is now following the path they’ve already been taking for years while pointing at some basic flaws of the iPhone for the EU market, such as lack of a 3G capability.

Just before Christmas, I was honored to present an overview of Global Crossing’s experience in the planning, deployment, and operations of submarine cable systems to the Development Fund Commission of the European Union in Brussels.

In its efforts to reduce poverty in Africa, the European Council defined a strategy to speed up and provide continued support for the African infrastructure. The EU-Africa Partnership was established in 2006. This Infrastructure Partnership encompasses many elements that are considered standard by most of us: Some 42% of the 900 million Africans do not have access to safe water; 20% of Africans have no access to electricity; Less than 6% have access to internet.

In a five year period from 2008 onwards, the European Development Fund will invest €5.6B (US$7.3B) in the African infrastructure. A significant percentage of this amount will be for the expansion of African communications networks and international connectivity. This will greatly assist in closing the Digital Divide, as mentioned by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his opening speech of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November 2005.

Despite the lack of access to electricty, Africa is the world’s fastest growing market for mobile telephone services. In remote areas, smart entrepreneurs have even started battery-loading services for people with mobile phones that do not have electricity at home. Mobile phones have taken over from wireline services, for which an infrastructure is basically absent outside the main cities. The mobile penetration rate, which I estimate to be around 16% at present, is still massively behind Western-European countries, where penetration in some cases exceeds 100%. Fixed phone penetration is less than 5%. You can find details on the African market at the African Regional Office web site of the ITU.

The growth of the mobile market offers great potential to boost business, but Africa still lacks the international bandwidth to support this growth. To stimulate new business as well as to handle international traffic, key improvements need to be made in the interconnection between African countries and between Africa and the rest of the world. The two main options are: Expansion of satellite links and/or submarine fibre cables. Due to high latency problems with satellite connections (up to 600 ms), submarine connections are the preferred choice for voice and internet services, while satellite connections are selected for broadcast-type services.

Some of you may remember the Africa ONE project, which involved the installation of 39,000 km of submarine fibre cable around Africa. The project implementation, for which Global Crossing was selected for project management and undersea construction, was planned to start in 1999 and be completed in 2002. The project eventually was abandoned late 2001 when international funding evaporated.  At the time, a main reason for Global Crossing not to participate as either investor or owner in this project was based on the absence of deregulation in African countries as well as on difficulties reaching the many landlocked nations. Experience from GC’s other submarine projects in Europe, US, South-America, and Asia is that the full growth potential only emerges once deregulation comes into effect.

Mid-2002, the SAT-3/West African Submarine Cable (WASC) with a capacity of max 120 Gbps was taken into service between South Africa and Portugal. The SAT-3 cable is a club cable owned by a consortium of over two dozen incumbents. Besides in South-Africa, the SAT-3 cable lands in eight other West-African countries. Unfortunately, like many other consortium cables, the SAT-3 cable system suffers from cooperation issues between the club cable owners. At present, few countries have benefited from its existence.

In 2003, an East-Africa Submarine Cable System project (EASSy) was initiated for linking eight East-African countries to the rest of the world. The completion of this new club cable system is targeted for 2Q07: Less than six months to go. According to the EASSy website, some 23 carriers have signed the project MOU. According to other sources, however, the protocol approving the construction of the EASSy cable has only been signed by twelve carriers up to now. Completion of the project before 2009 is unlikely. We can further expect that this club cable will face similar problems as exist with the SAT-3 system today.
EASSy will not provide a direct connection of these eight East African countries to the rest of the world, but will only connect them to the SAFE and SeaMeWe-4 consortium systems. A significant reduction of capacity costs for the consumer is therefore not to be expected. A total investment of around US$300M has been indicated at present for EASSy. In July 2006, the European Investment Bank approved its participation in this investment.

When trying to gather data from the EASSy website in preparation for my presentation to the EC, I immediately perceived the problems that burden so many of these projects: Both content and data access are poor. Many web pages and images do not exist or cannot be loaded due to hosting problems. This phenomenon already shows the desperate need for many African countries to get better internet connectivity. For a future investor, however, it will be difficult to understand why a US$300M project does not offer a professional looking website. Most high school students on this side of the digital divide will be able to create such sites in a few days and have them hosted by an ISP for under US$50 per annum.

My advice to the Development Fund Commission of the EU, and to any other investor in projects like EASSy, is to add the learnings from SAT-3 high on their 2007 Resolutions List: Especially the aspects related to open access to these scarce resources deserve detailed study.  The unique situation that exists in Africa (e.g. the virtual absence of a fixed in-country telecom infrastructure) requires maintaining a careful balancing act between telecom regulation, deregulation and incumbent privatization. A direct connection of EASSy either to countries with a deregulated telecom enviroment and/or to privately owned submarine cable systems is a must. The funding should further be governed by tight control structures to ensure that aid actually ends up where it is needed most: With the African enterprises and consumers. From my perspective, this is the only way that Africa will be able to cross part of the digital divide in the next five years.

Any other suggestions for bridging the digital divide? Don't hesitate to post your comments below.