[opendtv] Re: Nine ways Apple, Inc. just changed the landscape of consumer electronics

  • From: "John Willkie" <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:01:44 -0800

Apple vehemently denies everything and then does exactly what they denied
would ever happen.  (Color Macs, etc.)

 

The Ocean Telecom case is very strange indeed.  An allegedly offshore
Telecom company organized in Trinidad and Tobago, whose representative used
a @gmail.com address.  

 

IIRC, there's a little quirk about offshore telephone companies.  Unlike
firms that are based in the U.S., they can route calls to preferred
services, so that, say, if you dial a 900 or 800 number, they can route the
call to a high-cost provider so you get soaked.  And, by being in the Carib,
they can use the benefits of the FCC's Carribbean Basin Initiative (CBI)
which provides for call costs commensurate with domestic rates.

 

One doesn't think of Trinidad, Tobago (and Haiti) as being high-tech
centers, with plenty of spare capacity in telecom centers.  Certainly it's
not on my top 100 list of places to base telecom switches, so they were 

 

And, in case one missed it, Ocean Telecom is an Apple front.  Probably a
negotiating ploy of some sort.

 

Isn't the (we can't use the term yet) iPhone based on Cingular (GSM)
wireless infrastructure?  Kinda funny that as of today, they will start
promoting themselves as AT&T wireless and dropping the Cingular name now
that they own it all.  Yes; that's Apple working with 'the man."
AT&T/SBC/Bell South, etc.

 

I suspect that this is in reality another Mobile Virtual Network Operator.
About a year after that phase peaked and quickly tanked.  Can you still get
an ESPN phone that operates only on the ESPN MVNO?  (not in months).

 

If you read Verizon's 10-K filings with the SEC (somehow, I have) from last
year, one will note that MVNO's was the way that Verizon Wireless saw for
future growth.

 

The GSM in the U.S. operators are retrenching (T-Mobile is the other one of
note).  Kinda makes this sound like a kludge.  "Newton Phone"  probably
didn't hit the mark.

 

John Willkie

 

 

 

  _____  


Back on topic to the iPhone... how about that Ocean Telecom? :-P

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