Weekend Reading – November 6
The $10 Phone Bill
The cover story of current edition of Forbes magazine, written by Scott Woolley, is entitled “The $10 Phone Bill.” Such a scenario was discussed in the halls of the most recent CTIA, and Forbes teases “AT&T and Verizon’s worst nightmare is starting to happen.”
This in depth article about today’s North America wireless phone industry presents an insightful look at the challenges the major telcos face, the evolution of the industry to 4G and the acceptance of VoIP calls from mobile phones, and the opportunities for emerging players.
Just as interesting as the main article, a call-out article also by Woolley presents a Moore’s Law inspired analysis of Hi-Def Phone Calls. My favorite sentence: “Eventually the U.S. will catch up to Moldova, as the cost of better-sounding voice call becomes too cheap to ignore.”
iDidn’t, but you might have
In case the special effects laiden and action packed commercial of Stealth Bombers firing objects at unsuspecting farmers, school children, fishermen, hikers and motorists escaped your view, Verizon launched Droid, its first Android phone. This a much anticipated smartphone launch for Verizon, which has been losing market share to AT&T since that carrier’s debut of the iPhone in 2007. I am still curious why Verizon chose Air Force bombers firing pods into the US heartland as the visual for its launch of a smartphone. See for yourself, this commercial has erie Big Brother imagery.
By the way, on Twitter. Silicon Florist editor Rick Turoczy called to our attention that given all the hype about Droid coming to Verizon, who the owner of the website Droid.com turns out to be.
In case you miss it
On Friday last week it was reported that the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) unanimously adopted a new policy that will allow domain names in non-Latin based alphabets. This move clears the way for website addresses to be written in Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindy, Japanese and other languages.
And the winner is…
Guess who Fortune magazine named CEO of the Decade?
