BLYK Dies is August 2009, Another Experiment in Mobile Advertising Down the Toilet

I am not surprised by the recent announcement that BLYK will shut down its MVNO in the UK because the model didn’t work when we first analyzed it. back in 2007. It was doomed from the start but someone need to lose a lot of money in order to figure this experiment out. It is failures like this that put a black mark on the industry.

Ryanair in Europe Starts In Flight Phone Service

The EU has cleared the way for people to make calls in the air at astronomical prices of Eur2-Eur3 per minute; text messages at Eur0.50 a pop; and email/ data at Eur1-Eur2 per MB.

My take is that this is so expensive i am not sure who can afford this and how much traffic and revenues will be generated for the operators and Ryanair. Plus it is already annoying on the pane when people talk really loud that having people yapping during the whole flight would be really annoying! The only winners are the Blackberry users as long as their companies are paying for it.

Verizon Selects LTE Vendors

Not suprised that Alcatel-Lucent was selected given the historical relationship but wonder how much influence it had relative to a straight comparison of their product. I think this is a major win for Ericsson and disappointing for NSN to not get a portion of the RAN.

Has anyone signed up for the XOHM service in Baltimore, MD?

I am looking for anyone who has signed up for service (either the home modem or the latop modem cards) to provide any feedback they can on the WiMAX network in terms of coverage, network availability, downloads speeds, coverage while moving, etc.

Are we (the wireless telecom industry) staring into an abyss for 2009?

Third quarter financials for nearly every player within the wireless telecom space, except for maybe Skyworks Solutions, were off the mark but more importantly, guidance for Q4 was sequentially down with little visibility as mobile operators scale back on cap ex. The question that is on my mind is given the global financial credit squeeze and the financial crisis, will 2009 be worse than the telecom downturn of 2001?

On my way to Japan right now and sitting in the Admiral’s Club at SFO wondering how big of a cliff the industry is going to fall off going into 2009.

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